Hearing the Cry of Guyana’s Poor: Connecting with Earth and Social Challenges
By Sister Cynthia Serjak — “Take me with you, Hyacinth, I will make the burden light.” The year was 1241 and the city of Kyiv was under siege. Hyacinth, a local monk, ran to the sanctuary to take the Blessed Sacrament to a safe place. As he turned to leave, he heard a pleading voice: “Take me with you, Hyacinth.” He realized it was the image of Our Lady of Kyiv, begging to be rescued.
By Catherine Walsh, Features Writer – Something special has happened over the years since the Sisters of Mercy first started ministering with the people of the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, near the U.S./Mexico border, in 1875. The sisters and the women, children, and families of the Mexican immigrant community have formed a tight bond. And in recent years they have forged a mutual commitment to the Mercy mission of caring for Earth. In fact, they have put Earth at the center of their work together this year at four ARISE Adelante community centers that are co-sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.
Since 1998, the Mercy Ambassadors Program offers students at Colegio Santa Ethnea (Bella Vista, Buenos Aires, Argentina) and U.S. Mercy schools the opportunity to participate in a foreign exchange study. After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cycle that started in February 2020 was completed in June 2022. Lucía García Fernández, who heads the program in Argentina, shared the following: Within the framework of the Mercy Ambassadors Program (MAP), Lily Adams and Anna Koeberlein, students from Assumption High School (Louisville, Kentucky) visited Colegio Santa Ethnea during the month of June. They shared school life for three weeks, at all levels and in all the areas of our school. Before returning home, they expressed their gratitude for this incredible experience, full of memories that they will keep in their hearts forever.
By Sister Luz-Eugenia Alvarez — From the time I began formation in the novitiate (a phase in the process of becoming a Sister of Mercy), I knew that, following the completion of classes on the vow of service, there was the possibility I would go to the U.S.-Mexico border. This past June, I did. I traveled to the border between McAllen, Texas, and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to learn about how the sisters serve immigrants there.
By Kari Sims, Director of Service-Learning & Leadership, Mercy Academy, Louisville, Kentucky — I celebrated the 4th of July at a Major League baseball game this year. Before the unfurling of the giant American flag on the field, the announcer asked us all to pause for a moment of silence to honor the victims of the Highland Park shooting that had occurred earlier that morning. A solemn mood washed over the crowd. As we stood in silence, I wondered how many of us thought of the 53 people who died in the truck just outside of San Antonio, Texas—all in search of something better, in search of a home. After spending time at the border this past May, I cannot stop thinking about what it means to call someplace home.
By Sister Pat Kenny — Years ago someone gave me, or maybe I found, a copy of “Desiderata,” a short poem penned by lawyer Max Ehrmann in the 1920s. We all have the experience of discovering something that would have meant very little at any other time but, when it discovered you, it meant everything. When this poem found me, several lines “spoke” to the very questions with which I’d been struggling.
By Jocelyn Welch, Mercy Montessori Erdkinder/Farmessori Directress —
Mercy Montessori’s Farmessori and Erdkinder Program in Cincinnati, Ohio, is rooted in Montessori philosophy and strives to give all students opportunities to work with the land and grow into stewards of our Earth.
By Christina D’Amico, Library Assistant, Mercy High School, Middletown, Connecticut — As the final bell rings at Mercy High School, a committee of faculty, staff and administration gather to pray. They are dubbed the Mercy Circle in collective spirit of keeping the mission of the Sisters of Mercy thriving within their community. Several months later, the Mercy Circle prepares a celebration honoring the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy to Middletown, Connecticut, from their home turf of Ennis, Ireland, 150 years ago.
By Sister Honora Nicholson — Today we celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene, the woman whose place in the circle of Jesus’ friends was attested to by all four gospels and whose claim to apostleship is equal in every way to both Peter and Paul. Yet, unlike Peter, Mary never denied Jesus and, unlike Paul, she never persecuted him. She was given the title Apostle to the Apostles by the early church, the first to receive a direct mission from the Risen Lord to go and preach the Gospel.
By Sister Michele Schroeck — When I think of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint from the territory of the United States and Canada and patroness of ecology, I think of the Bhutanese immigrants living in my neighborhood. They were expelled from their native lands and sent to Nepal, where they lived in refugee camps in the 1990s before coming to the United States. These Bhutanese like many other native peoples were forced to leave their ancestral home.
More than 50 sisters, associates and colleagues in ministry joined the Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington, D.C., on Saturday, June 18, 2022. Sister Carren Herring and Sister Diane Guerin recently reflected on what it was like to be a part of this momentous event!
By Elsa Cromarty, Coordinator of Mercy Associates in Guyana —
“The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together….In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet….The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor.” This quote from Laudato Si’ reminds us that we and Earth are one. We are indispensably connected, and human actions, good or bad, decisively affect our relationship with the environment.