Journal Articles
LISTEN
Journal of the Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia
Biblical Theology of Mercy - Margery Jackman
Listen Vol 9, No.2 1990
The Scriptures leave us in no doubt on this point: mercy for us is not an option but a necessity. We are called to be people of mercy, not because we teach in a mercy school, not because we are part of a mercy congregation, not even because mercy is the only way our world can survive. Ultimately, we are called to be people of mercy because we are fashioned in the very womb of God, nurtured with God's everlasting love, sustained with her unfaltering trust.
We are called to be people of mercy because God herself is incarnate in each one of us, because the Holy One, gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, has indeed made her home within us.
Mercy made flesh: the mission of educators today - Valda Dickinson
Listen Vol 9, No.2 1990
Mercy - the biblical sedeq, hesed and rahamin- is a creative energy that incarnates and enfleshes the Spirit of God and the mission of Jesus in the world of today. It is a divine attribute- pure gift- given continually to those who are vulnerable and open enough to
receive it and to channel it. It is the ultimate manifestation of God in us. It celebrates existence, suffers with and works to make justice happen. Mercy involves a way of life that is just, morally good and faithful and a spirituality of universal reverence and love that is born out of an understanding of our connectedness to the holy and mysterious Way, Truth and Life of creation. It involves correct attitudes towards God, self, other living beings and the environment. It is vitally concerned about the liberation of life especially in those who are most deprived
To enflesh mercy in our schools and in our world is indeed the task and mission of educators today, and it is a crucial and tough option.
Appropriate rituals, symbols and structures for Mercy Schools - Valda Ward
Listen Vol 9, No.2 1990
In a mercy school, everything must point to an understanding of and adherence to the Mercy spirit or ethos. Each symbol must be unambiguous so that everyone can see congruence in meaning. Choice of staff will be based on their willingness and ability to grasp, treasure, and be enlivened by the Mercy vision. Curriculum will be designed to answer the needs of students. Care of students will reflect the concern of Catherine McAuley that young people are educated for the purpose of social change.
Our Australian Experience: A Reflection - Helen M Delaney RSM
Listen Vol 11, No.2 1992
Within fifty years of the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy, the secondary school apostolate was firmly established, and, of course, it has continued to develop to the present day. I would like to mention briefly three factors which I consider important as we look at our present apostolate in school belonging to the Mercy tradition. These three factors are:
- fidelity to the legacy of Catherine McAuley;
- adaptation to Australian conditions and circumstances;
- development of a philosophy of Mercy education.
Mercy Education: What it All Means - Helen Marie Burns RSM
Listen Vol 11, No. 2 1992
We have, as Mercy educators, much to sustain us. We have a vision of service, a tradition. We have stories of people who dared the tradition. How do we remain faithful to this past and present even as we move the experience into a future which will be quite different from both? What questions might we be asking ourselves to assure the continuation of the story? The future belong, you know, only to those who can frame the right questions. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say, the future belongs to those who hear the present the questions heralding the future.
The Business of our Lives - Helen Marie Burns RSM
Listen Vol. 11, No. 2 1992
As Sisters of Mercy, then, and colleagues in Mercy, we enter the struggle for justice in the world from a vantage point of persons and continue the struggle in constant awareness of the forgiveness and the reconciliation necessary for mercy and justice to meet. We cannot be content with structures have yielded, procedures have changed, processes have improved. We must seek also a reunion of those persons torn apart by unjust structures, wounded by processes causing harm to oppressor and oppressed, isolated by procedures disrespectful of the human dignity we all bear in common. We must walk with those who are poor and bind up their wounds, even as we strive to walk with those who are rich to heal their blindness. Together we seek justice, but then together we move beyond justice to a mercy which reconciles and forgives. Such forgiveness becomes a necessary companion to our daily efforts .. forgiveness of self, of others, of circumstances. We do not seek a 'cheap grace' here and yield dishonestly our anger, our frustration, our hurt, our offence ... nor do we ask others to do such. Forgiveness worthy of Christian persons may require much prayer, much reflection, much grace given in insights or relationships or experiences. Such forgiveness acknowledges evil and fault and intent, but does not hold life forever hostage to these limitations. Such forgiveness eventually "lets go" in order to reconcile the better part of creation one to another.
Australian Church for Tomorrow: The Challenge for Mercy Schooling - C. Gleeson SJ
Listen Vol. 13, No. 1 1994
There is something about a new millennium which calls forth from us the need to look more closely into the future and ask how we are preparing ourselves and our ministry for the new challenges it will provide.
Then I think about the future, two words come back to me again and again. They are 'spirituality' and 'technology'. All of us will be bombarded by changes in the latter, but Mercy schools will have something unique in their spirituality to make sense of such developments.
Changing Families: Challenge and Opportunity - Jack Darmody
Listen Vol. 13, No. 1 1994
The real challenges for the future is to remain optimistic about the goodness of people and the power that good schools can exert on students. Without faith and optimism Catherine McAuley would not have started the work.
Similarly, because the work of families has become so difficult as a result of change, Mercy schools and others have the opportunity to be supportive rather than critical, to be understanding rather than judgemental.
What parents need from their schools is support, confidence in themselves, courage to be firm in making decisions - and forbearance. If Mercy schools can do that well, perhaps wisdom will follow in the long run. The task is not necessarily an easy one. At times it will feel that an impossible task has been undertaken.
Shared Keynote Address, MERCY ALIVE FESTIVAL
1-2 October 1996 - Helen-Marie Burns rsm
'Listen' Vol 14 No 2 1996 pp 19-28
I would like to reflect this morning on this "business of our lives" and what meaning these "offices of Mercy" hold in the disorder in which we so often find ourselves today - citizens of nations whose worn and fragile infrastructures are crumbling around us, citizens of a planet in which valuable resources and biosystems are daily threatened with extinction. I offer this reflection as one way to break open the remaining three tasks of jubilee: free captives and proclaim liberty for all; occasion justice: return land and other goods to their original, rightful owners; and hold a festival.
Australian Response to Shared Keynote Address - Sheila Carney rsm
'Listen' Vol 14 No 2 1996 pp 29-31
What is it in our shared Mercy consciousness, I asked myself, that places a cry for hope, an exclamation of hope, at the centre of these moments of celebration? It is, I suspect, because of moments such as these we most sharply experience ourselves as standing between our past and our future.
Jubilee - Margaret McGovern RSM
The call to we Mercy people at this jubilee ....... is the call to be simpler, less structurally bound and free to seek the transcendent God of our land and of all peoples as a clear first and undisguised priority. It is about unequivocally and publicly and corporately nurturing contemplation of our God; it is about our visible solidarity in prayer and sacrament; it is about turning around our frenzies to survive and thrive and proclaim our God instead. God, then will liberate compassion in us and engender great and lasting hope in all to whom we are sent. Let that jubilee begin.
Mercy Challenges for the Twenty-first Century - Helen-Marie Burns RSM and Sheila Carney RSM
'Listen' Vol 14 No 3 1996 pp 28-33
At the close of the decade, the story of human experience will enter a new millennium of time as marked by Western civilization. Such an event offers an opportunity to look forward and to look backward in order to determine how best to progress into the unknown.
While it would be selfish to attempt to describe or proscribe that future, I think there is some wisdom in identifying the qualities which will most likely mark the third millennium. Such identification rightly begins by identifying the qualities which mark the momentum of human experience as we conclude the second millennium. We would like to suggest three qualities: relationality, sprituality, and viability. In relation to these qualities, we would like to offer some recommendations about the choices we make concerning what we take forward from the story of Mercy.
Mercy Secondary Education: What Does It Truly Cost?
Listen, 1998
For a teacher new to a Mercy school; coming to understand the tradition takes time. And it takes time on the part of veteran faculty to share the tradition with new persons.
But there is more. This is not just a matter of persons who "have it" sharing it with students and new faculty. The continuance of the tradition is a dynamic and ongoing process. It could be likened to a conversion: it doesn't happen just for once and all. We continually pass it on to one another. This is a dynamic without which the tradition would atrophy, would disappear. This conversion element, this dynamic on the horizontal level, is necessary because, to put it simply, it isn't easy what the tradition asks for us. Sometimes it takes careful insight, sometimes it takes deliberate effort which is why we need to remind and reinforce one another. It should be apparent by now that the cost of all this is not only time, but also has a significant personal energy.
This time and energy yield are a mutual communication of values. There is a sense of belonging that happens when people communicate values to one another. This sense is vital if the tradition is to thrive and be passed on. This is the sense of community we often speak of. As you well know, the Mercy community is bigger than the Sisters of Mercy. It is something born of people understanding the tradition, valuing the tradition, working together out of the tradition, and contributing to the continuance of the tradition.
