Our Spirituality
Mary Potter was given a special ‘gift’ from the Holy Spirit. This gift or ‘Charism’ is an insight which is unusual, spontaneous and creative. It was a conviction given to her through prayer.
This insight and focus centres around the Mother of God, a mother who stayed by her Son Jesus as he was dying on the Cross. Mary Potter wrote to her director that she felt a new Religious Order having Calvary as it model, was needed in the Church, and spoke of her increasing awareness of a call to “help save souls in their last hour.”
Mary also wrote:
“I cannot but feel I have had a call from God to devote myself to help save souls in their last hour. I have been drawn so strongly to pray for the dying and I believe it to be a work appointed for me; perpetual prayer for the dying.”
This grace – to pray for the dying was developed through the insights she received from her reflections on Calvary. She saw that prayer for the dying would be in union with Mary at the foot of the Cross on Calvary, to honour the Precious Blood that was shed for us, and to live lives consecrated to God.
Mary Potter wanted her Sisters to ‘have a mother’s heart’, to tend with compassionate care the most isolated, abandoned or wounded people. She wanted us to ‘go to Jesus through Mary’, to understand the depth of the love of Mary for her son, Jesus.
Mary became more aware of the ‘Maternal’ love of God. In her later writing, Mary spoke to the Sisters about being ‘mothers’:
“You must be true mothers; mothers by suffering, even until death. Offer your life to give birth to children in the spirit of the Mother-like Shepherd who tells us ‘I lay down my life for my sheep’.”
Mary Potter asked us to ‘despair of no-one’, but to have a mother’s heart and tend with compassion, the most isolated, abandoned or wounded person. To constantly pray for the dying, whoever the dying are – those who are dying physically, spiritually, emotionally or psychologically.
Mary Potter wanted her Sisters to “Go where you are needed” to bring the Mother Love of God to all in need. When we do go where we are needed, we go, Mary wrote, knowing that “it is not the greatness of what we do, but the way we perform it that will render us pleasing to God.”