A Reflection for the 2024 Senior Jubilarians

Note: General Superior Sister Dawn Tomaszewski offered this reflection during the January 23, 2025 Mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception for the 2024 Senior Jubilarians. Take a look at some photos from the event as well.

Let me add my welcome, jubilarians, to this long-awaited celebration marking 80, 75, 70, and 60 faithful years of service to God and to the people of God!

As Providence would have it, three of our 75-year jubilarians are celebrating the very anniversary of the date when they were received into the novitiate — Jan. 23, 1950. They professed first vows on Jan. 23, 1952 and final vows on Jan. 23, 1957.

Additionally, six other jubilarians entered the community in January, including our esteemed Sister Millie Giesler, who is celebrating 80 years as a Sister of Providence. I did consult Google to see if it was as cold in January 1944 as it has been here during the last two weeks. The answer: No data collected! I am sure, no matter the weather, Millie’s very presence warmed up the community the day she entered.

But I would like to take you back just a few months to the Feast of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin on Oct. 3. You may remember that I challenged all my sisters in my reflections that day.

‘Let us be astonishing, sisters.’

Referring to a quote from Mother Theodore in which she commented about the people of Terre Haute being astonished when she was seen transacting business in town, I said, “Let us be astonishing, sisters. Let the business we transact in this time be astonishing.”

So, Sister Jubilarians, let me be the first to say it to you, “You are astonishing!” Between the 19 of you, you have offered a combined total of 1,395 years of faithful service to God and to the people of God. On behalf of the entire Providence Community, thank you! Why is astonishment on my mind for this particular group of jubilarians? It’s not like other jubilarians haven’t been astonishing. Here’s why. During the afternoon following that Feast Day celebration, I went over to Guerin Park in Providence Health Care, and I came upon Sister Marian Brady. As you well know, Sister Marian was to be one of the 75-year jubilarians celebrating this year.

I commented to her then that it was really wonderful to see her in church that morning. Frankly, I was surprised because she had not been home from the hospital very long and was still recovering from a serious illness. She responded by asking me what was that word I kept saying near the end of my reflections. She just couldn’t get it. “Oh, astonishing?” I asked and said. “I told the sisters we needed to be astonishing.”

To which Marian replied, “My astonishing days are over.”

Faithfulness blesses us

Now, it was my turn to be astonished. I set myself to dispel any notion she had that she was anything less than worthy of praise at this very moment when, at her most vulnerable, she continued to show up, participate, pray, and try to be what God wanted her to be at this moment in her long life.

That is my message to all of you jubilarians. Your faithfulness blesses us. Blessed are you among women for showing up, participating, praying, and trying to be what God wants you to be, what God intends you to be day after day, year after year.

In the second reading proclaimed this morning, our Mother Theodore reminds us that we are called to do on Earth what Jesus did: To be devoted to the service of our neighbor, to cooperate intimately with God’s beloved, and to lay down our lives.

This is the mission to which we have been called, says St. Paul — “to be holy and blameless in God’s sight. … We are chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of God’s will.” And what is God’s will? That we should love one another.

‘Awe-inspiring’

Mother Theodore says it is truly sublime to be about this mission of doing on Earth what Jesus did. Sublime — one of those words like astonishing.  It means awe-inspiring, uplifting. On many days when being awe-inspiring was not especially easy, you, jubilarians, WERE up to the task.

Like the Jesus we read about in today’s Gospel and in these early weeks of Ordinary Time, the crowds were pressing in on him, because he had cured many. So he got into the boat for a while, but we know he continued to teach and preach and heal — even when the Pharisees seemed to be after him at every turn.

You have done the same in your own inimitable ways — as educators in elementary, secondary and college classrooms — as pastoral ministers in parishes, hospitals and mental health centers, as elected leaders in our community. You have lifted up the lowly as principals and directors of social service agencies, as a foster parent in a group home and a dietician in a VA hospital. You’ve stood with people in their grief, spent some time under house arrest, guided those seeking their own vocations to religious life, and used your hands to soothe souls whether by playing music or providing healing massage.

Dare I say it again, “You have been astonishing!”  

A ‘Leap of Faith’

Jubilarians, however and whenever you recognized your call to consecrated religious life, and for many of you, that happened when you met the Sisters of Providence in grade school, leading some of you to enter the aspirancy to explore that call. Others attended an SP high school; several of you met us as students at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. 

But ALL of you took a leap of faith. Regardless of how the spirit of God was moving in your heart, you were willing to believe that God’s purposes could be, would be fulfilled in you. Sixty, 70, 75, and 80 years later, why would we not recognize this as astonishing?

As you endeavored to do on Earth what Jesus did, your faithfulness has blessed countless places and people. Today, we want to return that blessing to you. So, I offer a new challenge today. Let each of us, in some way, let these women KNOW how they have blessed us by their day-to-day generosity and kindness, right here, right now.

Tell them when you have seen them being astonishing —

• Like just the other week when I learned that one of them had been sleeping in an elder’s room so that dear one would not injure herself in the night,
• Or when I asked one of them recently to take my place at a ministry because I wasn’t feeling well. Let me add that I asked her at 7:30 a.m. in the morning. She said yes without making me feel like I needed to make it up to her in any way, and
• I am astonished by the number of times and the many ways these jubilarians simply show up, participate, pray, and try to be what God wants her to be, may I daresay, what God needs her to be at this moment in her life.

You Are Astonishing

I could go on……….. but I leave it to you now to take time today or in the days to bless these jubilarians with your gratitude.   

On Oct. 3, when I issued my first, “Let us be astonishing, sisters.” I also said: Let us open people’s eyes by our love, by our generosity, by our righteous indignation at the intolerable ways of the world.”

It seems to me that we need each other more than ever to be faithful to this call — to be true to our purpose to be God’s love, mercy, and justice in the world and especially in our country at this moment in our history.

Then we can say with confidence what our Mother Theodore said:

“… ours is the preparation for the generation that will succeed us, and eminent good will be done this way by us. You may not live to see it, but you will have sown the seed, and your Sisters will come to reap what will have been sown.”

Thank you Jubilarians, for sowing the seeds of love, mercy, and justice wherever you have been these collective 1,395 years! Please don’t forget this: You are astonishing, and we love you.