SC Federation Temporary Professed
“And you know you can’t go back again,
to the world that you were living in,
‘cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide open.
So, come alive!”
“Come Alive”, from The Greatest Showman
words by Justin Paul and Benj Pasek
 |
| Future of Charity members gather at the Assembly of the Whole |
Sister
Tracy and I pulled out of the Crowne Plaza Hotel parking lot in Chicago, making
our way back home to Cincinnati. For the
first couple hours of the ride, we recounted favorite moments and memories of
the first ever Sisters of Charity Federation Assembly of the Whole. After a couple hours of sharing, we put on
some tunes and sang along to the soundtrack of the The Greatest Showman for the remainder of our ride. As I listened to the above lyrics of the song
“Come Alive”, I felt like it was an appropriate description of how many of us
felt leaving the Assembly of the Whole. From
June 13-16, over 500 Sisters of Charity, Daughters of Charity, Charity
Associates and collaborators gathered together in Chicago; while hundreds more
joined us via livestream and in our hearts.
Together we prayed, listened, shared deeply, dreamed, danced, sang,
cried and laughed. We each returned to
our home congregations, but in a new and transformed way. After experiencing a richer taste of our
Federation, we cannot go back to living the way we were before. We spent four days together as a Federation
dreaming, not only with our eyes wide open, but I would add with our hearts
wide open. Hearts open to each other and
open to the new possibilities of the Charity charism in our world.
Two
insights stay with me from the Assembly.
First, our attentiveness to the ever-unfolding Charity story. In her keynote address, Sister Peggy O’Neill
stated, “God is evolving. God is
becoming and God becomes what God loves.
We too, individually and communally, are evolving, we become what we
love.” None of us has a clear view of what
lies ahead, but what I heard over and over again this past weekend is that we
are ready for this moment of change.
This sentiment is well-expressed by our founder St. Vincent de Paul in a
quote used during our opening ceremony, “And that, my Daughters, was the
beginning of your Company; as it was not then what it is now, there is reason
to think that it is not now yet what it will be later on…” Charity is evolving.
The second
insight that stays with me is our commitment to stay at the table. It can feel so hopeful and optimistic as we
set out on this new part of our journey together as a Federation, and at the
same time none of us are naïve to the hardships and conflict that will
come. Some of the panelists at the Assembly
concretely named some of the things we will have to confront within ourselves: unconscious
biases, white privilege, inter-cultural and inter-generational tensions. I even experienced moments of conflict and
discomfort during the Assembly when some of our differences surfaced. But through it all, I felt a sense of
commitment of the whole to stay at the table with one another.
Why stay?
Because the world and the Church
need the Charity charism, and we have been bequeathed with this heritage of
love to carry forward. The world needs
us now, just as it needed Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac to open the doors
for vowed women to directly minister to those in poverty. And we are as much needed now as when the
Catholic Church in the United States was in its infancy and Elizabeth Seton infused
the boldness of Charity. And the same can
be said for all the places where our charism has spread: Korea, India, Botswana,
Belize, Ecuador, Peru and beyond. Now,
we are dreaming with our hearts wide open, the next chapter of our Charity
story. And we should never dream alone
what we can dream better together.
