Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP: “The little Mother”

By Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, 24 January 2025
Eileen O’Connor Mass at St Brigid’s Coogee. Images by Giovanni Portelli Photography © 2025.

 

This is the edited text of the Homily for the Anniversary Mass for Servant of God Eileen O’Connor, Co Foundress of Our Lady’s Nurses For the Poor, Friday After Epiphany, St Brigid’s Coogee, 10 January 2025.

Many of us enjoy courtroom dramas. 12 Angry MenTo Kill a Mockingbird, Judgement at Nuremberg, Primal Fear, A Man for All Seasons and The Lincoln Lawyer and are just a few examples. But it’s not just cinema that loves the law. The activities of criminals, investigators, prosecutors and defenders, judges and jurors often make for best-selling crime novels or compelling viewing on the small screen. We think of Ironside, Law and Order, Suits, Boston Legal or the “reality” TV show Judge Judy and its short-lived Aussie imitation, Trial by Kyle. For those after the real deal, there’s the Federal Court of Australia YouTube channel, which regularly livestreams cases to its 42,000 subscribers.

Why all the interest in the courtroom? Well, it’s a kind of theatre, a stage where a serious drama unfolds. Many are fascinated by legal procedure, the uber-glamourised and cut-throat world of detectives and lawyers, the twists and turns a case can take with new evidence or witnesses. There is also something satisfying about seeing malefactors punished, the innocent vindicated, and justice prevail. And our love for legal thrillers may also highlight that human beings are made for truth, so that no matter how well individuals or establishments try to hide the truth, we are hardwired for uncovering it.

But truth needs its witnesses. At Christmas Luke the evangelist recorded the testimony of angels, parents, shepherds and stable animals that the Babe in the manger was none other than Emmanuel, God-with-us (Lk 2:1-14; Jn 1:1-18). St Matthew gave us the take of the Magi and the star, King Herod and the religious authorities, on this also, suggesting the Babe was our proper King (Mt 2:1-12). This past week we’ve heard from Mark of the adult Christ bursting onto the scene amidst the evidence of John the Baptist and the first disciples, and signs as dramatic as the feeding of thousands, walking on water and, today, healing a leper (Lk 5:12-16), so we know that the boy-become-man is also God.

Eileen only lived 28 years, yet in that short time was able to mount a most persuasive account of God’s truth, beauty, goodness. Images by Giovanni Portelli Photography © 2025

But in today’s first reading it’s John, the fourth evangelist, who calls witnesses, beginning with the Holy Spirit. He echoes Jesus that “the Spirit is the Truth” (1Jn 5:7; Jn 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), the most reliable of all sources. We might think of Him appearing in the form of a dove to testify to Jesus at Jordan or inspiring the apostles at Pentecost. But somewhat curiously, John calls two other witnesses “the Water and the Blood,” which evokes the piercing of Jesus’ Sacred Heart on the cross when there followed forth blood and water (Jn 19:34) which the tradition interprets as signs of Baptism and the Eucharist. So, John concludes, “there are three witnesses, the Spirit, the Water and the Blood, and all three of them agree.”

What are we to make of these two additional witnesses? Well, through the Waters of Baptism, we enter Christ’s Paschal Mystery, joining ourselves to His life and death, resurrection and ascension, His identity and ultimate destiny, and to the communion of the baptised, the church here on earth and in heaven. By partaking in the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life, we deepen that union with Christ so that His flesh and blood, body and soul, humanity and divinity become part of our own substance and transform us sacramentally into “other Christs.” The Water and the Blood make us into living, breathing witnesses to Christ.

Some are better witnesses than others. By lives of heroic virtue, some attest to Christ in the most compelling fashion, embodying the sacrificial love of the Son of God and becoming transparent to grace. In the case of Eileen O’Connor, it was a life devoted to care of the poor and sick, distressed and dying, a life of suffering alongside those who suffered. She endured a grave spinal injury, a heart condition, chronic tuberculosis of the bone, compromising her mobility and meaning she was in constant pain. Her physical suffering was joined by the mental anguish caused by others being incapable of seeing past her afflictions to her human and divine potential.

In the case of Eileen O’Connor, it was a life devoted to care of the poor and sick, distressed and dying, a life of suffering alongside those who suffered. Images by Giovanni Portelli Photography © 2025

But at age 19 Eileen received an apparition of Our Lady offering her three options: to be relieved of her suffering by a miraculous healing and comfortable life on earth; to have the mercy of a quick death and going straight to heaven; or to continue to suffer and offer this, along with all her energies, to Our Lady’s work of building up God’s kingdom. She famously opted for the third, giving glory to God amidst her own suffering and devoting herself to others. The “Little Mother,” as she was affectionately known, together with MSC-Father Edward McGrath, founded Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor so her mission might be more effectively served, especially in the very homes of the sick and needy.

Some saints are given only a short time to get their job done. St Dominic lived only six years after founding his Order. Soon-to-be-canonised Carlo Acutis was 14 when he started his internet apostolate of promoting love for the Eucharist and not yet 16 when he died. Another soon-to-be-saint, Piergiorgio Frassati, was 17 when he joined St Vincent de Paul and 21 when he became a Dominican tertiary, but had only three more years to evangelise and serve the poor before he died of polio. So, too, our beloved Eileen only lived 28 years, yet in that short time was able to mount a most persuasive account of God’s truth, beauty, goodness. In her trust in God and reliance upon Our Lady, in her service of the poor and living the Gospel, Eileen was a paradigm of the Christian life and love.

In August last year I had the privilege of signing the final decree of the diocesan phase of the cause for Eileen’s beatification, the fruit of many years of investigation and study here in the Archdiocese of Sydney. Then in October I had the joy of presenting the six boxes of evidence of Eileen’s holy life to the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro. And so the journey towards the making of Australia’s second saint is well and truly underway. But, of course, canonisation is only the ecclesiastical confirmation of something we already know in our hearts: that alongside the Spirit, the Water and the Blood the Little Mother has offered us all persuasive testimony to Christ. We pray that through her intercession the healing balm of that divine physician will be experienced by many, that through our efforts the witness of her life will be better known, and that through our prayers favours will be granted and the church see fit to raise her to the altars!

Republished with permission from Catholic Weekly.

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