The Founding of the Religious Order Sisters of the Divine Compassion
“In the prayerful exercises of the contemplative life, they learn the lessons of sweetness, gentleness, and compassion.”
It is a special occurrence for any person to feel the call to religious life, especially within the Catholic Church, and an even greater and more unique call to form a new religious order.
In this third article on the importance in Westchester County’s local history of the lives of Good Counsel’s founders Mother Mary Veronica and Msgr. Thomas Preston, both buried in the crypt below the Chapel of the Divine Compassion on the GCA campus in White Plains, we will see how the religious order came to be through the spiritual passion and vision of its founders.
It is interesting to note that Mother Mary Veronica, formerly Mary Dannat Starr, a divorcee and mother of two boys, did not become a nun until a few years after the founding of the order she was responsible for.
While doing charitable work with Msgr. Preston in New York City in 1884, she became familiar with the “Devotion to the Holy Face” a movement at the time, which focused on the image of Christ’s face captured on Veronica’s Veil when she went to wipe his brow as he carried the cross to the crucifixion. The veil was being venerated at the Vatican.
A few years earlier, a French Carmelite nun, Sister Mary of St. Peter, claimed to have visions involving the veil in which she was told that the Lord was seeking souls “who would heal the wounds inflicted on His Face by pouring over them the wine of compassion and the oil of love, which is reparation.”
Both Mary Starr and Msgr. Preston, who had already devoted much of their charitable work to helping the most unfortunate in the tough industrial society of New York City, were impressed by what they heard. They were especially moved by the spiritual concept of and devotion to divine compassion and decided to act on that particular calling by forming a confraternity of Reparation to the Holy Face in 1885, which focused on acts of justice from a stance of human compassion derived from divine compassion.
For Mary Starr, the activities of devotion involved with the confraternity and her experience in the education and training of children, became the foundation for what later would become a Catholic religious order called Sisters of the Divine Compassion.
Moved by her own vision to focus on the spiritual training and development of the women who cared for the children she was already devoted to at the school of the Holy Family in New York, Mary Starr encouraged Msgr. Preston to make the necessary inquiries for the establishment of a new religious order.
Agreeing that this was a good idea, Msgr. Preston not only received permission but encouragement from the local cardinal and while still based in New York, the order was initiated with three novitiates receiving the habit as designed by Mary Starr and pronouncing their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Mary Starr and the sisters under the direction of Msgr. Preston focused their work on the education and training of young girls, taking them off the streets of New York and providing them with a loving home environment and the knowledge and tools to find work for themselves when they graduated.
Mary Starr notes in her journals that it took 16 years of spiritual growth and development for her to eventually become a member of the order she had helped to found. She was only fully ready when her own children were established in their lives and she could move forward completely devoted to the work she wanted to do.
As a wealthy woman about to take religious vows, she divided her inheritance with one third going to the order and the remaining to her family.
Mary Starr wrote that she took the name Mary for “Our Lady, after Christ, who embodied the most perfect spirit of compassion and then St. Veronica who would also become her patroness. She took her vows on July 2, 1887.
Humility and obedience became the foundation stones of the order and she expected the sisters she guided to perform everything they did as though it were a prayer. Along with the sisters’ spiritual formation, now called Mother Mary Veronica, she took great pains to train them for their active apostolate in the care and education of the children.
In the biography “The Fruit of His Compassion,” author Sr. Mary Theresa, RDC, writes: “The sisters were to be mothers to the children, and she counseled them to train their charges with gentleness and firmness and with respect for the individuality of each child.”
And in the words of Mother Mary Veronica: “Here in the prayerful exercises of the contemplative life, they learn the lessons of sweetness, gentleness, and compassion.”
In four years after the founding of the order, the move to Westchester for a better environment for the children was investigated and property centrally located in White Plains was purchased to house the school, convent and chapel. That was when things really began to take off.
The next installment of this series will report on the move and growth of the Sisters of the Divine Compassion as a teaching order and their vast participation and influence on Catholic education in Westchester County.
Previous articles “The Good Counsel Complex, a Fixture in White Plains History,” July 1, 2104 and “Mary Caroline Dannat Starr, an Icon of Religious and Local History,” July 15, 2014 can be found by clicking on the titles here or by visiting the Examiner Media archives at www.theexaminernews.com.
