SSND In the News
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Special Celebration:
150th anniversary of the establishment
of Visitation Convent
Joyful hymns of praise—enhanced by organ, recorder, and tambourine—rang through the Notre Dame of Elm Grove chapel on October 1, 2009. SSND was celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1859 establishment of Visitation Convent as a retirement community. On its Golden Anniversary, 100 years ago, Monsignor Peter Abbelen shared how this “home of rest” spoke of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth on a mission of charity and service. Now in 2009, both Local Leader Sister Marie Estelle Kuczynski, in her welcome, and Milwaukee’s Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba, in his homily, picked up the same theme.
Sister welcomed Bishop Sklba, Father Russ Tikalsky, our general councilors, present and former provincial leaders and councilors, sisters, and friends—all “in the spirit of Elizabeth as she welcomed Mary . . . blessed is the fruit of community life, Jesus. . . . for God has done great things for us!” The Eucharistic celebration began with singing the words of Blessed Mother Theresa Gerhardinger, “God’s cause is our cause.”
Bishop Sklba asked, over and over, if this place could appropriately be called anything other than Visitation, when we consider everything this building and community signifies. Its name recalls the greeting of two extraordinary women of faith, key figures in the history of salvation—this place where still today, he said, women gather to greet one another, to do whatever needs to be done, always making time for prayer, conscious of the growth of Jesus in their midst.
Both places were shadowed by the heartbreaks that come into every life: call of Elizabeth’s son, Cross of Mary’s son, SSND’s pioneering difficulties. Even the locations are similar: Ten miles into the hill country outside Jerusalem and the same distance into “the hills” outside Milwaukee.
Finally, the bishop showed how the values of Mary’s “Magnificat” were the same as those of Mother Caroline and her sisters when they came here, 15 decades, 7 ½ generations, ago. Each of the similarities was punctuated with the question: “How could this place not be called Visitation?”
– Sister Mary Benilda Dix
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