· CHILDREN'S EDUCATION

· ADULT EDUCATION

· EFM

· JOURNEY TO
   ADULTHOOD
      RITE 13
      J2A
      YAC

· VACATION BIBLE
   SCHOOL

· SERMONS

· CURSILLO

· HAPPENING

· RESOURCE LIST
      Chapel Library
      Recommendations

SERMONS

Constance and Her Companions
September 9, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

The Martyrs of Memphis:
In the Name of God, Amen. I, Sister————————, desiring to consecrate myself more fully and entirely than I have hitherto done in body, soul, and spirit, unto the service of our Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, do hereby make unto Almighty God, before the company of heaven, and in the presence of you, my spiritual father, the three-fold vow of Celibacy, of Poverty and of Obedience, steadfastly purposing to keep and observe the same unto my life's end, the Lord being my helper; and herein I humbly pray for the grace and heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It was the prayer said by the Sisters of St. Mary at their profession of faith. Poverty, Chastity, Obedience: throughout the history of the Church, they have been called the three Evangelical Counsels, or Counsels of Perfection in the Christian life. Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience are not necessary for salvation. However, some believe that if anyone would seriously follow Christ in this life - at some point we will meet these three on the road. For Christians of a more catholic frame of mind, it is traditionally believed that poverty, chastity, and obedience lay at the heart of a true devotion, and that this devotion is made incarnate, or visible, in the lives of professed religious- monks and nuns.

Following these Counsels of Perfection is not simply and end unto itself. Undertaking poverty, chastity, and obedience as vows, in the midst of a religious order, frees one to then become useful to God’s work of prayer, as well as serving others. The acceptance of these disciplines is not simply for the sake of rejoicing in one’s ability to endure hardships, which would make religious life nothing more than fuel for spiritual pride. These disciplines are undertaken to make one useful for the greater purposes of God, as well as give one a means of making a gift of oneself to higher purpose in life. In the year 1873, four young women traveled from New York to Memphis. One of them was a Memphian, the others new to this region devastated by the Civil War, and still something of an outpost on the frontier. Bishop Charles Quintard of Tennessee arranged to have the sisters come to Memphis to establish a school for girls. Sister Constance. Sister Amelia, Sister Thecla, and Sister Hughetta, of the Snowden family, came as a novice.

I imagine that each of the sisters arrived in Memphis full of expectations. They carried dreams of how they might fulfill their vocations in this new city. They imagined their girls school. They imagined teaching the girls about the religious life, prayer, of how to lead holy and wholesome lives. Perhaps each arrived believing that the building of this school would be part of the answer of their lives.

What they would find is that their poverty, chastity, and obedience would be spent on a wholly unexpected project. Within their first year they experienced an outbreak of yellow fever, and took some action to participate in the care of the sick and dying in their midst. The 1873 outbreak was mild compared to what the sisters faced in 1878, a full onslaught and epidemic that was city wide. Sister Constance wrote in that year:

A pouring rain—another bad thing—it just stirs up the horrible filth of this wretched city, and leaves muddy pools to stagnate in the sun. There is no drainage—no system of cleaning the city—everyone carries the kitchen refuse into the back alley, and the pigs, which run about the streets, eat it up. I have disinfected this house thoroughly, from garret to cellar, with lime, carbolic acid, and copperas—and today the health officer came and threw tar-water all about the place—spoiling our nice clean galleries and spotting our hall carpeting in the most unnecessary manner.

What was thought to be healthy and wholesome service to young girls in education quickly became a journey through some of the darkest territory that any human being might traffic: caring for the dying and the dead in the midst of an illness for which there is no discernable cure.

Sister Constance wrote the following in her diary:

"August 29 Yesterday I found two young girls, who had spent two days in a two-room cottage with the unburied bodies of their parents, their uncle in the utmost suffering and delirium, and no one near them but a rough negro drayman who held the sick man in his bed. It was twenty-four hours before I could get those two fearful corpses buried, and then I had to send for a police officer to the Board of Health, before any undertaker would enter that room. One grows perfectly hardened to these things—carts, with eight or nine corpses in rough boxes, are ordinary sights. I saw a nurse stop one to-day and ask for a certain man's residence—the negro driver just pointed over his shoulder with his whip at the heap of coffins behind him and answered, ' I've got him here in his coffin.'"

Each day in the diary is a variation on a similar theme. And we must ask the question, how do human beings continue to sleep and wake, to work, to push through every fiber of fatigue and doubt and despair, and continue, continue to live lives that do not succumb to cynicism. How do they continue? Sister Constance gives a clue of what gave her and her companions strength and hope.

One comfort we have that we never had before, and perhaps could never have under any other circumstances—the Reservation {of the sacrament}—always in the Church. It is not often possible to go in, but we have the key, and it does not take long to run through the little gallery leading from the Community Room. That, and the daily Celebration, do make such a difference in our life here!

Constance is referring to the reservation of the Sacraments, the body and blood of Christ, in their Chapel aumbry, the place where we keep the consecrated bread and wine. For Christians of a more Catholic faith, it is something like having the presence of the living God identifiably within our midst. It is a point of contact between heaven and earth, before which we might be both humbled and strengthened. For the sisters in a dying and chaotic Memphis, it was a touchstone of sanity and hope, and perhaps a reminder of why they had undertaken this life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They had come so full of hope, so full of the promise of a great project, only to find that their vocations would lead them to very different work.

Sister Ruth, who had come down from New York to help, wrote back home:

My DEAR SISTERS: "I will write and try to explain clearly about everything. Sister Constance and Sister Thecla were taken with the fever the day before yesterday, and Dr. Armstrong told us this morning he has no hope for either one: they are very ill. Mr. Harris is better. Mr. Parsons died this morning. Of course Sister Hughetta and Mrs. Bullock (a lady who is to them what Mrs. Crane is to us) are with the Sisters night and day, and can think of nothing else. . . . We are helpless and do not know what to do nor how help can come. There are nearly fifty children here now; we have no clean clothes, and it is utterly impossible to get any washing done. There is no one to send for supplies, and no stores are open. An old servant cooks for us, and his wife takes care of six little children: to-day one is dying with the worst form of the fever, another has sickened, and the nurse has locked herself in her room and will do nothing. Sister Helen, Miss Robinson, and I have to sweep the house, wash the children, and nurse the sick. It looks utterly hopeless, and all we can do is to go on until each one drops. A box of clothing is at St. Mary's, but there is no way of getting it here; no wagons of any kind; and it would be just the same with provisions....

Money is quite useless; there is plenty of money here, but it buys no head to plan, no hands to wash, nor the common necessaries of life.

We hear in today’s Gospel that there is food that God gives to us that is not as the world gives - and there are times in life when it certainly can make all of the difference. Something that binds us together as human beings is that we each suffer in ways that we could never have foreseen. That is something that we share with one another. Living the unplanned life. Living through the very thing we thought would be unlivable.

Our Lord chose to look into the face of death for us, in our stead we might say, so that as we live through those times, we might be left paralyzed, useless, and frightened. He goes to the grave willingly so that God might make of Him something that will give us life while we walk through what seems to be a living death. Sister Constance and her companions lived through something that did cause fear and flight for many, all the while finding themselves strengthened and sustained by a kind of bread that the world cannot give, because it was made with hands not of this world.

Over the past year at The Chapel, a group of women have been meeting in order to deepen their daily call to God’s service: they are called the Daughters of the King, founded in the year 1885. The Chapel’s chapter of this order will be called the Chapter of Constance and her companions. Members of the Order promise to follow a daily Rule of Life for prayer and service. They seek to be evangelists. They pray for the work of the Church. Essentially, they seek to be faithful in the way the Constance and her companions were faithful to the work both that they have chosen, as well as to the work that chooses them.

Ultimately, the goal of Constance and her companions, that of the Daughters of the King, and that of every professing Christian, is that because we are fed with this bread that came down from heaven, we can continue to do the work that chooses us; we can continue bringing glimpses of heaven to a world that generally always seems to be on the verge of passing away. And by becoming and being a people who are seeking to help those who are lost and forsaken, we thereby find our truest selves.

They came to Memphis to build a school, but rather found themselves trying to save a dying city. In the end, Constance and her companions helped saved the city of Memphis, and won many hearts in their efforts. The school that would become St. Mary’s school for girls is in its 160th year this fall. They came to do the work they had chosen, but instead did the work that chose them; and that is why their dream lives today.

“Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”