Yesterday's vision leads to today's vision - New Admin Building at St Ursula's Kingsgrove Named Brudazzo crucifix brudazzo

 

Mrs Mary Leask Principal of St. Ursula’s College Kingsgrove, reflecting on her pilgrimage to Brescia, the countryside where St. Angela Merici lived, writes about vision and the transformative influence it has on lives.

 
Vision : the faculty or state of being able to “see”. The ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom. To imagine...
 

Most organisations have a vison statement which tries to capture their hope for the future. You can sometimes see this vision in glossy brochures or even on stationery, as ways to keep the vision at the front of everyone’s thinking.

We hear about religious visions like those of the little children of Fatima who “saw” visions of Mary and were canonised on 13th May for their faith in those visions.

 

jacinta franscisco

These two very young children, Francisco and Jacinta were part of a family where faith and prayer were a daily part of their life. They were tending sheep with their cousin, Lucia, when the apparitions are said to have occurred in 1916 in the fields of Fátima, Portugal. At the time of the apparition, Francisco was 9 years old and Jacinta was 7. The process of canonization for these children had to overcome arguments about whether or not children could even be considered saints. Their story begins quite unremarkably - children in a paddock, but the way their life was transformed by their vision of Mary and the way in which they in turn have transformed the whole world, is extraordinary.
While I was away on pilgrimage last year, I went to the place where St Angela is said to have had her vision, for the company of women consecrated to God that she would form.

 It is in a place called Brudazzo - the place of vision

It is nestled in a lovely part of Brescia, Italy – close yet seemingly removed from what is now the main town. Today there is a retreat centre there and the first thing you notice about the retreat centre itself is the quiet stillness that surrounds the place and we were almost embarrassed to make any sound as we walked up to the front door. We spent some time in quiet prayer in the chapel before going outside to the olive grove.

Olives are a relatively ugly tree – the trunk is not smooth and the branches flay out in all kinds of direction. When parts break off, a new branch doesn’t grow back and it looks quite straggly. The olive grove is relatively unkempt
– no guiding pathways, no smooth steps, rather, several pathways often with moss-covered bits of rock and some old timber steps leading through the trees up to the top.

I could imagine Angela having gathered the olives, having some quiet time – perhaps a siesta – as is the custom in many parts of Europe and it was while she was there that she had her vision. She saw her sister who had died; she saw angels and she saw the company of women. As a result of this experience she knew what course her life now needed to take in order to better serve Jesus.

Angela channelled this experience into the way she created and sustained the vision she had for her company which included a radical departure from the usual norm of convent life into a consecrated life lived within family and community.
For St Angela, this vision was a view of the future: her future was with women through the ordinariness of their lives being able to do the work of Christ and to be Christ for others right here and right now. Angela had her vision while she was at ”work” – perhaps she had stopped to have a rest or perhaps she was having a quiet prayer, she was open in that stillness to the presence of God.
Vision is transformational at a foundational level. It asks us to name who we are and what we are about.
So as our new administration building rises from the street level, it is appropriate to name it:

 Brudazzo - the place of vision

so that anyone who comes to our College will know who we are and what we are about.

 

Knarled olive treed