Happy International Day of Happiness!

If you’re happy & you know it …👏👏

In 2012 the United Nations implemented the first International Day of Happiness and went further stating that happiness is a human right and worthy of celebration. It is annually celebrated on March 20th, a week of celebrations which bring happiness, or at least that possibility, to us specifically.  The ultimate goal of the day is to spread awareness that progress is not only about increasing bottom lines and encouraging economic growth, but well-being and human happiness. To give happiness as much priority as economic opportunity is an ambitious goal.

Happiness isn’t a given, it takes effort to attain, appreciate and understand one’s own happiness. Many people live very unhappy lives, and we have a responsibility to make happiness an option for them. Easier said than done.

On the third year of the international celebration Pharrell Williams gifted the world with his uplifting song “Happy” - I dare you to sit still as you listen!

In 2019 the Jerusalem challenge offered us a bit of happiness in the early days of Covid. It touched many cultures who couldn’t wait to dance…

Currently the people of the Ukraine are struggling to find comfort let alone happiness, meanwhile a 7-yr. old Ukrainian girl in a basement shelter brought joy to many by singing “Let it go” from the movie “Frozen”. Providing a moment of happiness for so many.

The Maxims of the Sisters of St Joseph ask us to:

• Return happiness freely to those who dish out unhappiness #51

• When you are with others, blend your serious side with joy, gentleness, and refreshing candor #45

• Everything in balance: heart, humility, detachment prayer, trust, solitude, love of God and neighbour, a life joyous and free. #100

I cannot guarantee happiness to anyone but I can offer some possible options to attain their quest for happiness. For me, a further look at the Beatitudes offers hope that I can attain more happiness through specific actions and offer that same wisdom to my dear neighbour. Will you join me?

• What do you do when you are happy?

• What do you do to get happy?

• How can you share your happiness?

 -Maureen Condon

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL DAY of HAPPINESS!

This year HAPPINESS FOR ALL, UKRAINE is the official 2022 International Day of Happiness campaign announced by HappinessDay.org, the campaign arm of UNIDO Happiness, the official home and secretariat of the United Nations International Day of Happiness. [https://happinessday.org/]

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Image: Unsplash/Szilvia Basso

Header Image: Unsplash/Szilvia Basso

Honouring St. Patrick

Some say that Maewyn Succat was kidnapped from his home in Roman Britain in the 4th century and sold into slavery in Ireland. For the 6 years of his enslavement his Christianity grew. To escape slavery, he stowed away on a cargo ship heading for his homeland. Others say he was the slave trader himself. (Smacks of St. Paul's pre-conversion experience!)

Spinning exciting tales to remember history has always been a part of the Irish way of life. These two tales would seem to support that theory.

No matter which account is accurate Maewyn felt a religious calling once back home in what is currently Wales. There he was ordained and ultimately consecrated a bishop receiving the name Patricius: Patrick to us.  He successfully asked to be sent back to Ireland where his knowledge of the land and language would assist him to spread Christianity among the Druids and Pagans. Cleverly combining Irish pagan beliefs with Christian sacramental rituals, he was very successful not only in converting Ireland to Christianity but also to having the Irish fall in love with him.

What were some of his combining rituals you ask?

• The most well-known is the use of the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity.

• He used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish honoured their gods with fire.

• He superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto a Christian Cross, creating the Celtic Cross.

St. Patrick was never canonized by the Catholic Church because during the first millennium there was no formal canonization. Saint Patrick was proclaimed a saint by popular acclaim, by the Irish to whom he ministered. March 17th, the day of his death, has been celebrated for well over 1000 years. Though a National Holiday in Ireland the largest parade is still held in New York followed by Dublin, then Sydney Australia.

As the daughter of an Irish Mom and a Canadian/Irish Dad named Pat, St. Patrick’s Day was always a day to look forward to - Mass, Irish Stew with lamb, corned beef & cabbage, soda bread and family stories. And so, in true Irish style, I bless you all on this day.

May the road rise up to meet you

May the wind be always at your back

May the sunshine warm upon your face

And the rains fall soft upon your fields

(unknown origin)        

OR

May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead!

Like St. Patrick we have all experienced some sort of trauma,  enslavement. Have I been as generous and forgiving to those responsible? It's never too late. 

St.Patrick, Pray for us.

-Maureen Condon

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Header Image: Unsplash/Adrian Moran

Let Their Voices Carry: International Women’s Day 2022

Let Their Voices Carry: International Women’s Day 2022

I have been an active feminist organizer and writer in three countries for nearly 60 years. This cause of justice still energizes me. I see it as spiritual-political work to which I am called for my lifetime.

I am thankful that Sophia Godde showed herself to me so early, and that I have had guidance from the best theologians and activists from around the world for many years to sustain me, deepen my convictions and provide me with an international community, even when nearby women, most church authorities and even an occasional family member were not with me.

My left-wing orientation, a fierce opposition to elitism and exclusion, and a commitment to internationalism have formed my beliefs, along with the example of my involved-citizen father, who actually subscribed to Hansard, the daily record of the House of Commons in print edition.

I find nourishment in the New Testament, in prayer and meditation, and in the witness of good people in Canada, Jamaica and Tanzania.

I am a philosophy and English grad from a Catholic Canadian college in Toronto, from the fifties. How, other than through grace, would I have landed there from a remote Northern Ontario town, and been drawn to living in residence with the Sisters of St. Joseph in Toronto? How, other than through grace, would I have recognized a desire to pursue the major questions which my major, philosophy, posed: who am I? where is here? and who are all those other people?

Rosemary with Sister Margo at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women

How, other than by grace, would I have taken myself off to Montreal at age 20 to a conference of Canadian Catholic students held at the Jesuit Loyola College, and there met the splendid young man who three years later would become my husband, friend and father of our four, and then co- worker with me in the vineyards of education and international development for the next 50 years?

With all that grace poured out on me, I was bound to take up a cause large enough, global enough, to be consuming.

When I looked at the great injustices wracking our world, I came to think that at bottom, was the way female members of humanity were regarded almost universally as inferior to male members.

Sadly, this state of affairs, which justified so many attitudes and practices that were damaging and unhealthy for both and all genders, was tolerated and even encouraged by the world’s religions. ”The roots of women’s oppression are in the religions”, I heard stated at the UN Conference on Women in 1995 in China, by Muslim feminist scholar Riffat Hassan.

Catholic Christianity, the largest of the world’s religions, was blessed with powerful feminist scholars, women such as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Rosemary Ruether, Sandra Schneiders, Ivonne Gebara, and Elizabeth Johnson, all, to me, doctors of the church. I studied their work, taught it in Jamaica and in various Canadian settings, and each time the shared experience was liberating for me, my students and our faith.

I had not personally been wounded by patriarchy; my father, brothers, spouse and 3 sons were feminists, but in my various parishes over the years, I met suspicion, exclusion, criticism and diminishment.

In the 2000’s, I co-edited an independent Catholic newspaper in Toronto, Catholic New Times and that was liberating. I examined the sexual teachings of the Church and found them dismally wanting, and so joined Catholics for Choice.

I have moved into ecumenical and secular feminist circles too, and into party politics. Change is made by feminists in all these sites.

In 2018, I was honoured to be asked by Prime Minister Trudeau to sit on an 18 member Gender Equality Advisory Council to the G7, which was meeting in Quebec.

Women have been making progress all over the world: In education, health, politics, media, business, leadership, the arts, and every field. I am very proud of Canada. But progress can be temporary, especially in a right-wing surge of populism. Violence against women and girls continues, as does racism and homophobia.

Rosemary Ruether said two crucial things to me. The first was that the transformation to gender equality is a two-hundred-year project, so don’t flag! The second was that the Church is stubbornly patriarchal, so don’t spend more than 15% of your time and energy on it. Guard your psychic and spiritual resources for potentially fruitful work.

I will participate in the Synod with a kind of hopeless hope, but Sr Becquart, Secretary to the Commission hasn’t responded to my hand written letter from November, and she was heard to say that women in the church must form better priests! Not good enough, Sr Nathalie.

Rather, we will announce goodness to the world, and join with others to expand human flourishing. So we reach International Women’s Day, 2022, recommitted and strengthened by feminist theology, (thealogy), liturgy and sisterhood.

I want to make mention of WATER, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual led by Mary E Hunt and Diann Neu in Washington. Their free programs have literally carried me through the pandemic.

By Rosemary Ganley,  Feb 2022

The Chapel Project

”I have been up to London three times this quarter. I find the people very glad to hear the gospel preached to them. I have in attendance on public preaching about one hundred and twenty-five persons I think…On last Lord’s Day I held an experience meeting. I invited some white friends to meet with us. I must say the meeting was one of deep feeling. There was many tears shed. In the afternoon, I administered the Lord’s Supper. God was with us, his spirit it was felt powerfully in the hearts of those who loved him. We have a tolerable good meeting house to worship almighty God in. It is a hard thing to preach among those who have made their way to Canada from slavery, but it requires much faith and patience. But I do not feel weary in trying to work for God. I love the peace of Christ and I am determined to spend and be spent in the missionary cause.”

These moving words were written on 20 April 1860 by Rev. Lewis C. Chambers to George Whipple, secretary of the American Missionary Association in New York. Chambers was working as a missionary for the AMA in the neighbourhood of Dresden, Canada West, and had just been appointed elder to the British Methodist Episcopal Church on Thames Street in London. He moved his family to that young city in October 1860.

Sketch, John Rutledge

The “tolerable good meeting house” was likely built c.1848 by trustees of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (in Canada, from 1856, the BME Church). Chambers was a diligent and devoted pastor and missionary during his three years in London: when he left for a new posting in St Catharines in June 1863, his congregation was already discussing expanding the small building on Thames Street. Moreover, he had also nurtured new church groups in Ingersoll and St Thomas. In the event, the London trustees bought land on Grey Street and built a larger, brick church, Beth Emanuel, still a place of worship and hospitality today. The small frame chapel near the river was sold and then became a modest family home for approximately 130 years.

Few buildings of that vintage in London have survived the vicissitudes of Canada’s climate, neglectful owners, and rampant urban redevelopment. But the former AME church on Thames Street did survive. When its last owner, planning a business expansion, sought a demolition permit from the City of London in 2013, city officials and politicians, concerned citizens, and heritage activists protested the request and mobilized to save what was generally referred to as the “Fugitive Slave Chapel.”  Mirable dictu, a lot on Grey Street next to and owned by Beth Emanuel Church was offered as a home for the chapel, and it was moved there in November 2014.

For more than eight years those concerned citizens and heritage activists worked with church officials to plan both the restoration of the chapel and an addition to it so that the building could eventually serve both as a learning centre about London’s Black settlement, the history of slavery, and the Underground Railroad, as well as a locus for community engagement. An architect was hired to draw up necessary plans, outreach was made to other southwestern Ontario centres that celebrated Black history, and heritage festivals like Black History Month in London were engaged. The work of restoring the building also began; volunteers worked with staff from Pathways Buildworks to strip off layers on the inside and outside of the chapel added by previous owners. Fundraising got off to a slow start, but hopes were always high that the goal of transforming the humble chapel into a learning centre could be achieved in time.

Aerial photo of Beth Emmanuel and the (daughter) chapel on Grey Street. Photo: Reubin Kuc

But by early 2018 it was clear that this was beyond reach, as Beth Emmanuel gave priority to its admirable community outreach. With the church no longer in a position to host the learning centre project, the British Methodist Episcopal Church offered the chapel to the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, hoping that the outdoor museum could take both ownership of the building and include the story of Black settlement into its already successful program of historical interpretation. The offer was first declined (many factors were at work here) but when made again in May 2021, the building was accepted with gratitude.

Plans are now underway to raise the necessary funds to move the chapel from Grey Street to the Village site, to provide a concrete pad as its new resting place, to restore the interior and exterior as closely as possible to its original design, and to begin plans for its future educational role. Everyone seems energized by this auspicious new partnership: the trustees and employees of the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, members of the Chapel Project who have been labouring for such an outcome for so many years, and Londoners who waited patiently for the learning centre to materialize. Perhaps also, its late pastor, Lewis C. Chambers, watched and prayed for this new home for his former worship place.

It is an unusual human being that does not become attached to familiar places and buildings. We often invest them with deep affection and nostalgia for the times spent and events enjoyed there. They gain in significance when we know those feelings have been and are shared with family members, contemporaries, and ancestors. Those of us who are currently involved in saving and restoring London’s “Fugitive Slave Chapel” feel that accumulated love for this humble building. Whether or not we have ancestors who actually worshipped there, we value what it meant for them and their descendants. Its walls, floors, and wainscotting have known anguish and joy, deep prayers and hymns of praise, struggle and harmony. This building is at the heart of London’s Black history.

Hilary Bates Neary

Hilary Bates Neary is an active historian in London. She was entered in the Mayor's New Year's Honour List in 2015 for Heritage. She also contributed a chapter to Shepherds According to my Heart: a History of St. Peter's Seminary in 2012. Her book, A Black American Missionary in Canada West: the life and letters of Lewis Champion Chambers, will be published by McGill Queen's University Press in its Studies in the History of Religion series in the fall of 2022.

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The Sisters of St. Joseph are honoured to contribute to this local fundraising campaign. Interested in more information? Please visit The Chapel Project.

World Day for Consecrated Life

World Day for Consecrated Life - February 2, 2022

Every Thanksgiving weekend our Congregation gathers to celebrate the lives of women who have lived their commitment to consecrated life for 25, 50, 60, 70, 75 and 80 years. It is a celebration of God’s fidelity and the Sisters’ joy of being called to minister to God’s people. 

Before I entered, I appreciated two songs that seemed to sum up my call: “The Simple Life” by Valdy and “Shower the People” by James Taylor. Even more now, the world celebrates “excess and extravagance.” “Give me the simple life, don’t want to worry about tomorrow,” sings Valdy. When you live simply, you are able to focus on what is truly important. James Taylor reminds us, “Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.” What a blessing it is to be able to pour yourself into your ministry so that those on the margins are seen and cared for.

“When you live simply, you are able to focus on what is truly important. ”

Image: Unsplash|Billy Pasco

You cannot live this life without being in relationship with the Source of all Being. This relationship supplies all the energy, direction, hope, love and grace that is required to be happy. It is not rainbows and balloons every day, but even in difficult times there is peace in the depths. And when one gets off track, there is plenty of mercy and forgiveness. There are many ways to live one’s life, to become a saint: single life, married life, religious life and priestly life, to name some. Each one offers a person a way to be in relationship with God and with the Church and the world. Religious life is a fulfilling adventure if you are called to it. Are you experiencing a desire to live a simple life? A life of joy and grace? A life of faith, hope and love? Consider life as a vowed consecrated person.  There’s no life like it!

-Sister Pat Carter, csj

Living with Christ/Bayard Presse Canada. Used with permission.

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Pat Carter, CSJ is a disciple, a teacher and an advocate for the poor.She has been a Sister of St. Joseph for more than half of her life and loves to use words to inspire faith and laughter.