Founding of the Sisters of Charity
Realising that she need to be trained in the spirit and traditions of
religious life, Mary travelled with Alicia Walsh to the Loreto
Convent in York. From May 1812 to August 1815, they completed
their novitiate.
At York, their studies and formation were based on the spirituality
of St Ignatius. Through the Spiritual Exercises, Mary developed a
deep life of prayer, marked by the habit of praying always, of living
in the presence of God, and striving to find God in all things. Her
ideal became that of Ignatius: to become contemplatives in action.
Ignatian spirituality thus became the spiritual heritage of her own
congregation.
In 1815, Archbishop Murray received the private vows of Mary
Aikenhead and Alicia Lynch (Mother Catherine). Added to the
traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was a
fourth vow:
to devote their lives to the service of the
poor. which was to be understood as to
render the Congregation extensively useful.
On December 9, 1816, after receiving the official confirmation of
their canonical status as a religious congregation and after
completing the Spiritual Exercises under the guidance of Fr Peter
Kenny, the two sisters made their perpetual profession. In 1817, at
a public ceremony to celebrate the foundation of the congregation,
the text of Fr Kenny's sermon was: "Caritas Christi urget nos" (2
Cor 5:14), which subsequently became the motto of the Sisters of
Charity.
With the founding of the Congregation in 1815, the first work
undertaken by the fledgling community was the Women's Refuge
established earlier by Anne O'Brien. Soon many other works
followed: the care of orphans, visitation of the sick in hospitals, the
poor in their homes, and prisoners in gaol, and a system of
schools for the children of the poor.
Mary had long dreamed of opening a hospital for the sick poor.
During the cholera epidemic, the sisters ministered tirelessly to
help with patient care in the city's hospitals and people's homes. A
number of sisters succumbed to the epidemic, including Mary's
own sister Anne, known in religion as Sister M. Ignatius
Aikenhead.
Eventually, she began to realise her dream. She secured
professional nursing training for some of her sisters, the honorary
services of generous physicians and surgeons, and other
generous support from the local community. In 1834, Mary opened
St Vincent's Hospital Dublin, dedicated to care of all sick poor,
regardless of background or creed. This first hospital was to be the
model for the numerous Sisters of Charity health care facilities.
From this time until her death on July 22, 1858, Mary ministered
tirelessly for the poor, together with the companions who joined
her as Sisters of Charity, and her many lay friends. Over her grave
at St Mary's Donnybrook, Dublin, is a large Celtic cross and below
it the inscription:
I comforted the widow, I was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame,
to the poor I was a mother."
(Job 29:14, 16)