MacKillop link

When Mary MacKillop visited my home town from March to May 1902, my grandmother, Marguerite, was all of 4 years old. It is not beyond imagination that Mary, who was in town for the healing, hot baths, may have attended Mass at the same time as my infant grandmother and her parents. My grandmother died six months after I was born, and yet she is but one link to this same Mary MacKillop whose 100th anniversary of death we remember this Saturday, and whose canonisation we await with a collective, bated breath.

Across this country are people, places, words and dreams that connect us to this daughter of Australia. Certainly a handsome woman, but no beauty, of ordinary, humble Scottish stock. Home educated, strong and persistent, Mary’s story is anything but ordinary. Her zeal, matched only by her faith, saw her congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart grow from zero to 130 sisters between 1867 and 1871, from one barn school in Penola to 40. She and her sisters ministered to women in poverty and distress, took in orphans, taught, visited the sick.

Nothing was easy. Mary’s rule of life caused conflict with her bishop. He excommunicated her and attempted to disband the sisters. In seeking Roman approval for her rule, she and her mentor, Father Julian Tenison Woods, had a falling out after Mary agreed to a number of changes.

There are other saintly Australians whose lives have enriched our folklore, our spirituality and even our nationhood: Maude O’Connell, founder of the Family Care Sisters; Catherine Gaffney (from Deloraine, Tasmania) who was a founding member of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration; Caroline and Archibald Chisholm – ‘The emigrant’s friends’; John Bede Polding, visionary bishop of Sydney and founder of the Good Samaritan Sisters; Ken Barker, who established and still leads the Missionaries of God’s Love within the Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community. There are thousands and thousands of others, perhaps less luminous, less famous, and each of us has been touched in some small or large way by one of them.

Mary MacKillop, like people of faith everywhere, listened to and responded to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5:1 - 2):

Try, then, to imitate God, as children of his that he loves, and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up in our place as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God.

If this became our rule of life, what a difference we could make too. We would only be following the path laid down by many who have gone before us – my grandmother Maggie included.

Happy feast day, Mary.