Saint Mary MacKillop Feast Day 2024

The month of August gives us a special opportunity to focus on the life of Saint Mary MacKillop as we celebrate her feast day on 8 August. All around Australia and beyond, people will be gathering to celebrate the gift of this woman of faith to our Church and our world. A special place of pilgrimage will be at Mary MacKillop Place, North Sydney, where Mary’s tomb is located. There will be a Mass celebrating the feast of Mary at 10:00am AEST which will be live streamed here.

This feast day we give thanks for Mary MacKillop’s ongoing commitment to the ongoing spiritual and faith development of children and their families. Mary MacKillop’s faith in and service of God were unceasing. Her deep faith in her good God enabled Mary to walk in and through the many obstacles she faced with confidence, hope and perseverance. Mary acknowledged that the presence of God seemed to follow her everywhere and made everything she did and said a prayer. She had that wonderful capacity to find God in both the messiness of life as well as in moments of joy.

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Mary MacKillop Feast Day Celebrations 2024

Mary MacKillop Place, the Sisters of Saint Joseph and Mary MacKillop Today extend a warm invitation to all to celebrate the Feast Day of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop on Thursday, 8 August 2024.

We look forward to welcoming everyone, including our pilgrims and supporters, to Mary MacKillop Place in North Sydney.

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The spirit of Mary MacKillop burns strongly in Timor-Leste

Learning literacy by parent/grandparent.

If one was to try to summarise the spirit of Mary MacKillop, we could possibly say that it is a spirit that is compassionate, one that uses education to “heal, include, untether, set right and serve”, one that loves not only those being ministered to, but also those who work beside us, and one that automatically acts on seen needs. This spirit is alive and pumping in Mary MacKillop Today (MMT), especially in the Timor-Leste region.

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Returning to Rome, 150 Years Later

Sr Annette with the self-guided pilgrimage booklet ‘Mary MacKillop’s Rome’.

Mary MacKillop left Rome in 1874 and I returned there 150 years later in 2024. I had only visited Rome once in 2010 for Mary’s Canonisation and was unable at that time to make the pilgrimage of her travels in Rome. I had Mary and her journey in my consciousness as I navigated modern day Rome.

So many times during my 15-day visit, I drew comparisons between Mary’s Rome and my Rome experience. So many things would have looked pretty much the same and so many other things, no doubt, unrecognisable to Mary. I was sitting on a train from Florence that was doing 250km an hour remembering that it took Mary 45 days by boat and then train to even get to Rome. I had gone and come back home in less than that time frame!

On arriving in Rome, I had a data pack on my phone to use Google Maps to get me to the Metro, to get to the monastery which I had pre-booked online and had used WhatsApp to communicate about my arrival time! And if all that had failed, I had a credit card and Uber account to get wherever I wanted to go. And of course, the greatest asset when not being able to speak other languages – Google translate on my phone! Seemingly all too easy in contrast to Mary’s journey.

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At home among the poor

The Vision artwork by Jan Williamson.

On 31 May 1867, Father Julian Tenison Woods sent to Mary MacKillop the first Rule of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. This became the founding document, encapsulating the vision for the order and providing the Sisters with important guidelines for their ministry.

It had arrived! Here was the fruit of their discussions. Sister Mary MacKillop opened it carefully, her heart filling with joy as she read Father Julian Tenison Woods’ words in his letter of 31 May 1867:

Dear Sister Mary

I enclose the Rule. You must without delay copy it out into a small neat book, smaller than this note paper, and written only on one side and enclose it back to me.

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Mary goes to Ireland

To celebrate 150 years since Mary MacKillop embarked on her first overseas journey (March 1873 – December 1874), the Sisters of Saint Joseph share reflections and details from Mary’s travels to and from Europe – sourced from Mary’s letters and Congregational Archives. This is the final journey in the series.

Mary MacKillop went to Rome in 1873 to have the Rule approved – a task that took the best part of two years. Towards the end of those two years, Mary visited England, Scotland and Ireland hoping to find some women to come to Australia to join the fledgling Institute.

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Mary MacKillop received revised Constitutions in Rome – 150th Anniversary

Mary MacKillop 1869.

We commemorate the 150th anniversary of when Mary MacKillop received the revised Constitutions of the Institute (Sisters of Saint Joseph) in Rome on 21 April 1874.

In October 1867, Fr Julian Tenison Woods drafted the original Rules of the Institute of St Joseph, with the subtitle, for the Catholic Education of Poor Children. This was approved By Bishop L B Sheil, Bishop of Adelaide on 17 December 1868.

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Mary MacKillop, Patron of our Diocese of Port Pirie

Sr Laurencia’s grave by Joan McDonald.

In the Diocese of Port Pirie in South Australia, there’s a beautiful well-kept graveyard, some seven kilometres out of Port Augusta, with the stunning Flinders Ranges as its backdrop. In good times the roses bloom and the kangaroos keep the lawn mowed and the grave-sites company. But on the area’s outer edge are the older graves of early pioneers – no roses or lawn here, just a few Blackbutt Eucalyptus, Weeping Myall and Saltbush surviving in red, sandy Earth.

On one side is a huddle of three graves, the centre on being that of Sister Laurencia Honner who died as a result of a fire on 11 May 1878, aged eighteen years. The local newspaper described her funeral at the time, the long line of buggies snaking out of town to Stirling North. Notably there is no mention of the grieving Sisters of Saint Joseph, her companions in this isolated, treeless town. Nor do they note the presence of Mary MacKillop who had made the arduous journey of some 350 kilometres by Cobb and Co and then buggy to Port Augusta to be with Laurencia before she died. If we were ever unsure about where Mary MacKillop walked, we can be sure her footprints are here at the grave of Laurencia.

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