The Scriptural selections we’ve heard this Easter season are an annual reminder of Jesus’ “journey” stories. We recall His appearance to Mary in the garden, His “beaming up” into and vanishing from the upper room where his mother Mary and the disciples had gathered, the meeting on the road to Emmaus, Jesus’ “here again, gone again, come again” ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit.
In this, our 135th community anniversary of our founders’ journey from Pennsylvania to Florida, I invite you to join me in taking a long backward look at the “journey history” of our community. The reflection is longer than usual but remember, it covers 135 years. It is evident that we and our Florida Benedictine ancestors have made many and varied journeys. We’ll start with Benedict and Scholastica who skipped happily along the hilltop path from their home in Norcia, Italy. Perhaps they stopped in to visit with the hermits who lived in hillside caves along the path on their trip to their grandparents’ summer house on the outskirts of town. When still a young boy Benedict journeyed to Rome for classical studies. Before long, he journeyed into the hills for a little sanity. A few years later, Benedict’s followers – and Scholastica’s too – traveled from Italy to Germany, England, France, Switzerland, and Austria – and from there in 1852 to the United States. You probably know the story of the monk shouting at Abbot Wimmer that his “wagon load of trouble” (the Benedictine Sisters arriving from Eichstätt, Germany) had been spotted on the horizon approaching the abbey in Latrobe. Like spotty fires that can’t be contained, Benedictine women’s houses sprang up across the continent.
Our own history brings a “wagon load” of five Sisters from Pennsylvania to San Antonio, Florida. It wasn’t long before the Sisters were operating schools in their own home, in the local parish and three miles down the road in St. Joseph. Over the years, our Sisters would journey each school year to/from places as far away as Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. They also they made a mark for our community in Miami, Miami Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Ocala, Sarasota, Venice, Lakeland, Apopka, Dade City, Zephyrhills, and San Antonio, New Port Richey, St. Joseph and right here in St. Leo. For many years every June the Sisters brought all their worldly possessions back to Holy Name Convent. They never knew for sure where they’d be “missioned” the next school year. Before it was in vogue, this practice was a built-in system of “spring cleaning” and downsizing.
During the summers, the Sisters continued on their journeys to complete, or extend, their educations. To name a few places I know about, they traveled to Cullman, AL, Notre Dame, St. John’s in Minnesota, Belmont College, New York, Louisville, Yankton, South Dakota, Barry College in Miami, the Mount Saint Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, Wisconsin and St. Louis. Sometimes they packed up a few necessities along with two habits and headed up the road to Good Counsel Camp where they squeezed in 2-week sessions of religious education for children that did not have the advantage of parochial schools.
In addition to staffing parish schools, Sisters packed into cars – sometimes with volunteer drivers – to teach weekend catechism classes in Floral City, Brooksville, New Port Richey, Eustis, Arlington, Ponte Vedra, Masaryktown, Belleview, Reddick, West Ocala, Fruitland Park, Gainesville, Clermont, Dade City, Zephyrhills and the Girls’ Reformatory in Ocala. I’ve never checked out the veracity of this story but I’ve heard that there was one Sister who used to travel to weekly college classes with her typewriter on her lap finishing up an assignments.
All this journeying from home to classrooms to college to camp to parish halls were mini-versions of the grand moves, the memorable journeys, that immersed travel in our Florida Benedictine genes. The move from Pennsylvania to the mission territory started with five valiant women. There followed in the years to come the move of the monastery building from the San Antonio plaza to the top of the hill overlooking Lake Jovita. In 1959, we saw the demolition of the wood-frame convent and the rise of a structure made of concrete and steel. And, then there were the years of discernment that concluded with our decision to move body and soul in 2014 across the highway to the structure we now call home.
And, you’ll recall we’ve moved not only our persons – we’ve moved buildings to our property. This included the barracks buildings delivered for a boys’ school, a canteen for the academy girls, cabin for Camp Jovita, and building for the day care. We can point to where these buildings used to be: the kindergarten and coif room, the laundry at the lake, Scholastica Hall, barns, the home economics house, the bus shelter, a hitching post on Hwy 52 and basketball courts where we hosted chicken dinners and danced around the May Pole.
Journeys are not a new phenomena for Florida Benedictines. For some of us a journey is an adventure; for some it is a dreadful thought. For all of us it can be a great risk, a scary thought, or a step into a future that unfolds as we walk the path God holds out to us. When we took our first journey from womb to the light of day, we were completely naked, vulnerable, squalling and fighting the loss of the comfort of 24-hour warmth, unending nourishment, periods of activity and times of quiet floating. Journeys are nothing new for any of us!
In conclusion, for today, I suggest you think about some of the journeys you’ve taken – moves when you were a child, the move to join our community and the journey that our Sisters of happy memory have traveled to their eternal home. May they rest in peace! Recall Gregory Norbert’s hymn, “Journey Ended, Journeys Begun” that we sang during our good-bye procession through Marmion-Snyder halls down to the cafeteria for our final meal there. We pray: O God of the journey, show us the path to life. Angels of God, lead us along our path. Amen. Alleluia!
~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB
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