Harking still to ‘Call of the Spirit’ after 100 years

IT was the “call of the Spirit” that brought four young German Catholic nuns to the little-known town of Tayum in the province of Abra, where a school was urgently needed and faith was deemed waning.

One hundred years after the nuns’ arrival in the Philippines, and long after they were gone, the same Spirit is moving Filipino women to keep the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSpS) ever discerning and responsive, empowering more women and some of the country’s neglected indigenous groups.

“[The mission] came from very simple beginnings and it has grown … Many people have been touched by the life of the sisters, who contributed a lot to the education of young people, to healthcare and also to the Church, [and] that is worth celebrating,” said Sr. Maria Theresia Hornemann, the congregation’s superior general.

Hornemann, representing the general leadership team in Rome, flew to the Philippines to join the festivities that marked SSpS’ 100th year of missionary presence in the country.

The festivities culminated on Jan. 15, the feast of the congregation’s German founder, St. Arnold Janssen, SVD, at the School of the Holy Spirit in Quezon City. But the centennial celebration began earlier with cultural activities in Tayum.

There, Hornemann and Sr. Mary Eden Panganiban, SSpS provincial leader, were welcomed with a bamboo raft-riding activity on the Abra River—an excursion that gave them an idea of the travails faced by their predecessors in establishing the then young congregation in the Philippines.

“We were trying to imagine how these young European women, in their heavy, dark blue habits, adjusted to the climate, language and culture. From the chronicles we read, they did not complain about the difficulties they experienced,” Panganiban said in an interview with the Inquirer on Jan. 15.

She said Sisters Cyrilla Hullermann, Hieronyma Schulte-Ladbeck, Cleta Heuwes and Cortona Ruther set foot on Tayum on Jan. 16, 1912, after traveling for months on board a military ship from Germany and at least nine hours on a raft on the Abra River.

Report from Inquirer.Net