Twice a year the Australian Bishops gather at MacKillop Place in North Sydney for their regular Conferences. In the chapel of what became the Mother House and Novitiate of the Sisters of Saint Joseph is the grave of Mother Mary. Strange as it might sound, it is a living tomb. At any time of the day there are people praying there, in ones and twos and whole groups. There are lay people, religious, priests and even bishops. There are people of all colours and nationalities. There is a powerful atmosphere of prayer and faith. It is indeed one of Australia’s holiest places.
Others have written about the obstacles Mary MacKillop had to encounter. There was her very dysfunctional family, an absentee father and a dependent mother, and siblings whose upkeep demanded that Mary take on the position of governess at an early age. In addition, Mary was of Scottish not Irish background in a Church of the time in Australia that could rarely see beyond Ireland as the only model of Church action. She was colonial born and not formally educated, and yet running schools and training Sisters, to the disdain of some of the overseas clergy. She was also a woman, in an age of male-only initiative, and a religious sister, in an age when nuns were meant to be semi-enclosed in grand convents leading ordered lives within protecting walls – certainly not in the outback in cottages and lean-to’s, miles and miles away from the presence of a priest. And nuns were meant to agree demurely with the clergy.
What did Mary have going for her? She had a quite brilliant mind and a faith that could move mountains, even bishops and a Pope. A heart and soul filled with the love of God was hers. She saw the inner truth of things, could see the beauty of the Church beneath the deficiencies of its exterior and the foibles of a lot of its clergy. She had youth and energy and sickness; she had daring and compassion; she had a constant daring and a desire to spread goodness and faith throughout our land. These ingredients made the Josephites a power house of energy and creativity, tempered at times by frailty like any human organisation, just as sickness tempered Mary.
Within 16 months of arriving in Adelaide in 1867, there were more than fifty Josephite Sisters. When Mary was excommunicated in 1871 she had already had to learn to face up to Church superiors, and she was responsible for the care and conduct of 110 sisters conducting 47 works in South Australia. The average age of this new order of nuns was just under 25. When calamity struck them and almost 50 sisters were dismissed and she was excommunicated, Mary was only 29 years old.
What makes her so strong in appeal for all Australians of all and no faiths was her integrity and commitment to the lowly, the isolated, those in adverse circumstances. She founded the first women’s shelters, aged care homes and houses for girls struggling to leave the dark life of the streets. She established schools which taught both youngsters and illiterate adults in country towns, giving adult men and women wanting to learn how to read and write the skills that would free them from being hooked into being near serfs.
The Port Pirie diocese has had more than forty Josephite works commenced here, and the Sisters are still here in schools and parishes and social work and care for the aged. Wallaroo is the oldest Josephite school in existence in Australia, and is to be named St Mary MacKillop School in her honour. Caritas College in Port Augusta, founded in 1872, has Sr Catherine Mead RSJ as its Principal, and that makes it the school with the longest record of unbroken Josephite leadership in Australia.
When an instrument is being made it has to be forged, to make it strong. Our diocese became the forge for the Josephite charism reaching out across distances in communities of two or three Sisters to serve the neglected and isolated, those poor in the world’s gifts. Our diocese was a place through the late 1860s and the 1870s in which Mary saw her dream forged in all the scattered little schools embracing the poor and lowly of this world, with her Sisters lifting up those being pressed down by isolation and scant means in a totally Australian environment.
Mary MacKillop travelled our roads, wrote letters from our little towns, got hot and dusty and dirty in our summers. Holiness is not far away. We drive the same roads, live in the same towns, stay where she stayed. The love of God has been seen to fill our land. She was here in her time, and now we are here to live that same love. The greatness of heart of dedicated young women in brown brought hope and strength to where it was very needed.
Thank you, Lord, for placing such a saint in our midst. We consider our blessings, looking for the flowers in the garden of our diocese, not the weeds. May we say in our hearts what Mary MacKillop wrote, ‘Let us rejoice and thank God for giving us such solid proofs of His love’. May our Church of Australia continue to bring forth disciples of Jesus of such commitment and closeness to Him as Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
By Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ, Port Pirie Diocese.
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