She did this to carry out the Works of Mercy , laid out by Jesus in the Gospel -- to feed the hungry , to give drink to the thirsty , to comfort the sorrowful . She believed that Mercy was the path that Jesus laid out for those of us who loved God .
But I wonder what it would have been like for you to be one of the people who lived across the street in that very posh neighborhood that Catherine put right in front of them , the homeless , the poor , the uneducated .
They might have asked , ‘ Who is this woman and what is she doing ?’
They might ' ve thought , ‛ Not in my neighborhood .’ But Catherine wanted the folks who had the influence , the money , and the power to see , hear , and understand the plight of their brothers and sisters .
So , here we are today , 75 years after the purchase , getting ready to dedicate this beautiful statue to the woman who started it all .
And it ' s the gracious generosity of President Deanne D ’ Emilio and the McMahon family that we owe this statute .
So , you might be asking , ‘ Who are these women , and what are they doing ?’
Before Deanne came here to Gwynedd Mercy University , she worked at Carlow College in Pittsburgh . I have a very dear friend who taught at Carlow , and when she found out that Deanne was coming here to be the President , she called me on the phone and said , ‛ Michelle , you are so lucky .’ And I said , and ‛ Why is that ?’ She said ' she gets it .’ And what she meant is that she gets Mercy , and not everybody does .
And suddenly , the Catholic church said , ‘ Who is this woman , and what is she doing ?’
‘ You can ' t do this kind of work unless you are religious .’
So , Catherine became religious and founded the Sisters of Mercy , and the rest is history .
There are so many stories about how these women , founded by Catherine McAuley , have done such remarkable things all over the world .
I want to reflect on one of those women , and I ' m going to go back to the year 1948 . We had a very powerful , visionary , courageous leader at the time . Her name was Mother Mary Bernard . She was a woman of vision . I don ' t have time to tell you all the decisions that she made that were beyond our comprehension , but one that she made was to purchase a plot of land that everyone considered in the middle of nowhere .
Neighbors may have asked the question , ‘ Who is this woman and what is she doing ?’
She was meeting a need that she saw in the 1940s for women to have a college education . And this was before she sent our Sisters to India . This was before she sent our Sisters to Latin America . This is before she said , why just the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas ? Why not the Sisters of Mercy of the world ?
There ' s so much I could say about Kati . I have to be really careful about the many , many years that we shared living down in Transfiguration House , solving the problems of the students here , and Kati saving my sanity . When I was Dean of Students , and she was the Director of Guidance , we shared a wall , and I frequently would bang on the wall to get her to come in and help me .
When I first came to Gwynedd , there were 55 Sisters of Mercy who worked on this campus , and today , there are precious few . Kati realized that somewhere along the line , and she established the Mission Leadership Program so that the mission wasn ' t going to be lost when the nuns left -- because this is not about the nuns . This is about carrying mercy into the future . She has ensured that in so many ways for so many years .
Who are these ladies ? They ' re women of mercy and they are putting up this statue so that it will be a reminder to everyone .
When people walk along the path now and they see this statue , I wonder how many of them are going to say ,
‘ Who is that woman and what is she doing here ?’
And then it ' s up to us to tell the story .
It ' s up to us to answer the question . And the icing on the cake would be if after that questioner hears the story , they might ask , ‘ What does she have to do with me ?’
TODAY 9