Creative women
By Sr. Mary Gauthier, O.L.M.
March/April 2009
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When I reflect back on the early years of Our Lady's Missionaries, I marvel at the faith and courage of our first Sisters. They had the foresight and creativity like Mary to say Yes. Till this day Rosemarie Donovan and Noreen Kearns from Toronto, and Prince Edward Island's Myra Trainor, the three earliest members, continue to say Yes.
How many people had heard of Alexandria, Ontario, or Glengarry County in those years? Of course those of us from there were surely proud to have our town as the place for the beginning of Our Lady's Missionaries, this new group of women missionaries.
There were those who questioned how our founder Fr. Dan Macdonald could start a women's missionary congregation at his age. How many young women could really appreciate his dream? But Fr. Dan with a twinkle in his eye was able to say to his God, "Your will not mine be done." I believe that the vision that Jesus gave to Fr. Dan was the dream of the reign of God in the world, with Our Lady's Missionaries (OLMs) as one of the lights making this dream visible.
So it is with gratitude that we OLMs are living this dream with continued support from our roots. To this day the Catholic Women's League of Alexandria and Cornwall Dioceses, and the Ladies' Guild of Williamstown, remain faithful to their promise to Fr. Dan by their love and financial assistance. Whereas Fr. Dan sold Christmas cards to support us, our friends in Glengarry now gather each year to stuff envelopes and mail our yearly Christmas newsletter. This faith and trust has followed us to Toronto and our number of supporting friends increases. In our own way, each of us tries to make real Fr. Dan's dream of the reign of God in the world.
As a young person, my own invitation to say Yes was stirring inside me nurtured by the faith of my parents and family. Seeing the first OLMs at my home parish of St. Finnan's each Sunday caused me to wonder. I followed the stirrings inside me and was able to say Yes even as I wondered like Mary how this would unfold.
When I arrived in the Philippines in 1966 I began to notice the faith of the materially poor. From my nursing experience of seeing women birthing at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, I now watched a woman give birth in her own little nipa palm house. Her husband prepared the lugao or watery rice while the children climbed a nearby tree in order to watch through a window. Soon the attending nurse thanked God for this new life. It was a blessing for me to experience the gift of life in such simplicity.
On another occasion I held a newborn infant in my arms and watched as she died while her twin lived. The father accepted it as God's will, whereas I felt my anger rise at the injustice of having no hospital for this family to go to or even nourishing food for them to eat each day. The poor taught me to trust in God when I cannot change things and to try to change the things I can.
I have accompanied women in a health program as well as parish groups struggling to obtain their rights. All have been faith witnesses for me. I remember a time when the members of the health group had organized themselves to go to the health centre to ask for medicine and were turned away empty handed. They returned to our meeting place dejected, saying that no one cared and that it was useless to keep asking. After reflection on Jesus' words, "Ask and you shall receive. Knock and the door will be opened," their fear and anger lessened. They returned to the clinic to ask once more and received the medicine.
"Salamat sa Dios" (Thanks be to God) was their prayer. They had felt and touched their God-given power and called upon it. This made me question whether I trust my power and how I use it.
There are so many stories of the faith of the people. Currently a group of farmers is protesting the aerial spraying of banana trees since the spray harms the workers as well as the earth. For two months they have camped on the sidewalk in front of the court of appeal waiting for a decision even as they hold prayer vigils and Eucharistic celebrations to keep alive their trust in God. Their commitment has awakened in me my connectedness with the earth and my power and responsibility to care for it.
A new experience for me is my involvement with a Christian-Muslim group for dialogue. It is gifting me with a growing realization and awareness that Muslims believe in the same compassionate, loving God as I do. This Christmas I listened at church as a Muslim explained his understanding of Mary and of Jesus as revealed in the Koran, their holy book.
What a long way my roots have taken me. I believe the faith of Fr. Dan lives on in today's world through Our Lady's Missionaries and many others. In spite of tensions that are mine, my hope is to have courage as Fr. Dan did to choose lifegiving responses and to live creatively.
I marvel at the faith and courage of our first Sisters. They had the foresight and creativity like Mary to say Yes.
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