Cause of Parish Visitors Foundress a Good Fit for Year of Faith

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Before there was the New Evangelization, there was Mother Mary Teresa Tallon and the order she founded, the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate. The order of contemplative-missionaries is charged with becoming closer to God through prayer. The sisters spread that bond with others through word and witness.

On April 16, the cause for beatification and canonization officially opened in the archdiocese for Mother Mary Teresa. She is now recognized as Servant of God.

Mother Carole Marie Troskowski, P.V.M.I., superior general of the Parish Visitors, credited “Divine Providence” with introducing the cause of Mother Mary Teresa “in a time of the new evangelization, which is put before the whole Church as of greatest importance.”

Born in the upstate hamlet of Hanover in 1867, Mother Mary Teresa was determined from age 12 to join a religious order, despite discouragement at home for such a choice. At 19, she entered the Holy Cross Sisters, remaining with them for 33 years. On feast of the Assumption in 1920, with the approval of appropriate ecclesiastical authorities, she founded the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate.

Mother Carole Marie said her order’s charism is imbued with the words and example of Mother Mary Teresa.

“God showed her how to live her life,” Mother Carole Marie said. “We have her example before us, and her words that she spoke to us. To be contemplative means to know the person of Jesus Christ and to love him greatly and to make him greatly loved.” The sisters carry this out through door-to-door visiting in parishes, as their name implies; catechetical work; and evangelization.

Mother Carole Marie said now is the time for the beatification and canonization process to begin because “it’s a time when many of the lay people are ready to do direct evangelization.”

Her hope for the cause, and for the Church, is what Mother Mary Teresa hoped herself—“that every single Catholic Christian is called to communion with love with Jesus.” She said the sisters go out to “invite others to the fullness God intends for them. Our motivation is to go out and offer to them everything God wants for them.”

Cardinal Dolan approved the cause for beatification and canonization for Mother Mary Teresa Tallon to open in the archdiocese. Serving as vice-postulator is Sister Maria Catherine, P.V.M.I.

“The diocesan tribunal officials who would be working on the cause officially took their oath before the cardinal,” said Sister Maria Catherine, who also took an oath April 16.

Those on the tribunal will now interview witnesses who knew Mother Mary Teresa. Since Mother Mary died in 1954, just two sisters in the order who knew Mother Mary Teresa are still living—one is 99 and the other is 92. They have already given written testimony.

Materials testifying about her heroic virtue in life, and her holiness, must be gathered. “Because ours is a historical case, we don’t have many witnesses, so we rely heavily on persons who knew sisters who knew mother, and sisters or others who have been affected by her spirituality and charism,” Sister Maria Catherine said.

To publicize Mother Mary Teresa’s cause, the sisters have included information on their website (parishvisitorsisters.org), in their magazine and on prayer cards. A guild for the cause is being formed.

“We are trying to make it known to people we meet in the parishes,” Sister Maria Catherine said.

Sisters who did not have a chance to meet Mother Mary Teresa are not strangers to her. Books written by Mother Mary Teresa, both published and unpublished, are used in formation. “We have a short reading each day from one of mother’s works, which really grounds us in our contemporary-missionary lives,” Sister Maria Catherine said.

Her grave is at Marycrest in Monroe, the motherhouse of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate, and many of the sisters pray at her grave each day.

There are 28 sisters at Marycrest, and three sisters at a convent in the Bronx. Other Parish Visitor convents are in Phoenix, Ariz., and in the Philippines and Nigeria, where two are located. The congregation has some 60 sisters.

“Mother taught us we are to be contemplative through the streets,” said Maria Catherine, who noted that people often think of contemplative sisters as cloistered.

“A contemplative is a person who has a deep love for God and gives much time in prayer, a deep prayer life,” she said.

To achieve that, the sisters only speak in the convent if words are necessary. At other times they are in conversation in their hearts with God. Daily holy hours, great devotion to the Rosary, and daily Mass are part of the sisters’ lives.

“Our silence is not to keep our mouth shut, it’s an exterior silence so interiorly we can be conversing with Jesus,” Sister Maria Catherine said.

“We are to bring that contemplative love that we have to the parish, to the people that we meet,” she said.

Sister Maria Catherine shared a personal story about Mother Mary Teresa Tallon. Before she entered religious life, she was having doubts if she could live the life of the Parish Visitors. She was given a photo of Mother Mary Teresa, and each day she looked at the picture and prayed.

“There was something about her eyes,” she said. “I knew that she was a woman who understood, a woman who had a great empathy for everyone; great compassion and great love for anyone who wanted to love God. She seemed to be telling me she would help me along the way.”

Sister Maria Catherine said, “We are so thrilled that her cause is moving at this time of new evangelization and also during the Year of Faith, because she had a zeal for spreading the true faith. We are so happy the Lord is seeing fit to bring her charism to the fore, to be more noticed in the Church in these times.”