The Sisters of the Sacred Heart

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 42, 25 October 1923, Page 35

The Sisters of the Sacred Heart

r * GRACEFUL • TRIBUTE BY VERY REV. PAUL V i ; CULLEN, O.M. V? '■ / , In the course of his address on Sunday, September 23, at the opening of the church-school dedicated to St. Vincent- de Paul, in the grounds of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Burge Road, Camberwell, Victoria, Very Rev. Paul Cullen, O.M. / (Provincial of the Vincentian Fathers in Australia) paid the following graceful tribute to the Sisters of the:Sacred Heart (says the Melbourne Tribune):- — ' Among the first in the grand educational work of religion and patriotism has ever stood the great community of the Sacred Heart Sisters. While politicians wrangled v and Governments fought about trusts and tariffs, these truly great ladies bent all their energies to looking after the girls of Australia, the welfare of its women, and the future mothers, of the race. The Sisters of the Sacred Heart have a glorious history ’ of achievement, the most fearless, devoted, enterprising, and successful contributors to whqt a .great American Bishop called “the greatest religious fact .- in the history of humanity—the Catholic school system.” Without wealth of their own, without endowments from others, without the aid of State, national St Federal, these V heroic ' Sisters, like‘the Sisterhoods all , over the country, 4jave beaten out highways along the trails of the missionaries and everywhere broadened the paths to knowledge. Well may you all rejoice to-day because you hand over your children to the ; care of , such devoted women. And here, I should like to pay 5 a tribute to one of the many distinguished members of the Sacred Heart . Community, Madame Janet Erskine Stuart, whose name must ever be associated with those noble women who have given their lives to the education of Catholic children. ‘Her treatise on the education of Catholic girls is a mine of educational information. Throughout its luminous pages she emphasises the great and unchangeable fact that the formation of heart and will and character is, and must always be, the’ very root of the eduction of a child. She felt, in. the words of Lionel Johnson — Fair though it be, to watch unclose . The nestling glories of a rose, Depth on rich depth, soft fold on fold, Though fairer be it, to behold Stately and sceptral lilies break To beauty, and to sweetness wake; Yet fairer still, to see and sing, One fair thing is, one matchless thing: . Youth, in its perfect .blossoming. It is in the Sisters’ schools here and all over the world that one may see “youth, in its perfect blossoming.” Within the precincts of the convent ground, on a spot hallowed for years and years by the purity and holiness of conventual life, we have the happiness. of witnessing the completion of this beautiful building, fair in outline, strong in structure, and worthy of the noble ends for which it is destined. •