On Pilgrimage-11
Here in Rome, we are living among our Notre Dame Sisters from many countries. All the provinces around the world try to support the activities of our Generalate by serving for a time in our Mother House, so I am among, my Korean, Indian, Brazilian, German, and American Sisters at the moment.
When St. Julie Billiart was suffering greatly the turmoil of the French Revolution, God gave her a vision in which she saw a cross surrounded by many religious Sisters in various habits. She heard: “Behold these spiritual daughters whom I give you in an Institute marked by the cross.” This makes a Coesfeld Notre Dame, such as myself, think that perhaps we also were in St. Julie’s vision, though we came into existence some forty years after her death.
On Pilgrimage-10
Now in Rome, Italy, we six pilgrims will be walking ancient roads to see St. Peter’s Basilica and many of the Church’s holy places. On Sunday, some of us made it to Pope Francis’s window on time for the noon Angelus prayer and his blessing. Though the Church is beset with sinful people, her holiness as Christ’s Body and Fountain of His grace cannot be dimmed. Multitudes of holy people died for this belief, and many people consecrate themselves for a lifetime to strive to be holy in the heart of the Church.
Our foundress for the Coesfeld Sisters of Notre Dame, Sister Maria Aloysia, will probably never be canonized. But she is one of the multitudes of holy persons who gave themselves entirely, first to Jesus Christ, and also to His Church. She did whatever was needed to be done. Rome is always a good reminder that we are surrounded by cohorts of Saints on earth and in heaven.
On Pilgrimage-9
Travel from Germany to Italy kept me from the computer for a couple of days, so now that I have reached the center in Rome for the Sisters of Notre Dame, I would like to extend the thoughts of the previous post. St. Julie gave us her great appreciation for God’s goodness, so manifest in the beauty of creation and all its many marvels.
Today, we Notre Dames celebrate the gift of creation, and we strive to do our part to protect and respect it. I had the privilege of seeing so much natural beauty in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, and today I will be out in sunny Italy! As St. Julie would say: “How good is the good God!”
On Pilgrimage-8
From Mulhausen, we took a trip to Namur, Belgium, a very special excursion for us. Here is where St. Julie Billiart began her community of Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur in 1804. Julie’s spirit is at a deepest root of our spirituality, because forty years after her death, her rule of life came to our first Sisters. Hilligonde and Elisabeth were formed and instructed in her spirit. St. Julie, though only a peasant girl, became a profound educator of future teaching Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Her love for God, creation, especially the children, found a perfect union with the Coesfeld spirit of education that our beginning congregation knew.
Julie taught catechism as a young girl in her fields. Her love for God was ever joyful in what she experienced as his great goodness to her. Though her life was marked with heavy crosses, she always trusted to take the next step. A definite example is when she had been paralyzed for over 22 years, and after a novena of prayer in honor of the loving heart of Jesus, she stood from her wheelchair and walked. Then she walked all over Belgium establishing convents and schools to educate the young.
On Pilgrimage-6
Our weekend was spent soaking in the rich history of our beginnings in Coesfeld. We spent time walking the places our first sisters walked from Suring Street where the first house for the neglected children was situated, to the famous Way of the Cross that circles 10km from St. Lambert’s Church. After 160 some years, it is not difficult to find the markers or the unchanged structures. Our good Father Theodore Elting, whom we consider our third founder, walked all over the same roads tending the flock of St. Lambert’s, and also leading the Way of the Cross. This devotion is still celebrated today, and still today, our Sisters participate in it. I was happy to stand and pray on a little mound where Father Elting would have said Mass in the course of the long outdoor Way of the Cross.
From the first years of Notre Dame in Coesfeld, our foundress Sister Maria Aloysia gathered, taught, and nurtured children, especially the neglected ones. Having been orphaned at an early age herself, she had a mother’s heart for them. So the first buildings ever obtained or constructed for the Sisters of Notre Dame included either a way to house the children or to provide schools for them. Father Elting directed and celebrated it all.
