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

On August 22, 2025, the Sisters of Mercy celebrate
the 164th Anniversary of our arrival in Philadelphia.

August 21, 2025

---

How Mercy has flourished
in the intervening years!
— countless numbers of students taught,
patients cared for, people given shelter,
prisoners offered justice, hungers fed,
struggling hearts tendered hope and direction.

We rejoice in the thousands
who share the name of Mercy with us
— people like each one of you
who are the face and voice of Mercy
in an inhospitable world.

---

We remember ten young women,
none even thirty years old –
women an ocean away
from their homes and families;
women who waited days
for donated food to sustain them;
women who believed that God
wants those who are poor and sick
to be cared for with love;
— and so they built a harbor of Mercy
from little but faith and hope.

---

There is a lesson for each of us
in these first Mercy stories.
Pray with them
and hear how they speak to you.

They teach that,
though we cannot see faith, hope, and love,
we see their powerful effects.
It is a power rooted in relationship
with the One Who is Mercy,
with the One Who chooses
to live in and through us.

---

In the Name of God’s Mercy,
we begin to feel, in our heart’s depths,
the profound suffering in the world.
We are moved to give
all that we can to its healing.

Listen for the next ten days
to those early voices, still living in us:
“Thank you for sustaining the dream
to which we gave our lives.
Eternal Mercy, Who called us,
now calls you.
Know that we are with you
as you answer.

(The first voice will be sent today,
and another in each of the next nine successive days – a “novena of Mercy”.