Blessed Mary MacKillop
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
9 Aug 2009
Yesterday we celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Mother Mary of the Cross.
We know her better as Blessed Mary MacKillop, because Pope John Paul II declared her "blessed" in 1995, which is one stage short of being officially proclaimed a saint. It is almost completely certain that she will become our first publicly recognized Australian saint and we hope Pope Benedict will make this declaration soon.
It is not easy to become a saint, not merely because it takes hard work to follow Christ's teachings heroically across a lifetime, but because the Vatican conducts a detailed examination of the evidence over many years.
To help him in this task the Pope has a Vatican department, the Congregation for the Saints, which decides not merely that the person proposed has done wonderful good works but also that they were persons of exemplary faith and prayer, hope and love.
Therefore a saint is an outstanding follower of Jesus Christ, a model for everyone of how to live a full Catholic life.
Often Catholics have a devotion to a particular saint, because they admire the way that saint lived or because they feel that particular saint in heaven would understand them, listen to their prayers and intercede for them with Jesus Christ.
Naturally Catholics do not worship the saints, because only the one true God, Father, Son and Spirit, is worthy of our deepest reverence and highest love. Like all Christians, Catholics worship the one true God alone, but they admire the saints, respect their example and ask for their prayers. Mary the mother of Jesus is the greatest saint, but there is an infinity of difference between the majesty of God and even the most wonderful of Christ's followers.
A saint has to live the Christian virtues in an heroic way, but often they live ordinary lives, doing their small daily tasks extraordinarily well.
Saints need not be persons who come from other countries and from distant ages. Mary MacKillop already has a significant following outside the Catholic community, because all Australians recognize her as one of their own
Every community needs its home-grown heroes, local models to encourage us in the right direction and we can tell what a person is from his friends and from those he admires.
Even religious commentators can exaggerate the secular nature of Australian life. How many people realize that Sydney is clearly the most religious capital city in Australia, despite the spin merchants chanting about "sin city"?
Even fifty years ago Australia had one or two Irish bishops who would not accept Australian-born men to study for the priesthood, because they were too wild!
Mary is an antidote to those misapprehensions, secular or religious; Australian born, practical and a saint.
She was born in Melbourne on 15 January 1842 in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, the eldest of eight children of Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald, who had emigrated - separately - from the western highlands of Scotland a few years earlier. By happy choice in the year 2000 the Archdiocese of Melbourne opened the Mary of the Cross Centre for the support of families suffering from the effects of drug and alcohol abuse on the site of her birthplace.
Mary was baptized at St. Francis' Church, Lonsdale Street, and grew up in the then-fledgling settlement of Melbourne where local legend has it, that she and her brothers and sisters played under the gum tree outside St. Francis' after Mass on Sundays. That gum was used to construct the bishop's chair in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Working as a governess in Penola, South Australia, she came under the influence of the local priest, an unusual English geologist, Father Julian Tenison Woods and together they founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart.
She started her first school in 1866 when Australian education was something of a shambles before the "free, compulsory and secular" reforms of the 1870s. In eighteen months she gained ten followers and a year later there were thirty nine sisters.
By the time of her death in 1909, she had established 109 houses, staffed by 650 sisters teaching 12,400 pupils in 117 schools across Australia and New Zealand.
She was often sick, regularly short of money, excommunicated by one bishop and expelled from Adelaide by another. Some of her nuns opposed her, a division arose between the "Brown Joeys" under her control and the "Black Joeys" controlled by the bishops, she was wrongly accused of drinking too much brandy and Father Woods finished up refusing to speak to her.
But she prayed and persevered, never lapsed into bitterness, regularly spoke well of her opponents and her work prospered.
God blessed her in her troubles. She will be a worthy saint, an important first for Australia.
