Nothing is impossible for God’s mercy

“And have you seen what is happening in beautiful Maui now? It makes me sick to think of it.” These laments from an elderly religious sister — 91 years old, to be exact — were shared with me just a few days after wildfires devastated the historic town of Lahaina, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The subject is close to the heart of the elderly but otherwise sharp Sister Jean, who was giving a tour of the Shrine and Museum of St. Marianne Cope in Syracuse, New York, where Marianne lived and worked after joining the Third Order Sisters of St. Francis. For though Mother Marianne was highly successful in her vocation — she had become mother provincial of her congregation in New York — it was to Hawaii that she and a handful of other sisters traveled by choice to minister to the leper colonies there. Illustrating this change in venue from upstate New York to the Pacific Ocean, the walls of the small museum and shrine were covered with maps of the Hawaiian Islands and supersized photographs of blue water and lush greenery. It was a place that would become a pivotal part of Mother Marianne’s story . For it was there that she and her fellow sisters spent their days doing the unthinkable — caring for children who, stricken with the contagious disease, had been separated from their parents and the rest of their families. More than just caring for them, the sisters became family to those who were ill and forgotten.