Mission Day Homily at Saint Xavier, March 27, 2019

By Jenny DeVivo, Ph.D.

Readings:
Micah 6:6-8
1 John 4:7-21
John 1:1-14

We are invited today to consider the source of all love. Our second reading proclaims

that if you have any love in your heart, it is because love is from God. And whoever is without

love does not know God, for God is love. Whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides

in them. At the source of all love is our God who first loved us, who came to dwell among us.

The prologue of John’s gospel is incomparably beautiful and can be meditated upon for a

lifetime. One part that is particularly poignant for today is, “and the Word became flesh and

lived among us.” The verb used for Jesus dwelling or living among us, σκηνόω, means “to pitch

a tent” and is a cognate of the Greek word for tent, σκηνή. This conveys to me the beauty of the

incarnation at a deeper level. In God taking on flesh and becoming a human being, God was

willingly agreeing to the sufferings of humanity – saying yes to knowing and experiencing

hunger, pain, sickness, and even to death itself - in God’s very own flesh. The image of pitching

a tent next to our tent illustrates the goodness of our God who will come to be with us in any

circumstance.

The comforts of the 21st century - heating and cooling, indoor plumbing, safe, clean

water, and buildings that can keep out animals and bugs might make the Incarnation of God

seem less impressive, but the thought of pitching a tent and being without these modern

conveniences shows the love of a God who does not hesitate to rough it and get dirty with us.

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 Within our Mercy heritage, we can tell so many stories of the love of God spilling over

into the love of neighbor in the examples of countless Sisters, but on Mission Day, we remember

the beginning of the Sisters of Mercy in the United States, and especially our American founder,

Mother Frances Xavier Warde.

Before leading six Sisters of Mercy to the United States in 1843, Mother Warde had

already established other new houses of Mercy throughout Ireland. But the call to America came

with a bitter pang at the thought of leaving so many of their Sisters. Moreover, there was a

painful recognition on the part of all of the Sisters that the separation might be permanent and

they might never return home to Ireland again.

Yet, in their love of neighbor, and the example of Jesus who had pitched a tent among

them, the Sisters could not neglect to come and attend to the needs of the people in America –

the need for religious instruction for both children and adults, the need for the care of the sick

and the poor. In addition to the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, the Sisters of Mercy

had also vowed to care for the poor, the sick, and the uneducated. There was no short supply of

people who were poor, sick, and uneducated waiting for their arrival in America.

When Mother Warde moved from foundation to foundation and to a foreign land across

the ocean, she recalled Mother Catherine McAuley’s words, “You will have one solid comfort

amidst your tripping about; your heart can always be in the same place, centered in God for

whom alone you go forward or stay back.” Wherever the Sisters went, they found that Jesus was

already there, tent pitched, and waiting for them.

With her heart centered in the presence of God, Mother Warde and six other Sisters left

for the new mission in the United States. The only women traveling on the Queen of the West,

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the Sisters wore secular black dresses and hats, with Mother Warde’s black lace cap trimmed

with a lilac ribbon.

From their new mission in Pittsburgh, Bishop Quarter renewed his request for the Sisters

to come to Chicago. When Mother Frances Xavier Warde and Sisters Agatha O’Brien, Vincent

McGirr, Gertrude McGuire, Josephine Corbett, and Veronica Schmidt arrived in Chicago in

1846, they arrived in a place without heating and cooling, indoor plumbing, safe, clean water,

and buildings that could keep out animals and bugs. While Bishop Quarter had vacated his

residence at Michigan and Madison for them, it was hardly luxurious. The one-story, frame

building, sixteen by forty feet, let in rain and snow through the roof. Water had to be hauled in

buckets and construction on underground sewers did not begin for another nine years. What they

did have was an ample supply of mud and occasional wolves appearing at the door – only

slightly more posh than a tent. Yet, when the six sisters arrived in Chicago, Jesus was already

there, his tent pitched in the mud, waiting for them. Bishop Quarter could hardly sleep the first

night the Sisters were in Chicago, worrying that he had called five Sisters, all under the age of

25, to work in such bleak conditions. Yet, the next morning as he was walking with Mother

Warde, he heard the laughter of the five Sisters ringing through the house as they were already

diligently at work, setting up their teeny convent.

On Mission Day, we not only recall the first Sisters of Mercy who came to Chicago, we

pause to consider that God has a mission for each of us. A great saint said, “Christ has no body

now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks

with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the

hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are

the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

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 To be called by God for a mission means that God takes us very seriously, and entrusts us

to be part of God’s love and action in the world. We are each given a vocation; we are each

called for a mission. At its root, the calling is the same for us all. We are all called to love. We

are called to love God above all and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we only have the

strength to do that because our God first loved us.

And just as the one Spirit of God blows through us all, so God makes different music in

each of us. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Your role at

Saint Xavier, whether faculty, staff, or student is not just a job and not just your schooling, but a

calling from God. Yours are the hands, the feet, the eyes, the compassion – the body of Christ in

the world.

After mass today, there will be people outside with baskets of lilac lapel ribbons in

remembrance of the ribbons on Mother Warde’s cap as she crossed the ocean. You are invited to

take one and wear it in recognition that God has also given you a mission.

We are not all asked to do things as difficult as the first Sisters of Mercy in Chicago, but

such heroic examples are part of our heritage. We have the generosity of our God who so loved

us as to take on flesh and pitch a tent among us. Filled with the love of God, we have the

examples of Sisters who crossed oceans and great lakes to pitch their tent in the mud – to shiver,

go hungry, and get sick alongside of the people of Chicago to whom they ministered. This is our

story. This is our heritage. This heritage is ours as Christians. And this heritage is ours as

people who have been brought in to the Mercy story and who are sent out with the charge to act

justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, and the charge to love one another as God

loves us.

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 Wherever God calls us to serve – across the ocean, across the country, or across the street

from our childhood homes, our God has already gotten there ahead of us and has pitched a tent

right by ours, to dwell with us always. Thanks be to God!