A Mother’s Heart

It was morning. I stepped off the bus and started walking to my apartment as I balanced both a baby and bags from errands. I walked along the quiet street with my little baby nestled asleep in my wrap and noticed an older woman peacefully watering her garden.

I approached the iron gate to her late 19th century house and tentatively asked, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” 

Quite tall and regal, she turned her grey head to face me with a magnificent smile, “Yes, I speak a little English,” she answered with an Austrian accent.
“My name is Clare,” I told her, “and I heard that Jesus lives here! Is that so?”

“Yes, yes!” She answered joyfully. 

I explained that my husband and I along with our five children lived a few houses over in an apartment, and that a friend had mentioned there was a convent on our street. “Is this the place?” I asked her as the baby started to wake up. 

“It is!” She answered and opened the gate. “Won’t you come in? I can show you the chapel!” She proceeded to unlock the gate and lead me inside the house to make a visit with Jesus in the Eucharist.  Then she invited me for a refreshing drink in the backyard and offered the baby an ice cream. He was much too young for it, but she was eager to give. 

A stranger passing on the road, yet instantly I was embraced as a neighbor and a sister.

This was the first touch of many I had with The Spiritual Family “The Work.” The Sisters of this house welcomed me again and again into their home, as if it was the very extension of my own. We hadn't any outdoor greenery, yet my kids were always welcomed in the Sisters’ yard with a ball in summer or to build igloos in the winter. For Christmas one year, they opened their chapel to us for Christmas Day Mass. 

This tired mother in a foreign land was included in their evening prayer and adoration, fully translated into English to accommodate me. Upon another occasion, a homemade cake was delivered to my doorstep to celebrate my birthday. 

As true mothers, their thousand acts of love and service to their family—the Church—remain hidden, buried in the Lord until the end of time. Their foundress Mother Julia once reflected, “Since 18 January 1938, the Lord has called me and others with me to live this unity in a family, to make His life and His prayer our own, and to work for Him and with Him for this unity.” 

In their mothering of me, I learned and hope to mother others likewise. 

Thank you, dear Sisters, for nurturing me.