PROVIDENCE

few days before she died, I asked
Sister Rose Collins, who had served
there as our teacher and principal
for 35 years, “What was your fondest
memory of Smiths Falls?” Without
a pause Sister answered, “All my
memories were fond.”
Providence called us to Smiths Falls
and Perth and Arnprior, lovely little
valley towns and now Providence is
calling the last Sisters back. Back to
where the Providence dream began
for the Archdiocese. We read in the
book of Job, “The Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the
name of the Lord.”
Pathfinders
You know the old saying – if you
are really successful, you work yourself
out of a job. Religious are really
not called to maintain the status quo
in the Church but to be the “shock
troops,” to “push the envelope”
with our mystical-prophetic lives.
Perhaps once it was prophetic of us
to open Catholic hospitals and
schools where there were none. Perhaps
we were not meant to stay
there and become comfortable in
those missions.
Religious have always been called to
be Pathfinders. And perhaps that is
what is being called of us today. The
schools and the hospitals continue.
What would those valley towns be
without having us there? We leave a
legacy and a challenge for the people.
We, too, must
leave in hope and
maintain our
hope by listening
to that deep
mysticalprophetical
call
within us today.
When I was in Ireland during my Jubilee
year, I visited the Brigidine
Sisters at Kildare. Wonderful Sisters
named after St. Bridget. These Brigidine
Sisters are only a couple of
hundred years old. St. Bridget and
her abbey were founded in Kildare
about 1,500 years ago. At Bridget’s
death there were only 20 nuns of
her order left, but the spirit of St.
Bridget and what she stood for
never died in Ireland. It was kept
alive in the hearts and minds of the
150 Years
people. For, several hundred years
later, her spirit arose with the foundation
of this new order of sisters
filled with her charism. We, too,
must live in that kind of spirit, for as
Jesus tells us, “if the seed does not
die it will remain just a seed of love,
but if it dies, new life will come.”
Challenge and Hope
It was not easy for the last Sisters to
enter into the spirituality of surrender.
It was not easy for the people of
those parishes who felt a sense of
abandonment. This surrender and
abandonment had to be accepted
with both challenge and hope. For
the Providence presence does not
leave Smiths Falls, Perth or Arnprior.
How could it? In the many
years where our Sisters were sharing
their individual giftedness, surely
something of our spirit and charism
was left. Something must have
rubbed off, because many of the
young women of these parishes entered
our order over the years.
But they are not entering any more.
“It is hard to believe there are no
Sisters to send,” I told them at Mass.
“Sisters don’t grow on trees in
Kingston; they come from families
like yours and mine, but they are not
coming now. It is a different world.
Is it because we are entering another
era where the laity is called to take
its rightful place in the Church? Is
God calling us to be smaller, to be
something different? Something
new? What does Providence have in
mind for us?”
And so as in the days of yore, we go
forward in hope, knowing God is indeed
with us. As we dream religious
life into something new, where will
we meet the God of the future
coming to us? Perhaps our big
work is over, but for the folks in the
parishes it isn’t.
I have often thought that the
Church of the first millennium was
the Church of the clergy; of the second
millennium, the Church of the
religious; and the Church of this
third millennium, the Church of the
laity where the laity takes a significant
role within the Pilgrim People
of God. “All our gifts are needed,” I
told the people. “Know that your
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