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As the sacred is driven more and more from public life it becomes all the more urgent for all believers to be authentic in their faith.  We know how quickly we must update our electronic appliances and what was new a few months ago is obsolete. Why would we think that our religious education from childhood or youth does not need to be polished and adapted to our fast changing culture and life circumstances.   We have at our disposal opportunities that would make even our dear Mother Foundress envious.   Information is all around us for the taking.  We have diocesan publications, free libraries, the internet which has websites and posts by dioceses, religious congregations, Catholic publishing companies and many private individuals.  The coming year of faith is a challenge to dioceses and parishes to provide programs to help people.   The upcoming Synod of Bishops will be responding to our Holy Father and his predecessor’s requests for a New Evangelization.  In the past this meant foreign missions, now, though they are not excluded, it is the previously Catholic cultures that must be re-evangelized.  We are invited to become closer to Jesus, to have an faith that is internalized in a loving relationship with the Blessed Trinity.  How excited would Mother Franziska be with this and how she would strive to motivate her sisters to be examples of persons in love with God, radiating a charity and loving care for every person they meet.   No one is so alone that they do not come into contact with other persons.  Perhaps God lets us meet a mailman or shopkeeper because we are to be the presence of God’s love for them.  No one is exempt from this great world mission.  We are called Daughters of Divine Charity which is translated in most of our languages as (Divine Love).  Our very title is our program and the opportunities to deepen this love in our own hearts and to radiate it in our sad and lonely, lost world are endless and everywhere.  We have a glorious task and a joyous and fulfilling future.

 

These notes are an endeavor of love, to keep alive the great Charism that was God’s gift to our foundress and adapt its rich message to a world that has changed dramatically.  She came from a time when there was the Church founded by Christ and its enemies.   Catholics were the good people, anyone who did not accept the moral code expressed in Catholism, was lost if not evil.   When the sisters arrived in the United States they found themselves in an experiment in ethnic and religious pluralism.  The beginnings were rocky and Catholic immigrants were the object of sometimes severe and violent discrimination.  They were the first to accept the separation of Church and State because it gave them liberty to practice their faith and to educate their own children and serve the poor and sick of all races and creeds for the love of Christ.   The Catholic Church in America has been the envy of Bishops in countries that were just beginning the struggle with democracy and pluralism.  What would Mother Franziska tell us today?   I think she would say: “Love the Church, cultivate compassion and forgiveness to the members who carry all the faults and weaknesses common to our humanity.”   She would tell us to pray daily for the Holy Father and Bishops who are faced daily with difficult decisions and dilemmas.   There is often no road map.  In many ways we are on new ground with a wide variety of moral convictions and practices and technology that spreads these various ideas in rapid succession, allowing almost no time for reflection or dialogue.   She would counsel her sisters to cling to Christ, to allow ample time for meditation and intimate prayer to the Holy Spirit.  She would ask all those in her charge to be devoted to Sacred Scripture and to good sources of information.  In her time she had “Sunday Schools” for the housemaids working for wealthy families because she understood that even a maid or kitchen worker who loved Christ would be a blessing to the entire family of their employer.  The secret of Mother Franziska and all saints lies in  prayer, especially quiet prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.