Mary MacKillop was by all accounts a peaceful woman who, it has been said, “respected and loved people even when they were at their worst”. Yet she was no stranger to conflict through her life. She didn’t seek conflict, but it seemed to seek her.
Mary’s conflict with some of the bishops of Australia became a theme in her life, climaxing in her excommunication. Those with whom she had most trouble were Irish, and those who supported her were not; they were English and Italian. So too the Jesuit priests who supported her weren’t Irish; they were Austrian.
The roots of the conflict are complex. Part of it was the question of how to make the best use of scant resources in a Church which was struggling to establish itself in world very different from anything known in the old world. But there was more. Mary unsettled the Irish-born bishops because she was Australian-born and of Scottish background, not part of the Irish tribe. She was also in cahoots with the English priest, Julian Tenison Woods. Then of course she was female, not part of the male tribe.
In 1885, the Irish-born Rome-educated Cardinal Moran of Sydney, working in tandem with the Holy See whose ways he knew well, declared Mary’s 1881 re-election as Mother General invalid. There was supposed to be a new election, but instead Cardinal Moran simply appointed the Irish Sister Bernard Walsh, thinking she would be more accepting of the will of the Irish-born bishops. This was an attempt to bring peace, but it didn’t work. Lacking Mary’s intelligence and strength of character, Mother Bernard proved quite unfit for the role, placing the future of the Institute in jeopardy through her long years as Mother General which would have been even longer had she not died in office.
At the heart of Mary’s disagreement with the bishops was her insistence on central governance of the Sisters rather than episcopal control. This wasn’t because she was power-hungry or disrespectful of the bishops’ role. It was because she had a clearer grasp of what was needed in the very different circumstances of colonial Australia. But it was also based on a rejection of tribalism. Mary had a deeper understanding of a Church whose mission rejects every form of tribalism, a Church in which there’s a place for everyone at the table. That’s why we call the Church catholic. It’s why the Successor of Peter, Pope Francis, has put before a dangerously polarised world the Gospel vision of his Encyclical Letter, Fratelli Tutti.
The same transcendence of tribalism we see in Mary’s friendship with non-Catholic supporters of her mission like Joanna and Robert Barr-Smith and Dr John Benson, to say nothing of Emmanuel Solomon who was Jewish. Long before the word ecumenism was ever heard, Mary reached out across confessional boundaries, showing herself to be above all a woman of the Gospel sans frontières, the Good News without borders.
She struck a chord in surprising places because she had an unusual ability to meet people at the deep place of shared humanity. That’s why her brother Donald could write towards the end of her life: “You have won the heart of Australia”. Nothing was more evident at the time of her canonisation, and it is no less evident in a celebration such as this. St John Henry Newman took as his episcopal motto words of St Francis de Sales: Cor ad cor loquitur, Heart speaks to heart. That was true of Mary in her lifetime. Her heart may not have spoken to the heart of every bishop, but she spoke heart to heart to all kinds of people across the board; and she still does. She speaks to the heart of Australia and the world.
Mary’s transcendence of tribalism and her ability to cross boundaries become more important in a time like this when we see globally a resurgence of tribalism and its larger offshoots of racism and nationalism. This can show itself as an almost obsessive concern to protect borders, even to the point of building walls or allowing desperate human beings to drown at sea. At such a time, Mary stands as a witness to the Gospel sans frontières, a mother whose love knows no bounds, the very practical love that builds bridges not walls, that never sees a need without doing something about it: never.
At a time when the dark side of identity politics is evident not only in politics but even in the Church, we can be tempted to define ourselves by difference in a way that creates and foments division, the kind of polarisation we now see. The identity of St Mary MacKillop was based not on difference or division but on a sense of limitless communion that comes from the encounter with Christ crucified and risen. Even when treated appallingly, she held fast to that sense of communion and refused to be aggrieved or resentful towards those who treated her badly. She refused to strike back; she held her peace and held her ground.
As Pope Francis has said, “Humility can take root in the heart only through humiliations”: for Mary the humiliations she suffered were the school of the humility which so marked her life. That was a crucial part of her identity as a woman of the Gospel sans frontières. St Anselm wrote of St Stephen, the first martyr: “When they were against you, O friend of God, this is what the truth of Scripture testifies: On your knees you cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lay it not, O Lord, to their charge’. O heart, rich with the treasures of charity, from which, when afflicted, such mercy poured. O mind, fervently ablaze with love, fed by the oil of charity, from which, when afflicted, such sparks shone, sweetly burning and burning with sweetness”. No less could be said of St Mary of the Cross.
That’s why if we look at Mary MacKillop long enough with the eye of faith, we see not just a nineteenth century woman who did remarkable things and helped shape a nation, but the figure of Christ crucified and risen, he who himself knew conflict, even unto death, but who rose triumphant from the tomb and led a host of others into the light of Easter, first among them the poor and the powerless. For St Augustine, “a Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks and a hand through which Christ helps”. That’s what we see in St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. It’s why we join the whole Church in calling her a saint, and why her witness matters at least as much now as it did all those years ago. Amen.