Journey: Winter 2001
Contents
Letter From the President
S. Margaret a Presence at Hospital
Baton Rouge Associates Program a Source of Inspiration
Viewpoint on Spirituality
S. Eugenie Veglia, CSJ
S. Margaret Mary Paradis, CSJ
Planned Giving Through IRAs
Letter
From the President
A Message for the New Year
by Lucy Silvio, CSJ
During this Christmas season we celebrate the human birth of Jesus, knowing well that as an adult he gave himself up to death for our sake and was raised from the dead to new life. Certainly this year the mystery of life and death is a conscious part of our celebration of Christmas and the New Year 2002. We stand in faith before this mystery as we remember the events of the past few months: family and community celebrations of anniversaries and jubilees and holidays, gatherings like “Rollin’ on the River” in Cincinnati, memorial and award ceremonies honoring special people, the deaths of many of our sisters and loved ones, and the continuing aftermath of September 11.
A story of one woman’s belief shows this dynamic of life, death, and new life. In one New York parish, one of the first funeral services to be held after September 11 was for this woman’s husband, who had been killed in the attack. In late August the couple had scheduled a baptism for their new baby, to be held the Sunday after September 11. The day before the funeral, the woman asked if the baby’s baptism could be included as part of the funeral mass: a funeral for the father, a baptism for the child.
This joint celebration proclaims the victory of life over death. It illustrates that as followers of Jesus, we have not been promised a life free from sorrow, but one in which joy will have the last word. Our prayer for all of us as we begin this new year is that we will live in this joyful hope. May the fullness of grace and peace from God strengthen us and our world in the days ahead.
S. Margaret a “Presence” at Hospital
Last August, when S. Margaret Smith of Park Rapids was named Minnesota’s Outstanding Older Worker of 2001, she was honored for qualities that co-workers and patients at St. Joseph’s Hospital have seen first hand for 55 years.
“She’s the rock, the foundation,” says Peter Jacobson, CEO for St. Joseph’s Area Health Services. He calls her “a role model with strong values” who “does what she does because she believes wholeheartedly.” Jacobson adds, “She spans the generations in her ability to relate to people.”
S. Margaret was one of seven CSJs who arrived in Park Rapids in 1946 to open the hospital. Since then, she has never missed a day of work. Her experience is broad as well as long: she began as an X-ray technician, but over the years she has worked in almost every department. From 1965 to 1970 S. Margaret was the hospital administrator, and she has served on the board of directors. Currently her duties include scheduling, peer review, and examining reports in the radiology department. In recent years she has learned three computer systems.
S. Margaret’s caring approach to her ministry has earned her various nicknames. Doctors call her “The Presence” because “wherever she is needed, she is there.” When she traveled around the country to compare CT equipment, she was dubbed “The Flying Nun.” Grateful patients call her “The White Angel” because of her white habit.
The ceremony honoring S. Margaret and Outstanding Older Workers from all the other states was scheduled to be held in Washington, DC on September 15. On September 11, as S. Margaret was traveling to Minneapolis to make a connection to the capital, her plane was grounded because of the events of that day, and she returned to Park Rapids. The ceremony has not yet been rescheduled.
Meanwhile S. Margaret’s ministry continues. “My philosophy has been to care for the whole person, the spiritual and the physical,” she explains. “Caring for all patients is sacred because we are ‘all one with Christ.’ I believe my presence as a Sister of St. Joseph has made a difference.”
Information for this article came from the October 4, 2001 issue of Our Northland Diocese and from the August 20 issue of the Park Rapids Enterprise.
Baton Rouge Associates Program Source of Inspiration
by
Martha Innes
As a member of the CSJ associates program, I am challenged at each of our meetings by what other members are doing to promote love and service to God. As a mother of seven children I thought I’d been exposed to nearly everything, but as each member at meetings casually relates personal experiences and individual work for the great love of God, I feel humbled at how little I have done. Some of our associates work with Miriam House, a ministry for women just released from prison; some have worked long hours in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults; some of us work with diocesan Catholic Community Services; and many help with educational programs offered at the Sisters at St. Joseph Academy. Many also are active in ministries with Holy Rosary Parish, where S. Mary John Hotard, the leader of our associates group, works and keeps us all inspired.
I first became a great believer in the Sisters of St. Joseph about 40 years ago, when our three oldest daughters went to school at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge. My husband, Ted Innes, served as president of the parent-teacher group, and with the help of principal S. Claire Germaine they succeeded in getting a private road entrance built to the school. One of the students had recently been killed on the dangerous main thoroughfare. I was invited to become a member of the Advisory Board of St. Joseph’s Academy and was influenced by another sister, Mother Alice Biguenet, who organized the board. At the time we had a Jewish board member and an ardent Protestant leader, as well as several Catholics. I thought how wonderful Mother Alice was to have a well-rounded board, and this was long before Vatican II. So in 1997, when S. Mary John invited me to become a member of the associate group, I felt that God was blessing me again with this religious order of devoted women.
Our CSJ associate group in St. Amant, LA has attended St. Joseph’s Day celebrations at 1200 Mirabeau in New Orleans; we have held annual crawfish boils for all our neighboring associates groups; and we have shared many memories. But for me, our individual associate meetings and the guided spiritual direction we receive as we gather in S. Mary John’s home are the most important thing.
Our group may not be the largest, but each member has been spiritually inspired by St. Joseph. I know that the associate group has influenced my life, and has evoked a new devotion to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille and a greater love of God.
Editor’s note: S. Mary John Hotard was the leader of the Baton Rouge associate group when Mrs. Innes wrote this article.
This article is the last of a series on the Congregation’s associate program.
For further information, contact the director of associates for your geographic area.Directors of Associates Programs
Baton
Rouge:
S. Evelyn Mee (225)344-1517
evmee@juno.com
Cincinnati:
Jane Bogenschutz (513)231-2993
bogenschutzj@aol.com
Crookston:
S. Ruthanne Scherer (218)281-4682
prcsjm@webtv.net
New
Orleans:
S. Margaret Maggio (504)948-6557
margmaggio@aol.com
Twin
Cities:
Colleen LaVenture (651)455-3469
cmlavent@mninter.net
Viewpoint
on Spirituality
Hope in the 21st Century
by Maria Hill, CSJ
“Tainted
air may bring long-term health risks.”
“Aid not reaching everyone.”
“Gun collection meets resistance in war-torn Afghanistan.”
“Militants renew assaults.”
“Food in cupboard, but baby starves.”
“Racial unrest continues.”
These quotes could be headlines from a newspaper in almost any nation or era. They happen to come from this morning’s paper, the day of this writing. A few headlines fell into the category of “good news,” but not nearly as many as for the “bad news” stories.
A steady diet of this in the written or spoken word is not a recipe for hope unless one has faith in Jesus or a passionate creativity that expresses itself through the imagination. Hope seems to be inherent in us, but it must be raised to the plane of conscious exercise. This is difficult in a society that offers false hope and has a fascination with hopelessness.
I observed a hopeful person when I was 15 years old and a candy striper at a Catholic hospital in Minneapolis. I had heard that a Dominican priest, Father Kelly, had been living in a hospital room for 17 years and was so saintly that scores of people came to see him daily. I wanted to see for myself, so I went to visit him. He lay nearly motionless in a bed surrounded by a huge, noisy machine with mirrors situated strategically so that he could see the people coming into the room and encircling his bed. He spoke with great difficulty, but his eyes and smile communicated volumes.
I was totally amazed that Father Kelly could exhibit such joy when he was deprived of even the most basic of human functions. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to go on living; I thought that if I were in his place I would want to die. I left him with a great peace growing inside me, but I couldn’t explain the source of that feeling with my child’s mind. I only knew that I wanted to know the God whom he loved, who gave him so much hope, even when his body failed him.
The nature of hope is that it arises out of despair, personal failure, or encounters with destructiveness in the Church or the world. Hope is rooted in the crucifixion of Jesus, the seeming ultimate failure. Christians never think of the passion and death of Jesus without believing in the resurrection. When we have no suffering, when we sit in the light, when we feel full of all that is good, hope is difficult to experience. Hope can’t happen without emptiness or darkness or the lack of something we desire. Father Medaille, the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph, called his daughters to “the more,” always moving toward greater union with God, that innate longing within every human heart. He urged the sisters to revitalize themselves from the Source and to participate in their own conversion—a little “more” day by day.
This movement is a participation in hope. Father Kelly lived it daily. In the concrete ways by which he manifested his faithfulness to a God he knew as loving, he called countless others to do the same. To bear witness to hope is one of the Christian’s essential functions in the world. In a world where illness, violence, war, starvation, and injustice are a daily occurrence, we desperately need the ministry of hope. Strong people who have no hope are weak; weak people who have hope have an uncanny strength.
The good news of the Gospel is not that God came to take our suffering away, but that God wanted to be a part of it. Hope has become incarnate in Jesus; the horizons of hope were exploded in the person of Jesus. In him we can courageously face whatever difficulty enters our lives. With Paul we say, “Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can trust God to keep His promise.” (Hebrews 10:23)
S. Eugenie Veglia, CSJ
November 28, 1910-November 8, 2001
S. Eugenie Veglia, a native of New Orleans and a member of the Congregation since 1927, died on November 8 at the Our Lady of Wisdom Health Center.
Beginning in 1929, after taking her first vows, S. Eugenie spent 50 years as a classroom teacher. She taught or served as principal at St. Ann and St. Joseph Academies in New Orleans, at the Academies in New Roads, Bay St. Louis, and Baton Rouge, and at McNicholas High School in Cincinnati. In 1965 the Visiting Committee of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools commended St. Joseph Academy in Bay St. Louis, where S. Eugenie was principal, for its “extraordinary sincerity of purpose,” commenting that “the morale of students...was evidence of a discipline which is well-balanced and handled by people who know what they do.”
S. Jane Aucoin, who wrote and delivered the eulogy, tells of S. Eugenie’s ingenuity and talent as a teacher: “Eugenie’s senior physics class (at McNicholas) constructed a telescope, even grinding the lenses themselves. Many a young sister student was able to pass tough science and philosophy courses only because of Sister Eugenie’s daily tutoring sessions, in which she brilliantly and successfully conveyed ideas that (professors at Loyola University) had failed to do.
“When she retired from classroom teaching in 1979, Sister Eugenie continued for another 10 years to tutor students in Baton Rouge, with the same infinite patience and success that had always characterized her teaching ministry. Her retirement also gave her the opportunity for the full-time pursuit of the other great love of her life: archives. That interest had begun with her 1936 bachelor’s thesis for Loyola University....It recounted for the first time in an organized way the history of the presence and ministries of the CSJs since 1855....
“Throughout her life, until the very end, she found time and energy to keep asking questions and gathering important facts....Her work chronicling the CSJ presence in Baton Rouge is housed in several rooms at St. Joseph’s Academy there....The other important collection of her work is in New Orleans, where a section of the (Southern Region) Archives was formally dedicated in her honor as the Sister Eugenie Veglia Collection.” (For a photo taken on that occasion, see the winter 2000-2001 issue of Journey.)
“When she could no longer be completely independent, she moved on,...with the same grace that had characterized her life, first to the Infirmary at Mirabeau and then to Our Lady of Wisdom....Dear Sister Eugenie, you’ve woven quite a legend with the threads of your life.... we count on your continued interest in each of us, as we in turn continue weaving our own life-stories.”
S. Eugenie is survived by a sister-in-law, Mrs. Claude Veglia, of Metairie, LA, and by numerous nieces and nephews.
S. Margaret Mary Paradis, CSJ
July 22, 1903-November 12, 2001
S. Margaret Mary Paradis, a member of the Congregation since 1923, died at the Marywood Residence in Crookston on November 12 at age 98.
S. Margaret was born in the countryside near Crookston and served all of her ministries in the north. In 1925, after returning from the novitiate at the motherhouse in Bourg, she became a teacher at St. Rose School in Argyle. Later she taught at schools in Superior, Somerset, Stewart, Kilkenny, and West St. Paul. When the Congregation agreed to staff schools in Ontario, S. Margaret earned provincial certification at the University of Ottawa and then taught at Pinewood and Dryden. In Dryden she also served as principal and as coordinator of the Sisters’ community from 1943 to 1953.
Beginning in 1977, S. Margaret ministered for three years at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Park Rapids, working as the coordinator and as an assistant in the central purchasing department. In 1980 she retired to St. Joseph’s Provincial House (now Marywood), where she devoted her time to prayer and to community service.
S. Margaret is survived by a niece, S. Germaine Perrault, a resident of Marywood, and by many nephews and other nieces
Planned Giving Through IRAs
More and more people are finding that their investments in IRAs or other qualified retirement plans have grown nicely over the years. Income tax on these amounts is charged when the assets are distributed either to the owner or to a beneficiary at the owner’s death. (This assumes that the beneficiary is someone who pays income tax.) In addition, any amount remaining at death is subject to estate tax, which can be as high as 50%. Overall, as much as 72% of an IRA may go toward estate and income taxes, and only about 28% may remain for the beneficiary.
If a person with an IRA or other qualified retirement plan wishes to make provision in a will for bequests to a charitable organization such as the CSJs, there is a way to save significantly on estate and income tax: the organization can be named as beneficiary for the IRA or other qualified retirement plan. Because the charitable bequest removes the amount from the estate, no estate tax is paid. Because the charity does not pay income tax, the bequest includes the full amount in the retirement plan.
In making this arrangement, it is very important to receive advice from a qualified professional. Sometimes a waiver is required from a spouse. Also, some minimum distribution rules may apply for the individual beneficiary if the organization is named as the beneficiary for only part of the IRA or other qualified plan. The Heritage Society is a wonderful way to leave a legacy to the Sisters of St. Joseph. The Society is a group of people who have named the Congregation in their will or have made a planned gift to the Sisters. Join us in our mission by becoming a member of this group! For further information, call Judy Sandquist at (513)761-4143.