November 9 each year is marked as Founders Day by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Not far from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, west of the town of Malvern, is Villa Maria, the motherhouse of the Sisters. They do seem to prefer calling their properties “Villa Maria” — one of those little customs that make a group a community.
Founded in the middle of the nineteenth century by Theresa Maxis, a laywoman of Haitian descent and Father Gillet, a Belgian Redemptorist priest, this American congregation was organized to respond to the continuing need for Catholic children to be educated in their faith as well as reading, writing and arithmetic.
From a small beginning in a cabin in the woods of Michigan in 1845, this congregation of women religious has grown into three separate, though similar in spirit, congregations: one based in Malvern, another one near Monroe, Michigan, and a third located in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In the Malvern motherhouse is a newly rearranged and redecorated “heritage room” where one can trace the history of the congregation by viewing the exhibits. But there is another place where one can learn the history of this group of teaching Sisters. It is across the road at Camilla Hall, the large convent and health care center where the elderly, retired and sick Sisters are looked after and look after each other. I have been their chaplain these last three years.
Often across the tables in the dining room at Camilla, stories emerge from 50, 60, or even 70 years ago: stories such as the fun they had as an entrance band of young postulants in the 1950’s, stories they remember of the endearing things children did in their classrooms, the assignments they loved—or perhaps didn’t enjoy.
Some Sisters are at Camilla Hall temporarily, recovering from surgery or an acute condition and are anxious to get back to their mission. For others, this will be their last assignment. I like to think that St. Paul’s words to the Romans apply to most residing here. “Although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”
Almost all rooms are equipped with television sets, so that even those who need to spend nearly all their time in bed can see and hear the Masses and other prayer services being conducted in the chapel. Despite that, the rooms on the second and third floors of this four-story building tend to be quiet. And daily, the ringing of a handbell in the hall signals that the Blessed Sacrament is being brought to Sisters who instructed literally tens of thousands of children that Jesus is truly present in the little white host.
The Sisters have had long journeys from their own Catholic homes, to school days when perhaps they noticed and admired the Sisters, to the Novitiate, to the day when they professed their vows, to a series of schools and convent assignments, around Pennsylvania, or Connecticut, or Virginia, or Georgia, or Florida, along with summers spent in summer school. For some, their journey involved years-long sojourns in Peru and Chile.
November in our Catholic tradition is a time for remembering those the Lord has called to Himself. On the extensive grounds along Fraser Road, in Malvern, Co-foundress Mother Theresa Maxis and hundreds of the Sisters who followed her are now laid to rest under simple headstones in the peaceful, orderly community cemetery. Each gravestone says little: a name, a cross, a date of death. But God knows the stories of joy and sacrifice. The stones are slanted and arranged in neat rows, like rows of student desks. Together, they silently bear witness to years and years of service to the Catholic Church in North and South America.
Columban Fr. John Burger lives and works in Pennsylvania.
