Last week Tuesday (January 27), the Ursuline Sisters of Youngstown celebrated the feast day of St. Angela with an evening mass and dinner. Sisters and Associates gathered to pray and share their stories about how they are continuing to live St. Angela’s mission through their ministries. As one of the Sisters described it to me later, the celebration was prayerful and joyful, and I could imagine the energy in their songs and stories.
Meanwhile, in West Virginia, I honored St. Angela’s spirit in my own way. The feast day fell on a Tuesday, and the women’s group at my church would be gathering for our weekly study of Pope Saint John Paul’s Apostolic Letter to Women. The program is offered through a national organization called (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women) which empowers women of faith to become who God has already made them to be. Our particular group is led by Emily, a WVU alum who said that there hadn’t been a group for women during her time as a student, so she returned to her Newman family to meet that need. Endow
Each Tuesday, we move the chairs and couches in the Newman Hall lounge into a giant circle so we can face each other. Our group spans multiple generations: college students and parishioners. Together, we discuss our unique experiences and insights about what it means to be a woman of the Catholic faith. The parishioners share their perspective of the 1980s work world that forced them to suppress their femininity, and the college students share their perspective of becoming a woman amidst a rapidly changing society. I imagine us gathered as St. Angela’s original company, women who challenged society’s expectations for women by actively living their faith in the world. Almost 500 years since the original company was founded, I knew that St. Angela (as she promised in her ninth counsel) was in our midst.
Our women’s group begins each session by praying the Memorare, then takes turns reading the reflections in our study booklets out loud. Whenever we come across a passage with a footnote, Emily encourages us to pause and read the footnote aloud as well. “That’s what we’re all doing anyway,” as she put it, “so rather than each of us trying to glance down, why not read it together?” I thought her suggestion captured the true spirit of our group’s purpose. Our group gathers to give voice to our unspoken challenges and joys of being Catholic women. Rather than leaving these experiences unvoiced in the margins, they become part of the main dialogue.
Each Tuesday, we move the chairs and couches in the Newman Hall lounge into a giant circle so we can face each other. Our group spans multiple generations: college students and parishioners. Together, we discuss our unique experiences and insights about what it means to be a woman of the Catholic faith. The parishioners share their perspective of the 1980s work world that forced them to suppress their femininity, and the college students share their perspective of becoming a woman amidst a rapidly changing society. I imagine us gathered as St. Angela’s original company, women who challenged society’s expectations for women by actively living their faith in the world. Almost 500 years since the original company was founded, I knew that St. Angela (as she promised in her ninth counsel) was in our midst.
Our women’s group begins each session by praying the Memorare, then takes turns reading the reflections in our study booklets out loud. Whenever we come across a passage with a footnote, Emily encourages us to pause and read the footnote aloud as well. “That’s what we’re all doing anyway,” as she put it, “so rather than each of us trying to glance down, why not read it together?” I thought her suggestion captured the true spirit of our group’s purpose. Our group gathers to give voice to our unspoken challenges and joys of being Catholic women. Rather than leaving these experiences unvoiced in the margins, they become part of the main dialogue.
The Endow study guide describes Pope Saint John Paul’s letter to women as a “hand-written personal note” to each woman individually, thanking her for her gift to the Church and welcoming her to join in the discussion of how to face the problems of our day. The concept of a personal letter—composed by the hand of a saint and waiting to be received in our hearts—also applies to St. Angela’s counsels, her heartfelt words of encouragement and guidance which continue to guide communities of Ursulines. As she wrote in the prologue of her counsels, “For understand that now I am more alive than I was when I lived on earth, and I see better and hold more dear and pleasing the good things which I see you constantly doing, and now, even more, I want and am able to help you and do you good in every way” (Counsels, Prologue 23-25). The spirit of St. Angela and the heavenly communion of saints continue to guide us in our own call to holiness.
The possibility of conversing directly with holy men and women also reminded me of the words of a retreat master during my internship with the Ursulines this past summer. When I met with the retreat master to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, he said, “When Jesus was dying on the cross, he thought of you. Even though we can’t conceive of that mystery in human terms, it is possible with God.”
Beyond the human notions of time and space, we can engage in conversation with the men and women who have walked the earth with us and who have been recognized as saints. I think of Ursuline Sister Frances Marie, who told me about the time she had a private audience with the Pope John Paul II, and she showed me a picture of them shaking hands. Looking back on the experience now, after his canonization, she recalls that she had been looking into the eyes of a saint. The words they offer allow us a similar kind of glimpse. Pope John Paul II’s letter was written in 1995, and yet, twenty years later, it reaches each of us on a personal level.
He signs the letter with his blessing.
The possibility of conversing directly with holy men and women also reminded me of the words of a retreat master during my internship with the Ursulines this past summer. When I met with the retreat master to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, he said, “When Jesus was dying on the cross, he thought of you. Even though we can’t conceive of that mystery in human terms, it is possible with God.”
Beyond the human notions of time and space, we can engage in conversation with the men and women who have walked the earth with us and who have been recognized as saints. I think of Ursuline Sister Frances Marie, who told me about the time she had a private audience with the Pope John Paul II, and she showed me a picture of them shaking hands. Looking back on the experience now, after his canonization, she recalls that she had been looking into the eyes of a saint. The words they offer allow us a similar kind of glimpse. Pope John Paul II’s letter was written in 1995, and yet, twenty years later, it reaches each of us on a personal level.
He signs the letter with his blessing.