Editor’s note: To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, we remember one of the Diocese of Charlotte’s many Irish roots – that of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, sisters who came from Ireland and England and established Pennybyrn at Maryfield in High Point.
We all know God, relate to God, love God and serve God in our own unique ways. For Frances Margaret Taylor – founder of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, and now known as Venerable Magdalen of the Sacred Heart – the call to serve God was spurred by her fascination with the mystery of the Incarnation and how it prompts us to care for one another.
Frances Taylor was an Englishwoman, born in 1832 in a prosperous village in Lincolnshire. Her father was the village’s Anglican vicar, and her mother’s family were merchants and shopkeepers in London. Frances and her three brothers and five sisters loved to play in the beautiful countryside and enjoyed the simple joys of outdoor life. Fanny, as she was known, also loved to hear and tell stories. When Frances was 10, her father died and the heartbroken family had to move out of the rectory they loved and travel to Brompton, London, under reduced circumstances.
For the 10-year-old Frances, London opened up much to see and to learn. London was beautiful, she found, but it wasn’t long before she noticed the city’s squalid underbelly. What really upset her was seeing hungry, shabbily dressed children of her age living on the streets, and in response she felt called to serve the poor and vulnerable.
She went with her sister Charlotte to the Anglican convent in Devonport in answer to her older sister Emma’s call to nurse cholera victims. In 1852 Fanny trained as a nurse and continued her hospital work in Bristol for the next two years. She then served as a nurse in Plymouth during the city’s cholera epidemic.
In 1854 the Crimean War broke out, and nurses and volunteers were urgently needed to tend the wounded and dying soldiers returning from the front.
She joined a second wave of women volunteers sent out to nurse at British military hospitals in Turkey. Her experiences, some horrifying, some frustrating, distressing and overwhelming, at hospitals in Scutari and Koulali, had a profound effect on her life.
She briefly worked alongside Florence Nightingale at Scutari Hospital. At the hospital in Koulali she assisted French Sisters of Charity and worked alongside the Irish Sisters of Mercy in nursing Irish soldiers.
Frances found the conditions and resources in these ramshackle battlefield hospitals shocking, but she was so impressed by the soldiers’ Catholic faith and the sisters’ dedication that she felt called to convert to Catholicism in 1855.
Frances and two other women were assigned the task of caring for 1,400 wounded and frostbitten soldiers, who had been transported to the hospitals after a harrowing voyage across the Black Sea. Even those who read the newspaper accounts could not have imagined the full horror of the war and of the improperly equipped conditions for the British Army.
Frances wrote: “As we passed the corridors, we asked ourselves if it were not a terrible dream. When we woke in the morning, our hearts sank at the thought of the woe we must witness during the day. At night we lay down wearied beyond expression; but not so much from physical fatigue, though that was great, as from the sickness of heart occasioned by living amidst such a mass of hopeless suffering.”
She felt the hopelessness was beyond description, yet her deep Christian faith caused her to reflect: “patience, deeply suffering ones, every drop in this most bitter cup is portioned out for you, and as you drink it, it will be treasured up in heaven. You have followed bravely an earthly captain to victory; follow now the great captain of your salvation, through the dark valley.”
Frances saw firsthand the immense comfort of the sacraments of confession, Holy Communion and extreme unction. She wrote: “Death indeed became familiar to us as the ordinary events of life and in it all, the influence of the nuns and priests on the patients was a beneficial one: those who had lived for years in sin, today, once more sought their Savior: those whose last remembrance of prayers and sacraments had been in days gone by, in the shelter of their homes, now returned to the God of their youth.”
In 1856 as the Crimean War was coming to an end, Frances returned to London to care for her ailing mother and her brother. To support her family, she turned to writing – recounting her experiences as a wartime nurse.
In 1857 she published her first book, “Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses,” an appeal for reform of the nursing system and of the way the poor were treated. It was an instant success. She launched a career as author, journalist, editor and translator of fiction and non-fiction works.
After four visits to Ireland in 1864 to 1867, Frances published “Irish Homes and Irish Hearts.” These years in Ireland formed something of a watershed in her life – almost as if she felt she would find the answer to her quest for her calling there. She returned home confirmed in her desire to serve the poor – which meant a much different life from the respected career she had built as a writer and editor.
Nonetheless, Frances realized that God was calling her to something more than writing. She prayed each day to God for guidance and discernment about entering religious life. In her search she traveled and experienced the lives of other sisters throughout Europe, and she struggled to learn what motivated them and gave them courage and fortitude in their service to God.
She became a nun, taking the name Sister Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart.
It is said that she experienced extreme insomnia as a result of her traumatic experiences nursing in the Crimea.
Because of her persistent prayers and daily sufferings, the Holy Spirit led her to the realization that she was to start a congregation herself. At 37 years old, she founded the Congregation of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God in London.
Tradition tells us that Mary’s wish from childhood was to be the handmaid of the Lord, so Frances had the idea of calling her congregation the Servants of the Mother of God and of the Poor. Some thought that was a little too long, so the altered version is what she kept: the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.
Frances, or Mother Magdalen as she became known, was joined by a growing number of women who also sought to serve God by caring for the poor and the sick. The Incarnation and the Visitation were their inspiration.
“God wants to become incarnate in me.” This was the motto summarizing the founding grace of Frances Taylor. Her great attraction was to the mystery of the Incarnation – especially when Mary said yes and the angel departed, leaving Our Lady alone, kneeling and bearing within her the Word made flesh, that moment when the “power of the Most High did overshadow her, and God was hidden within her.” Frances believed in the indwelling of God from her baptism, and her humility delighted in the gift that all that was good in her was from God’s own life within her.
The action that followed Mary’s being “overshadowed,” the Visitation, when Mary went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth, is the completion of prayer, the completion in action, the ideal for every member of the congregation. It is also the natural outcome of God’s presence received into a person’s life.
Her deep appreciation of the mystery of God living within each person is the key that unlocks the call and the founding grace of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God. It gives words to the spirit of Frances Taylor, and it puts the Incarnation at the heart of the sisters’ lives and in the ways they are the presence of God in the world. Believing this, Mother Magdalen spent her life revealing this insight through deep reverence for every single person.
By the time Mother Magdalen died on June 9, 1900, the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, based in England and Ireland, administered more than 20 convents and institutions where they focused on refugees, hostels, schools, orphanages, teaching and health care. Her death was noted widely all over Britain and abroad, even in Australia and the U.S. In the sermon preached at her funeral, Jesuit Father Francis Scoles said, “With pains and prayer she left a perfect work.”
In 2014, Pope Francis declared as Venerable Mother Magdalen and authorized the Church to search for the two healing miracles needed to proclaim her a saint.
Throughout the ages, certain individuals have been given special gifts to inspire, challenge and guide people and nations. Venerable Magdalen has left us many examples of her goodness, and we thank God for them:
For her example of dedicated service to stand sure and convinced of the need to stay with what cries out to be served.
For her example of enthusiasm to begin each day with zeal and love.
For her example of generosity and gratitude in recognizing our gifts and claiming them as our own, to use and to give away.
For her example of joyfulness in celebrating even the smallest of events and achievements.
For her example of prayerfulness and her great love of the Incarnate God and His Mother Mary.
For her example of gentleness shown in her great respect for the dignity and uniqueness of each person.
For her example of encouragement in appreciating and affirming the gifts of others.
For her example of hospitality in welcoming all, especially the stranger.
Can you see any of these gifts in yourself? Can you take any of them and make them your own? By her life’s work, leadership and example, this is what Venerable Magdalen asks us to do in following Jesus Christ, with the Blessed Virgin Mary as our model.
Deacon David King is assigned to Pennybyrn at Maryfield in High Point. This commentary is adapted from a talk he recently gave there.
Did you know?
In 1947, five Sisters of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God from England and Ireland traveled to North Carolina. With little more than a dream and a whole lot of faith, they opened a 22-bed nursing home, which they called Maryfield, in the High Point convent where they stayed. Six decades later, the expanded continuing care retirement community offers a variety of active lifestyle, assisted living and full care choices. The 71-acre campus is now called Pennybyrn, the premier provider of long-term care in the Triad.
More online
At www.smgsisters.com: Learn more about the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, the cause for canonization of their foundress Venerable Magdalen, and their ministry at Pennybyrn at Maryfield