Anniversary Mass, Dominican Sisters of St Margaret of Hungary, 1868-2018

Homily for Anniversary Mass, Dominican Sisters of St Margaret of Hungary

13 October 2018

Votive Mass of St Dominic

Readings: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 95 (96); 2 Timothy 4:1-8; Luke 10:1-9

When Jesus tells his disciples what they are to bring and what they are not to bring as they set out to preach his kingdom he does not say anything about typewriters. And yet at a certain moment in the history of the Dominican Congregation of St Margaret of Hungary, the typewriter was a very powerful symbol of that freedom to preach the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks in the gospel reading that we have just heard.

The typewriter was an instrument with which thoughts, ideas and information could be communicated and reproduced, and the communist regimes, in Hungary as in other countries of Eastern Europe, became paranoid about the typewriter. When we read accounts of how Dominican sisters managed to continue their apostolic work in Hungary between 1948 and 1989, we see how important the humble typewriter was for their teaching and catechetical work. In a very powerful film called The Lives of Others, set in East Germany in the same period, the hidden typewriter is crucial to the work of defending human dignity and struggling for human rights. One of the Hungarian sisters, Beata, wrote later that ‘typing was playing with fire: the secret police was very careful to seek out every typewriter, every house search started with confiscating typewriters and any typed and copied material’. I suppose it was because the typewriter was at first anonymous but also eventually identifiable that it became a serious crime to have one. But for anyone with a message to communicate, it was a very useful tool.

As a congregation dedicated primarily to education, the Dominican sisters were directly attacked by the communist regime, their schools and convents taken and their way of life terminated. The Church was regarded as an obstacle to reaching the perfect society and we can imagine accusations of ‘indoctrination’ and even ‘brain-washing’ which are sometimes made against Catholic education, an accusation which is patently false. It is false because Catholic education, confident in the truth’s ability to take care of itself as St Thomas Aquinas puts it, encourages in people a desire always to seek the truth. It encourages us to go on asking, like the little child, ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’? What is it? Where is it? Why are there things rather than nothing? Why do things work the way they do? How do aeroplanes fly, buildings stay standing, babies get made? Why do we believe to be true what we do believe to be true? And most of what we know we believe, accepting it on the authority of those we judge to be reliable witnesses, guides and teachers.

Catholic education seeks to generate in those who are taught not just an appetite for the truth but also a desire for the great virtue of charity. We know it is the heart of the teaching of Jesus: love God and love your neighbour. Charity originates in compassion for those who are suffering, a compassion that not only touches the heart or the emotions, but that finds its way to the lips as we speak up for what is right, to the hands as we work to build the kingdom, to the fingers as they type the words of truth and pass them around to all who want to hear.

A system of education which has at its centre these two great values, the love of truth and the practice of charity, can never be a system of indoctrination or brain-washing. A system of education whose fundamental principles are ‘always seek the truth’ and ‘always think of the other’ is open and not closed, it is outward looking and not introspective, it is at the service of the Church and society and not self-serving or partial.

The search for truth and the practice of charity serve the dignity of the human person. This is what is most fundamentally attacked by political and other regimes that seek to suppress either the search for truth or the reach of charity, restricting people’s access to the sources of truth or setting limits to the extent of our charity.

In the dark days the sisters established new kinds of base communities and continued to reach out particularly to young people. Even without typewriters they set off, as one of them records, ‘with faithful hearts. We carried the light of faith, the beam of hope and the warmth of love! It was not easy but we saw our mission; with this secret in our hearts we set off into the uncertain future’. In those days the sisters were asked to live the simplicity of the gospel, pared down to its essentials, and they did it, not without anxiety and sadness but also with courage and joy.

There is a temptation to dwell on the Congregation’s history between 1948 and 1989. But there have been three great periods in its 150 years of history which others will speak about with more knowledge and authority. There is the first eighty years in which the congregation became established. Its communities and its schools were thriving at the eve of the Second World War and God alone knows all the good that was done during those first eighty years. After the communist period the Congregation has enjoyed these past thirty years of re-foundation and renewal. The communities we see today are made up of older sisters who lived through the forty years of communism and younger sisters who have joined the congregation since then. This is a rich combination which is bearing admirable fruit in the communities and educational institutions which the congregation has been able to re-establish. We can say, in the words of Saint Paul in the second reading, that the Dominican sisters of Hungary have remained faithful to preaching the Word of God in season and out of season.

Another thing that is striking, even from a quick glance at the congregation’s origins and history, is its sense of belonging to a bigger Dominican family. We see that the sisters have always sought to work with the Dominican friars, for example, to live near them and to be in collaboration with them. They have worked with groups of Dominican laity as a way of sharing the charism of Saint Dominic with as many people as possible so as to involve others in their mission of teaching and preaching. The sense of belonging to a bigger Church family has also been strong, the sisters seeking always to work with the bishops and clergy of the Church, to be in solidarity and communion with all who profess the same faith, and to reach out to all people of good will who value the approach to education that the sisters take.

A powerful lesson we learn from the difficult years of the congregation’s history is how, in the end, it is the martyrs who are remembered when their oppressors are forgotten. At the time it seems like the opposite: on the day of their martyrdom or imprisonment the powerful prevail and the powerless are lost. But in God’s providence the last become first and the first last. There is a wonderful irony in the fact that our knowledge of the work of Dominican sisters in the dark years comes from the archives of the secret police. People moved by a certain obsession and anxiety have recorded for posterity the good deeds of people moved by very different concerns. In the time of persecution it might seem as if identity and dignity have been taken away. But those who serve truth and charity are never abandoned by the Lord and in His good time their good deeds are made known. Their witness shines all the brighter against the background of the darkness in which they remained faithful. As the prophet Isaiah foretells in the first reading, in many and various ways the Lord continues to lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and the ends of the earth continue to see the salvation of our God. 

Sister Armella’s file in the archives of the secret services is called ‘Disciples’. Here is another wonderful irony, for what better word would we want to describe us than this? Like Saint Dominic we are disciples, followers of Jesus. We are students in the school of Jesus, seeking always to learn from Him, consecrated in the truth and called to follow His way of love. All across the 150 years of the congregation’s life the sisters have responded generously to the same challenge: how to be true to their vocation to teach the truth of the gospel amidst changing environments and regimes, how to be faithful to the requirements of charity in changing social and economic situations.

In giving thanks for the Congregation’s history up to now we pray also for the years to come, that God will continue to bless the sisters of the Hungarian Congregation of Saint Margaret, that He will send many vocations their way, and that He will enable them by His grace to flourish ever more strongly in their service of truth and charity.

Sisters, go and preach the Good News to everyone, in every place, in every possible way, and at all times. Do not forget that you are the loving servants of the Word of God, sharing with all whom you meet the light of His truth and the joy of His love. And do not forget your typewriter, or whatever the modern equivalent is among the tools of the preacher’s craft!