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The current issue is dedicated to contemplation upon Mary. The Constitutions of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy remind us that “Because Mary entered fully into her Son’s mission she became the Mother of Mercy and our model of faith…Devotion to Mary, the Mother…

I was asked to join the children’s choir in First Grade, on the edge of Vatican II, and so I began learning some of the well-used Marian Latin Hymns like Salve Regina and Regina Coeli.

This prayer was developed by the Institute Prayer and Ritual Committee in 2021 for communal and individual prayer for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In most cases the reality of women in Latin American countries as well as in the US continues to be oppression and exploitation by political, cultural and religious systems that are predominantly male. For this reason, as Our Lady of Guadalupe is a feminine image,…

This article will explore both religions because they influenced the rise of Christianity and offer a new understanding of Mary’s role in the Church.

Mary is not God, she is not a fourth member of the Trinity. However, for many Catholics Mary provides ‘a’, if not ‘the’ major connection with the divine; for some she is even the primary connection with God and the spiritual life.

As a feminist theologian, Mary Aquin O’Neill wrote Original Grace: The Mystery of Mary out of a committed devotion to Mary and a commitment to women.  She was very aware that the images of Mary developed over the years by male theologians simply deepened an…

Sisters of Mercy and their colleagues and friends around the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Sister Mary C. Sullivan, RSM. Our gratitude depends on much more than her commitment to scholarship and to theological inquiry. Most of all, we appreciate her dedication…

In this essay I wish to explore Catherine McAuley's concepts of comforting and animating, by which I believe she defined both her own unique contribution to the founding of the Sisters of Mercy, and two essential works of those who would personally quicken the re-founding…

Somehow we know, beyond all doubt, that the eager enkindler of our personal and corporate vocation as Sisters of Mercy is, even now, steadily at work among our dry bones and sinews. More than anything else in this world we wish to surrender to this…

The "visitation" of the sick poor was one of the three central elements in Catherine McAuley's vision of the merciful work to which she and, later, her companions in the Sisters of Mercy were called.i She conceived of this "visitation" as affording to the desperately…

The theme for our reflections is "Sowing Hope: Embracing Cultural Diversity," and I have been asked to focus on Catherine McAuley's legacy as it relates to this theme.

The word “prophetic” is often used in relation to religious life: as an exhortation, a complaint, a compliment, an assurance, a definition, a description. In fact, it is currently quite a fashionable word: if one can say that someone or something is "prophetic," one's theological…

If we wish to enter deeply into the prayer of Catherine McAuley, as a place where she and Christ may teach us, we may enter the ordinary scenes of her praying that have been recorded for us by those who lived with her. Whether we…

The history of the Sisters of Mercy is a history of radiant public symbols: living persons, objects, events, and actions that by their symbolic character and presence proclaim the enduring and gracious mercy of God. Some of these symbols have remained constant in their vitality…