EDUCATION MATTERS: Mary MacKillop, Catholic Education Week, and Me
By Dr Gerard Gaskin, Executive Director of Catholic Education Tasmania
During Catholic Education Week from 6 to 12 August I was invited to speak at three consecutive celebration and award-giving evenings (in Devonport, Launceston and Hobart) about an aspect of the inspirational life of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
Conscious that many other invited personnel (Catholic Education Leaders, Clergy, Commissioners and TCEO officers) would participate each evening, I made it my goal not to repeat the same presentation each evening – but rather choose a different reflection on Mary of the Cross’ saintly example each evening. I am delighted to share some of them with you.
To be declared a saint, it is a requirement of the Church that the person must demonstrate heroic virtue in their life.
It is another requirement that a full and detailed documented history of the persons’ life (the “cause” for canonisation) be presented in Rome.
As a result of this process we now have the “Cause” of St Mary in published form. Written by Fr Paul Gardener SJ, this two-volume book series provides a remarkable and penetrating insight into the saint’s motivations, challenges, aspirations and holiness.
Via diary accounts and the countless letters she wrote and received we can witness, almost first-hand, the mind of St Mary.
My Aunt Margaret was recruited as a young girl in England and came to Australia in the 1930s as a Josephite sister.
We regularly made family visits to convents and foundations where our aunt, Sister Edmund Campion was posted, all established by St Mary.
Indeed, we enjoyed afternoon tea in the very rooms and spaces that Mary MacKillop had worked and lived. Because our Aunt lived with many of the sisters who had lived and worked with St Mary, through them, we experienced a living link with St Mary of the Cross, known lovingly to them all as “Mother Mary”.
Her diaries capture moments of great holiness, none more moving than the moment of her excommunication – a short lived exile from the Faith – soon to be justly restored. During the dark, sombre and solemn moments of the ceremony of excommunication, we could imagine that she would experience frustration and anger at such an obvious insult to her faithful service of God. Not so St Mary!
She spent every moment of the ceremony praying fervently for the soul of the bishop who was excommunicating her. She beseeched God to spare and forgive him and called on the deep reserves of her own intimacy with Jesus to strengthen her persecutor’s faith and the faith of all the sisters who depended on her. That is heroic virtue indeed.
Beleaguered with chronic illness for a great deal of her life, St Mary always displayed heroic courage and perseverance in the face of hardship.
Deeply embedded in her writings and instructions to the Sisters of St Joseph throughout Australia was a profound and sisterly love of the ordained clergy.
She forbade any of her sisters ever to criticise a priest – no matter what! She reserved her sternest rebukes for anyone who gave less than the required respect for the revelation and personification of Christ that is the life and ministry of the priesthood.
Indeed, we have so much yet to learn about heroic virtue from our Australian saint.