They know the pain of the world, and they radiate God’s healing.
Every year on the Feast of the Transfiguration in August, the Sisters of Life have their final profession Mass — sisters taking their permanent vows for life, for life. The Sisters of Life are Catholic “nuns” who take the usual vows that women religious do: poverty, chastity, and obedience. And they have a fourth: to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life
Three women made their final vows earlier this week at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where their founder, Cardinal John O’Connor, is buried: Sisters Beata Victoria, Léonie Thérèse, and Maria Augustine — all gals I’ve been blessed to get to know a bit over the years. They are all exactly who you would hope an abortion-minded woman might be able to encounter: loving, understanding, listening, knowing, helping.
They know the pain of the world, and they radiate God’s healing. Usually/always because they’ve received it themselves — and continue to. They are not disembodied pray-ers. They live in the world, heard a vocational call from God, and give Him their lives in love for others. It’s quite the act of gratitude, trust, and love, of the kind that we need if we are ever going to have anything like a culture of life and civilization of love.
You can watch Wednesday’s Mass here:
Inevitably there is an effort to categorize public figures as conservative or liberal. Cardinal O’Connor, like the church herself, defies this type of categorization. He was eloquent and unremitting in his defense of the life of the unborn as well as his support of the value of human life to the moment of natural death. Perhaps his most lasting testament in support of life will be the work of the Sisters of Life, a religious community he founded and loved so dearly.
As he was dying last Wednesday as a result of a disease with terrible consequences, he bore witness one last time to the moral evil of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
At his funeral Mass in May 2000, this happened:
During Law’s homily, the mourners burst into a loud, two-minute round of applause when he spoke of O’Connor’s vehement opposition to abortion.
“What a great legacy he has left us in his constant reminder that the church must always be unambiguously pro life,” Law said, prompting the standing ovation.
When the clapping subsided, Law drew laughter when he said of his old friend, “I see he hasn’t left the pulpit.”
If O’Connor were giving us a sermon today, he might say something along the lines of what he often said: God chose to need you.
Almighty God could have designed the world in such a fashion that He would have no need of any of us. But in His great love and His great mercy, He designed the world so that He would need us. We would have to be His arms, His legs, His eyes in this world . . . to be his beating heart in this world, beating with love, and compassion and tenderness and mercy for others.
Each sister has on the medal she wears the words “And nothing would again be casual or small.” It’s from a poem about the Annunciation — when the angel Gabriel approached Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a little news. He changes everything. And so during every given day, really nothing is casual or small. Do we see that? Do we know that? Do we love or fear that?
Just thoughts about some women and their charism which help a culture be more tender.