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Field trip to a farm, early 1970's.

8. A Search in the Desert

Mae welcomed the change in the identification of Joseph House as a Christian community and not just a charitable agency. Still, it did not satisfy her completely.

I felt very much alone even though I was living with people. I needed a community.

Mae longed for something more than this tentative step taken by the volunteers at Joseph House. She wanted a religious community, that is, a consecrated life with other sisters under the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Mae never intended to leave that way of life when she left the Little Sisters of the Poor. When Mae came to Baltimore in 1965, creating a religious community was as equally important to her as beginning a ministry to help the less fortunate. In the call she experienced from God, she could not have one without the other.

Mae felt a deep need for this type of communal support, especially as Joseph House branched out in many different directions. In just a few years, it had grown from one woman in a church basement to a city-wide operation that included emergency social services, marriage counseling, home nursing care, literacy training for adults, a Montessori pre-school, a soup kitchen, an ex-offender self-help program, and a gift shop. As the guiding force of Joseph House, Mae carried a heavy burden of responsibility.

Weary and unsure about her future with Joseph House, Mae sought some advice. In October of 1972, she arranged a meeting with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Her sisters fearlessly minister to the poorest of the poor, enduring the same harsh conditions of poverty as the people they serve. At the time, Mother Teresa was in the United States visiting one of the convents of her community in the Bronx.

Mae met with Mother Teresa during this visit and shared with her the struggles of directing Joseph House. Perhaps, Mae inquired, the Missionaries of Charity would like to take over its operation?

Mother Teresa declined, but she did suggest that Mae needed sisters of her own working under the vow of obedience. A community of one heart and one mind can effectively witness to the love of God and provide the support needed to proclaim the Gospel, whether in word or deed. Mother Teresa saw consecrated life as a means to this unity. The vow of obedience in particular can make a community a powerful instrument in doing God’s will. Mother Teresa saw no other way of accomplishing the ministry of Joseph House.

This response echoed the desire Mae felt in her own heart. She could not create a community by herself, however; she needed someone to join her. Knowing that the desire for community came from God, she placed the fulfillment of this desire into His hands. Mae knew she would find someone if this was truly God’s will.

In her search for this person Mae met a woman in Baltimore who belonged to Sisters for a Christian Community.

It was established at first for sisters who had left their communities for some reason, who wanted to form a very loose-knit community that could be a means of support from time to time. By the time I got to know them, they came to meet together maybe once every six months or once a year, something like that. There was no formation. 

Well, I thought, this is not what I am looking for. But there was a young girl, she was twenty-two years old, and her name was Pat Guidera.

Pat, a native of Timonium, Maryland, had been a member of the Daughters of Charity for about 18 months. After discerning that her vocation lay elsewhere, she left the order and found a job as a nurse’s aide in Baltimore. Pat also became associated with Sisters for a Christian Community. But that was not working out for her, either.

I was thinking maybe Pat was just in the wrong place. I invited her to come to Joseph House and see how we lived and find out if she wanted to move there instead of living where she was. So she came one Wednesday and the following Wednesday she came back with her clothing and said she was ready to stay.

Pat and I became very close, especially in talking about spiritual things and about prayer life and all that. And so she stayed on, and in a year or so I began to realize that she might have a religious vocation.

Pat’s arrival renewed Mae’s hope of forming a new religious community. Mae began to develop a simple way of life that incorporated service, prayer, and community living. For inspiration she looked to Charles de Foucauld, a French priest who had lived among the Muslim poor of the Sahara. Mae first encountered this mysterious and saintly hermit when she was still a Little Sister of the Poor.

God really does some strange things sometimes. I was in Cincinnati, I think, as a Little Sister of the Poor. We went to see the cathedral, and there I saw a painting of Brother Charles in the desert. I don’t recall what was in the painting, but I remember that something inside of me clicked with that picture, and I thought to myself, "Why am I a Little Sister of the Poor when that’s who I should belong to?" I knew practically nothing about him except that his name was Charles de Foucauld.

So I tried to learn something about him. Well, some of the sisters knew the Little Sisters of Jesus, and they talked to me about this order that followed Brother Charles. Then I met a couple of priests who knew Little Brothers of Jesus. For some reason I felt that I belonged to this family of Charles de Foucauld in some way.

When I came out of the Little Sisters of the Poor, I knew that I wanted to follow the rule of this man, at least his spirituality and his philosophy. So one of the first things I did was to buy a life of Brother Charles and read it. 

Then I looked up the Little Sisters of Jesus in Washington. I went over to talk with their local superior and their provincial who were really very good to us. Pat and I went every week to their house and studied the writings of their foundress, Little Sister Magdeleine.

I told them that I felt called to follow Brother Charles and wanted to know if that would be any kind of a threat to them. And also that we wanted to wear a habit and wanted to be recognized as belonging to the de Foucauld family. I said that our habit would look somewhat like theirs but would not be made the same. I wanted to know if that would be OK with them.

Well, the Little Sisters of Jesus were extremely good to us. The provincial said they never saw Brother Charles anymore than we did. [laughter] And then she said there was no monopoly on whether or not anyone looked like them. She said that we should follow whatever we thought God wanted us to do. I felt very much at ease with them.

By June of 1974, both Mae and Pat believed that God was calling them to form a new community of religious sisters. Wanting to receive permission from the Church to move ahead with their desire, Mae considered whom to ask. The Archdiocese of Baltimore was in transition between His Eminence Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, who had just retired, and the incoming Archbishop, Most Reverend William Donald Borders. She decided to approach Bishop F. Joseph Gossman, who was then serving as Urban Vicar of Baltimore. 

Mae first met Bishop Gossman when she worked part-time for the Archdiocese in the early days of Joseph House. He was aware of Mae's dedication to the poor, and he knew that she and Pat were sincere in seeking God’s will in their lives. The Bishop saw no reason why they should not go ahead in their pursuit of a new religious community.

A ceremony was needed to give a starting point to this new endeavor. Mae wanted something simple to mark the occasion. A clothing ceremony would be perfect, where their habits would be blessed and presented to Mae and Pat as a sign of their new life. Now the question was, where to do it?

I thought, "Well, I have to ask somebody who knows us sufficiently that if it isn’t the right thing to do he will say so." I had been going down to the Trappists in Berryville, Virginia for a long time for retreats after I left the Little Sisters of the Poor. I knew Father Andrew Gries very well, and I also knew Father Edward McCorkell. He was the abbot.

I called Father Edward on the phone and told him that we were intending to do this and that I wanted to have a little ceremony to give us something to start off with. And I also said that we did ask Bishop Gossman.

He said, "It’s a free country." [laughter] And then he said, "Well, if it’s to be it will be, and if it isn’t it won’t. Strangely enough, we have two novices that we are going to give habits to on Sunday. Can you come down this Sunday?"

I said yes.

He said, "I’ll do them in the chapel first, and then we’ll all go to the chapter room and we’ll do yours."

And so just like that a date was set: Sunday, July 7, 1974, henceforth to be known as Foundation Day.

 
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