Sister Katherine (Kitty) Machell was a wife and a mother, but she describes her time with the Sisters of the Child Jesus as among the richest of her life. “It has given me more than I have ever given it.”
At an Aug. 11 celebration at St. Mary’s, Vancouver, to mark the order’s 350th anniversary, Sister Machell said, like their foundress Anne Marie Martel, she did not begin her adult life as a nun.
“I was a wife and mother long before I was a nun,” she said. “I was a widow. My daughter was growing up. She was in Grade 11. I knew it wasn't going to be long before she was going to be gone.”
Sister Machell said she contemplated what she could do with the rest of her life.
“I reframed the question to be 'what would you like me to do?’ The answer was this.”
Some of that time has been served on a First Nations reserve, which she remembers fondly.
“Those were some of the richest years of my life. Certainly, I learned more than I ever taught up there. I still miss it but I am called to something else now.”
The congregation’s foundress, Anne Marie Martel, lived from 1644 to 1673 in Le Puy, France, and while she never became a nun, her life and work launched a congregation focused on teaching the Gospel.
At the age of 21, she responded to the invitation of her confessor to minister to women in a small hospital for the destitute. Within a year, she was teaching catechism to street children, and before long others had joined with her to serve the poor. She died at 27, but within three years the religious community of women she had started received official approval.
“She wasn't on this earth very long but here we are 350 years later still celebrating the impact her life had on the world,” Sister Machell said.
The Sisters of the Child Jesus arrived in Canada in 1896 when they were invited by New Westminster Bishop Paul Durieu, OMI, to work with First Nations people. Their work in education and service to the poor led them throughout B.C., across Canada, and around the world.
Because of their connection with First Nations communities in B.C., the Aug. 11 event began with a procession of drumming and chanting.
During the liturgy, Archbishop Michael Miller described the sisters as creative and faithful women who were “powerful reminders of the fundamental demands of the Gospel.”
Martel’s cause for canonization was accepted for study by the Vatican in 2005.
http://www.sistersofthechildjesus.ca/a_foundress/index.html)