50 days from today, Australia’s Mary MacKillop will be canonised.

Blessed Mary of the Cross will become Saint Mary of the Cross.

The canonisation, celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, will be in Rome.

Many Australians will travel to Rome — as pilgrims — to witness the rituals in person.

* * *

The official Mary MacKillop Blog (25.8.2010) says:

“The Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Melbourne has prepared a very beautiful ‘Journey Stone’ to commemorate this momentous occasion and Mary’s journey to Rome.

The Aboriginal people of the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Melbourne have a (project) of giving travellers a journey stone for safe travel.

You are invited and encouraged to take one of these stones . . . with you on Pilgrimage. The stone you hold has been hand painted by an Aboriginal artist (and) comes with this message:

‘As you journey in the footsteps of Mary MacKillop,
may you feel her courageous spirit
as you walk the streets of Rome.
Travel gently with respect
to the places where Blessed Mary once prayed.
Hold the sacredness of the land close to your heart.
Remember the good that she has done in our sunburnt land.
May the spirits of my Ancestors, watch
over and keep you safe.’  © Vicki Clarke 2010”

The blog also says:

“Mary MacKillop’s canonisation is particularly special to the Catholic Aboriginal community. The concern Mary showed for the welfare and education of Aboriginal peoples is well documented and her legacy continues through the work of the Sisters of St Joseph . . . .”

* * *

The real Mary MacKillop had little to do with Aborigines.

Blessed Mary’s official biography by Father Paul Gardiner does mention one occasion when the young Mary MacKillop willingly combed lice out of the hair of an Aboriginal girl, Nancy . . . .

Later, in 1898, Blessed Mary hoped to involve her Sisters in a Northern Territory Aboriginal mission organised by her brother, Father Donald MacKillop.  However, floods destroyed the buildings and the project never eventuated. It was decades after her lifetime before the Josephite Order had a presence in Australia’s north and north-west where most Aborigines lived.

* * *

Invoking “spirits of ancestors” (Aboriginal or any other) as watchers over our lives is sentimental dabbling in paganism.

The Catholic religion encourages us to pray to Saints acknowledged by the Church. Praying at random to others isn’t encouraged in the same way.

Better to pray TO the Church’s recognised saints – FOR our departed ancestors.

Florence Nightingale died 100 years ago yesterday.

Florence had an experience at the age of 17 when, “God spoke to me, and called me to his service.”

Back then, nursing wasn’t a very respectable profession. Hospitals were famous mainly for bad smells and frightening death rates.

Despite family protests, Florence became a nurse anyway. By 1853, she was superintendent of London’s “Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen”.

She and 38 of her trainees went to Turkey to nurse soldiers injured in the Crimean War.

At first, recovery rates didn’t improve much – but after the hospital’s sewers and ventilation were fixed they did.

* * *

Back in England, Florence published a book, “Notes on Nursing”, covering what professional nurses needed to learn, plus “everyday sanitary knowledge . . . which every one ought to have.”

She wrote, altogether, 17 books on medical topics.

Plus another, 829 pages long, entitled “Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.”

Due to health problems, Florence spent much of the second half of her life bed-ridden.

But she remained a great organiser, intellectual and author.

She died at the age of 90.

* * *

Florence made her nurses recite a pledge:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully.

I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.

I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.

With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

When young, Florence worked in a Paris hospital staffed by nuns. She wore the postulant habit, but never became a nun herself.

She never became a Catholic. She told Cardinal Manning that she wished to, but he said no, as she didn’t accept some Catholic beliefs.

Florence Nightingale is venerated as a Saint in the Episcopal Church, but not in the Catholic Church.

* * *

A phonograph recording of Florence’s voice, made in 1890, has been preserved. She sounds a bit like Queen Elizabeth II:  www.archive.org/details/FlorenceNightingaleVoice

Professor Patrick McGorry, officially “Australian of the Year”, yesterday criticised Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s recent pledge to provide $277 million for suicide prevention.

He seemed to think it wasn’t enough.

He called the failure of Australian governments to put more money into mental health services for the depressed a “national obscenity”.

He told reporters: “We wrote to the previous Prime Minister in April, and we’re three months down the track, another 600 Australians are dead from suicide.”

* * *

So what is depression?

Depression is a sad/miserable/despondent emotional response to the experience of suffering.

Human suffering cannot be understood properly unless one has a proper understanding of what being human means.

Human suffering cannot be properly responded to without an awareness of the human capacity for relationship with God.

Believing in God, one sees depression and suffering from a different perspective — still a challenge, but less overwhelming.

Without that, no matter what pills, electric shocks, counselling sessions etc. are employed, the root causes of depression are not touched.

* * *

To quote Elder Zachariah, “Depression is a hangman which kills the energy essential for the receiving of the Holy Spirit in one’s heart. A depressed person loses the ability to pray . . . .

“We greatly offend the Lord when because of our afflictions and sorrows we fall into depression . . . misfortunes and sorrows are sent us by God’s providence to test us.”

S0, seeing somebody in the throes of major depression, should we say to them, “Pray more!”?

No, not in most cases.

Unless a person has prepared himself by a lifetime of disciplined prayer . . . you’ll be hard pressed to start teaching him a prayer-life when his spiritual energy is at its lowest ebb.

If one’s life doesn’t already have a supernatural foundation, it will collapse under pressure like a house with no proper foundation.

* * *

One person who coped with personal suffering, and helped hundreds of other sufferers by her words and example, especially by letters that she wrote, was . . . guess who?

Blessed Mary MacKillop.

Reading her published letters recounting her hardships – and her temptations to depression – is a real inspiration.

Especially in the second volume (entitled “Mary MacKillop in Challenging Times”).

It can be purchased online at www.marymackillopplace.org.au/store/view_category.asp?id=30

The Polls suggest that Labor will win the Australian federal election on August 21.

Which goes to show that — whatever you may have heard to the contrary — Australians do NOT believe in a fair go for everyone.

And they do NOT stick up for the underdog.

Anything but.

Perhaps they did once.

Not now.

The backstabbing of Prime Minister Mr Rudd the other day made Julius Caesar’s knifing by his mates seem like a Sunday School picnic.

* * *

Since becoming a suburb of the USA, Australia has based its political methods on those of our American friends who live in perpetual cut-throat election mode.

The patron saint of Australia’s political parties – all of them – seems now to be Saint Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

We should be trying to get away from that.

* * *

A better saint to emulate might be Saint Francis de Sales — bishop of Geneva around the year 1600AD – famous for his simplicity.

The opposite of “tricky” is “simple”.

Simplicity is a Christian virtue.

Saint Francis de Sales wrote, “When a simple soul is to act, he considers only what is right to say or do, and then immediately goes into action without losing time thinking what others might say about it. And after doing what seems right, he dismisses the subject from his mind . . . He has no other aim than to please God.”

On one occasion when something Saint F had done was criticised, he said, “That is not to be wondered at, for not even the works of Christ our Lord were approved of by all.”

An understatement if ever there was one.

* * *

So those who love God can take no great interest in opinion polls — or in elections.

They have a one track mind — the track of showing God that we love him by simply doing his will.

Live that way, and you will be a great failure in the eyes of the world. Everybody will feel free to take advantage of your simpleness.

However you will die happy, for you will die in God.

After your death you will live in God and with him, forever, in heaven.

Some church groups were in the media last week criticising Prime Minister Julia Gillard over her proposed East Timor processing facility for asylum seekers.

For example Saint Vincent de Paul Society chief executive, Dr John Falzon, was “disappointed” and called it “a missed opportunity to genuinely move forward”.

* * *

Saint Vincent de Paul, a 17th century Roman Catholic priest, founded groups within the Church to cater for the physical and spiritual needs of the poor in France.

This year happens to be the 350^th anniversary of his death in 1660.

Today, July 19, happens to be his official feast day.

* * *

These days, the only messages from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society reaching the public seem to be political opinions, like the above.

Yet St Vincent’s personal emphasis was never primarily political, but always spiritual.

Here are some of his sayings addressed to his workers:

* You are servants of the poor, to be always smiling and good-humoured.  The poor are your masters, sensitive and exacting masters, you will discover.  The uglier and the dirtier they are — the more unjust and insulting — the more love you must give them. 

* We must love our neighbor as a being made in the image of God and as an object of His love.

* However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction — but rather be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.

* * *

St Vincent was a true saint.

His greatest wish for all people was they should find salvation through Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church.

The Society bearing his name today does a lot of good. It will do even more good by remaining behind the scenes ministering to the poor and needy — leaving political theorising and telling the government its job to somebody else.

The world is full of would-be political experts.

It is short, however, of those able to offer both physical compassion and the saving message of the Gospel.

The website of the Josephite Order founded by Blessed Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) describes their “Mary MacKillop Place Museum” in Sydney:

“Since opening in 1995 the museum has been engaging visitors with the story of Australia’s first Saint, Mary MacKillop, and the co-founder of the Sisters of St Joseph. Follow Mary’s life story (1842 – 1909) and celebrate the legacy of this pioneering women (sic) today.

“A visit to the musuem (sic) includes an historical overview of key events in the history of the order and the current progress towards the Canonisation of Mary MacKillop in the Catholic Church.”

* * *

I am told that visitors are shown a short movie climaxing with an actor representing Bishop Sheil excommunicating Sister Mary (as she then was) shouting to everyone to get out or he will call the police.

Another room has dummies depicting Sister Mary’s excommunication.

In yet another area the visitor him/herself is surrounded by people dressed as priests, a judge and male officials, accusing him/her of drunkenness, blasphemy etc., ending with a loud verdict of “Guilty!”

* * *

The museum is modernistically set out. Unfortunately its creators were fanatical about the “excommunication” plus a desire to denigrate Bishop Sheil, Catholic priests, and men in general.

Nobody explains that the excommunication was improperly carried out and was never valid.

Or that Bishop Sheil himself reversed the “excommunication”, realising that he had been misled.

* * *

Blessed Mary of the Cross would be angry about this museum.

She would disown it — having a few unforgettable words to say to whoever devised it.

No matter how unjustly some priests judged her work, Blessed Mary told her Sisters always to think about priests the way she did:  “I would rather a dagger were thrust into my heart than hear a word said amongst us against priests – the anointed of God.”

* * *

Priests make mistakes. Priests commit sins. Priests need our prayers.

But we all need the Sacraments to give us forgiveness (Confession) and to give us God (the Eucharist).

No priests, no Sacraments. We would be spiritually so much the poorer.

Let us never belittle the priesthood.

May God forgive those who do.