Celebrating Sr. Agnes McColgan’s 70th Jubilee
Leading up to our July 27 celebration, we will be highlighting a different Jubilarian each week from now until July 22. Sr. Agnes McColgan (70 years), Sr. Ann Nielsen (70 years), Sr. Evelyn Eckhardt (60 years), Sr. Maureen Hurley (60 years), and Sr. Rosemarie Greco (60 years) will all be celebrated as they hit this monumental milestone.
As Sr. Agnes McColgan celebrates her 70th Jubilee as a Daughter of Wisdom, she reflects on the moments that stand out to her.
A Reflection on Life in Wisdom
Looking back on my life in Wisdom, what stands out for me is everything that has led me to love this world: quiet retreat days spent by the ocean – a place I first came to love when my father took us (we were a family of 8 children) to the waters of Shelter Island to go clamming.
I recall some Retreat directors I have had over the years who enriched my life and helped me figure out what really matters. My sister Maureen and I shared a childhood friendship that lasted into our adult life. One day, she gave me a framed text of a blessing: “May your hopes fly on the wings of possibility.” Maureen died too soon, but her blessing has always hung on the wall of my room and in my heart –helping me to believe in what is possible: my years of being the Cook in convent kitchens from Maine to Virginia, but also coming to realize my own managerial skills in the process.
As an LPN, I would go on to love many: the Children at St. Mary’s who gave me so much love back, memories of Sr. Mary Cassidy, DW and her fun-loving ways, Fr. Tom Quinlan, who injected real-life into Liturgy at St. Mary’s in Norfolk, VA, and brought his parishioners to a new level of faith in a loving Jesus. Looking back on my life in Wisdom, I am so grateful to my Leadership who permitted me to care for my aging mother, who needed my help with Philip, my brother who had Down Syndrome.
I recall my retirement days at St. Mary Gate of Heaven, where I gathered with many lay women and seniors like me to share prayer in our Wisdom Circles. Then, there was one final privileged friendship I will always treasure with a woman named Isabel, who had no family and asked me to be her friend until her death. My Life in Wisdom has taught me who I am and what it means to love this world.
A Tribute by Sr. Ann Gray
“When I think of Agnes McColgan and her life with Wisdom, what comes to mind and what I want us to celebrate is her deep compassion for children in special need of love and care.
When she was a high school senior, she would visit the children in the ward at St. Charles in Hick Street, Brooklyn. The ward was filled with children in body casts, and saddest of all were the babies with Hydrocephalus who could only stretch their arms upward in search of love. Agnes claims her vocation to religious life was nourished in this environment where so many Daughters of Wisdom dedicated their days to caring for these special children.
And so, Agnes, over these 70 years, engaged in the practice of compassion – a compassion grounded in the real. As an LPN her services were needed in St. Mary’s Children’s home to work with children with Down syndrome. She had a special interest in this population because her youngest brother, Philip, also had Down syndrome. These children, whom no one ever visited, stole her heart away. She knew so many by name, but she will tell you stories about two: Marie, who was two years old, and Peter, who was four, who came with her on vacation to meet Philip and to experience what it felt like to belong and to be loved.
And then there was the preemie baby, David, who was dropped off at Kings Daughters Hospital to begin his life in an incubator. Agnes was working in the baby unit and was assigned to follow him from suckling to tube feeding until he grew into a healthy child. Finally, he was adopted by loving parents, but first, he was loved by Agnes.
Our Jubilarian Agnes McColgan has lived by love.”
Sr. Ann Gray, DW