Mercy Permeates The Work Of Benedictine Sisters
Editor’s note – The Message asked the religious communities serving the Diocese of Evansville to submit articles that reveal aspects of their communities related to the Jubilee of Mercy. This article focuses on the Benedictine Sisters of Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand.
As a member of the Ferdinand Benedictine community for the last 23 years, I have seen so many acts of Mercy from my Sisters. When I entered, we were and had been showing mercy to young women from all around the world by ministering at Marian Heights Academy. We also ministered in Peru and Guatemala, not to mention all the parishes, schools and hospitals in the area.
That was two decades ago, so I started asking my sisters, how do we show mercy today? Some of the answers I received discussed how we have sisters that help greatly with the homeless in Louisville. Then someone mentioned that we also help house and feed the homeless in Evansville. So the conversation began.
We realize that a big part of showing mercy is our prayer life. We gather throughout the day to pray as a community. There is also a prayer board that we have on a wall that you read on the way to Chapel. On it are prayers from people from everywhere who are asking for so many different requests. Some of the prayer requests also come from our family members, work colleagues, students, and requests received from our website. We pray for all of them. I think that’s a great sign of Mercy. But what someone pointed out was the Mercy we show to each other.
We show Mercy to each other when we sit with someone at a doctor’s appointment, pray with those that are dying, go to the funeral home when a sister’s relative has passed, sit and listen to each other at the table when things are hard, take someone’s dishes because they are sick, or just hold their hand as they walk across the ice. It’s what we all do…and by all, I mean you reading this article. It is all of us showing Mercy as the Pope has asked.
Pope Francis mentioned in his homily on Dec. 8, "The fullness of grace can transform the human heart and enable it to do something so great as to change the course of human history.” I’m ready to change the course of history.
