food for faith: light & life: the witness of Mary MacKillop

from darkness to light

The world-wide news story of the week must be the rescue of the 33 miners in Chile. It is impossible to imagine what they went through in their ten week captivity. For their first two weeks we did not even know they were alive. Until the last moments of their rescue there was uncertainty about whether the rescue shaft and equipment would do the job. Thanks be to God they are now reunited with their families.

One of their many great struggles in their first days underground, was darkness. While there was an emergency bulb, to conserve this they waited in darkness. We tasted their experience in last month's earthquake, when in the moments of our greatest terror, there was no electricity.

When the miners emerged from the darkness on Thursday, they were wearing the sunglasses that had been sent down to them. After life in the dark, the light they had yearned to see, would be too much for their eyes. They would have to grow accustomed to the light of day once again.

This contrast between light and darkness is a useful metaphor for the life of faith. We need light. Without light there is no life. Light gives the ability to move ahead with clear direction and confidence.

Mary MacKillop: walked our roads

This weekend, Mary MacKillop will be named a Saint of the Church. On Sunday night (NZ time) Pope Benedict will celebrate Mass in St. Peter's Square, Rome. At that Mass he will also name five others as saints of the church.

Saint Mary of the Cross is the first named saint to have travelled (probably by horse and buggy, perhaps on foot) through the streets of our city. Her brother John, is buried in the Barbadoes Street cemetery. (ref. Inform Page headed 'schools')

The first Josephite sisters arrived in Temuka (the first New Zealand Josephite foundation) in 1883. In the last years of the nineteenth century Mary MacKillop's sisters formed communities throughout New Zealand in response to the needs of education and poverty in our country.

Between 1897 and 1902 Mary made four visits to New Zealand to spent time with her sisters and their communities in our country. It was on her last visit to NZ in 1902 that she became ill and returned to Australia where she died in 1909.

I won't go into the details of the life of St. Mary of the Cross in this reflection. There are many websites (some listed below) that give a good insight into the life and faith of this holy woman.

Instead the Canonisation of St. Mary of the Cross, gives us the opportunity to remember that the life of the saint is the "default-setting" for every baptised Catholic.

You and I are created to be saints.

People think that it is impossible for 'normal' people to be saints. This is not true. In Baptism we have been given all that we need to begin to live the life of the saint. If we followed the journey that we begin in baptism we would live the full potential of our human existence.

Instead of following this wonderful adventure of faith, from our earliest years, we seek to avoid this life-giving invitation. Like Adam and Eve in the garden we grasp at whatever looks promising. We become convinced that the bite of an apple can turn us into Gods.

sin: chasing fleeting mirages

This action (and motivation) is sinful, since in chasing these fleeting mirages, we are escaping the truth and beauty that is offered to us by God.

Those named as saints by the church are not named so because they were friendly polite people. Saints are not saints because they have achieved personal knowledge self-mastery or psychological wholeness. It is not even avoidance of sin that makes a saint so.

Saints are saints because they know that they are created by God, that they are sinners, and that they are loved by God. It is this experience of divine love that transforms. Rather than trying to satisfy myself by lurching from one passing pleasure to the next, the saint in me is seeking to relax into the embrace of God, and live in harmony with and response to every divine nudging.

Mary MacKillop: a most reasonable life

I am created for life in this loving embrace both for now and for eternity. Healthy human activity emerges from this relationship. This ultimately reasonable attitude is what we see in the life of Mary MacKillop.

Too often we settle for an existence of lurching from one satisfaction to the next. This exhausting habit is both stressful and demeaning for the woman or man created in the divine image.

May St. Mary of the Cross teach us to be who we truly are. Let us no longer be satisfied with existence in the enclosures of darkness. May the intercession of St. Mary of the Cross open us anew to the fulness of divine light. Like Mary, let us refuse to settle for anything less than intimacy with God in every word and action.

Holy God, source of all goodness,

you show us in Mary MacKillop

a woman of faith

who lived by the power of the cross.

Teach us to embrace what she pioneered:

new ways of living the gospel

that respect and defend

the human dignity of all in our land.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.