Lately I have been reading a lot about the new cosmology. I find this research energizing and so hopeful in relation to the future of our planet home. For example, the insight that the universe is not a place, but a process – an evolutionary process creating greater and greater complexity over time. It is a developing community of beings, not just a “cosmos”, but a “cosmogenesis”, and the whole has been in motion and evolution for billions of years since the originating “Big Bang”. For cultural historian Thomas Berry, “story” is the only adequate way to frame the immensity of the creation of our universe, over an unfathomable stretch of about 13.7 billion years.

It is within this large story context that I want to frame an accompanying story – that of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM) in Canada. This year it is 125 years since the first Sisters came to Canada from France. In relation to the 13.7 billion year story of the Universe, our time here in Canada is the blink of an eye. But in human chronological time, it is significant that any human enterprise has lasted 125 years.

The story began with the first Sisters – Marie St Paul, Marie Madeleine de la Croix, Marie Ste Valerie and Marie de L’Eucharistie. They arrived in the village of Grande-Clairière, MB, after nine days at sea, sixty-nine hours by train (most of it “in a third class compartment, sitting on a plain board without being able to change position”) and an hour by horse and cart.¹

Describing their arrival a Sister wrote:

“Could we not call this our triumphal entry? No conqueror experienced more satisfaction than our little group when on August 11 at 1 a.m. we at last arrived at the post assigned to us by holy obedience, i.e., in front of the poor rectory…The house was the picture of the most complete destitution…In the hazy glimmer of a wretched lantern, the interior revealed undisguised poverty and discomfort…In the three so-called rooms or nooks on the first floor, where we were to sleep, the beds consisted of four planks nailed to the wall and covered with a rough straw mattress”.²

Despite the rawness of their lodgings, these women saw their arrival as a hopeful new beginning.

The Sisters in Grande-Clairière suffered greatly from the cold of the first winters. Their housing was inadequate to the rigours of the climate, and they had nothing in their previous experience to prepare them for the bitter cold. As one Sister wrote:

“The Canadian winter with its rigorous cold soon arrived. We had not the least idea what it would be like and did not take the prudent measures common to the country people. A violent wind, gentle at first began to blow. We paid little attention to it since we had not the experience of a blizzard in these vast plains. We were, therefore, surprised when we saw Father Gaire rushing in with all the old cloths he had picked up in his own house trying to block the holes in our walls…While politely thanking him, we could not help being amused at such precautions which our inexperience thought unnecessary. But soon we understood”…³

Given all they suffered from the cold in those early years, the Sisters nonetheless named their convent “Our Lady of the Snows”.⁴ Their hope was that this humble beginning might be the foundation stone for what would be a new RNDM Province on Canadian soil.

Now, 125 years later, here we are!

I will post another Blog about this anniversary on Wednesday February 1.