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“In
1880 it was not at all obvious that the ‘land of the bean and the cod’
was a congenial planting ground for a foundation of the Society of the
Sacred Heart.” So wrote Mary Quinlan twenty-five years ago. She based
her observation on the account of the foundation in Boston that she
found in the Annual Letters, Second Part, 1880-81, pp. 293-296.
We read that Reverend Mother [Sarah] Jones, the vicar, invited to found
a house there and armed with the approval of the Mother General, set
out for Boston to find a suitable location. The Sisters of Notre Dame
gave her hospitality while she explored; it was a delicate matter to
find the best location because: “…if with time the well-known
fanaticism of New England has disappeared [everyone remembered the
burning of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown], nevertheless there
remains some deeply rooted prejudice with the result that Protestants
and Catholics keep their distance from one another, not only socially;
in order to avoid any contact they settle in different parts of the
city.”
The account goes on to note that the Protestants
are wealthier and consequently are considered the aristocrats of the
place. Some friends thought it a good idea to open a boarding school
that would appeal to these families, but the archbishop and Reverend
Mother Jones considered it more in line with “the views of Our Lord” to
offer a means of solid Christian instruction to Catholic families,
“quite as respectable, though less well off than the Protestants.”
Until that moment Catholic children had no choice but to go to public
schools, where no catechetical instruction was available. We can read
in this explanation the effort of the nuns to explain to their European
sisters something of the social context of an American city. RSCJ
establishments outside of Europe were still rather few in 1880.
A
house was found for rent near the cathedral and the Jesuit school and
on a bus line, an important advantage because the children were to be
day students. “Under the auspices of St. Joseph, the 19th of March, 1880, Reverend Mother [Sarah] Randall at the head of a colony of three religious opened the little foundation…April 1st
was fixed upon for the beginning of classes: thirteen children
responded; the fourteenth, the first on the list had already taken off
for heaven there to learn in the midst of the angels to know and love
the Heart of Jesus…”
There follows this amazing story: One
of the first mothers to apply for admission to the school for her two
daughters, ages seven and eight, was an alumna of the Sacred Heart and
Child of Mary; only a week later she died of peritonitis, leaving five
children, the youngest of whom was only few days old. Her death was
edifying in the extreme; after blessing and saying farewell to her
husband and children, she said she heard beautiful music and died in a
kind of ecstasy singing a hymn to the Sacred Heart. The children were
grief-stricken, all except the eldest, Fannie, the eight-year old, who
simply told everyone that Mama had said that she would come to get her
when she went to heaven. The day of the funeral Fannie fell seriously
ill. She asked to go to confession for the first time; the priest
complied and brought her first Holy Communion. Asked whom it was that
she was going to receive, she answered that it was Jesus who was going
to take her to her mother. And so it was: she died a short while later.
The nuns saw in this a clear sign of God’s blessing on their beginnings.
When the time came to send in the account for the Annual Letters,
there were eight in the community and forty-one pupils. They were happy
to report to the motherhouse that devotion to the Sacred Heart was
growing, not only among the children, but also among the “persons of
the world” whom they met; that the Jesuit fathers provided spiritual
help generously; and that in October the Sodality of the Children of
Mary was formally established.
Two years later, however,
they wrote somewhat apologetically that they could not report rapid
success because “the population of this city does not comprehend
sufficiently the importance of Christian education and looks only for
the teaching of sciences [secular knowledge].” But the number of students has increased to sixty-five.
The
word was spreading, and the history of these 125 years tells us that
New Englanders came “to comprehend the importance of Christian
education.”
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