Homily 12/13/2009. Gaudete Sunday. Sister Marilyn Lacey
St Matthew Church, San Mateo
Thank you, Father Tony
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice!
Sooo…The question for today is: Where have all the nuns
gone? They used to fill our schools, our hospitals; they were always easy to
spot in those long dark habits. They were so other-worldly and so very
mysterious! [A friend of mine got all the way to 5th grade before
she figured out that the nuns in her school who had men’s names –like Sr Joseph
and Sr Mark-- weren’t actually men!] Yes, the nuns were strict and
maybe we were afraid of some of them, but if you grew up in the 40s or 50s or
60s, they were certainly part of your life.
They built the American church as we know it: they established
the vast network of Catholic schools and taught in them for meager stipends (about
$70/mo); they set up Catholic hospitals across the United States and staffed
them 24/7 without hardly ever taking a day off, year after year. They taught
catechism in our parishes, visited the sick in theourir homes, taught us how to
read. Prepared us for the sacraments. Chaperoned our dances. Cheered at our
baseball games. They were everywhere. They were happy. And then they all but
disappeared.
What happened?
1) Since Vatican II the laity have been slowly taking their
rightful place in the church, doing what used to be reserved for “sister” or
“father.” Now you don’t need to enter a convent in order to serve God, so many
young women are making other choices.
2) Family size shrank dramatically. Several generations
ago, most Cath. families had 4, 5 6 or more children. If one of them entered
the convent, that was an honor for the family. Today most families have just 1
or 2 children. Be honest: are YOU encouraging your only daughter to go into a
convent?
3) God just might be creating something new, a new form of
dedicated service in the church that will not look like the group convent
living we have known for the past few centuries. We simply don’t know. But if
it is God’s work, we do know it will be wonderful.
And what about the sisters who are still here, living in the
Bay Area? Why don’t we see more of them in our parishes and schools and
hospitals? Vatican II mandated that all religious should “go back to their roots”
to the original spirit or charism of their foundresses. We took that very
seriously and we discovered a lot!
Sisters, in fact, are not part of the structured
hierarchy of the church. We learned that Sisters were not necessarily meant to
be the “workforce” of the church, an army of servants staffing large
institutions. We got back in touch with the special callings of our various
beginnings. And so the sisters moved out into other ministries. Some call them
new ministries, but actually we were returning to the vision of our earliest
years. Over the past 40 yrs we realized more clearly that we are meant to be
more of a leaven--or perhaps even a disturbance--to the official church. Our
role is to be voices from the edges, not the mainstream.
Sisters began visiting jails. Leading Centering Prayer with
the inmates at San Quentin. Working among the homeless in the Tenderloin. Starting
affordable housing for the poor. Finding daring ways to promote peace and
justice. Counselling children and families. Moving to the margins of polite
society to work with prostitutes and addicts. Comforting those suffering with
AIDS. Standing up for the rights of migrants. Teaching prayer and spiritual
direction and giving retreats. Welcoming refugees. Practicing nonviolence.
Caring for the earth. Tending the spiritual life. And all the while, giving
ourselves entirely to the God of our hearts.
Yes, there are fewer of us now; and yes, we are definitely aging,
but oh, look at the ways Sisters are living the Good News that John Baptist
proclaims in today’s reading:
One of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Sr Dorothy Stang,
was murdered several yrs ago in the Brazilian Amazon because she stood with
the poor against ruthless landowners.
Two local Sisters of Mercy, Margeurite Buchanan and Suzanne
Toolan have started a safe-house here on the Peninsula that welcomes, shelters
and transforms abused women who’ve just been released from prison.
I myself work with displaced women and girls in Southern
Sudan in Africa thru a nonprofit called Mercy Beyond Borders. It’s true, I have
moved beyond the math classroom where I used to teach. If you want to find me
now, you’ll need to fly 30 hours to Nairobi, then hop a bush plane to
Lokichokkio, then climb into a jeep and drive 3 more hours escorted by two
trucks of men armed with machine guns to fend off ambushes, until you reach the
village of Narus, where Mercy Beyond Borders is educating 830 eager students in
the first all girls’ school in the whole country.
You may have read or heard on the news that the Vatican is currently conducting an investigation of American nuns. Indeed, they are,
though we are not privy to its intent. We have been told that once the study is
finished, we will not be allowed to read the report or respond to its
findings. Perhaps God views this 3-yr investigation as a peculiar way to spend
time and money when there is so much real pain in the world. Never mind! We Sisters
will go about doing what we believe the Spirit of God impels us to do: announcing
Good News, healing the sick, being with the poor, standing with the oppressed.
We do not claim to have a corner on the truth, but we do try
earnestly to live each day with joy, faithful to our vows and present to the
poor in ways that respond to the suffering of our day—all the while, giving
witness to the Good News that God is right here in our midst. There is much reason
for rejoicing. Happy Gaudete Sunday to you all!
-Sister Marilyn Lacey,
RSM
