Maryknoll Sisters

How have you grown? Sister Janet Hockman, who took this photo while in Haiti recently, asks that question in several ways. Here, Sister Dianne of the Sisters of Charity measures a girl who lives in an orphanage in Haiti.

How have you grown?

What have your outgrown?

How has your love for God and others grown?

Could you consider growing into the life of a missionary as a Maryknoll Sisters?

Think about discerning a mission vocation with us.

 – Sister Janet Hockman, MM

I have been to two Vocation meetings within a week.

The energy was unmistakable – friends meeting again, curious questions of how others have been and what they have been doing – catching up.

Maybe it was like the season of returning to school after a summer break! The energy was also high about the ministry of invitation, of vocations, of possibilities toward new membership.

What a wonder to have such a concentration of commitment and love and service and hope and joy. It was a kind of witnessing to each other.

May it overflow to all we meet.

 – Sister Janet Hockman, MM

Today, the Maryknoll Sisters community honored Sisters marking their 75th, 70th, 65th and 60th jubilee year as women religious missionaries. Sister Rebecca G. Macugay gave the welcome reflection at the Eucharistic liturgy.

Good morning! Welcome to this special and joyous occasion in our Maryknoll community.

It is said that all of us are made of stardust. Each of us is a particle, a glimmer of that burst of mysterious Love that brought forth all of Life. The ongoing development of science, spirituality and other disciplines that are about the promotion of life confirm and affirm this truth and reality. Early on in Maryknoll, Mollie Rogers intuited this noble light that is within us and her reflection about it portrayed her sense of cosmic wonder!

“Each of us has seen her own Star and had the grace to follow it. That is the secret of the foundation and growth of our Congregation, for our Stars, a vocation to the mission apostolate, led us all to Maryknoll.”

Today, we celebrate you, our Sister Jubilarians, our stars. Your hearts and souls deeply resonated with Mother Mary Joseph’s articulation of the beckoning for each one to be a reflection of God’s Love.

This wise insight of Mother Mary Joseph, our founder, has socialized and nurtured us in our Maryknoll community. We have come to value that inner light within us as gift and blessing, as presence and spirit which we desire to share with others “to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Seventy-five, 70, 65 and 60 years ago, you responded to this holy and enlivening call to a new way of being in service and relationship through Maryknoll. With faith, perseverance, trust and a spirit of adventure you followed your Star to Africa, Asia, Latin America, the island countries, and places here in the United States, where with surprising and starlit clarity, the peoples with whom you lived and served gifted you, in return, with their own lights of hospitality, friendship and community.

The mission of Jesus is a journey of meaning which you faithfully embrace and your commitment has molded you into “contemplatives in action” with your:

– devotion to beauty and wholeness;
– widening circles of friendship;
– attendant listening to the mystery of suffering;
– awe in new learnings;
– compassionate solidarity with those in need;
– graceful living of advancing age; and
– child-like curiosity on what else has “God in store for us”

We give thanks and celebrate you, whose lives embody the awesome mystery that we are. Your faithfulness is a tribute to our spirit. Your lives continue the legacy of Mother Mary Joseph. As reflections of God’s love, “The love of Christ cannot be confined; like the flame—our love must expand or it will die,” – a nobleness we carry and pass on that enkindles nobleness in others.

Today is an occasion of praise and joy. Let us together give thanks to our God and enjoy the day.

Welcome Tom McDonell, MM, and thank you for presiding at this liturgy.

– Sister Rebecca G. Macugay, MM