Washington D.C., Jan 16, 2018 / 02:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Walk along in the March for Life and you may see them: a swarm of women – many of them young – dressed in long blue habits, white veils blowing in the breeze.
They are the Sisters of Life and they have a message for women and for the pro-life movement: “You are not alone.”
“We really see ourselves primarily as a spiritual entity that intercedes for and upholds the work of the pro-life movement,” explained Sr. Mary Elizabeth, SV, Vicar General of the Sisters of Life.
She also said she hopes that the pro-life movement knows that they can depend upon the Sisters’ prayers and support: “They are not alone and they have a family of Sisters who love them very much and are praying for them daily.”
Joseph Zwilling, Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of New York, where the Sisters of Life were founded, said he believes the Sisters of Life have already made a tremendous impact on the culture since their founding. “It’s about 25 years later and the Sisters of Life are growing, they’re thriving and they’re everywhere” he told CNA.
“Help Wanted: Sisters of Life”
While it may be impossible to quantify the full impact of the Sisters’ prayers and efforts, Zwilling said, “I truly believe that they have helped through their prayer, through their example, they’ve helped to change people’s minds and hearts about this issue.”
“I think that in the long run that’s going to be their greatest contribution.”
The Sisters’ journey began in 1990 with a newspaper column by then-Cardinal John O’Connor of New York. “This really was the brainchild of Cardinal O’Connor,” Zwilling said.
In the 1990s Cardinal O’Connor was a prominent leader in the pro-life movement in the Church and in the country, and saw the issue of abortion as one of the most pressing need of the time. Before acting, the cardinal reflected on the long history within the Church of the Holy Spirit giving life to religious communities able to meet these these challenges.
Cardinal O’Connor suggested in his column that it was time for another order able to respond to the challenges of abortion. The piece was titled simply: “Help Wanted: Sisters of Life.”
Eight sisters answered the call, formally founding a community on June 1, 1991. During this time, they lived temporarily with the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in the Bronx, praying, fasting, attending Eucharistic adoration, and discerning their vocations.
Sr. Josamarie, SV, was one of these first women to join the Sisters of Life. “None of us had been religious sisters before,” she said of herself and the other seven women who were part of the initial novice class. Moreover, God “called us from various things” – the young women had such backgrounds as scientists, college professors, and librarians.
As the sisters prepared themselves for a life of prayer and ministry to the most vulnerable in society, Cardinal O’Connor also introduced the Sisters of Life to members of the pro-life movement, including Mother Teresa.
Today, the order is thriving, with more than 100 Sisters, whose average age is mid-30s.
Sr. Mary Elizabeth joined the Sisters of Life in 1993 after graduating from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, having heard the cardinal talk on campus during her junior year. Already involved in pro-life activism, Sr. Mary Elizabeth explained that she “wanted to be part of the solution, offering other options to women” who felt like they had no options and turned to abortion out of desperation.
A Life of Prayer
The foundation of the Sisters of Life ministry and daily life is prayer and contemplation, explained Sister Mary Elizabeth. “Our spirituality is Eucharistic-centered and Marian,” she told CNA. In each of their convents, the Sisters participate in Mass and spend a Holy Hour in Eucharistic adoration daily. In addition, the sisters gather together to pray the Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day.
As part of the group’s Marian focus, the Sisters of Life also pray a rosary together “to support the works of the pro-life movement in our country and throughout the world each day.”
The Sisters of Life also draw upon the example of Mary in their spirituality, and from there, the way they engage other aspects of their lives: “A deep part of our spiritual life is living out a spiritual maternity, and so we take Mary as our model.” Sister Mary Elizabeth said the sisters’ goal is to carry Christ’s presence with them and to echo Mary’s “yes” to life and to Christ.
The Sisters of Life from The Sisters of Life on Vimeo.
One of the examples of Mary’s maternity they seek to emulate is her decision to journey forth and visit her cousin, Elizabeth, after the Annunciation. “Just as at the Visitation the presence of Jesus in Mary radiated out” and filled her cousin with joy, Sr. Mary Elizabeth said, “so we can have the same life and power dwelling within us and radiating out from us to touch all those women that we encounter every day who are pregnant and in need and hopefully them with joy and with hope.”
The sisters also seek to bring the example of Mary’s receptivity and welcome into the way they treat people – by recognizing the unique dignity of every person. When sisters encounter someone, Sr. Mary Elizabeth said, “we’re not in a rush, we’re not in a hurry.” This patience and attention, she continued, is “deeply rooted in our belief that every human person is created as a unique manifestation of God.”
“It’s a way we live out our spiritual maternity,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth noted.
As a contemplative and apostolic order, however, their prayer life does not stop at the sanctuary doors, but carries over into their ministry, too. “Our prayer kind of fuels our apostolic efforts, and then our apostolate brings us back to prayer,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth noted. “We can bring all those people we are working with to the Lord throughout the day.”
A Mission to Save Lives
The ministry of the Sisters of Life’s apostolate is focused upon the defense of human life at all stages. Sisters in each of the convents participate in a range of missions, from ministry with women facing crisis pregnancies or regret after an abortion to study of bioethics and theology.
At the center of the Sisters of Life’s apostolate is the Holy Respite Mission, a sanctuary in the Upper West Side of Manhattan for pregnant women in crisis situations to come and live with the sisters, join in the community and prayer life of the sisters, and stay until they are ready to go back into the world after the birth of their child. Women typically stay with the sisters between six months and a year.
Just a few blocks uptown lies the sisters’ Visitation Mission, which offers “practical support and compassion to women who are pregnant and find themselves in a crisis,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth explained. “Most of the women that come to us have been abandoned by everyone and are unsure of what they’re going to do.” The Sisters of Life serve around 1,000 women each year.
The sisters, along with a crew of volunteer lay helpers called the Co-Workers of Life, provide women with the practical support they need. “We provide everything,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth elaborated, from physical needs like diapers, bottles, strollers, cribs, baby clothes, and maternity clothes, to other forms of aid like helping women find safe housing, moving help, navigating challenges with college administrators or employers, writing resumes, and finding jobs.
In addition, some Co-Workers of Life open their homes as a safe space for women in crisis and offer their friendship and support. Even simple gestures like talking or texting with expectant mothers can be an immense help for women with few other sources of support.
“They’re being pressured into having an abortion by their family, by their friends, by the medical community, their employers – it’s really outrageous,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth said. “They just need someone who’s supporting them and encouraging them in their decision to keep their child.”
Another important service the Sisters of Life provide is hope and healing outreach to women who have had abortions. “From the beginning, Cardinal O’Connor was very sensitive to those who had suffered the wounds of abortion,” explained Sr. Josamarie. Many women, she continued, feel pressured into abortion and then are left to suffer through the emotions alone afterwards.
Sisters provide opportunities to “work through” feelings of grief, anger and other emotions by counseling women, as well as offering specialized retreats where women also have access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, in addition to someone who will listen to them as they process their experience.
“It’s our experience that women hold this secret and don’t speak about it to others,” Sr. Mary Elizabeth added on the experience of post-abortive women. “It’s a tremendous burden that they handle alone.”
Finally, the sisters engage in a range of outreach and evangelization activities through their retreat center in Stamford, Conn., and their presence at pro-life and Catholic events such as World Youth Day, the March for Life in Washington, D.C., and the Walk For Life in San Francisco. These activities compliment the education work the sisters do through their pro-life library, their support of the Respect Life/Family Life Office for the Archdiocese of New York, research in their House of Studies in Maryland, and talks on college campuses and in parishes.
With their lives dedicated to the defense of life every day of the year, the Sisters aim to revitalize a love for life in the world.
Their hope, Sister Mary Elizabeth said, is to be “a spiritual force that generates a new culture of life within the minds of hearts of men and women across the world.”
If the thousands of lives they touch every year are any indication, they are well on their way.
This article was originally published on CNA Jan. 27, 2017.
[…]
What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our ‘journeying together?
Encourage the Traditional Latin Mass and more Pro Life/Pro Family support from the clergy especially Pope Francis and the Vatican.
We read: “When you think about it being a 41-page document, how are we going to consult people? Are they going to read 41 pages?” Well, a good place to START might be Part I:5, Proposal “o” which reads in part:
“From the work of the Assembly, there is the call for better knowledge of the teachings of Vatican II (…).”
Indeed, this comes nearly forty years after the IDENTICAL CONCLUSION was achieved at the 20-years pulse-check following the Council, the Final Report of 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops: “[Part 1:6] It is suggested […] a new, more extensive and reception of the Council. This can be attained above all through a new diffusion of the documents themselves [….]”
Perhaps, after almost sixty years, actually read the DOCUMENTS, as contrasted with the disembodied and decapitated “spirit of the Council” as marketed by Hans Kung and two generations of freelance theologians, including many lemming synodalizers.
Two other FINDINGS in 1985 were:
“[Part II:6]…from Vatican II has positively come a new style [not exactly a new idea!] of collaboration between the laity and clerics,” AND: “[Part II:3] We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral [!].”
Less dense than the inventory compiled in the 2023 Synthesis Report, key themes of the 1985 Final Report might already frame the requested “EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.” Although much of the overlay of current grassroots concerns gives added and valuable definition to engagement in the world. Omitting, of course, Germania’s distracting moral, sacramental and ecclesial novelties.
“Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had noted at last month’s synod that only 1% of Catholics participated in the listening sessions.”
Is that 1% of Catholics, or 1% of Catholics who attend weekly Sunday Mass?
~ 17% of Catholics attend weekly Mass, so even if that’s 1% of Catholics, it’s still only about 5% of Catholics at Sunday Mass. And it’s not like there’s enough kids to make that an impressive number.
I am not surprised that only 1% of Catholics listened/paid attention to the Synodal conference. In the U.S., most people are too busy. Yes, some of the busy stuff is “junk”–being on X (Twitter) and other social media sites, being online on sports sites and other “fun” sites, ordering stuff from Amazon and trying to find a place to put the stuff in our homes when it arrives, working (often working overtime or more than one job), driving (can take up a lot of time depending on where you live in the U.S.), taking care of children and keeping up with teens, etc. And frankly, I didn’t want to spend time listening to a conference that seemed basically to be a meeting to talk about stuff that seems to be of little importance to many of us in our daily lives. There are so many wonderful things to learn about Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc., and so many tasks that need to be done in my home and my parish, and so many things to talk to God about in prayer–I personally think there are better ways to spend my time than listening in on a conference that I don’t really understand the purpose of. I’ll read the “summary” when it comes out, and let the “thinkers” in the Church act (or not act) on the Synodal Way.
Drinking a six pack and staring at a turned off tv screen is a more valuble way to spend time than participating in the evil enterprise of a synod. Christians are oblighed to resist evil.
If the synod was held to hear the voices of Catholic lay people, then in my opinion, it has failed. Why even hold a synod if only one per cent of Catholics participated? Why is Francis insisting on having these synods, if the vast majority of Catholics express little to no interests? How does he know that the Holy Spirit will guide his synod in any way? To me, these synods are a waste of time, energy and money. I understand that the Vatican is not in good shape, financially. Is the Vatican able to afford these meetings?
Synod’s next step. Cancel all future meetings, give those millions of dollars to the poor and all those involved spend one month in a retreat given by Bishop Strickland entitiled: “Caritas in ecclesia”.
Yours truly humbly proposes that the needed EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Synthesis Report actually appears within the report itself! Not to diminish the contents of the report, but first an observation, then the very concise summary, and then a concluding question…
OBSERVATION: Curiously, the table of contents for the Report appears at the end rather than the beginning. The first impression is that this is either a formatting error, or a cross-cultural touch toward Hebrew, or Chinese, or even Egyptian hieroglyphic ways of reading, but no…this is a right-brained effort to place the “concrete” process in front and above of any synoptic or disdained “abstract” perspective.
THE SUMMARY QUOTE: Part III, n. 20—The Synod of Bishops and Ecclesial Assemblies: Convergences (a):
“Even though the experience of ‘walking together’ has been tiring, the Assembly sensed the evangelical joy of being [?] the People of God. The new experiences involved in this stage [?] of the synodal journey were generally welcomed [two thirds?]. The most obvious one included the shift [paradigm shift?] of the celebration of the Synod from an event [!] to a process [!]…”
CONCLUDING QUESTION: Event vs Process? As in “…being [?] the People of God?” Does this wording actually propose/impose, broadly and by subliminal suggestion, that experiences together displace being? That ontological being is subordinate to horizontal becoming? That what we are is reducible to what we do? That to do is the sum total of to be?
So, the process IS the message, “aggregated, compiled, synthesized” by “facilitator” bishops, more or less. AND, this message can be summarized: “Do-be-do-be-do-be-do”! The conceptual ambiguity of convergent synodality! The enabled reduction of pluriformity to pluralism. On this “backwardist” journey, which is not so new, the lay theologian Etienne Gilson reminds us:
“Philosophy always buries its undertakers.”
What’s occurring at the Synod is a circumscribed process that is light years away from the comprehension, or practical relevance to the vast sea of Catholic Christians. Mrs Sharon Whitlock’s comment expresses it well. Nor does a summary inform the reader of the rationale for getting there. That alone speaks to an exercise in futility. Unless there is a rationale to further an agenda.
Certainly this pontificate has an agenda to modernize the Gospel contextually, grounding it in cultural differences, scientific advances, anthropological, biological, philosophical, theological [recently proposed to that effect by pope Francis]. What will result is rote indoctrination of material that is otherwise unintelligible to the average Christian. Nor will the average Christian, or any Christian for that matter be able to identify continuity with the revealed Word of God.
The agenda was provided two millennia ago in the Great Commission.
However, That’s hard work, especially in these times and I suspect few if any Bishops can provide any evidence from their particular diocese of increased Mass attendance; reduced pre/non-marital cohabitation, increased conversions; the end of church closures; increased marriages.
Instead we get vainglorious soliloquys from our “Shepherds”.
Instead of looking to Rome for guidance, the bishops might save time (and sanity) by reading The Catholic Thing, Nov. 17.
Why do these bishops feel obligated to act as stupidly as entertainers?
The Bishops have an obsession with material poverty, to the exclusion of the far more pervasive and destructive moral poverty. On well, another verbose document should help.
Good point, and I believe the reason is because the first is a product of the latter which they refuse to acknowledge since it would implicate their failures.
Getting back, again, to the need to “formulate concrete plans to prepare for the final stage of the Synod on Synodality next fall”…The Synthesis is 41 pages, some 21,000 words, and was tweaked by 1,251 amendments (the devil is in the details). The term “LGBTQ+” is deleted. Deleted also is a permanent and content-free synod. The Magisterium is noted ten times rather than four in the draft report (but now whose magisterium?).
One simplifying way of preparing for 2024 might be to focus on the trees rather than the forest. That is, where are the unblended drops of cyanide in the punch bowl?
Two such possibilities:
The proposed “[16 (p)]…ministry of listening and accompaniment,” as potentially eclipsing the guardianship of the Deposit of Faith? And, “[12 (h)] Further reflection is needed on the relationship between episcopal collegiality and diversity of theological and pastoral views,” as possibly contradicting the clarity supplied in Veritatis Splendor, including “The Church [as in ‘episcopal collegiality’] is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Further, regarding the forced dichotomy (though much amended in the Synthesis) between progressive synodality and what is conservative, reflection reveals that there is no such thing as “conservatism” as a movement, per se, as if to counter the many historical movements of progressivism… Instead, a grounding in the fact of creation by a Creator. That is, the mystery and radical fact of “existence” (the is-ness of things) before “essence” (the thing-ness of things). With Leibniz, too, “why is there something rather than nothing”! Being above becoming, reality before ideas…
Of this conservative VISION, which should pervade any activism and even synodality, yours truly blatantly inserts, here, the vision of an unapologetic and archconservative layman, Frederich D. Wilhelmson (“Citizen of Rome: Reflections from the Life of a Roman Catholic” 1980):
“I repeat the thesis: we conservatives cannot cure the modern world: we do not hold the power, nor is it likely to pass into our hands. But if liberals–and they are in the saddle almost all over the West–will make the descent into the maelstrom of the modern soul, they will find in conservatism a diagnosis of the disease of our time. We conservatives have lost our kings and our chivalry; our craftsmen are gone, and our peasantry is fast disappearing. Our horses have been shot from under us. We have nothing to offer the world but our VISION.” Not a program at all, but a vision! The pre-modern and again awaited sacral nature of creation and of all of reality.
Does our synodal response to the “signs of the times” discount or even reject—or embrace—this broader and deeper and conservative (so-called backwardist?) “vision” …Wilhelmsen’s “rhythm [!] of being and becoming” [both]?
The exercise on discernment offers a constructive road map. “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience” – Mahatma Gandhi