Cathedral of St Stephen
Letter-writing was a big thing in the nineteenth century. No radio, no TV, no computers, no iPhones – so lots and lots of time and lots and lots of letters. The new Doctor of the Church, St John Henry Newman was a prodigious correspondent; so too was his younger contemporary St Mary MacKillop.
Mary’s last known letter was written from her sickbed early in 1909, her death coming in August of that year. It’s a kind of last will and testament. In it, she writes this: “Whatever troubles may be before you, accept them cheerfully, remembering whom you are trying to follow. Do not be afraid.” As always with Mary, the language is deceptively simple, almost homely. Yet she says more than she seems to say. The echoes reach deep.
She speaks of troubles, and she had plenty of those, not least with bishops – expelled from this diocese by Bishop Quinn and excommunicated by Bishop Sheil of Adelaide, not to mention the titanic struggles over the governance of the Sisters of St Joseph. Then there were the troubles with Fr Tenison Woods which were never really resolved. She had troubles too with the Sisters, as she did with finances and eventually with her own health. But none of this broke Mary or even disrupted her serenity of spirit or her trust in God’s providence. How right it was that she became Mary of the Cross, because she looked unfailingly to the Cross of Jesus and drew mysterious strength from that.
There was more to this strength than grim endurance, because she heeded her own advice to accept the troubles cheerfully. Cheerfulness can seem too shallow for what was required. But this wasn’t the faux cheeriness of those who live in a world of denial. It was the deeper cheerfulness born of Easter and which therefore leads to the joy which no troubles can dispel or destroy.
Mary urges her Sisters to remember, knowing that, in the midst of all the troubles and the demands of work, there was a danger of the kind of forgetting against which the Bible warns repeatedly – a kind of worldliness that cannot see beyond. Mary remembered who it was who had called her and who it was she was following as disciple, following wherever he led, even if that took her into some dark and unforeseen places. She never forgot the Lord crucified and risen, and she understood therefore the urging of the Letter to the Hebrews: “Let us not lose sight of Jesus” (12:2), since to lose sight of him who is the light is to be left only with the darkness.
Remembering who was leading and never losing sight of him, Mary learnt to live beyond fear. She understood the words of St Thérèse of Lisieux: “It is trust and trust alone that will lead us to Love”… Love, that is, with a capital L. For Mary as for Thérèse, love was nothing abstract; the Love had a face and a name. The name was Jesus, the face was his; and a boundless trust led both women to him in a strange and wonderful way.
They found their way to the Love who drives out all fear in a world which seems to drown in fear. Mary’s last words in her last letter, “Do not be afraid” echo words found 365 times in the Bible. They are not her own. But in making them her own, not just in a letter but in her life, and learning to live beyond fear, Mary became the Love with a face and a name, the presence of Christ in our midst.
Beyond all the letters she wrote, Mary’s greatest letter was her life – a letter written not by her to the Sisters but written by God to the world. She was the letter written by God, the never-ending letter of which we ourselves are part. Hers are the accents we hear, but the word that is spoken is God’s.
In his second letter to Corinth, St Paul says to the community there: “You are yourselves our letter of recommendation,…to be known and read by all people, and it is plain that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (3:2-3). Mary MacKillop was a letter written by Christ “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” and written not just for some but for all people. No-one finds the letter hard to read or understand. They all understand Mary, even if only God knows her fully. Mary has a mysterious ability to speak to every heart; and that ability comes not from her but from “the Spirit of the living God”.
As she lay dying, Mary’s last words were: “God bless you all. Go on!”: very simple and unsurprising. But again there’s more to it than meets the eye. Mary knew the blessing of God had flowed through her as she followed the Lord in the midst of all her troubles. She also knew the blessing wouldn’t cease with her death. She knew it would continue to flow, even through her, into the Sisters and through them into the world. That’s why she says, “Go on” immediately after saying “God bless you all”. Because the journey doesn’t cease, the journey into the future God is preparing, ultimately the return of the whole creation to Paradise.
The journey doesn’t stop with Mary’s death, because it was never just about her: she knew that better than anyone. It was at the heart of her humility. God had done something through her; and looking back as she lay dying, she must have deeply amazed. But she would have known too that God would continue to do something, the same thing, through those who came after her; and that is what has happened. “Go on”, she says; and the Sisters and those who with them are heirs to the charism have gone on and are still going on.
The letter is still being written by Christ “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God”; and Mary sits by Christ in heaven suggesting, with her usual discretion, what the next words of the letter might be. That’s part of her service of intercession beyond death. The letter will be finished only when we all come before Christ in the end. There will be no need for a letter when we finally see him face to face. With his usual discretion, the Lord will allow Mary to speak first, and she will say simply, “Welcome, dear sisters and brothers, all you who accepted the troubles cheerfully, remembering whom you were trying to follow and learning from him to live beyond fear” – to which the Lord himself will say Amen, as we do now. Amen.