Dear Friends,
We pray you are safe and well.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
Today's Meditation celebrates Mercy Day (September 24) when the Sisters of Mercy were founded and opened their first house of Mercy.
The Spirt of Life Community is especially connected to the Sisters of Mercy through Sr. Judy Oliver who helped Jean found The Children's Room, a center for grieving children and families and their Retreat Center Mercy by the Sea and Mercy Corps whose works of Mercy overseas we have helped after disasters. What a wonderful lens to look at the world: mercy, compassion, inclusion. Sr. Eileen has a wonderful reflection at the end of this story where she talks about how much we can learn from those to whom we show mercy. The main story is about a 90 year old Sister roaring with mercy and empowerment.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.
In this "Season of Ordinary Time" in the Church Year, may this be a time of peace, of healing and hope, of the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron & Jean
MEDITATION 158: Every Day is Mercy Day: Our hearts and hands on the world: mercy, compassion, inclusion
90-Year-old Nun ‘Roars’ for Women and Girls
September 24, 2020
By Sister Mary Reilly, as told to Catherine Walsh, Communications Specialist
Sister Mary with one of the girls from Sophia Academy. The ease between a student and a sister in this photo makes it one of Sister Mary’s favorites. After attending Sophia Academy, the student won a scholarship to St. Mary Academy – Bay View High School. She is now a college sophomore. (Sophia Academy photo)
I am a 90-year-old nun who has spent my life working to empower women and girls, especially those who are poor. The song for my burial will be “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy. Its’ opening line—”I am woman, hear me roar!”—inspires me. For as the song also says, “It’s wisdom born of pain.”
Over my 72 years as a Sister of Mercy, I have been transformed into a feminist. I was one of nine children raised by Irish-born parents in South Providence, Rhode Island. We didn’t have much, but nothing prepared me for the poverty I saw in Central America in the 1960s.
Serving as a teacher and principal for six years in Honduras and Belize developed in me a feminist consciousness. I saw women stand up to abusive husbands in a macho culture. I saw Indigenous girls become more confident as they learned about their bodies; they grew in appreciation for themselves right before your eyes.
When I came back to South Providence and began working at St. Michael’s Parish in 1970, I was shocked by the poverty of the teenage mothers who wanted their babies baptized. I visited them in their homes. Some of these young moms couldn’t read past grade 2. I was angry that a country as rich as ours had created an underclass of people whom no one cared about.
From ministry to advocacy
But my years at St. Michael’s also gave me hope. It was the 1970’s and many of us were excited by the Church’s recommitment to social justice, as called for by Vatican II. We moved from ministry to advocacy. All sorts of faith-filled activism began in this era. (See sidebar.)
It’s amazing how one ministry in your life threads into another. Deborah Thompson, a sister who later became a Mercy Associate and has since died, joined me at St. Michael’s, and we began teaching basic literacy to four young moms in 1980. As we helped these women learn to read their bills, leases, notes from their kids’ teachers and music to sing at Church, their fears of inadequacy and illiteracy subsided. They became more confident and more moms showed up, as did volunteers, who became tutors. That was the beginning of Dorcas Place Adult and Family Literacy Center, now Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, the largest adult learning center in the state. (Dorcas, an early Christian woman in the Bible, helped people in poverty.)
I was 50 at the time, about the same age as Catherine “Kitty” McAuley when she founded the Sisters of Mercy. We struggled for funding for Dorcas Place, as adult education was a new concept and the state agencies wouldn’t help us. (They did later.) But I’d say to Deborah, “We’re doing Kitty!” Catherine was about helping young women. She personified one of my favorite sayings: “The rising of the woman is the rising of the race.”
‘Age of idealism’
During my 19 years at Dorcas Place, I learned that nearly every woman there had experienced violence in her life. That influence, along with the UN’s Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, which stressed the education and development of the girl child, made me realize we had to start younger. We had to reach girls at the “age of idealism” when they enter adolescence.
Sister Mary with girls from Sophia Academy Sister Mary with one of the girls who was one of the first graduates of Sophia Academy Sister Mary surrounded by girls from Sophia Academy
So, in collaboration with a group of passionate women, I founded Sophia Academy, a non-denominational middle school for low-income girls, in 2001. Sophia means wisdom and the school’s motto is “Reflecting Wisdom in the Girl.”
The Sophia community is about empowerment and social justice. The girls get it! In non-pandemic times, they work together in “circles of learning” in the classroom; they understand that coming together makes them stronger.
Sr. Mary with Malala Yousafazai, a Nobel Prize Winner and International Advocate for women and girls. Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, made a surprise visit to Sophia Academy in 2016. After she was nearly killed by the Taliban in 2012, Sophia students wrote her letters of support. “I was moved by Malala and all she had done by age 19,” muses Sister Mary. “I was cloistered in a convent at that age.” (Sophia Academy photo)
During the pandemic, Sophia has had a 97 percent attendance rate. (Our school has 64 students from diverse backgrounds.) We have fabulous teachers and staff and they really responded. Three times last spring they went out to the girls’ homes with groceries and Visa gift cards, and once I went with them. It was moving to see how encouraging everyone was of each other.
Overcoming patriarchy
I believe that Sophia Academy reflects feminism at its best, which is mutuality, cooperation, and supportive relationships. This feminism is the opposite of patriarchy, which is about power.
The 2018 Women’s March in Providence included Sister Mary, whose tee-shirt says, “Mercy for Justice and Peace.” In June 2020, she attended Providence’s Black Lives Matter protest. “I’ve been going to protests all my life,” the nun says. “It’s important to me to be out there.”
Although we have a long way to go to overcome patriarchy, I’m hopeful because I’ve seen so much progress in my lifetime. I never thought I’d live to see so many women running for Congress and (hopefully) a woman vice president. Even in the Church, more and more people of faith understand that God isn’t a “He” or even a “She,” but Spirit who is Love.
Over the years I have learned that people want to be part of something good, something life-giving, something bigger than themselves that broadens their world. Dorcas Place and Sophia Academy are the work not of one or two persons but of many.
I have been blessed to work with so many wonderful women and girls.
Today the Sisters of Mercy throughout the world celebrate Mercy Day, the day in 1827 that the first House of Mercy opened on Baggot Street in Dublin, Ireland. Mercy Day is a celebratory and joyous day for the Mercy Community, and we usually gather for a Mercy Day Mass and dinner. This year will be different: prayer on zoom, small group gatherings, connecting with one another from a distance. Margaret Farley, RSM writes that “Mercy is love for those in need: it is the gift that fulfills or tries to fulfill, the needs of those in misery: as bread is to the hungry, warmth to someone who is cold, a word of comfort to the lonely and abandoned.” The call to be a person of mercy is a call to all of us to “Be merciful as God is merciful.” (Luke 6:36) Each Mercy Day, and at other times too, I am reminded of the paragraph in our Sisters of Mercy Constitutions which states: By collaborating with others in works of mercy we continually learn from them how to be more merciful. (par. 6) We at Mercy by the Sea continually learn from you, our friends, supporters, donors, participants, volunteers, and colleagues how to be more merciful. And we thank you for that, for your example, for your efforts to bring compassion to a fragmented and fractured world, and for your willingness to work with us to further the mission of Mercy by the Sea. In a world crying out for compassion and a simple little bit of kindness, let us continue to work together to touch our world with mercy and tenderness. May each of you experience the mercy you have shown to one another. In the spirit of Mercy, Sister Eileen