Columban Sisters Centenary: "100 years of blessings"

East London Columban Sisters

The Columban Sisters marked their Centenary on Sunday 29 September. East London's community of sisters celebrated with a Mass and refreshments at Our Lady and St Catherine of Siena Church in Bow. The main celebrant was Fr Howard James and concelebrating was Fr John Boles, Director of the Columban Fathers in Britain, and Fr Joseph Liang of the Chinese Chaplaincy. Graham Lindsey led the music, which included an 'Our Father' sung in Mandarin and a 'Hail Mary' written by Fr James. The sisters spoke of "100 years of blessings" and the following talk was given by Sister Kate Midgley.

First let me say a few words about our readings today and I will go on and say something about our Congregation later.

The second reading from St James gives a very vivid description of what happens to the wealth of the rich: "Your wealth is all rotting, your clothes are eaten by moths. Your gold and silver are corroding away." And their behaviour: how they cheated the labourers who worked for them and kept their wages back … And then goes on to say how the cries of the reapers, the workers, "have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts". This is a God who hears the cry of the poor.

How very relevant this reading is to our world today when even in our own country there are so many people who have to choose between eating and heating. As missionaries, and having lived in some of the poorest countries of the world, we have become very aware that it is not by accident that some countries are rich and others are poor, and that justice is such an important part of the gospel.

There is some similarity between the first reading and the gospel. In both cases it seems the people who felt they had a bit of a monopoly on sharing God's word were a bit put out when others started doing it as well. In the first reading, 70 elders had been with Moses when God came down on them in the form of a cloud but two others started to prophesy. When people complained to Moses he said, "If only the whole people of Israel were prophets and the Lord gave his Spirit to them all." And indeed, every single one of us is called to be prophets in today's world. In the gospel, there was a man casting out devils in Jesus' name and the disciples tried to stop him because he was not one of their inner circle, but Jesus said they should not stop him. In our life as missionaries, working together with people of other faiths or no faith for the common good has been an essential part of our mission

So, I share with you now a little of the story of our Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of St Columban or Columban Sisters.

Today is exactly 100 years to the very day when our first Sisters made their first vows and our Congregation was officially founded. They had joined the Congregation just two and a half years before. Most of them were quite young.

If we just pause for a moment and think back to what life was like 100 years ago, on 29 September 1924, it was a time of great political and social upheaval. The First World War had just ended, and some women had just got the vote. Our Congregation was born in Ireland and just a very few years before Ireland had become independent. This context proved a very fertile soil for the Holy Spirit to stir up great dreams in the young people to share the good news of God's love all over the world.

As you heard from Fr Kevin McDonagh a couple of weeks ago, the Columban Fathers (which was initially known as the Maynooth Mission to China) were founded in 1918. But they realised that in order to reach Chinese households they needed women. One of the cofounders of the Columban Fathers, Fr John Blowick, and some Catholic women led by a Lady Frances Maloney, began the process of starting a missionary Congregation of women to share the good news of God's love to the "millions who haven't heard" in China. At that time in China the population was a mere 400 million compared to the 1.4 billion today but still it was a lot of people who had never heard of Christ.

So, after the first group of Sisters made their vows on 29 September 1924, the young Congregation began their preparations to go to China to share the good news of God's love with the people of China. China was very difficult to get to in those days and when the Sisters left Ireland two years later they thought they were going for life, never to return to the families or native land again.

It reminds of us of the same spirit of abandonment to divine providence of St Columban, our patron, who, 14 centuries earlier, had left his monastery in Ireland and set out with his monks on a small boat casting themselves to the mercy of the tides and currents of the sea and to the providence of God to wherever God might take them. The place where the Sisters initially went to in China is now known as Wuhan, famous for where the Covid pandemic started! To this day there is a Cathedral of St Columban and opposite is the No.5 hospital which was originally started by our Sisters.

After almost 25 years in China the Sisters had to leave when the communists took over, but they carried on their mission in the Philippines, what was then known as Burma - now Myanmar, Hong Kong, Korea, and later on in South America, Peru and Chile, and after that in Pakistan. The Sisters were also expelled from Burma but were able to return in 2001. All of this missionary work was possible thanks to the generosity of benefactors in the US, Ireland and Britain and we also thank God for them today.

So, as we celebrate these 100 years, we want to thank God for the people who have touched our lives in all these countries. We may have felt we went to these places to give something but, in reality, we have all received so much. Living in some of the poorest countries of the world, yet we have all experienced there the richness of human values. We have experienced the Church being very alive in the midst of the people.

Let me give a few examples …

In Peru, where Sr Anne Marie spent most of her missionary life and where Fr John Boles was, the ability of the people to celebrate, (birthdays are very important) despite the most adverse of circumstances was amazing. The city of Lima, the capital and the second biggest city in the desert in the world, is itself a monument to the human spirit with shanty towns built on totally barren hillsides. When Columban Sisters make their final vows, they are asked if they are willing to follow Christ even to the giving of life itself. In Peru, one of the Sisters did indeed make this ultimate sacrifice. She worked in the overcrowded Lurigancho prison and one day prisoners who wanted to escape took hostages of some pastoral workers visiting there. When the prisoners later escaped in an ambulance the police opened fire and Sr Joan Sawyer was killed along with seven prisoners. To this day, there is a cross to mark the spot where this happened and there is a huge mural of Sr Joan in the Lurigancho prison.

In Chile, where I began my missionary life in the middle of a military dictatorship and a country prone to frequent earthquakes, the words SOLIDARIDAD (solidarity) and OLLA COMUN (common pot, where neighbours cook together) were some of the first words I learnt. Being in solidarity with those who have less.

Sr Margaret was in the Philippines and she remembers the warmth, joy and great faith and resilience of the Filipino people. And China, where Srs Josephine, Ursula and I experienced the hard work, respect, modesty and strong family ties of the Chinese people.

100 years ago when our Sisters set out for China their mission was to share the gospel. Throughout our Congregation's history we have realised that to do this you need to respond to the concrete needs of the people in that country at that time, which led us to open schools in the Philippines and hospitals in Korea in the wake of the Korean war, and pastoral work in South America. Living as we did in all these places it has made us acutely aware of the injustices in the world. Today, we particularly remember our Sisters in Myanmar living in a war situation.

So, as reflect on these past 100 years, we realise the world 100 years ago was a very different world from the world we are living in now, especially as regards our sister Mother Earth. Pope Francis has said in Laudate Deum (about the climate crisis) "the world in which we live is collapsing and may be near the breaking point."

100 years ago we weren't taking more out of the Earth than what was beyond the capacity of the Earth to recover, but now we are using up the resources of 1.75 Earths every year. Of course, sooner or later, this will all run out. 100 years ago, there was an abundance of wildlife, but 69% of wildlife has disappeared since 1970. 100 years ago there were no nuclear weapons. 100 years ago, human induced climate change was not at dangerous levels, but now extreme weather events are happening more frequently and more intensely.

At our General Chapter - a meeting held every six years - last year, the Sisters wrote in the Chapter document: "We have always been drawn to areas of greatest need which today is the climate and ecological crisis…" and "We feel the urgent call to … an ever more radical ecological conversion." We went on to say: "No humans in the past lived in such a moment … when the actions we take today will affect the future of humanity living on this Earth… We sense God is calling us to harness the energy of our founding Sisters and with great courage to embrace the challenges of today."

St Francis of Assisi said to his friars as he was dying, "I have done what is mine to do, may Christ teach you what is yours to do." Our first Sisters did what was theirs to do. Inspired by their love and courage may we Columban Sisters, and all of us here today, ask Christ to teach us what is ours to do, as the poet says, with the "one wild precious life" we have.

I would like to end with the prayer of St Teresa of Avila:

"Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on Earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which he sees,

yours are the feet with which he walks,

yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

Christ has no body now on Earth but yours. Amen"

LINK

Columban Sisters: www.columbansisters.org/