Our friend and frequent meeting facilitator for the province, Sister Margaret O’Brien, OSU, shares her thoughts on Saint Angela Merici and the Ursuline Sisters' history. January 27 is the Feast Day of Saint Angela.
Saint Angela Merici was devoted to prayer and scripture, and founded the Company of St. Ursula 1535 in northern Italy. St. Angela established a new way for women to live. At that time women either married or went into a convent, in which they lived rather cloistered lives. Parents at the time would often have to pay to have their daughters join a religious community, but St. Angela envisioned a completely different way for women to live. She wanted women to live, work, and pray in the community, not apart from the community.
St. Angela’s plan was for single women to live in homes of one or two, and she also intended the Sisters to be in and among the people living the three vows - poverty, chastity, and obedience – and gathering together for work and prayer.
Unlike many new religious orders of the time that would take their Rule from an established order, St. Angela developed her own Rule, which she dictated to a priest who served as her secretary.
The Ursulines were dedicated to the needs of the people, and over time Ursulines got connected to education. Sister Margaret is a member of a group of Ursulines from Belgium, the Ursulines of Tildonk, which was established in 1830 when a priest invited three Ursuline Sisters to help him open a school for girls in the small town.
Since Second Vatican Council, the Ursulines renewed the call of the original foundress of living and working in the community. They broadened their ministries from education and started other types of ministries, including working with migrants at the southern U.S. border, helping people infected with HIV and AIDS, and human trafficking.
Sister Margaret, who is originally from England and moved to the United States to join the Ursulines, has herself worked in a broad range of ministries. She started as a teacher; then worked with new members of the Order; worked with the diocese on Long Island; and was trained and ministered as a spiritual director before she began working as a co-facilitator with congregations, including serving our province by helping to plan and facilitate province Assemblies. Sister Margaret’s work has taken her around the world, where she has collaborated with organizations’ leadership teams in Africa, India, and Europe.
“In my work, I’ve gotten these amazing views from windows into cultures all over the world,” she says. Sister Margaret also spoke about the Charism of the Ursulines, which she hesitantly summed up into two points. The first is to respond to the needs of the times and the second to live in harmony.
“We always try to go back to the heart of St. Angela to see what moved the heart of our foundress.” Sister Margaret said that in working with the SSNDs she was struck by two characteristics that each SSND Sister carries with her. The first is their dedication as educators, and the second is the level of professionalism that they approach each and every task at hand.
