Sisters set a Rock for Generations

Celebrating 140 years of the Holy Family Sisters in South Africa at a Mass: (from left) Sr Shelagh Mary Waspe, Hilton Stander, head prefects Mikhail Amod and Safia Poultney, and Srs Therese Hannon, Tshidi Matsha, Dolores Boyle and Cathy O’Gorman (seated). (Photos: Sydney Duval)

A large marquee was set up in the school grounds high up at Glenmore, overlooking the city where the sisters opened the school that began its life as the iconic educational facility known as Convent High, where pupils wore the striking red and black striped blazer with the motto Quid Retribuam? (What shall I render to you?).

This was the motto that set the Holy Family Sisters on a journey of service in education, health, pastoral and community work across Southern Africa, leaving footprints from Lesotho to Kimberley, from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

The celebration explored past and present as building blocks for an inspiring vision of the future of combining faith and life to know what God wants me to do now.

At the beginning of Mass, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, the principal celebrant, added the spiritual and human developmental dimensions to the introductory talks on the academic, sporting and cultural achievements of schools such as Holy Family College.

He spoke of human development, alongside the spiritual, as one of the greater things these schools were doing developing boys and girls into mature young men and women who become more and more what God intended them to be. Unless we are conscious of the spiritual we won’t be able to develop our full potential.

In celebrating the birthday of the Holy Family Sisters, he continued, we were also celebrating the life of the sisters and their 140 years in Durban as special gifts from God.

The offertory procession with the Fynn family, Andrew and wife Leeanne, and their son and daughter Matthew and Jordan, representing all the families, past and present, who have been part of Holy Family College in Durban.

The cardinal used his homily to apply the readings of the day (Eph: 2: 1-10, 19-22 and Lk: 6: 46-49) to the celebration in likening true disciples to God’s household which he builds with rocks on a solid foundation that will not collapse in a flood but will endure. Knowing sacred scripture and knowing Jesus Christ formed part of the rocks.

Cardinal Napier said the sisters came as gifts to the people not just to start a school and the activities associated with education, but to communicate the knowledge, the understanding and the appreciation of the gift that God was offering us and had given us. These gifts included faith in God, faith in his word and faith in his Holy Spirit.

Addressing the Holy Family Sisters present, Cardinal Napier said: You are living proof that if you build your life on a sound solid foundation of rock, God being that rock, then you will be able to share with others…what is important in the life of each one of you is that you founded your life, your Christian life, your religious life, your professional life on deep and firm foundations of faith in God, hope in his goodness and the grace and love of God which showed itself in the way you cared for the children in your care.

For the future, Cardinal Napier offered the sisters the vision of walking with Jesus as his disciples in the Church in motion expressed by Pope Francis, who never ceased to surprise with the simplicity of his remarks.

He also offered the sisters this creative thought on ageing: Though some of us are already on the wrong side of 60, and even 70, God is not finished with us yet what does he have in store for us, for renewal of religious life?

He developed this idea and its relevance for consecrated life through some challenging questions: What do we do in order to renew our religious life…how do we renew the vision, rediscover the original inspiration, the charism of our respective community life…how do we attract and form new members… how do we show our evangelical commitment…what is the rock of today…what resources do we have…how can we be building blocks for our society that it doesn’t fall down…how do we go forward?

In short, let’s go back to the Gospel, to something that really makes a difference to our personal life. What is God saying to me now today what is the solid rock and foundation of today that they will not fall down before the storm. God is not finished with you yet. He has a lot more that he wants us to do.

Holy Family Sisters present were Sr Shelagh Mary Waspe, leader of the sisters in South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda, and Srs Marion Millane, Tshidi Matsha, Colette Holmes, Marie McGhee, Therese Hannon, Dolores Boyle and Cathy O’Gorman.

Also present were the school chaplain, Fr Christopher Neville OFM, and principal Hilton Stander, who spoke of six young Holy Family Sisters arriving in Durban to implement the dream of their founder, Pierre Bienvenu Noailles. In attending to the education of the children of settlers, they were obeying the words of their founder who encouraged them to go forward and let nothing check your course.

The sisters had diligently allowed their hands to scatter on all sides the divine seed of God’s work and good example. It was out of this diligence and obedience and an unwavering faith in God that Holy Family College as we know it today was born in 1875.

Through all the years the school’s employees walked together preaching a silent message of life. What and how they talked represented the desires expressed by Venerable Pierre. There was a very clear message to love your neighbour and to take care of the poor. It was from a humble beginning that this tradition began and would continue to grow for centuries.

I often wonder what it was like to be in the audience on that day when Martin Luther King made his I have a dream speech, Mr Sander said. On this day he was motivating, moving and challenging. His commitment to reform was the catalyst for change, the effects of which are still being felt today.

The offertory procession included Sr Marion and Sr Tshidi, each bringing a brick signifying that the Holy Family Sisters built the foundation of the school, knowing that Jesus was and still is the cornerstone of all that they hoped to accomplish. They would lay their bricks on the large rock which reminded us always to make Jesus the cornerstone of our lives.

Two of the younger learners carried a poster reminding us that they are the future of the school and the next generation to care for God’s creation which he has entrusted to us. Others bearing symbolic gifts included teachers and a family.