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SEED AND GROWTH by Sister Mary Thomas Lillis, O.P.
Sister Mary Thomas Lillis, author of Seed and Growth: The Story of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose, was a great story teller. She was fond of recounting many stories of the women who embodied and exemplified the tradition of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose. Coupled with this gift was her mastery of the English language. In respond to a request that she write a history of the Congregation, Sister Mary Thomas asked that she be allowed to tell a story rather than research a history. Like Robert Bellah (Habits of the Heart, 1985) she believed that a true community was a community of memory. She wanted to re-tell the Congregation’s “constitutive narrative as an important part of the tradition, central to a community of memory (p. 153).”
Sister Mary Thomas loved the Congregation deeply and the variation and number of ministries she was asked to perform served her well in learning the story of the Mission San Jose Dominicans. Both a scholar of Keats and a student of Shakespeare, she truly believed that the “past is prologue” and that “beauty is truth, and truth beauty.” She often used both phrases in her conversations with the Sisters.
Her extensive studies, her experiences and her dearly cherished Irish heritage helped her to appreciate the richness of the stories about the Congregation handed down from the first Sisters who accompanied Mother Maria Backes to California… She had a special love for our Sisters in Germany and would sit for hours exchanging stories about the saintly Mother Columbia Weigl, the precious Jesulein and the dramatic resurrection of Altenhohenau. The exchanges contributed to her keen understanding of the character of the Congregation; they also provided a connectedness which enabled her considerable intellect to shed light on the culture and climate of the Mission San Jose Dominicans, their formation at Regensburg, and the distinctiveness of service they have given the Church in the past one hundred twenty-five years.
When Sister Mary Thomas died in 2005, she left a manuscript plus reams of notes. Her story had several suggested titles, various organizations of footnotes, many hanging parts of chapters, often two or three versions of a section. In October of 2006, Sister Gloria Marie Jones, Congregational Prioress, asked a committee of six Sisters, Evangela Balde, Mary Paul Mehegan, Veronica Lonergan, Mary Brennan, Katherine Jean Cowan and Sister Mary Peter Traviss to prepare the manuscript for publication.
Their task was to be part editing, matching footnotes with the text, inserting transitions and even a few longer sections, reviewing chapter titles, deciding on a final book title, completing a bibliography and constructing a glossary, selecting appropriate pictures and compiling an index. A commonly agreed upon goal was faithfulness to Mary Thomas’ intentions, and in a few cases, that meant deciding what she would have wanted and what she would have written. The book has a forward by Sister Gloria Marie Jones, a prologue, 28 chapters, and an epilogue.
Overland from the East
NOVEMBER 11, 1876. A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd gathered on the Benicia platform as the Overland from the East, its brakes screeching and engineers slowing, ground to a jarring halt. Friends and relatives surged forward, crowding the car doors as weary passengers began their slow descent from the dust-covered coaches.
Among the last to emerge were three black-clad and bonneted figures who stood apart, gazing uneasily into the sea of strange faces before them. Anxiety gave way to relief at sight of a priest elbowing his way through the happily chattering groups. The Reverend Julius Herde, pastor of St. Boniface Church, San Francisco, welcomed the trio warmly and, carpet bags in tow, escorted them to the ferry for the picturesque ride across the bay.
San Francisco at last! With a prayer of fervent thanks, the travelers entered the waiting carriage for the last lap of the long journey that had begun ten days before in Brooklyn, New York. Discreetly the nuns drew the carriage curtains; they had endeavored to adhere conscientiously to their Rule on the trip west; they would admit no exception on the streets of San Francisco.
Belle and the Bread Man
Mid-January, 1886, brought a letter from Father Hermann requesting the sisters to open his school the following September. With high hopes and youthful enthusiasm Sisters Amanda Bednartz, Hyacintha Schneider, Vincentia Powers, and Miss Belle, a postulant, boarded the steamer for Portland on September 8, 1886. Alas, from Day One the Verboort mission was a disaster. No pastor was on hand to welcome the sisters; as Father Hermann had gone to Europe on a fund-raising quest for a convent—an endeavor praiseworthy in intent, but regrettable in its consequences. No house was available to receive the newcomers. The situation called for an immediate solution, and the sisters found one by asking the acting pastor to vacate the rectory— which he did, after a fashion—for he continued to come and go as he wished, entertaining his friends without regard for the sisters’ privacy or convenience.
This state of affairs elicited a swift reaction from Mother Seraphina: “You should have been absolutely sure that the sisters had a house to live in before you sent them. It was a mistake that you sent Sisters without first going to look at the place. This was only done to save money. Father Hermann may be a holy man, but I cannot see wisdom in this action going to Europe at the time. Your zeal is only to be praised when it is joined with wisdom. Pray each day to the Holy Spirit to enlighten you to do only that which is for the greater honor of God, for your own sanctification, and the welfare of your neighbors.”
Moreover, although Archbishop Gross was of the opinion that three sisters could “easily find support” in the Verboort mission, such did not prove to be the case. The first month’s tuition for 57 children grossed $5.50, as most parents opted to pay in produce, an option that guaranteed an adequate table, but a critically limited cash flow.
Letters from Verboort to New York and San Francisco to New York arrived one after the other until Mother Seraphina concluded that the interim pastor was either mentally ill or an alcoholic! For one thing, the sisters had no access to the church, which was kept locked; and for another, they had not been able to receive Holy Communion or the Sacrament of Penance since their arrival six weeks earlier. “You are too credulous,” wrote Mother Seraphina to her young superior, “and too easily influenced in favor of an undertaking. In the future be more discreet. Your present day experiences are of some value. You young people must sow some wild oats.”
Then, as if matters weren't bad enough, gossip reared its ugly head and set the rural community buzzing. Miss Belle, the postulant, left (“ran off,” it was noised abroad) to marry the bread man after a whirlwind courtship conducted presumably at the sisters’ back door on occasion of the young man’s regular deliveries. And romance had its moment in the sun when the acting pastor, with benign approval and full community support, married the pair at the Sunday High Mass attended by the village. This could well have been the last straw, but Mother Seraphina was determined to salvage the mission, come what may. A telegram to Archbishop Gross brought the immediate removal of the priest and the appointment of an “older” man (42!) to the immense satisfaction of Mother Seraphina. It was now her hope that there would be no further “hairraising” experiences and that the situation would settle down. She would make no decision regarding the sisters’ future in Verboort until Father Hermann’s return from Europe in January; nevertheless, “a return trip was always open to them.”
Affairs, however, continued their downward trend, Sister Amanda complaining that the priests came and went in the house as they pleased, stayed as long as they liked, and created general havoc in the cloister. To this Mother Seraphina replied that since the house was theirs, she could not forbid them entry, but that this state of affairs would never do. Finally, the last ray of hope vanished, she ordered the sisters home, trusting that Sister Pia had learned a lesson for life. At Mother Seraphina’s behest, Sister Amanda went to Portland to see the Archbishop, who, unfortunately, was out of town for an extended period. Complying with Mother Seraphina's wishes, Sister Pia sent a telegram to Sister Amanda: “If Archbishop does not come home this week telegraph to him; in the meantime get ready so that you may come home. S. Pia.” A letter of apology followed, explaining the situation in detail to the absentee Archbishop. How bad it really was may be gleaned from the Diary: “Conditions were unendurable there. The trouble in Oregon was so profound and so sharp that I could confide it only to Jesus in the tabernacle. Yes, Oregon has taught me how circumspect one must be in making foundations.”
A Sorry Looking Lot
St. Michael's opened on September 8, 1903, with 33 children spread over six grades and taught by Sisters Hedwig Infanger and Marcolina Schriever. The sisters lived at St. Joseph's and each day made the long trip by interurban car out to St. Michael's. For four years the daily excursion continued until the sisters' dismissal from St. Joseph's (Cf. Chapter Ten) worked to the benefit of St. Michael's. Rendered homeless by their termination at Saint Joseph's, the sisters rented a small house some eight blocks from St. Michael's to accommodate the community that had grown to four: Sisters Rosaria Huber, superior; Barbara Huber; Diana Biro; and Pulcheria Reichert. Monthly rental payments ($13.00) proved a challenge, as so few children paid tuition—the Wagner, Merten and Thill offspring providing the main financial support.
Sister Diana taught Grades One to Four and Sister Rosaria, Five to Eight, in addition to holding the dual responsibilities of principal and superior. Monday through Friday Sister Pulcheria commuted to Sacred Heart where she taught music, and Sister Barbara served the little community as cook. To Sister Diana, youngest member of the group, fell the custodial task of sweeping the two classrooms daily, as well as the bulk of convent duties—cleaning house, mending clothes and helping with the laundry and ironing.
Early accounts of life at St. Michael's spark the imagination. The snugness of the little house demanded a degree of agility on the part of the occupants. "Bedrooms" were upstairs under the eaves. Lodged between the staircase and the exterior walls of the house were two beds, one to the right of the stairway and one to the left. To retire was a dual enterprise: one member had to climb on the bed and hold aloft a chair so that the other could squeeze her way between the banister and the wall. The alternative was to stand on the chair at the foot of the bed and jump! The "closet" was a rope tied around the brick chimney that ran through the center of the attic floor to the roof. Over the rope the sisters had draped sheets to protect their white habits from the brick dust. To reach the "closet" one had to crawl through a small opening making sure that a wayward foot did not go through the ceiling below.
In the absence of a chapel, the sisters turned the tiny parlor into an oratory, its one window adorned with a lace curtain, which did not prohibit passersby from bunching on the sidewalk to watch the sisters at prayer. The community attended daily Mass at St. Vincent's, the nearest church, rising early to catch the first electric car of the day from Redondo Beach. The pre-dawn exodus was perforce a necessity, as the smell of the freshly caught fish carried by a later San Pedro car was too much of a challenge for empty stomachs. Arrived at St. Vincent's, the sisters made their contemplation until Mass time. On returning home, they breakfasted on black coffee and dry bread; then, rain or shine, they set out through tall grass and hay fields to walk the distance to school. On Sundays they worshipped with St. Michael's Catholic community, as Mass was celebrated in a nearby home by a priest from the Cathedral.
Fortunately, living in the little house did not endure for long. Once more the Wagner contingent came to the sisters' relief when Peter Thill offered to build a more comfortable home on his Manchester Avenue property, a short distance from the school. The new house was a spatial, as well as financial relief. Not only was it larger, but it came rent-free! Although the strain was somewhat alleviated, the sisters' monetary problems did not disappear. When Mother Pia came to visit, she reproved a sister for having only soup for dinner at noon. Under the table the cook nudged the corrected one and whispered, “Nothing else in the house; wait until after school” when teachers would be recruited to visit the neighboring farmhouses to beg bread and potatoes. Distressed when she discovered how poorly the sisters were living, Mother Pia made arrangements with Sacred Heart convent to assist the sisters at St. Michael's with donations of food. From then on, they fared better, but not always. On one occasion when potato salad was on the menu, the cook mistakenly substituted machine oil for olive oil. The long-suffering community attributed the unpalatable dish to an absence of vinegar, a not unusual circumstance, given their limited funds. “A sorry looking lot” was Sister Diana's description of the community that evening.
Catastrophe!
Catastrophe struck early on the morning of April 18, 1906, when at 5:18 a.m. San Francisco was rocked to its foundations by an earthquake of devastating proportions. Two shocks, registering 8.25 on the seismograph, followed within 10 seconds of each other, the first lasting 40 seconds and the second, 25. The treacherous San Andreas Fault, paralleling the central California coastline for approximately 600 miles, was the culprit, and its shifting caused damage for a distance of some 30 miles on either side of the fault.
With a penchant toward purple prose, an anonymous writer at Immaculate Conception Convent described the event:
As the first rays of the morning sun tipped the Golden Gate hills, we were startled by an unusual sound—a low rumble, chilling in its ominous tone, that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. Instantly following, the ground rose and fell, swayed and shivered with awful motion, and hell was loosened. The shrieks of women and children and the imprecations of men were drowned in the roar and crash of falling buildings, the grinding thunder of the upheaving earth, and the groaning, cracking, and splitting of timbers as homes and business places of the peerless city were being wrenched to pieces. With a last vicious tremble, as of a terrier shaking a rat, the terrible subterranean power ceased with a groaning sigh and quiveringly the earth settled to quiet, a cloud of dust arising from the shattered city. As that mantle of destruction was being borne toward the calm bay on the morning sea breeze, there was an instant of silence as the people gasped in the dumb realization of the cataclysm.
But the horror had but begun. From every direction red spears of fire shot from among the ruins, and as men rushed to the work of preservation, the blood in their veins was frozen when the pumps brought forth only air. The wracking of the earth had torn the water pipes from the ground, and with a greedy roar the flames mounted higher and leaped upon their prey with little hindrance.
The details of the ghastly conflagration, the heroic fight of the people to save the city, the suffering and privations of the tens of thousands of homeless ones, and the unexampled rush to the rescue by the American nation have been told by a thousand pens.
Although shattered glass, broken crockery, and cracked plaster were the order of the day, far greater havoc was wrought by the fire that raged throughout the city as the day wore on— overturned stoves, leaking gas pipes, and damaged electrical wires sparking the blaze. The city firemen fought valiantly to bring the flames under control, but lost the battle when water mains gave way under pressure from recurring temblors. Without water the men were helpless.
Father Victor Aertker, O.F.M., St. Anthony pastor, arrived at the Motherhouse to check on the sisters, offer Mass, and impart General Absolution. It was a solemn moment when Father asked, “Sisters, are you sorry for your sins?” and all . . . answered with a ringing: “Yes!”
At 9 a.m. word arrived at the convent that casualties were being taken to the downtown Mechanics’ Pavilion, set up as a temporary hospital. Mother Pia immediately sent three sisters to help care for the injured and comfort the dying. Armed with holy water and indulgenced crucifixes, the sisters picked their way through the still falling debris, forced to cover on foot the long route from Immaculate Conception Convent on Twenty-fourth and Guerrero Streets to the Pavilion across from the City Hall on Larkin and Market, as no streetcars were running in the city. Later in the day when fire threatened to engulf the overcrowded Pavilion, patients and caretakers were loaded into wagons and transported to the Presidio, which was out of line of the flames. Despite the efforts of San Francisco police to persuade Sister Bartholomea Decker to leave the Pavilion for her own safety, she adamantly refused until all the patients assigned to her care had been evacuated. In the afternoon four more sisters from Immaculate Conception made their way to Buena Vista Park and to Bernal Heights to assist.
All through the long and terrifying day the scene outside the Motherhouse was one of endless lines of people tramping heavily past the convent in a death-like silence. Dragging what belongings they could manage, they made their way toward Bernal Heights, the hills their only refuge. “I could not watch this sad spectacle any longer,” wrote Mother Pia in her account. . . . “The sight of so many people walking silently by was too much. At 3:00 p.m. the Blessed Sacrament was removed from the convent chapel; their Support gone, the community felt bereft. "Dies magna et amara valde!” (A terrible and exceedingly bitter day!) was Mother Pia’s description of the catastrophe.
Following a sleepless night (under community room tables for those who elected to try to rest), the sisters were notified that the fire would reach the convent sometime after 11 p.m. Little hope was held out for its preservation. As the day wore on, there was even less reason for optimism. Increasingly the sisters felt the heat of the encroaching flames and breathed with difficulty the smoke-filled air. By evening, ashes covered the streets and rooftops. Concerned for the boarders, the sisters took them to St. Paul’s and St. Anthony’s churches, which were judged out of the path of fire. For the next few days the children's “home” would be the church basements.
To save what they could, the community carried among other things the altar, altar picture and chapel stalls from the convent out to the sidewalk. From there they were carted by horse and wagon to outlying areas. Sister Pulcheria Reichert and an unidentified companion rode in a dray, holding erect the large altar picture of the Immaculate Conception. As the wagon moved slowly down Guerrero Street toward St. Anthony’s, people knelt in the street invoking the Virgin’s protection in their affliction. Meantime, the sisters at home buried smaller articles, such as Office books, candlesticks and statues, in the convent garden, the safest place the sisters could think of on short notice.
Just before nightfall, the word they had been fearing arrived. Although water flowed in the streets from broken water mains, not a drop was available to put out the fires. Dynamite was the only alternative! St. James Church on Twenty-third and Guerrero, one block north of the convent, was scheduled for destruction at midnight and the Motherhouse at 2:00 a.m. By then the fire was already at Twentieth Street. The sisters sat outside on the convent steps, watching tongues of flame begin to appear over the crest of the hill and listening to the sound of explosions as the dynamiting drew closer. “No sister wept or complained,” wrote Mother Pia. “I went with good Mother Seraphina into the middle of the street to see better the terrible spectacle, and it was in truth a frightening beauty—the stately, beautiful tower of St. James Church against the red sky.”
But the sisters were not to see their convent destroyed! Two factors were decisive in saving both St. James Church and Immaculate Conception Convent: a sudden shift in the wind and the discovery of an unbroken water main in the neighborhood. “God preserved us!” rejoiced Mother Pia. “How can we thank Him?” Recalling her feelings as she reentered the convent for a little rest late that night, she wrote: “Am unable to describe my feelings of gratitude to God, as I once more ascended the steps and entered the room from which I had taken leave with a saddened heart. At six o’clock I got up and sang: “Jesus lives, Jesus lives, Alleluia, Jesus lives!” This was my expression of joy and, if possible, I would have shouted it to the whole world.