Sister Mary Francis McDonald, OP
Date of death: April 17, 2005
“I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.” John’s Gospel has Jesus identify Himself with many “I am’s”: “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way, the truth and the life,” “I am the living water,” “I am the Good Shepherd,” “I am the gate.” All of these alert us that Jesus is saying something important.
It seems to me that the picture of Christ as gate has layers of meaning that are especially pertinent to the life of Sister Mary Francis McDonald. (And we all know also how she held dear the abiding image of Christ as Good Shepherd who took her to Himself on that feast day.)
An open gate suggests something about access, doesn’t it – in John’s context, access to God, access to life, through Jesus. It could be said, I think, that Mary Francis’ life was all about finding that access herself and finding multiple keys to it that she could distribute to everyone she met. In that process she herself could be said to have been a significant gate to very many people in very many ways. Last Saturday evening I was at a Liturgy with a small circle of worshippers, and the presider at the Liturgy of the Word invited us all to reflect on some of the people or experiences that were real gates in our lives. And we shared our reflections. Two in that circle named Mary Francis as a gate in their lives—a gate to love of learning (even Latin!), to love of teaching, to love of Dominican life and history and spirituality, to love of story-telling. She was a gate to all of these and more. For me, she was a gate to the religious life lived out in the Newburgh Dominican Congregation, She, in fact, handed me an application form on my very first visit here to Newburgh in 1949. And I signed it on the spot!
In the very earliest days of “renewal,” Sister Mary Francis pondered and articulated a vision for us all of hope for a new future for religious life, still being shaped. She seemed to find nourishment and confirmation for that vision through her conscientious and energetic participation in national meetings of LCWR and DLC, as well as in their regional gatherings. Who of the former Newburgh Congregation does not remember her animated, inspired and inspiring accounts of the many stimulating meetings she attended during her time as Superior General from 1971-1979? Who of the former Ossining Congre-gation does not remember her vision-sharing and her companioning during their particularly challenging years around that same time?
We all know the strength, the intellect, the imagination, integrity and enthusiasm she brought to teaching and leadership positions from grade school in the Casa, to high school in Mt. St. Mary Academy, to college at Mount Saint Mary College, and later Providence College, and to Maryknoll School of Theology. In all of these positions she remained first and foremost a student, frequently recalling particularly her happy days of graduate study in Washington, D. C., delight in her living at the Dominican House of Studies while pursuing doctoral studies in the Classics across the street at Catholic University. Remember Dr. Peebles? and Maguire? Remember translating the Fathers of the Church? Remember Lactantius?
Sister Mary Francis also seemed to have been born to tell stories, stories from her personal experiences and from books she had read or was reading. We always knew what she was currently reading because she inevitably told us about it! How many of us, years ago, read H.F.M. Prescott’s Man on a Donkey because of her account of her reading it? (And lots of other books, too.) I received an e-mail on Monday from an alumna of Mt. St. Mary Academy who had been a boarder here in the late fifties. She recalled her image of Sister Mary Francis sitting on the couch in the hall on the third floor, holding a stack of mail for the boarders as she told them a story with so much love and enthusiasm that they didn’t even mind having to wait for their mail!
From an “Around the World” tour by way of Maryknoll Missions, including an exhilarating study experience in Israel at Tantur (our Jewish heritage and Jewish brothers and sisters claimed a large part of her heart) – this, to ongoing gatherings with Nona McGreal and other U. S. Dominicans of Opus (the U. S. Dominican History Project), Sister Mary Francis has continually brought back to us a large and open vista of possibilities for new life, new hope.
A true traditionalist, she found her vision of “a future full of hope” through the gate of history, history of the world, of the Church, of the Dominican Order, of religious life, of our individual congregations, all of which she studied and remembered and shared with us. She had that classic sense of the real meaning of tradition and of learning from the study of history.
We heard in the first reading today that as long as we stay on the quest, keep up the search, we will be sustained by prayer. The prophet Jeremiah tells us, as he told the exiles to whom he was writing, “It is Yahweh who speaks . . . when you call to me (when you pray), I will listen to you. When you seek me (when you pray), I will let you find me.” Sister Mary Francis understood that promise. She took it very seriously. And that promise was the source of her earnest and tireless prayer in which all else in her life was grounded.
Each of us has her or his own memories of a relationship with Sister Mary Francis McDonald. We celebrate today all aspects of those relationships: a profound devotion to the intellectual life, a love of human story and a gift for it, a vision of hope for our future combined with a deep respect for our past, and integrity born of faith and experiential knowledge and the peculiarly Dominican pursuit of truth.
“I am the gate,” Jesus said, “and I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Sister Mary Francis knew so well that gate who is Jesus as the access to God, access to life, that it was just about inevitable that she would take on a similar role in her life among us. Now we pray that the abundant life she shared so generously with us may be hers even more gloriously now.
Eulogy by Beth McCormick, OP
April 20, 2005
Twenty years have passed since Sister Mary Francis joined our Dominican community in Chicago as a pioneer researcher for Project OPUS, the history of the Dominicans in the United States. She was the first "resident researcher," volunteering in the name of all the Newburgh Sisters.
I first knew Mary Francis sixty years ago when we were young together at Catholic University. She studied the classics and became a good friend, encouraging Sister Joan Smith and me in the writing of the curriculum, Guiding Growth in Christian Social Living. Our beloved neighbor down the hall was your Sister Thomas Aquinas McManus, creating the Faith and Freedom Readers.
Your two beautiful women of Newburgh welcomed us to the little community of your Sisters at the friars' House of Studies in Washington. We sometimes joined them in the friars' chapel for the liturgy (sometimes concluded with vigor by our favorite Catholic University professor, Ignatius Smith.) Those were surely "the old days," and good ones.
Mary Francis went home to Newburgh to serve her Sisters well; but her vision was still as wide as the Church and the world. She became the first to join our Dominican historical research, called project OPUS, living in our Chicago community as a true pioneer and beloved sister. While here she answered another call: to teach a night course (Patristics, I think) at Mundelein Seminary, more than forty miles north of Chicago.
Her next call was to return to teaching at Maryknoll. But she brought her homework with her, continuing to study, and search for Dominican documents and, of course, translate the Latin ones.
The Sisters of St. Martin de Porres community and members of Project OPUS join in thanking God and you for the gift of our beloved Sister Mary Francis McDonald. May she rest in peace, with our love.