The 20th anniversary of the founding of Mercy International Centre is taking place from the 23rd to the 29th of September in the founding house on Baggot Street.

Thinking about this celebration and the woman at its source brought me back to the words “Kitty’s Folly”, which was the way that James, Catherine McAuley’s younger brother, labelled her risky venture on Baggot Street. He was perplexed and not a little frustrated by what Catherine was doing with the large inheritance that she had received from William O’Callaghan. He saw the Baggot Street venture as a costly structure that he considered useless, ridiculous and foolish, and he wasn’t the only one.

Catherine kept her project secret from her family for a long time because she knew them and understood what their reaction would be. In spite of all the derision and opposition she held firm and from our standpoint of 186 years later we know that James was very wide of the mark – this enterprise turned out to be no “folly”, but the seed bed of a veritable tsunami of service to Dublin people of Catherine’s time and then to the universal Church in Ireland, Great Britain and throughout the known English speaking world. Women following Catherine’s lead and sharing in the charism entrusted to her followed emigrants as they headed into the then unknown of the Americas, North, South and Central, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa – and in more recent years Sisters have moved into places like Kenya, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Samoa, Iceland, Zambia and Nigeria. This is to name just some of the geographical places where Catherine’s influence continues to be experienced today. The digital explosion has expanded this circle of influence beyond all imagining.

The “Folly” was originally conceived to house women who were in dire need of shelter, to educate poor young girls so that they could have some chance in life, to help prepare women to hold down a job so as to be able to take care of themselves within their work situation. It was also a place from which generous and enthusiastic women went into tenements in the back streets of the Dublin slums of the time in order to care for and help families who were ill and dying in their own homes.

Today the “Folly” has become a place of heritage and remembrance which allows all people inspired by Catherine to touch into the wellspring of her original dream and to have an even more profound contact with this woman who defied the odds so that the people of Dublin who needed help, could have it and could have it immediately.

In many ways the work that she started has been formed and transformed by the passing of time and the changing needs that emerge with each passing generation. Teaching in a classroom or working on a ward in a hospital was vital in a time when there was little social structure in a country, but these services have now been replaced generally by involvement with immigrants, with people with special needs, with people recovering from addictions. Being a voice for the voiceless, working against human trafficking or social injustice of any sort is also part of the evolution that has been taking place over the years. This list is not exhaustive.

In modern times the trend towards the God search has become ever more acute. Walking with people in their search for God, creating spaces of hospitality, peace and an atmosphere where prayer can blossom and deepen are also part of the evolving face of the Mercy charism today.

There is a question that constantly surfaces. What was it that led Catherine to build her “Folly”
– to put up with the teasing of her brother and her family,
– to stand up to the criticism and even the vindictiveness of those who saw her as an upstart “getting beyond herself” as a single laywoman and as a Catholic in the Dublin of her time?

What is it in any human being that enables a person to tackle the odds and to stand up to the current of life around her in order to achieve her dream?

I believe that the underlying power that fires a passion so strong that major obstacles are overcome is love.

Catherine McAuley loved

She loved her family so much that she was willing to put herself in danger from her brother-in-law, in order to help her sister die in peace. She loved her family so much that she took her orphaned nephews and nieces under her wing and became their guardian, even though at the time she was on the verge of a whole new enterprise in her own life that demanded her fullest attention

Deeper than this love of family was her love for those who were poor;
-the children of the cottiers on the Coolock estate,
-those whom she visited in the slums of the inner city,
-the poor mad woman that she took into her home in Coolock and cared for for years
-the orphaned baby she took home to Baggot Street with her and cared for when she found her crying and abandoned beside her mother who had just died from cholera.
Love of those who were poor was for Catherine an overriding passion.

Love for the women who joined her enterprise and who worked alongside her was palpable and can be clearly seen in the many letters that she penned throughout the last ten years of her life.

Deeper however, was her love of God
– a Love Catherine found in the face of “her poor abandoned Jesus”,
– a Love that stirred her to the very depth of her being,
– a Love that she received with gratitude

Conclusion
One of Catherine’s greatest attractions for people today is that she was very rooted in ordinary life. One can see from her letters how the ordinary worries about family, friends and the fledgling group (community/congregation) she had started are the basis for her prayer and surrender to God. It is this very ordinariness that is the basis of Catherine’s holiness. Holiness can be found in a common day to day life, trying to faithfully do what we know God wants of us in our ordinary daily round. As her love of God went deeper and deeper she was able to respond to the ordinary demands of her life in ways that were consistently generous and self-giving, consistently more like Jesus Christ and his way of living. This is the essence of holiness.

Venerable Catherine McAuley intercede for us. Amen

Brenda Dolphin rsm
Postulator for the Cause of Catherine McAuley
Congregation