Julian Tenison Woods: A Life – Chapters 15th & 16th

Chapters 15th and 16th

Father Woods returned to Penola as he had arranged. Great was the sorrow of his parishioners on hearing that he was certainly leaving after Christmas…[1]

Preparations had to be made for the expected visit of the Bishop and for the Confirmation, which had been delayed several years, owing to the prolonged absence of the late Bishop.  Many adults were to be confirmed and Father Woods was kept busy at work, but as we have already seen, he considered it ‘a perfect luxury to have plenty to do.’…[2]

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ethica and Fair Trade

Want to join us in making a positive mark on the planet?

Fair Trade Fortnight takes place from 7 August to 20 August. It is based on a simple principle: we’re all connected. It is about people coming together to support farmers and workers around the world.

You can make a difference to people and planet by choosing to buy Fair Trade.

When someone asks me, ‘what is Fair Trade?’ my answer is simple: it is about trade and about being fair. It stands for improving livelihoods and supporting the development of artisans through trade, resulting in positive change in people’s lives.

Women in Peru, living in marginalised areas, have little or no opportunities for earning an income, but possess other skills: determination, ability and compassion.

Through the work with Ethica they have been able to achieve many milestones in their development, which has helped them, not only to receive an income, but has had a ripple effect with their families and communities

Today, they are facing one of their biggest challenges in Peru due to the pandemic and they need your help to keep their source of income. They love knitting all the amazing Ethica products for you, and it is thanks to this unique and fair source of income that they can have better food, send their children to school and pay for medicines.

If they are to continue the progress they are making to achieve sustainable development, they need your immediate support. At Ethica we want to continue to create opportunities for their families and communities. They want to keep their source of income, to survive and thrive, and this is connected to your purchase of Ethica products.

We should, together support the artisans and choose to buy Fair Trade.

By purchasing an Ethica product:

• you are coming together and supporting the women who are struggling to feed their families in Peru;
• you are buying something beautiful;
• you are buying quality;
• you arehaving a positive impact;
• when you join us, you are investing in a more just world;
• you are investing in women and together we are supporting communities.

You can do something today – Please help.

Fair Trade means what you buy matters!

Make a difference today, go to www.ethica.org.au

Gina Bradley,
National Manager
ethica

Mary MacKillop Today Community Grants Program

Community Grant Applications Open 10 August!

Mary MacKillop Today’s Community Grants Program seeks to empower people in need to build a better future for themselves and their communities. By participating in community led projects, individuals build skills and gain knowledge to engage with their local community and take advantage of life opportunities.

Applications for the 2021 Community Grants Program funding round open on 10 August and close on 14 September 2020.

Eligible organisations can apply for grants up to $10,000 AUD to deliver transformative projects that promote life-long learning for vulnerable Australians.

The Program began as a response to the ministries of the Sisters of Saint Joseph dedicated to helping vulnerable communities. In 2020, the Program awarded $150,000 in small grants to 15 recipients in urban, regional and remote communities.

The grants program creates positive change by supporting small, local organisations to assisting some of the most vulnerable groups in their communities, including homeless women, people living with disability, refugees and asylum seekers, to become more empowered to engage in broader society.

To find out more and to read the Community Grants Guidelines for 2021, please click the link below:

Mary MacKillop Today Community Grants

God Will Take Care of Us All: A Spirituality of Mary MacKillop

Now an eBook!

An Australian! A saint for the universal Church!

From her earliest years Mary MacKillop had learnt from her grandparents and parents that ‘God will take care of us all’. This deep trust in God’s loving care became fundamental to her spirituality.

Her life as a pioneer Australian Christian provides for us today a model for living our Baptismal call. Her spirituality, which found expression in her heroic devotedness to her ‘good God’ and to the needy, is the subject of this book and is explored through her writings from 1860 to 1874.

Mary’s response to God’s grace enabled her to live by the will of God, to trust in the providence of a ‘good God’ and allow the cross to transform her life. Mary asks us, as she did her mother in September 1870, ‘do you try now in real earnest to be a saint?’

This new eBook is available through Amazon Kindle and Apple iBook.

Pauline Wicks rsj

I am Josephite: Pauline’s Story

To celebrate National Vocations Awareness Week (2-9 August 2020), a new series has been launched called ‘I am Josephite.’

First Maori School 1891

St Joseph’s Maori School, Matata in New Zealand 1891-1894.

Two Mill Hill priests of Saint Joseph’s Foreign Missionary Society from Mill Hill, London, England, were sent as missionaries to Aotearoa New Zealand and particularly to the Maori people. They arrived at Christmas, 1886, and were appointed to Matata by Bishop Luck of the diocese of Auckland. Their goal was to revitalize the faith among the Maori people. The bitterness of the Maori wars, the poor influence of some Europeans, and the lack of priests to maintain contact with Maori converts were felt keenly by the Catholic hierarchy. Mary MacKillop was asked for Sisters to staff the proposed Maori Mission school at Matata.

Mary MacKillop sent the first Josephite Community, Sisters Xavier Molony, Francis Fitzgerald and Louis Hoare in 1890 to work alongside the Mill Hill Fathers. They arrived in Matata on 9th February 1891 and as there was neither convent nor school ready for use, they stayed at the local hotel. A two- storeyed building with accommodation for Sisters and boarders on the upper floor and schoolroom on the ground floor was built. The school was opened on 3 August 1891 with a roll of 52 pupils. The attendance at school fluctuated. In 1895 Sister Xavier wrote about the cold experienced in the school.

Annie MacKillop accompanied Mary on her first visit to New Zealand. She has left a vivid picture of what travel would have been like. She talks of a dreadful road, up and down hills with the road just wide enough for one trap and not many resting places or nourishing food on the fifty-six-mile drive from the port of Tauranga to Matata – the last stage at night. It was only after Mary MacKillop sent the first Josephite community, Sisters Xavier Molony and Francis Fitzgerald that Mary and Annie realised how dangerous their first journey had been.

The letters of Mary MacKillop describe the conditions in Matata as she found them three years after the first school was opened. Mary was given a great welcome by the Maori People and she set about improving conditions for the Sisters, the pupils in the School, and for their families. Mary wrote a school report for “St Joseph’s Maori School Matata Bay of Plenty” in 1894. She noted the children’s progress and recommended that the Sisters give oral lessons in grammar from time to time.  Before Mary left New Zealand, she sent them kegs of butter, dripping, necessaries and wire netting which she had begged for while she was travelling about.

Colleen Dempsey rsj

Media Release: National Vocations Awareness Week

Drawing on the wisdom of Saint Mary MacKillop through National Vocations Awareness Week (2-9 August 2020).

Each year the Church celebrates National Vocations Awareness Week. This week is dedicated to promoting the various expressions of Christian vocation with a focus on promoting priesthood and consecrated life.

This year, a group of Josephite Sisters and Affiliates have been asked to contribute video content about their Ministries and how they participate in God’s mission today.

“The response has been extremely pleasing, and we are thrilled to showcase the great works of these individuals,” said Kathleen Norman, Communications Manager, Sisters of Saint Joseph. “The first of the content series will be launched on Sunday 2 August in time for the start of National Vocations Awareness Week, and then continue throughout the remainder of this year.”

Drawing from reflection on Saint Mary MacKillop’s experience, Sister Monica added: “My advice to young Australians of faith is – be the voice of the gospel and the face of God in the world today. Be courageous; use your passion and energy to address the critical issues facing the world and church today.”

During these unusual times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, research shows us there is a new openness to the sharing of faith in 2020. Australians have turned to prayer during the coronavirus with many wanting to spend more time growing their faith once restrictions are lifted.

The Sisters of Saint Joseph believe that Saint Mary MacKillop would offer encouragement during these difficult times. In 1907 she wrote to the Sisters:

Sr Monica Cavanagh, Congregational Leader, believes strongly that Mary MacKillop is with us:

Saint Mary MacKillop herself wrote about her testing experience of being dangerously unwell:

Please continue reading the Media Release here (PDF)

For more information, please contact:

Kathleen Norman
Communications Manager
Sisters of Saint Joseph
Kathleen.Norman@sosj.org.au
+61 2 8912 2722   +61 438 006 566

National Vocations Awareness Week

For National Vocations Awareness Week (NVAW) starting on Sunday 2 August and concluding on Sunday 9 August 2020, you’re invited to view a reflection by Sr Clare Conaglen.

My Dad was a doctor. As kids we learnt that we had to share him with many other people unknown to us. For Dad being a doctor was more than a profession or career, it was a vocation, a belief that God was calling him, and that God had given him the gifts necessary. [1] He was dedicated, he gave his life to it and even when he was sick himself for a nearly a year, his patients all returned to him knowing that he cared for them with compassion and genuine concern.  Mum was always the support and in turn lived out her vocation of spouse, mother and carer of the carer.

What do we mean by Christian vocation or call?  It is not that we are doctors or priests, construction workers, secretaries or religious. It is more a sense that God is intimately involved in our lives and calls us to participate in making our planet, with humans and non-humans alike, more just, caring and loving, building and participating in the reign of God here and now.

However not everyone wants to hear this message and violence, racism, greed, egocentrism and destruction of our planet continue. Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush when he says, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matt 10: 39). How Jesus uses the word worthy means more about ‘capable’, ‘ready’, ‘equal to.’  Am I worthy of, up to it, ready, capable of Jesus? None of us are capable by our own efforts. With the support of a spouse or of a community we can respond to Jesus’ challenge.

Jesus continues “Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 10:39). Am I prepared to lose my life for the sake of Jesus? Our world today says you must be self-realised, achieve your utmost, be someone, make your mark in the world.  Jesus asks us to be faithful, using our gifts and time for others, for our world. We will find meaning in our lives, we will have life.

My life as a Sister of St Joseph has led me into the classroom teaching mathematics and science in New Zealand and Samoa- such small islands in the Pacific with a culture rich in dignity and respect for each other.  The students there saw themselves as the centre of the world and lived into their dreams for education and a career, living their vocation.

My life has also taken me to Peru for 16 years working alongside some wonderful people in a parish on the edge of the Lima where people  come from the mountains and the jungle areas with their hopes and dreams to start a new life, a better education for their children and a better job. They carve out settlements on the dry and dusty hills of the desert in which surround Lima. Poverty abounds but a spirit of resilience also abounds.

Now I find myself on the Congregational leadership team in North Sydney which brings yet another set of challenges.  And underneath and through the activity and challenges there is a constant flowing stream -the call, that relationship of love with God that invites us on.  Are you up to the challenge?  Are you capable?   My Dad and Mum said “yes.” With the support of a community we can say ‘’yes.”

Sr Clare Conaglen

Footnote:
[1] Idea taken from Mary M McGlone, Scripture for Life Column, NCR, 13^th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2020