Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton presided at the 11am special Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral in Perth marking Mary MacKillop’s canonisation last Sunday. Here is his homily.
There are relatively few residents in Western Australia, or in any part of Australia, who can trace their ancestry to the earliest settlers and beyond. The majority of Australian families have come to this land recently or came at a time when this nation was developing.
Like the MacKillop family, we can tell the stories of our families as they settled and integrated into this new country. These stories have been handed down from the first generations to our own.
They often have the common threads of the need to adjust, to be accepted, to be able to make a new life in a new and difficult land. We can only but admire the courage and self-sacrifice, the resilience and fortitude of our parents and forebears who were migrants and succeeded to carve out a new life in a foreign land.
Those stories form the traditions of our families. They and the other influences from our families are very strong and very important. The experiences we have shared with our families remain with us. They are formative in so many ways, so much so that our world view, our political leanings, our sense of justice and our faith as adults have had their germ in those shared experiences.
To get to know Mary MacKillop we have to learn and understand her early life. Her early life and experiences within her family give us the insight into who she became and what she sought to achieve.
Mary MacKillop was the child of migrants. We know that she had a slight Scottish lilt in her speech for she could speak the language of her ancestors, Scottish Gael. Her parents were very close to the Church and their faith was effectively handed on to their children.
Mary always retained a love for the Catholic Church despite the problems she had to confront. The life of this first generation family was at times comfortable and at other times precarious.
Mary’s father, Alexander, was a generous man but no great manager of the family’s income and resources. Alexander and his wife, Flora, valued education and they ensured that Mary had as good an education as possible.
The family learnt the lessons of the Gospel too, especially to see the face of Christ in every person and to respond to the needs of the poorest and most disadvantaged for Christ’s sake.
If we were to examine ourselves, reflecting on what are our values and the motivations for what we do with our lives, I believe we would find that most of our values and motivations were laid down when we were children.
Mary wanted, above everything else, to be as close to Jesus Christ as possible. She would write later in her life that it is a wonderful thing to want to become a saint. She meant that by being so close to Christ she might be able to become Christ to others.
This desire led her to the Religious life where she would consecrate her whole life to the service of Christ and the Church. Through her consecration, giving her life, energy and will to God, she chose the way of Religious Life to grow closer to Christ. Mary’s desire was that everyone she encountered might be able to feel Christ’s love and compassion in her spontaneous response to them of love and compassion.
Mary would always choose the option that meant the most disadvantaged one was assisted. Her experiences of hardship and the seeming impossible financial situations the family endured when she was a child provided her with a heart for the lonely, isolated and most hopeless of cases. Her work in providing education, the key to defeating poverty, and shelter to the homeless and rejected were the responses of a heart trained and transformed by Christ.
Before writing down my thoughts and reflections on Mary MacKillop for today, the day we finally acknowledge her great sanctity – what God has been able to do within her – I prayed to Mary herself. From my heart, I said, “Mary, help me discover what it is you would want to say to the Australia of today. What will you be praying for as our own Australian patron?”
I have been led in my prayer to look not only into the story of the past but to look to the future.
Mary was motivated by her life-long ambition to do the will of God. In practical terms, it meant that she wanted to make a difference in the Australia in which she lived. She did this by taking up challenges that were formidable, like giving people the chance to be lifted out of poverty’s destructive cycle.
The Australia of today requires the spirit of Mary MacKillop. The challenges have different forms but they are essentially the same. Our responses need to be as prophetic and practical as were Mary’s.
There is still homelessness, there are the arrivals of people to Australia who are leaving behind persecution and dehumanising treatment in their own homelands.
There is the presence in our midst of indigenous people searching for the key that will open the door to a new dignity and sense of worth. There is the work to be done to eradicate prejudice.
Mary’s life and faith are a gift to this nation. They teach us a way to become a more generous and compassionate nation.
Mary MacKillop is honoured by the Church because she heard the Word of God and she kept it. Certainly, she heard Jesus Christ in the Word of the Scriptures. But she became aware of Jesus speaking to her through her life.
We can certainly marvel at the things she achieved and launched for Australia. Mary realised that Christ was calling her to hand over the key that alleviates poverty: education. In fact, this was the first response she made to Christ. She and the Sisters of St Joseph lived in poverty alongside the labourers and the lowest strata of society. She brought to them the educational opportunity to make a new life with the simple skills of reading, writing and managing their finances.
For the Australia of today, education remains the key to a new life, especially for the people living in the remote areas of our nation. Mary’s legacy is the commitment of Catholic education to use every resource at our disposal to enable the Aboriginal communities in remote areas of our State to have a school and an education for life.
Mary heard the voice of Christ the Word in the appalling conditions of women and children. These had been abused and were destitute. Some had been prisoners who had nowhere to go upon release.
The houses she set up and homes called ‘Providences’ provided, at first shelter, and, then, a springboard to enter society again. The Sisters of St Joseph, in concert with other Religious Sisters work today with homeless women in providing shelter and the helping hand they need to create a new life. They are engaged in a variety of ministries that means they live and work with the poor. It is there that today they meet Jesus Christ.
What does Mary want to say to us today? What is her prayer for us Australians?
Mary’s prayer for Australia would be:
that we be renowned in all the world for our compassion;
that we be a people who recognise and value deeply the dignity of person;
that we are a people who seek truth and justice, and we stand alongside the weak;
that we choose the highest ideals above self-aggrandisement and personal advantage, materialism and individualism;
that we be a people who embrace the journey with the Spirit of God.
St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, continue to pray for us.