The virtuous life of Sister Paschal
LATE LAST month, Sister Mary Paschal Figueroa died at more than 100 years of age. A Jamaican of middle-class background, she was a nun, a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, for over 80 years. As we thrash about to determine what kind of lives, what core values and styles are in sync with national dreams and personal aspirations, the example of this simple woman deserves recounting and emulation.
There is little drama, nothing showy, and everything meaningful in her story. A never-can-done love affair with her God and an openness to see Jesus in beautiful Jamaican faces, she found happiness in giving herself to the young, sick and vulnerable.
Thus fascinated with the Creator and creation, she cared not to earn a penny for herself, probably never owned more than two changes of clothes, yet moulded and lifted the lives of thousands who otherwise would likely have been denied the opportunity to thrive.
Sister Paschal, hardly over five feet in height, was a long-time principal of St Catherine High School, still probably the largest high school in the land. She was an institution builder at a time when, for young people in the environs of Spanish Town, if you didn’t make it to St Jago High School, there would be little chance of a good high-school experience.
Among those whose lives and opportunities were fashioned at St Catherine High during Sister’s tenure are Prime Minister Holness and, I believe, Mrs Holness, as well as Archbishop Kenneth Richards. She resolutely and sensitively demanded the best of everyone she directed. She had a sharp tongue – not a forked tongue. And she could laugh too.
For her and the several other women and men, of all religious faiths or deep human commitment, the good life is not a ‘party’, as one newspaper characterised it recently. Joy is found in commitment to people and a cause, not in frippery and show-off.
NO PIOUS SAPS
Sister Paschal was no pious saps. A disciplinarian of herself and all others, she was a prodigious businesswoman who could multiply loaves and fishes with the small money received from government and charitable sources. She was one of the best beggars I knew – nothing for herself, everything to build up the Kingdom of God’s Jamaican people.
When she retired from schoolwork, she volunteered as an administrator of St Joseph’s Hospital, which she guided for many years, facilitating, among other advancements, the Consie Walters Cancer Hospice, the first of its kind locally.
This piece comes as we all experience the vulnerability of the virus which, worse than a hurricane, respects none of our ordinary life defences. It is time too when, shaken by fear, fragility, economic downturn, no carnival, futile gambling and general powerlessness, we ask ourselves what constitutes the virtuous life, the purposeful way going forward with whatever time is left for each of us.
Sister Paschal’s life path of generosity of spirit is duplicated all through our history and present – though less counted, and thus less emulated, in these times. Another nun of the same ilk, Franciscan Sister Claire Marie Figueroa, OSF, also passed last week.
Pope Francis put our predicament this way recently.
“The worst virus is that of selfish indifference – spread by the thought that life is better if it is better for me, and that everything will be fine if it is fine for me. The virus begins there and ends up selecting one person over another, discards the poor and challenged, and sacrifices ‘those’ (we would say ‘dem’!) on the altar of what it suits you to call progress or prosperity.”
Rest in Peace, Sister Mary Paschal RSM. Your life and others like yours are the antidote to this systemic malady. May many come to fill your shoes.