Founding of the Sisters of Charity

Realising that she need to be trained in the spirit and traditions of religious life, Mary travelled with Alicia Walsh to the Loreto Convent in York. From May 1812 to August 1815, they completed their novitiate.

At York, their studies and formation were based on the spirituality of St Ignatius. Through the Spiritual Exercises, Mary developed a deep life of prayer, marked by the habit of praying always, of living in the presence of God, and striving to find God in all things. Her ideal became that of Ignatius: to become contemplatives in action. Ignatian spirituality thus became the spiritual heritage of her own congregation.

In 1815, Archbishop Murray received the private vows of Mary Aikenhead and Alicia Lynch (Mother Catherine). Added to the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was a fourth vow:

to devote their lives to the service of the poor.
which was to be understood as to render the Congregation extensively useful.

On December 9, 1816, after receiving the official confirmation of their canonical status as a religious congregation and after completing the Spiritual Exercises under the guidance of Fr Peter Kenny, the two sisters made their perpetual profession. In 1817, at a public ceremony to celebrate the foundation of the congregation, the text of Fr Kenny's sermon was: "Caritas Christi urget nos" (2 Cor 5:14), which subsequently became the motto of the Sisters of Charity.

With the founding of the Congregation in 1815, the first work undertaken by the fledgling community was the Women's Refuge established earlier by Anne O'Brien. Soon many other works followed: the care of orphans, visitation of the sick in hospitals, the poor in their homes, and prisoners in gaol, and a system of schools for the children of the poor.

Mary had long dreamed of opening a hospital for the sick poor. During the cholera epidemic, the sisters ministered tirelessly to help with patient care in the city's hospitals and people's homes. A number of sisters succumbed to the epidemic, including Mary's own sister Anne, known in religion as Sister M. Ignatius Aikenhead.

Eventually, she began to realise her dream. She secured professional nursing training for some of her sisters, the honorary services of generous physicians and surgeons, and other generous support from the local community. In 1834, Mary opened St Vincent's Hospital Dublin, dedicated to care of all sick poor, regardless of background or creed. This first hospital was to be the model for the numerous Sisters of Charity health care facilities.

From this time until her death on July 22, 1858, Mary ministered tirelessly for the poor, together with the companions who joined her as Sisters of Charity, and her many lay friends. Over her grave at St Mary's Donnybrook, Dublin, is a large Celtic cross and below it the inscription:

I comforted the widow, I was an eye to the blind,
a foot to the lame, to the poor I was a mother." (Job 29:14, 16)

Constitutions

In May 1814, Archbishop Murray had been present in Rome for the restoration by the Pope of the Society of Jesus after forty years' suppression. Among the Irish Jesuits present was Fr Robert St Leger who was later to become Mary's friend and spiritual guide. Realising she needed help in framing the new Constitutions, she turned to Father St Leger, now back in Dublin and the rector of the newly-established St Stanislaus' Jesuit College in Dublin.

While at York, the Loreto sisters had permitted Mary Aikenhead to make a copy of their Ignatian-based Rule and Constitutions and related books and papers which she had become convinced were the most suitable as the basis of the new congregation. On examining the York Rule, Father St Leger found some deficiencies, so he gave Mary Aikenhead a correct copy of the Jesuit Rules of the Summary, the Common and the Official Rules, and the General Examen that prefaces the Jesuit Constitution.

He began work on the Constitutions, keeping closely to those of St Ignatius for the first nine chapters. In three years he completed a copy in Latin (which he sent to Rome in 1824) and a copy in English that Archbishop Murray approved and the sisters put into practice from that time.

Spirituality

As has been seen, Mary's own formation was grounded in Ignatian spirituality. Lectures, retreats and triduums were led for the fledgling Congregation by Fr St Leger and Fr Kenny. These reinforced Mary's teaching and her guidance of the sisters and novices in the way of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.

At the same time, Mary adapted the Ignatian heritage to the particular charism of her own Congregation. She developed her own deep faith in Divine Providence and began constantly to remind her sisters that anything was possible through the gracious and providential love of God. In doing God's work, they could count on his constant help to provide all they needed as they endeavoured to discern how they could meet the needs of the poor. The essence of her own deep spirituality has been distilled in a booklet of sayings The Teachings of Mary Aikenhead.

In essence, the goal for each Sister of Charity was to be:

the union of constant practical work with
the highest spirituality and interior discipline.

Mary's keen powers of discernment knew that suffering was inevitable, and she stimulated the spiritual energy of her novices by urging them to pray, in the words of St Ignatius,

"Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and to look for no other reward
than that of doing God's holy will."