Elms College - Elmata Yearbook (Chicopee, MA)

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MISS MARY E. GARST, AB., B.S. in L.S l.1mm1u.,xN

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MISS KATHERINE V. LONG, B.S DIRECTOR or PHYSICAL EDUCATION

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SISTERS OF SAINT JOSEPH To the Sisters of Saint joseph, the teaching Sisters of our College, we owe a great debt of gratitude. We would express to them our appreciation and pay them loving tribute, and we find no more fitting way than to devote these pages of our Elmata to honor their congregation and one of its holy founders. The Congregation of the Sisters of Saint joseph, in our day so flourishing, and so helpful to Church and society in every quarter of the globe, has had a double origin: the one before, the other after the Revolution of 1789. That revolutionary cyclone which overthrew the very pillars of the sanctuary respected not this humble Congrega- tion, but assailed and dispersed it together with a host of other grand and holy institu- tions, the offspring of faith and charity, only a few scattered remnants found refuge in the mountains of Velay in southern France, In the design of Providence, the Superior of that little community was the Nehemias who was to reconstruct, or rather, refound the second Congregation of Saint joseph on the ruins of the first. As Nehemias, after the destruction of the Holy City, placed the sacred fire in a cistern where it was extin- glished in the slime, so during the revolutionary tempest which destroyed the religious houses of France, the spirit of the Congregation of Saint joseph was to be hidden in the heart of the Superior of Ministrol, not indeed to become extinct, but to shine forth pure and resplendent when God should arise and bid the waves, Be still. She, of whom we speak, was the Reverend Mother Saint john Fontbonne, a soul at once grand and simple, prudent and gentle, a soul whom God, according to the sacred simile, had fashioned unto a strong and solid ship that should bear its precious cargo safe and unharmed, through its voyage over a rough and tempestuous ocean. The world is too often aware of its sinners, it is rarely interested in its saints. But our common imagination is captured when one who was once educated by the Sisters of Saint joseph becomes ready for beatificationg our admiration and our interest are equally claimed by Reverend Mother Saint john Fontbonne. vi JMR,s l g V J I f gl ah 4,,. ' Vg f Qi n. ' . N SS: i I ii' ' YM , ' 91 W7 28