Saints

The following homily on the Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila was written by Sister Margaret Brennan, one of our IHM sisters, a theologian, and wise spiritual director.

Australia will have its first Catholic saint in the person of Mary MacKillop, a Sister of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Mother MacKillop founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, a religious community that has ministered across Australia and New Zealand, including building dozens of schools for impoverished children in the Australian Outback in the 1800s.

Picture this: you’re going through a difficult time, you’ve got a lot on your mind, you just can’t seem to make sense of stuff. Then someone says it, that dreadful line: “Offer it up.”

Teresa spent a year and a half living with the nuns. Still, she resisted becoming a nun, saying, “I could not be persuaded to be one” (Life 3.2). Though obviously attracted to the life, Teresa needed time to adjust to the possibility of God calling her to religious life. Like Teresa we are often given the same challenge of imagining our life in a different way.