August 30, 2025

Mimi Connor, RSM playing
Mother Patricia Waldrom

Dear Sisters, dear Mercy Family,

We have shared our Founders’ dreams with you.
We love you so for making the dream come true
in each succeeding generation.
Today you have a new name
“Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas”.
Quite impressive!
But the dream remains singular and unchanged.
In each of you,
We see our dream repeated, nourished,
Clothed in the needs of your day,
Assisting in the merciful recreation of the earth.

Many sisters now have come to be with us in heaven.
Know that they all join us in blessing you this night.
Do not fear diminishment.
I made that mistake myself in the early 1900s
When I expressed the fear that
There would not be enough hands for all the work.

But God makes a way.
We flourished after that
In ways I had never imagined.

Right here in these seats, in these balconies,
in these neighborhoods and homes,
There are pure young hearts
Who know that God’s dream for mercy lives in them.
They will have the courage we had.

And so we say good night. God bless you all.
We will see you in another 50 years or so.
Go now and dream the Mercy dream
For the generations you have yet to see.

August 26, 2025

Still,
here at home were those
Who were strangers in their own land.

Pushed to the fringes of society,
They languished in prisons, poorhouses.
They sought refuge when they had no shelter.
They were imprisoned in the hopeless land of violence,
Ignorance, addiction and all the disguises
injustice takes to keep its true name hidden.

My heart cried for these struggling sons
and daughters of God.

My name is Mary Ann Coveney … known to you
simply as Sister Mary Ann.
I too was born in Cork in 1838.
The sisters said I was a charming, vivacious girl.
I was! My heart was full of life.
When I was about 20 years old,
I recognized my gift as “Hope”,
And I came to Mercy with a dream to share that gift
with the hopeless ones.

Philadelphia, in the 19th century,
harbored stagnant pockets of despair.
Moyamensing Prison was one such place.

When there is no one to care,
The powerless are crushed beyond recognition.
They become nameless, numbered.

My sisters and I went often to these abandoned souls.
We brought them hope.

For hope is just to know
that someone speaks your name in mercy,
And will return to speak it once again.

Dear sisters, I lived among you for just four brief years.
But through all the years since then,
my dream has lived in you.

I have accompanied you to the prisons,
on your civil rights marches,
as you protest at the School of the Americas.

I have stood with you against war,
Against economic oppression,
against the immigration raids,

Against the shunning of anyone
whom hatred names “a stranger”.

Hope was the ground of my being.
In the rich soil of my care,
those who were abandoned
planted the seed of their new life,

I bless you with that song of hope.
Do God’s work, my friends.

For Your Reflection

• What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
• Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
• What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Micah 6:6-8

August 26, 2025

Ah! My Philadelphia Mercy friends!
How good to see you!
My name is Anne Geraghty,
known to you as Sister Mary Francis de Sales.
I too came to America in 1860
with Patricia Waldron on the good ship Parana.

Do you remember the day we sailed out of Galway, Patricia,
never to live on our beautiful island again!
Were there not at least some soft tears that day!
Little could I have realized then
that our journey was but a first step for me
on a life of missionary adventures.

After twelve dynamic years in Philadelphia,
I became our first sister sent on mission.
I went to Omaha
and then for a few years to the wild Dakota territory.
I lived a long and glorious life in the service of our God,
Who has many faces and speaks many languages
and lives in every corner of the earth.

And I have watched you through the years,
my Philadelphia community.
You have ventured into many states and many lands.
You have immersed yourselves in many cultures.
You have shaped the word of Mercy
so that it can be heard by the rainbow of God’s People.
And it has returned to you,
twice blessed by their humble, loving welcome.

It thrills my heart to see your lively, open spirits
in our country’s West and South, and distant North,
in the heart of India, Peru, Guyana, Bolivia, Africa.

I have seen you accompany God’s people
in the campo and the reservation,
In the ghetto and the bayou,
In the cities, villages and pueblos.

My spirit was a golden clarion
that called hearts to courage.
From my own pioneer’s heart and will,
I have sent you the blessing of courage and adventure
as you have spoken the word of mercy
in the steadfast witness of your lives.

I have sent you the blessing of humility and love,
So that your hearts could be transformed
By the sacred touch of the poor whom you serve.

For Your Reflection:

• What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
• Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
• What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Matthew 28:18-20

August 25, 2025

Hello, dear sisters and friends.
My name is Lizzie Davis.
I had great love and natural talent for music,
Especially the organ and piano,
Although I loved to sing as well.

Mother Mc Auley’s dream of mercy was but three years old
When I was born in Carlow, Ireland.
The works of mercy she had begun
were the talk of my family and friends as I grew up:
visitation of the sick, comforting of those in prison,
care of those in the wretched poorhouses
that were the curse of Ireland’s Penal Laws.
She and her sisters were such amazing women!

Mercy’s great-hearted stories filled my spirit.
So it was quite natural that when I was 22,
I chose to join Catherine’s brave yet gentle sisters.

I was a bit surprised to be asked instead
to journey to America and there to join
Frances Warde and the pioneer sisters
who had carried mercy to a new frontier.

Later, when we came to Philadelphia,
we of course began our works of teaching
and care of the sick.
But we were so aware,
because of all that we had seen in Ireland,
that the poorest and most wretched souls
are often hidden in the fringes of society:
in the poorhouses,
and in the broken hovels of their homes.
But most of all,
they are imprisoned by their own isolation.

When we finished our daily work,
it was our joy to go out to these places
to find the waiting face of Christ among the poor.

Perhaps it would seem strange to some that I,
a master of piano and organ,
employed my gifted hands
to tend hurts of those so poor.

But their thanks became my hymn of joy
And I would hum a melody of blessing over them
as I cared for them in mercy.

My spirit spoke peace to them,
like a sweet rose blossoming in the chaos.
I have cast its petals over you in blessing.
I have watched you, dear sisters,
tend God’s loneliest children.
I have prayed for you,
that the song of mercy deep within your hearts,
would sustain you in the work of God.

For Your Reflection:

• What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
• Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
• What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Colossians 3:15-17

August 24, 2025

Teaching the dear children was just one part of our daily rounds.

My name is Elizabeth Hughes.
You know me as Sister Mary Philomena.
My dream of mercy was born in Wales, Great Britain
and nurtured later, like Patricia’s,
In Ballinrobe, Ireland.

When I was but a child,
The Great Famine fell upon beloved Ireland.
I suppose it was then
that my innate compassion for suffering people
began to shape my dream of mercy.

Although I lived for only a decade
after our journey to Philadelphia,
Mother Patricia knew me well.
We had sailed together to Boston in 1860
on the good ship “Parana”,
You, and I, and Francis de Sales.

You believed that my natural talent
and innate sympathy
prepared me well to be appointed
our first real practical nurse.

The care of the sick was a ministry I loved
in the brief time I spent on earth.
I dispensed it with every tenderness I could,
Knowing that I tended the wounds of Christ.

Before I died, I heard the priest whisper in the stillness,
“There is no cloud on that sister’s soul.”

Indeed, by God’s good grace,
Compassion flowed from me
Like dew upon the fresh green grass.

From my cloudless soul, I have sent you
the blessing of compassion and gentleness
down these long years.

I have watched our healthcare ministries
pour out like a sweet ointment
over the wounds of this city and its people.

In 1915, most of us had gone to God
but you, Mother Patricia,
When you journeyed in your final days
to the groundbreaking for Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia.
Oh, from that clear October afternoon,
What a wellspring of healing has come.

For Your Reflection:

• What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
• Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
• What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Colossians 3:12-14