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A visitor noting the ice-cream sodas might conclude that all has changed since the days of the formidable Teresa, who 400 years ago traveled the rutted roads of Spain inveighing against lax monasteries, chivvying Pope and emperor to institute reform, and scandalizing her squeamish sisters by insisting on the discalced (barefoot) rule. But St. Teresa, who wrote some of Christianity's most exalted mystical prose, and often was in such a state of religious ecstasy that she felt herself levitated from the ground, was also gay and relentlessly practical. Once, feeling joyful, she led her nuns in an impromptu dance, but she had a born executive's capacity for administrative detail, down to the latest cookstove ("A real treasure for all the friars and nuns"). The essence of monasticism has always been a fascinating marriage between the spiritual and the practical. History's greatest monastic figures not only knew how to suffer for God; they knew how to organize for Him.
Frontiers of Civilization. Maryknoll's organization began, strictly speaking, with Augustine, reformed man of the world who became the famed bishop of Hippo (354-430). The Vandals were nearing the gates of his city, and Roman civilization was crumbling, but St. Augustine had a special problem. A group of nuns in Hippo had asked him for advice, and, as usual, he obliged at length. Augustine wrote them, among other things, how to keep moths out of their clothes (shake them out), how to take care of their laundry (hire washerwomen), and admonished them to "harken without din and wrangling" to their superiors.
Maryknoll, in 1955, still follows such sage advice, as do all orders, whether under the Augustinian rule or any of the others—Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican, etc. Changes have occurred in 1,500 years. The Maryknoll sisters combat moths by using nylon and other mothproof garb whenever possible, and they do their own laundry in gleaming washing machines. At no time is there any din or wrangling; most meals are taken in silence, except on special days, or when the Mother General looks out the window and says: "It's too nice a day to be silent."
The missionary sisters of Maryknoll know, as did St. Augustine, that the survival of civilization always depends on faith and discipline, often on details.
When Maryknoll was formally recognized by the Vatican, only 35 years ago, it had two houses and 35 sisters. Today, the order has 16 missions in the U.S. and 61 abroad, including five hospitals, eight high schools, two colleges, four refugee centers, with more mission outposts being added all the time on all the frontiers of civilization.