From the Editor's Desk

Making a Difference

By Sr. Frances Brady, OLM
Summer 2000

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Christians around the world have spent a lot of time recently reading, writing, praying and reflecting about Jubilee—talking about what it means and how to celebrate it. This is doubly true for Our Lady’s Missionaries. While preparing with others for the 2000th anniversary of Christianity, we have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of our congregation.

During the past year we went to Alexandria, Ontario, place of our founding and first ten years as a congregation, to celebrate with the people there. In Toronto we celebrated with the Sisters of St. Joseph whose Sisters lived with us for the first ten of our 50 years and played an important part in the founding of Our Lady’s Missionaries.

The celebration of our 50th Jubilee has been a wonderful opportunity to meet with old and new friends, to be grateful for God’s blessings and express our gratitude to some of the people who have been the carriers of those blessings.

We have also been participating in a variety of ways in preparation for, and then the beginning of, the Christian Jubilee.

It seems to me that during this unique time, along with many other people, we are looking for something truly unique, some sign that the world is now new, different, better than it has been. We want to believe that after 2000 years of Christianity—and after 50 years of the life of a religious congregation—we will see the effect of those years on the world. A new millennium, or century or half century, or even a new year, we believe, ought not to be simply a matter of a new calendar, or a different number at the top of the page.

At the same time we know that the newness, the difference, does not come from a calendar page or the number we write for the current year. How we live and what we do, one day at a time, make things different, or not. And so we have been looking back at what has gone before, for what is good and has made a difference; for what we would remedy and do differently if we have the chance; for ways to express reconciliation, celebration, and gratitude. We look at our world today and our hopes for the future, and ask ourselves and each other what we must do differently to bring about what we desire.

In the pages that follow are stories about some of the ways that Our Lady’s Missionaries have been celebrating Jubilee. You will read about the hopes and dreams that we and people with whom we live and work hold dear. These stories also tell us some of the ways that various groups of people are trying to fulfill their greatest hopes, and give us some indication of what would, for them, embody the true meaning of Jubilee.

Once again we are grateful to the Scarboro Missions and the staff of Scarboro Missions magazine for giving us this issue. We are grateful also to Sr. Marie Clarkson for gathering the material and acting as a liaison with the magazine staff.

On August 15, 1999, Sr. Frances Brady began her ministry as Our Lady’s Missionaries’ new congregational leader. Along with the leadership of Sr. Mary Gauthier and Sr. Joan Missiaen, Our Lady’s Missionaries will strive to practice Sabbath, offer and receive forgiveness, free captives and proclaim liberty as we enter the new millennium and complete our Jubilee Year 1949-1999.

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