Reflection

Reflection

Traditionally October is the Month of Mary, the mother of Jesus, a time when we reflect on the life of Mary and take example and inspiration that will assist us in our call/responses to life. Another Mary, Australia’s first saint, Mary MacKillop we also can draw inspiration. The church celebrates on the 17th October Mary MacKillop’s 8th Anniversary of her Canonisation.

 St Mary MacKillop

There are numerous attributes about Mary MacKillop’s life that I find very appealing, and why I am delighted and proud that her name will be placed on the list, or canon, of the Saints. 

I am not sure of another person who has gone from being excommunicated to being canonized, and in a historically Irish-Australian Catholic Church, our first Saint is of Scottish heritage. Amazingly, one of Mary’s great patrons and friends was Mrs Joanna Barr-Smith, who helped finance her first mother's house in Adelaide.  What is extraordinary about this woman is that she was a Presbyterian. It was Mrs Barr-Smith, who along with her very good Jewish friend Mr Emmanuel Solomon, who paid for Mary’s ticket from Adelaide to Rome in 1871. In the most wonderful of alliances it was the Jesuits in Adelaide and Rome who enabled Mary to later get an audience with Pope Pius IX, but it was a Presbyterian patron and a Jewish businessman who made sure she got there. 

Mary MacKillop also knew that education was the key to true freedom, especially for the deprived people of the bush, so (along with the Mercies) the Joeys were sent across the country and she knew that true Christianity was about living simply and sharing what she had with the poor.  Just as remarkable too, is the fact that in a nation that can be as blokey as we can be, and in a Church that is as dominantly patriarchal as we are, a woman is the first Australian to be canonized, and a woman who was loyal in her dissent, strong in hope and magnificent in faith.  

(Richard Leonard SJ)