Foundation Day Prayer 2025

Today, we celebrate Foundation Day during the Jubilee Holy Year 2025 with its focus on Pilgrims of Hope. Journeying globally as a universal Church toward Hope calls forth historical and other contemporary examples of Pilgrims of Hope, internationally, nationally and congregationally. God of the journey, grace us with imagination to journey with the universal Church, with Blessed Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger, with migrants seeking a better life and with our Baltimore Sisters who are currently moving from Rosary Community and Villa Assumpta to SSND Stella Maris Pangborn. Bless us to see them as Pilgrims of Hope. We give thanks for their example, including the Sisters who have moved in prior years from their motherhouse to a new home. May they kindle in us courage and faith on our individual and collective pilgrim journeys.

Anchored in Hope

[The remainder of this Holy Year of Jubilee is] marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in
God. May it help us [pilgrims] to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in
society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfillment of the Lord’s promises. Let us even now be drawn to this hope! Through our witness, may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: “Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord!” (Ps 27:14). … As Saint Augustine observes: “Whatever our state of life, we cannot live without these three dispositions of the soul, namely, to believe, to hope and to love.” (Serm. 198 augm. 2. )

Migrants as Pilgrims of Hope

Signs of hope should also be present for migrants who leave their homelands behind in search of a better life for themselves and for their families. Their expectations must not be frustrated by prejudice and rejection. A spirit of welcome, which embraces everyone with respect for his or her dignity, should be accompanied by a sense of responsibility, lest anyone be denied the right to a dignified existence. Exiles, displaced persons and refugees, whom international tensions force to emigrate in order to avoid war, violence and discrimination, ought to be guaranteed security and access to employment and education, the means they need to find their place in a new social context.

“Moving is not foreign to us School Sisters”. Mother Theresa in one of her early letters reflected on moving the motherhouse from Neunburg to Munich, and the Sisters to various mission institutes for the sake of mission: “At the foundation of each mission institute, the superior must travel to the site first in order to see the situation, and then a second time to accompany the Sisters to the new mission. Each of these missions must be completely furnished - which makes no small demands on the motherhouse…”.

Moving continued in Baltimore after a successful start of the Motherhouse “on Aisquith Street when in 19555 we needed to move … to this beautiful place called Villa Assumpta and the 48-acre Gunther property on Charles Street. … Reflecting on leaving a home is a deeply emotional experience, evoking a complex mix of nostalgia, gratitude, and a sense of closure. This sacred place is more than just a building; it is a canvas where the stories of a particular chapter of our lives were painted, and saying goodbye means acknowledging all the memories and milestones held within its walls.”