Mary Daniel Turner, SND

A TIME TO REMEMBER,
TO GIVE THANKS,
TO CELEBRATE

By Mary Daniel Turner, SND

INTRODUCTION
Today we gather as a Eucharistic community to do precisely what the Eucharist symbolizes: remember! Yes, remember the Word of God, and what Jesus has done for us, and in the context of today’s celebration, remember the founding of the Sisters of Notre Dame two hundred years ago. Wondrously too, the Eucharist is the sign par excellence of a community’s desire, in fact its need, to give thanks. And so, we Sisters of Notre Dame share with you, and invite you to share with us, a profound gratitude for the legacy that is ours.

Each sister gathered here, and throughout the Notre Dame world, knows that the Gospel of Jesus and the mission of the Church have taken hold of her in ways unique because a woman named Julie Billiart risked all, and dared to invite others to do the same. Julie made a difference, not because she saw herself as especially erudite or clever, but because she believed in the power and grace of God at work within her and within the chaotic times in which she lived. Quintessentially a woman who knew how to believe and how to love, Julie spoke an unconditional “YES” to God. That YES birthed a community whose purpose -- even to this day -- is to make visible and credible that indeed God is Good! For that glorious purpose, we are awesomely grateful!

We know our identity, individually and collectively, has been fashioned by this woman and by the graces that accompanied the founding story of this congregation. We know, too, that our story is both a tale of grace and sin: at times faithful, at other times negligent; sometimes audacious, sometimes timid; occasionally prophetic, yet far too often, complacent. For the graced moments, we proclaim, “Indeed, God is good, very good” For our errant ways, we exclaim, “Indeed, God is compassionate, and incredibly so!”

As we address God, we also speak to you, friends and family, students, colleagues and coworkers, associates and former members. We ask you to thank God for the good that Notre Dame has embodied, does embody. Simultaneously, we ask you to forgive us the mistakes and misjudgments we have made; we ask your pardon for the good we have not done; we ask your forgiveness for the times we failed you, and ourselves!

As we thank God for the Divine Goodness that has graced our community, we thank you for your abiding trust in us. Without God’s Goodness, we would not be celebrating today; without your trust, we would most certainly be an at-risk community!

REMEMBERING:
In gratitude then, let us reflect on the life of Julie: she was a woman who knew how to believe and how to love; a woman for whom the Church was both her beloved home, and paradoxically, at times, alien territory; a woman who lived in her times, imaginatively responsive to them. Her life images the lavish grace with which God endows each of us, even without our earning it. Her story likewise discloses the transformative energy that a response to God’s grace engenders. Her journeys testify to the incarnational spirituality that contemplation fashions.

Yes, Julie was a woman who knew how to believe, steadfastly:

In today’s first reading, Jeremiah announces what happens when God touches our hearts, and we respond. While Julie never used Jeremiah’s words to describe herself, she evidenced that she unreservedly believed God knew her from her mother’s womb. She believed God called her by name! Because of that belief, Julie grasped that it was indeed God who consecrated her prophet in the turbulent era of the French Revolution.

Endowed with this steadfast faith, Julie was (to use the words of Jeremiah) “a fortified city, an iron pillar, a bronze wall!” Twenty-two years of physical paralysis never numbed her moral sensibilities; persecution never deadened her prophetic spirit; rejection never jaded her luminous simplicity. Paralysis, persecution, rejection were the raw material for divining God’s will: what was God asking and gracing her to do? That was the overriding question which guided all her choices; it was the question that compelled her to union with God, to prayer, to contemplative action.

Ceaselessly, Julie wrote the sisters, “God alone, God alone,” not to dispense herself or them from involvement with others, and most assuredly not to escape the responsibilities turbulent times exacted of her fledgling community. Hers was neither an other-worldly nor a privatized spirituality. Her constant reference to “God alone, God alone” signified her radical oneness with God. Her message, “God alone, God alone,” signaled too that Julie rightly understood the meaning of her prophetic vocation: to embody God’s Word and to speak and act from an authority not her own. With unwavering faith, Julie believed herself graced to be God’s spokesperson! The work of founding the congregation was God’s enterprise, not her undertaking! In the words of the Psalmist, “She leaned on God from her youth.”

And yes, Julie was a woman who knew how to love, passionately:

Paul writes, “I will show you a more excellent way, the way of love.” Julie, who understood these words of Paul, showed us the more excellent way, the way of passionate love. Love -- complicated, complex, and paradoxical -- is no easy matter. A graced energy that generates life, love renders us vulnerable. With love, however, vulnerability inclines us to trust and to persevere and to hope, even in the presence of despair. Without love, however, vulnerability inevitably produces cynicism, distrust, and sometimes even violence.

Not a shallow emotion, love invites the practice of virtues life’s surprises demand of us.

Nowhere was Julie’s passionate love, and her vulnerability, and the virtues with which love clothed her, more evident than in her relationship to the Church. Long-suffering patience, purposeful docility and unyielding obedience marked the more excellent way Julie journeyed.

The patience Julie embodied in her forced exile at Compiegne, and in her hiding there for over three years -- with five moves within that period -- dramatizes her unwavering love of the church. Because she resisted the dismantling of the church during the French revolution, made most visible in her rejection of constitutional priests at Cuvilly, Julie was a hunted woman, a woman to be restrained, and a woman to be reckoned with.

From her earliest years, the parish church claimed her affection. Love of the church permeated her home. Allegiance to the church defined her family. Respect for church authorities engendered deep bonds with the clergy. Julie had to resist the constitutional priests to safeguard the status of the church in French polity. If that resistance necessitated exile; if it exacted insecurity; even if it demanded death, Julie, like many others, would endure it all. Her loyalty to the church demanded a love marked by long-suffering. And so, she clothed herself with patience.

Similarly, during the early days of the congregation’s founding, when ecclesiastical superiors would seek to alter Julie’s vision for the congregation, she learned the meaning of docility, a finely-tuned attention to the movements of the Spirit. In the midst of suspicion, character defamation, and conflicts with the bishop, Julie understood that love exacts a vulnerable heart and a discerning mind. In the midst of deep pain, she believed God would show her the way of love if she were but sensitive to the grace of each moment. Julie embraced docility, and in that embrace she touched the transforming power of love.

Likewise, that she would leave her beloved Amiens to ensure the character and continuance of the congregation, and that she would act without the approval of local church authority witness to her radical obedience. Convinced of the liberating power of the Cross, Julie grasped the truth that obedience is not a naive surrender of one’s will or freedom. Neither is it an unexamined compliance to authority. She valued obedience as a graced energy summoning, at all times, judicious judgment and sagacious choices. Insightfully, she grasped that obedience sometimes elicits actions that disturb peace, one’s own, and even that of legitimate authority. Because of this conviction, Julie risked being an un-welcomed disturber of the peace; because she loved, she practiced an obedience that did not count the cost.

Love invited Julie to a long-suffering patience, an incisive docility, and a discriminating obedience: she responded.

Julie was, too, a woman responsive to her times, and imaginatively so:

Prophetically attentive to the signs of her times, Julie pledged the congregation to the service of the poor. The French Revolution had not alleviated the abhorrent conditions of the poor; it had exacerbated them. Similarly, the Revolution had almost obliterated any hope for universal education. Reading the signs accurately, Julie identified education of the poor as the primary work of the community. Because of that she worked tirelessly for the education of the sisters - their professional competency commanded her full attention. Inummerable journeys and prolific letter-writing testify to the intensity of this commitment.

Integral too to Julie’s founding vision was a congregation prepared to go wherever God would call, even beyond local diocesan boundaries. Unquestionably devoted to the local churches in which our founding houses were established, Julie nevertheless envisioned sisters with “hearts as wide as the world.”An expansive vision fashioned Julie. She expected as much from those who would follow in her footsteps. Undoubtedly, this vision has unique claims on us today!

OUR RESPONSE
And, how shall we respond to this rich legacy? Like Julie, we must question, “What is God asking and gracing us to do, today?”

Repeatedly we are told we live in a global village. In many instances that village exists right where we live and work and socialize. Many local parish neighborhoods reflect a cosmopolitan community: people of different races from diverse nations; from different ethnic backgrounds; from varied church affiliations, or, no affiliation; and sometimes (but all too rarely) from mixed economic classes. Assuredly then, our times, like Julie’s, call for hearts and minds as wide as the world. Our times call for people who grasp that Julie’s world-wide vision signifies something other than leaving one’s country, although that may be asked. The country we need to leave is the territory a closed mind establishes which keeps us alienated from one another. The country we need to leave is the terrain of a domesticated heart which dwarfs our capacity for greatness. The land we need to leave is a spiritual realm which dispenses us from being invested in our times.

Fidelity to Julie’s legacy demands then that we translate her world-wide-vision into a global seeing, a seeing that transforms our myopic viewpoints, our short-sighted perspectives, and our biased perceptions.

Believing that God creates us, each one of us and all of us together, images of God, we realize, maybe reluctantly, that we are called to live as friend and neighbor, as brother and sister, as one family - where we are! Whatever our skin color, our national identity, our ethnic heritage, our religious convictions, or economic status, none of these renders us a superior icon of God. Our physical persona gives us no special significance. Our kinship with God, and with one another, however makes us truly distinguished, individually and collectively.

Steeped in this faith conviction, we welcome being touched by those who are different from us. More to the point, we welcome being changed by them. In other words, possessing hearts as wide as the world we risk conversion -- right where we are, and with the folks with whom we rub elbows daily. We forego demonizing others; we give up self-serving ideologies; we fast from mean-spirited attitudes.

Today’s Gospel reading shows us only too clearly what happens when we don’t surrender closed minds and constricted hearts: violence is spawned.

Today, tragically, violence grips our global village, and we cry out for peace. Yet wonderfully, hearts as wide as the world serves as a powerful antidote to the violence. Fashioning expansive hearts, we clothe ourselves with hospitality: we welcome people who think differently from us. We welcome folks whose practices appear strange, whose beliefs seem foreign, whose ideas jar us, and whose cultures challenge our values. Clothed with hospitality, we even welcome folks whose features are not like ours. We create conditions for peace-making! Incredibly, we make contemporary Julie’s vision of a world-wide-community- where we are! In welcoming all, we become exquisite icons, striking images of the God whom we name Good!

Mary Daniel Turner, SND de N
February 1, 2004