In this first full week of the fourth month of the pandemic, the numbers of deaths and people struggling to stay alive continue to climb. Also, as if to remind us again of the Yellow Fever epidemic in Memphis that we wrote about two weeks ago, the thinking and resistance of some politicians and government officials, especially those who have no time for reading, study, and listening, and no time for science, have become much more expansive. Meanwhile, we at Saint Stephen’s continue our series of reflections in this bewildering time by looking backward and exploring the stories and story threads that are hidden in our history and in our memories, as we come forward.

We return again this week to the Episcopal Lectionary of Holy People, A Great Cloud of Witnesses, and meet Harriet Starr Cannon (1823-1878) who is commemorated on May 7, and founded the Episcopal order of women religious, the Community of Saint Mary. Next week, Suzanne Glover Lindsay will dig more deeply and widely by examining the life of Sister Cornelia Connelly (1809-1879) who founded the Roman Catholic order of women religious, The Society of the Holy Child Jesus. And mysteriously, Sister Connelly has some direct tie to Saint Stephen’s through her early life and extended family buried in the Saint Stephen’s churchyard. Thus, this will be a two-week ecumenical reflection about religious communities of women, another group of those “modern-day saints” we considered last week.

In the first half of the 19th century, the Episcopal church was among those Protestant churches in America endorsing the revival of the “female diaconate.” What is more significant is that “the Episcopal Church stood alone among Protestant churches in reviving monastic orders for women.” (Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, Revised Edition, p.160) Harriet Starr Cannon played roles in the founding of the first two orders. She was the first American nun in the Anglican tradition when she took vows and helped found the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion (1851-52), initially part of William Muhlenberg’s Church of the Holy Communion in New York City. The Sisters of the Holy Communion’s ministry was centered on staffing clinics and care facilities, which clinics and care facilities eventually became Saint Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan. Sister Cannon was a nurse so she was heavily involved in the Order’s ministry from the very beginning. The Sisters of the Holy Communion was what we would now call an Anglo-Catholic religious order and the Sisters were seen either as “too Catholic” or “too Anglican” or both, so there was some controversy. After more than a decade of service, Harriet Cannon and some of her fellow Sisters decided they preferred “a more traditional monastic form of religious life” (A Great Cloud of Witnesses) and petitioned the Bishop of New York to form a new order.

In 1865 Harriet Cannon and four of her fellow Sisters took their vows and became the Community of Saint Mary (CSM), and Sister Cannon became the first Superior of the Order. The Order’s ministry was concentrated on nursing and medical care for women, the homeless and orphans, and its community life was grounded in a modified Rule of Saint Benedict. By the time Mother Cannon died (1896) and the order had grown, The Community of Saint Mary had founded several tuition free schools for young women and established new hospitals and orphanages in several states. But the basic apostolate was always focused on the care of the “lost, forgotten and underprivileged.” (cf. Anglican Religious Life 2012-13, p.64) 

In late September 1824, when Harriet Starr Cannon was three years old, both of her parents died of Yellow Fever. Not surprisingly, it was Mother Cannon who sent several members of The Community of Saint Mary to Memphis to help care for the sick and dying during the Yellow fever epidemic, all of whom lost their lives in 1878. These Sisters became the Martyrs of Memphis, also known as Constance, Nun, and Her Companions. 

By 1880, “there were thirteen Episcopal sisterhoods. Of these four were in New York City, and two were in Baltimore. The remaining seven orders were located in Washington, D.C.; Newark; Saint Louis; Albany; Boston; New Orleans; and Louisville. The sisters in these institutions worked in hospitals, schools, and institutions for the poor.” (Prichard, p.161) It is remarkable that the Episcopal Church had 13 separate orders of women at a time when its membership was not even 500,000 souls. At the same time, there were well over 100 religious orders of women in the Roman Catholic church with as many as 40,000 to 50,000 Sisters. The numbers are vastly different but the charism and commitment are the same. In the last half of the 19th Century, Catholic and Episcopal Sisters were primarily nurses and caregivers for the poor and the sick and founders of new hospitals, and by the end of the century both Episcopal and Catholic religious orders of women had founded and were running many different kinds of schools. There is no better testimony to this shared charism and commitment than Harriet Starr Cannon’s Community of Saint Mary in the Episcopal Church and the Sisters of Mercy in the Roman Catholic Church. “Modern-day saints” ? The case is especially compelling when we acknowledge that these Sisters were doing the work of the Gospel and they knew it. And the “modern-day saints” we wrote about last week were also doing the work of Gospel, but many of them may not have known it. Instead, they were doing what they felt called to do. The results are the same.

We end this week’s reflection with a story from Thomas Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu. (The translation is Merton’s)

When Life was Full there Was no History

In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy [people], nor did they single out the [person] of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing they were “doing their duty.” They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one yet they did not know they were “[people] to be trusted.” They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith.” They lived freely together giving and taking and did not know that they were generous. For this reason, their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history. (p.76)

No, the Sisters of the Community of Mary and the Sisters of Mercy did not “make any history.” They didn’t need to. Just as with our “modern-day saints” in this time of the coronavirus, their deeds were enough. 

Amen

—Father Peter Kountz