Download Script of Dayton presentation - Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

Dayton Connections to the Charism Script
1. (Title Slide) Today we’re going to take a look at the historical connections between C-J and the Sisters
of Notre Dame de Namur. We’re also going to explore the Notre Dame charism. There will be about 20
minutes of input, and then some time for some interaction: questions, reflections, discussion, teasing
out the information you will receive. As we go through the input, there may be questions that pop into
your mind. Jot them down so we can go back to them, ok?
2. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur officially started on February 2nd, 1804. They came into being to
meet the needs of the Church in the wake of the French revolution. Their expansion to different
geographic areas and different works has always been in response to the needs of the People of God. In
1840 the need was for sisters to go to the “foreign mission”… of Cincinnati, Ohio! There, on Sixth St.
where Proctor and Gamble now has its headquarters, The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur started their
first community, and first schools, in the United States. All of the SNDdeN foundations east of the
Mississippi River trace their history back to Cincinnati.
In 1849 Notre Dame arrived in Dayton in response to a request from the pastor of Emmanuel Parish for
sisters to staff the parish school. The sisters staffed more and more Dayton area schools as the need
arose, often splitting the grade schools with the Marianist Brothers: the sisters would teach the girls
and the brothers would teach the boys.
3. In 1886 it was the need for a Catholic option for secondary education for girls that resulted in Notre
Dame Academy opening at the corner of Franklin and Ludlow. Some of you may know the rest of the
story: Julienne High School was built in Five Oaks to answer the increased academic needs of the
Academy Students. It opened in 1927.
In 1973 the two oldest catholic high schools in the city merged so that the Sisters of Notre Dame and the
Marianists could better meet the needs of the Dayton students through the end of the 20th and into the
21st century.
How, in responding to these needs, does charism fit in? Let’s try to first define the term “charism” and
then see if we can answer that question.
4. To get at Charism it is important to look at the larger picture out of which the Notre Dame Charism
operates. That means looking at the vocation, or call, of all baptized Christians.
Through baptism three elements become a part of each individual Christian’s life:
1. We are incorporated into a faith community
2. We are invited into an ever-deepening personal relationship with God that demands a response
on our part
3. We are brought into Jesus’ mission to be priest (people who pray) to be prophet (people who
speak God’s word through our actions as well as through our speech) and servant-leaders.
5. For those who are also called to live out their baptismal call within a religious community (like the
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur or the Sisters of St. Joseph, or the Sisters of Mercy, or the Jesuits or
Marianists) there is an additional element that affects the other three: Charism. Charism influences the
shape of our faith community. It influences how our individual relationship with Christ develops, and it
influences how we use our gifts to further the mission of Christ.
6. So what exactly is charism?
The Miriam Webster Dictionary says: An extra-ordinary power given a Christian by the Holy Spirit for the
good of the church. The reality is that each individual is given a personal charism by God: it is the
unique gift each person is to the Church and world. Throughout the history of Christianity God has
gifted some individuals with Charisms that have had strong influences on the whole Christian
community.
Another definition of charism that is much more inspirational, and that utilizes images to facilitate
concretizing the term is this one:
Charism is “A spark from the Heart of God dropped into the heart of an Foundress (or Founder) of a
religious community to be a Gift the Church, to Illumine part of the Gospel, to Attract others, to ignite
the flame of a community, to Build the Kingdom of God, and it will Continue to burn as long as the
Church needs it. Let’s take this definition and see how it applies to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
7. The foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur is Julie Billiart. The spark that dropped into her
heart was an insight into God’s infinite goodness. That spark illumined for her the Gospel message that
our God is indeed very good: that our God is worthy of our trust, that we can experience that goodness
through creation. That spark in her highlighted the gospel message of optimism: God brings forth new
life out of suffering and even out of death, and that spark highlighted for her the fact that God loves us
so much God chooses to be with us in suffering and pain as well as in joy. That spark for her was rooted
in her own experience of God’s goodness
8. Which she experienced through increasing poverty in her family, through over 26 years of increasing
paralysis and physical pain, through persecution. Julie was hunted by the revolutionaries for her
faithfulness to the Church. She was later persecuted by church authorities and even her own sisters.
Julie’s sense of God’s goodness was not just sunshine and rainbows, but came out of her experience of
God’s presence with her and love for her, through all she experienced.
9. Even though Julie was paralyzed and pretty dependent on others to care for her, her sense of God’s
goodness attracted others, including the co-foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur:
Francoise Blin de Bourdon. It was only after she started the community that Julie was cured. She was
making a retreat, and a priest asked her to pray for a special intention. What he didn’t tell her was that
she was praying for her own cure. He came back a few days later and said, “Mere Julie, if you have any
faith in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, stand up and walk.” She stood up and walked. Julie and Francoise
started Notre Dame with one other person… today the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur we number
almost 1800 world- wide, and her charism continues to attract women to join the community.
10. What’s the spirit and wisdom of Julie that Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur follow? That continues
to attract women to join the community? That shapes the form of community the sisters live? That
shapes their way of growing into relationship with God and their way of being in ministry to God’s
people?
First: deep union with God: prayer is critical, building that personal relationship with God, allowing God
to be with them always in all ways. Second: it’s the sense of being beloved children of God that fans
what Julie called ‘liberty of Spirit’ and courage: if God is for us, who can be against. Julie saw these
qualities as absolutely essential for an “apostolic vocation”: the call to be out in the world meeting the
needs of the people of God.
11. Julie’s way is marked by Simplicity: and for her that means staying focused on God and constantly
responding to God’s goodness in one’s lives. An image that she used is the image of the sunflower: “as
the sunflower turns toward the sun, so should we always turn toward our good God”
12. Julie’s way is also marked by Obedience: and what is important here is that she operated out of the
root meaning of obedience: to listen. It ties into the centrality of prayer: are our hearts attuned to
God? To the needs of the people around us? To our own hearts desires? It’s a discipline of discerning
the signs of the times: what is going on in the world? What does the community need to do about it?
How can the community respond?
13. Julie’s way is marked by charity. But for her charity was not just giving from material excess to help
the poor. For her charity was first and foremost love for God’s people. It is the love of God poured out
as love for God in each person one meets. It’s marked by reverencing each person’s dignity. That
means the focus is on the individual, and this is something that can set SND’s apart from other religious:
they’re not into numbers so much as they are into meeting the needs of individuals. They change the
world one person at a time. Julie’s charity was inclusive of all: she begged her sisters to have hearts as
wide as the world: she fought for the internationality of the community and that internationality is part
of the richness Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur bring to their work, to their prayer, to their community
life. And part of this is helping to build up the community of the Church, to build up the kingdom of
God, to build up the body of Christ.
14. Julie’s way is marked by joy and confidence: again, if one is rooted in God’s love one are going to be
joyful and confident! Julie thought laughter was a sign of healthy community. One of her favorite
sayings was “better mistakes than paralysis”. So what if you’re not 100% sure of what you should do:
move forward, start, try and do it!
Her way is marked by contemplative prayer and action: Sisters of Notre Dame are to be praying each
moment of the day, no matter what they are doing.
Her way is marked by perseverance in the face of difficulties. Julie believed all things are possible with
God. That didn’t mean it would be easy. She was always comforted by “crosses” or difficulties at the
beginning of an endeavor. She felt that marked it as truly God’s work and not the work of an individual’s
ego.
15. For Julie everything was to help the poor. She choose to work with poor girls because no one else
would do it. Again, there is the reaching out in love to each of person as one’s brothers and sisters in
Christ, there is the focus on the lifting up the gifts of each individual, of helping them identify and
deepen their experience of God’s goodness in their lives. There are two sides to this preference for the
poor: direct service to the poor and working on behalf of the poor. For every Sister of Notre Dame it is
a call to look at what she does and ask: how does this help make things better for the poor? Especially
for poor women and children?
16. Julie’s way was marked by loyalty to the Church. During the revolution, when priests were required
to take an oath putting the government over God and the Church, Julie refused to support those priests
and encouraged others to do the same. So she was put on the list to be caught and executed. Her
action, and her courage, came out of her experience of God and out of her experience of the Church as
bigger than just her town or her country: it is the Body of Christ. Julie started the community in 1804 in
Amiens, France. By 1807 the Sisters were serving in three dioceses. And the bishop of Amiens ordered
her to cut off the houses in the other two dioceses and just serve the diocese of Amiens. What would
the implications be is she had done that? The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur would have never left
France. The educational institution you are a part of most probably would not exist. But Julie had
already had a strong sense in prayer of her sisters needing to be free to serve where ever they were
needed in the world, so she said no. She tried for two years to work out a compromise with the bishop,
and when there were no further options she accepted the invitation of the Bishop of Namur to move the
motherhouse to his diocese. Hence the “de Namur” on the end of the community’s name. For the
Sisters it symbolizes this loyalty to the Church that is part of their charism. Julie’s great love for the Body
of Christ, the people of God, kept her in the church even when the institution seemed to demand she go
against what God was calling her to do. She was able to live in this tension because church for her was
more than the local parish or diocese. She was able to live in this tension because of her foundational
relationship with God.
17. Julie’s founding vision of the congregation was in 1793 when she was in hiding from the
revolutionaries. Paralyzed, unable to speak distinctly, dependent on others for her survival, she saw a
group of women gathered around the foot of the cross and heard the words: “Behold the daughters I
will give you in the Institute which will be marked
by my cross.” Working with and on behalf of the poor, lifting up God’s goodness in the midst of pain
and suffering, this is the stuff of the cross, and it is why the Sister’s habit today is the Notre Dame cross.
18. Julie named her community “Notre Dame” because of her hope that her sisters would be the
“company”, the companions of Mary. She wrote: " Hence in each one ought to be found the spirit of
Mary, the virtue of Mary, the strength and power of Mary."
19. Look at the definition of charism again: Can you take each part of the definition and apply it to
what’s been shared about the charism of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur?
20. And can you identify your own personal charism and see how it relates to the Charism of the Sisters
of Notre Dame de Namur?