THE LATE MOTHER MARY XAVIER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 336, 26 September 1879, Page 3

THE LATE MOTHER MARY XAVIER

(From our Melbourne correspondent.)

A lady who knew her writes to me of Mother Mary Xavier, the Superioress of the Geelong Convent of Mercy :—": — " Her death is recognised as a public calamity alike by Protestants and Catholics in Geelong and the western district. During the twenty years she has worked among them silently, ' unhasting and unresting.' monuments of many sorts have arisen in Geelong (notably the Convent Buildings with the beautiful Chapel of the Sacred Heart attached) offsprings of her head, heart, and hand, all for the furtherance of the one object of her life— the glory of God and the salvation of man.

" To this she devoted her life, her large private means, and an intellect more clear, capacious, and practical than falls often to the lot of even the most gifted man. I have heard a hard-headed banker, a strict Protestant, declare that, in the course of his business, he never had a constituent to equal her in financial ability and resources. His belief in both, and in her integrity, was a sort of act of faith with him.

" And yet the work which witnesses to her energy and zeal in this hemisphere is dwarfed by what is known of her achievements at home. Early in her career she saw new openings of usefulness for her Order, the Sisters of Mercy, in skilled medical nursing of the aick. By permission of her Superiors, she and two Sisters left their convent in Dublin, went to Paris, and in the Hospitals there studied diseases and their amelioration. The idea of a great Irish National Hospital to be erected in Dublin suggested itself to her there, and before many years the Mater Misericordise, the largest hospital, it is said, in Europe, was completed, and in full swing of work. That in Mother Xavier"s brain the idea of this magnificent institution first germinated, and that she found the means, by subscriptions, &c, to erect it, there is no doubt. She gave much of the plan to the architect, and herself, it is said, laid the first stone. With sleepless vigilance she watched its erection, and the success of its opening years, but those who knew her best declare that she shrank from the fame that linked her name to this great work.

" Her practical ability was only a phase of her character, tha outcome of her grand common-sense. She was a tender, sensitive, retiring woman, always at her best and happiest among the infant orphans, who adored and caressed her as if she were indeed their mother. Above all, she was a saint, and when she found that philanthropists at home, and American and other travellers, pursisted in recording her deeds in their books as foundress of the Mater Misericordicc, sh^ seized on the occasion to escape from public praise int© more obscure duties in a distant land which the Australian mission offered her. What a holy life her's was here ; begun in privation and toil and ending in nine years of terribly acute suffering. A cripple, and always in pain, phe bore her cross with a patience, sweetness, and cbeei fulness that never bioke down — never even faltered — and steadily carried on the work of her community to the end." " You think too seriously of my cross," she wrote to a friend, who loved her much ; " I have never much minded physical pain. I am very happy. lam God's prisoner." Now she is released it seems sinful to grieve for her or to think of her, except as in the presence of God, singing His praises as had been her delight in the early days of her religious life, when people came to her convent from afar to hear the fresh glorious voice in the choir, which thrilled the listeners with its expression of sublime faith and profound piety.