Whether you meet Sister Marie Mackey, ’84 C.S.J. inside Tuohy Hall’s auditorium hosting a Mardi Gras breakfast, at mass in the Kennedy Chapel in Burns Hall, or through an off-campus service event, one thing is immediately apparent: her love for the students of St. Joseph’s University, New York. Her care and commitment mirrors the feelings she experienced as an undergraduate student. Sister Marie, has in fact, walked many of the same hallways as current SJNY students.
A student at what was then St. Joseph’s College in the early 1980s, Sister Marie is the director of campus ministry at SJNY’s Brooklyn Campus.
“For me, returning to St. Joseph’s is a true homecoming. I have very fond memories of my years here as an undergraduate student,” said Sister Marie.
In addition to the education she received at St. Joe’s, the guidance of the Sisters of St. Joseph during her undergraduate years in Brooklyn had a lasting impact on her life’s trajectory.
Sister Marie, who took her vows at 26, holds degrees in English, education and theology and has a certification in spiritual direction. She has taught religion classes at high schools including St. Francis Prep, The Mary Louis Academy and Bishop Kearney High School, too.
“As one of the youngest sisters in the Congregation, I am honored to follow in the footsteps of the many Sisters of St. Joseph who were my teachers and mentors,” said Sister Marie. “As a student, I was the recipient of the self-emptying love of the sisters, faculty and staff as they went about the business of the day. Whether in the classroom, business office or extracurricular activities, I never doubted that I was cared about for who I was. Now, I can do the same for the new generations of students who attend St. Joe’s.”
One recent example is the ice cream social Sister Marie arranged on Monday, March 3, for students who live at SJNY’s residence hall in nearby Brooklyn Heights. (The ice cream was generously donated by a local shop, The Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory on Old Fulton Street.)
Her greatest joy, Sister Marie said, “is that St. Joseph’s continues to have that same spirit of welcome, inclusion and collaboration among the campus community.”
SJNY Mission Trip
Next week , Sister Marie and eight SJNY students will embark on a week-long service and mission trip to Chicago. The trip is sponsored, in part, by the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Joseph’s Hands Mission and Service Trips grant.
During their spring break, SJNY students, Sister Marie and her counterpart on the Long Island Campus, Jonathan Galo, will work with local community partners, volunteer at a food pantry and visit a bilingual high school.
These efforts and others undertaken by Sister Marie during her time at SJNY are reflective of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s “concern for the ‘Dear neighbor,’” she shared.
Founded in France in 1650, this year marks the 375th anniversary of the Sisters of St. Joseph. The Congregation was founded in North America in 1836 and then in Brooklyn in 1856.
Sister Marie, who has been a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph for 26 years, has visited Le Puy, France—the place where the Sisters’ story began.
“It was my second time walking the streets of LePuy and Lyon. I had many profound moments including celebrating Easter in the Cathedral in Le Puy, visiting the original kitchen of the first six sisters, praying in the Jesuit Church where Fr. Medaille, SJ often preached and reflecting in the town square where Sisters of St. Joseph were guillotined during the French Revolution,” she said.
Sister Marie also had opportunity to visit the house of Jeanne Fontbonne, which she found especially meaningful. Known to the Sisters as Mother St. John Fontbonne, she re-founded the Congregation after the tumult of the French Revolution, noted Sister Marie.
“We were able to gather in her kitchen and walk through history,” she said.
The history of her own Congregation is something Sister Marie holds dear.
“As I think about my own Brentwood Congregation, I remember the stories of our first convent at St. Mary’s Parish on Maujer Street in Brooklyn. The three sisters from Philadelphia and upstate New York arrived with very little and within two days started a school. And from that seed grew many more vocations and ministries including elementary and high schools, orphanages and hospitals and in 1916, St. Joseph’s College for Women.”
Their legacy helps guide SJNY today.
“It is humbling to stand upon the shoulders of these ‘giants’, knowing full well that they blazed a path with very little resources and made untold sacrifices to lift up the people of God and serve the Church they loved and still love,” Sister Marie concluded.
