Saint Mary MacKillop Feast Day 2022
A Message from Sr Monica Cavanagh, Congregational Leader, Sisters of Saint Joseph. Greetings for the feast of Saint Mary MacKillop (8 August). As we join in celebrating Mary MacKillop’s feast this year, we are called to embrace the values that were at the heart of all she did. Her deep love for those she […]
Looking forward to the next 150 years at Perthville
The Sisters of Saint Joseph marked the 150th anniversary of when the first Sisters of Saint Joseph arrived in Perthville to begin ministry in New South Wales on 16 July 2022. The first community of sisters, Teresa MacDonald, Joseph Dwyer and Hyacinth Quinlan, and an enquirer, Ada Braham, arrived at Perthville near Bathurst at the […]
Mary MacKillop Feast Day Celebrations 2022
Mary MacKillop Place and the Sisters of Saint Joseph extend a warm invitation to celebrate the Feast Day of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop on Monday, 8 August 2022. “After two years of disruption due to COVID, we look forward to welcoming pilgrims and supporters to Mary MacKillop Place in North Sydney,” says Sr […]
Responding to a Call
The phone rang as I was locking up the house before going to Saturday night Mass. It was the bishop wanting to know if I would go to a country town, 400 kilometres away to train people in leading Liturgy of the Word with Communion. The parish had recently lost their priest, with no replacement […]
First Adelaide school opens in 1867
On 2 July 2022, the Sisters of Saint Joseph will celebrate 155 years since the opening of the first Josephite school in Adelaide, South Australia. “What,” they say, “can you expect from colonial girls, without any knowledge of a religious life, and no one to train them?”[1] Writing to Sister Mary MacKillop, Father Julian Tenison […]
Celebrating June Feast Days with Mary MacKillop
During the month of June, we have the opportunity as followers of Mary MacKillop, to recall and celebrate the great feast days of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (24 June) and St John the Baptist (25 June). Our Josephite constitutions expresses Mary’s hope that: God’s compassionate love, symbolised for Mary MacKillop by the Sacred Heart, […]
World Communications Day 2022
World Communications Day was established by Pope Paul VI in 1967, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to bring the gospel to light in the modern world. This annual celebration occurs each year on the Sunday before Pentecost. World Communications Day invites us to reflect on how we can best use […]
Mother’s Day
We all have some experience of being mothered and in some way we have all had some experience of mothering/fathering those for whom we have cared. Mary MacKillop had very positive experiences of being mothered and had a very close relationship with Flora, her “own loved mother”. [1] We can look to their relationship to […]
Remembering Mary MacKillop’s mother Flora
On Sunday 8 May, many families throughout our country will be celebrating the wonder and joy of experiencing motherhood and being mothered. For others, Mother’s Day brings sadness and a sense of loss. In troubled places throughout the world mothers are separated from children, and children are living with the awful memory of losing their […]
A pilgrim’s ‘light-bulb’ moment
Recently, the staff and volunteers of Mary MacKillop Museum in Adelaide were delighted to welcome a busload of interstate pilgrims, one of whom, after spending quite some time in the museum, was hungry for ‘the more’.
The Hope and Faith of Mary MacKillop
Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give in to resignation and failure? Easter is the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside. God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness. […]
A Letter to Mary MacKillop
To commemorate the anniversary for when Mary MacKillop received Constitutions of the Institute (Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart) and when Central Government was accepted on 21 April 1874, Sr Maria Casey shares what she would have written to Mary if she was alive today.