St. Mary’s Celebrates 150 Years

It was standing room only for the Festival Eucharist at St. Mary’s Convent Chapel on Feb. 7. People of all ages gathered for the sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of the Community of St. Mary. 

With the Rev. Jo Ann Barker as celebrant and the Rev. Robert Hughes as preacher, members of the congregation shared the Eucharist while accompanied by the organ and a five-piece ensemble of community musicians. 

In his sermon, Hughes told the congregation about the origins of the Community of St. Mary. It began at the dedication of the Mother Harriet Cannon and four other sisters at St. Michael’s Church, Bloomingdale, New York in 1865, as the first Episcopal Benedictine monastic community for women in the United States. 

The sisters went to Memphis in 1871 during the yellow fever epidemic, and four of the sisters were among “the martyrs of Memphis.” 

Sisters arrived in Sewanee in 1887 with the founding of St. Mary’s on-the-Mountain, a school for impoverished children. Hughes said that “these events established the religious life in the Episcopal Church in the United States, Tennessee and Sewanee, respectively.” 

Currently, as part of the Southern Province in Tennessee, the sisters continue their ministry of addressing the spiritual and temporal needs of society with a special emphasis on connecting faith with the stewardship of the environment. After the service, everyone shared a meal and their memories of their life at St. Mary’s.

­—Reported by Harriet Runkle
Special to the Messenger