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This Friday, January 27th, the Church commemorates St. Angela Merici, a lady from the north Italian lake country who in the year 1516 founded a group of teaching Sisters whom she called the Ursulines, in honor of a special favorite saint of hers, St. Ursula. A little more than one hundred years later, the Ursulines of Europe sent a group of their Sisters to begin the religious instruction of the girls in the city of Quebec on the St. Lawrence River in what is now Canada.
They have been there ever
since: from the year 1639 to the present: 373 years. Then, when the
French government was asked to send women to educate the girls of the
brand new settlement of New Orleans near the mouth of the Mississippi
River, Ursuline Sisters were sent there, too. That was in 1727, 285
years ago. The Ursulines are still in Quebec and still in New Orleans.
Their history in North America is one of the most glorious parts of the
long saga of Catholicism and of education in the United States and
Canada.
As we read the gospel of
today's Mass in honor of St. Angela, I was struck by the importance of
the words of Our Lord. On one occasion, the apostles asked Jesus who
among them was the most important -- a question that indicates their
pride and lack of understanding of the mentality of Our Lord. St. Mark
tells us that Jesus took a small child, placed him in their midst and
said to them, "Whoever welcomes a child such as this for my sake
welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but him to sent
me." This is a beautiful statement of Our Lord's thoughts about those
who are good to children. And certainly true religious education is one
of the highest forms of goodness to little ones. It introduces Him to
them, and them to Him. So today we celebrate St. Angela, the foundress
of the Ursulines, and we also celebrate the 285 years of their goodness
to the women of North America. And that doesn't include their teaching
in Galveston and in Dallas and maybe other Ursuline schools in Canada or
this country of which I'm not even aware. These years of teaching are
treasures in heaven which have been laid up, and for which St. Angela
certainly gets some of the credit and merit.
Victor Brown, O.P.
The Mystery of Redemption, Rev. Rinaldo Antonio Zarlenga, O.P. |
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