Mother Frances Streitel: Her riches were the Lord

Amalia Frances Rose Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, aka Sister Angela Streitel: In my last blog on Mother Frances I mentioned that she was living for something beyond herself and that she lived her life for others. The Other for whom she lived her life, obviously, is Christ. She wanted to belong totally to the Lord by how she lived her life here on earth. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was to come between her and her Beloved. She’d give her all. One of the means she used was that of holy poverty. Her riches were Christ. Her “Enough” was Christ.  So she treated material things as unimportant. She wanted to be as detached from material things as humanly possible, as was St. Francis of Assisi, her model of living the vow of poverty. One of the things she did as superior of the Marian Institute was to ask the sisters to exchange rooms, taking nothing with them in the exchange except their personal linen, so as to practice the virtue of detachment. Her request was not appreciated by many of the Sisters who denounced her to her Superior General. I recall in my earlier religious life having nothing but three habits, a bible, the Constitution of the Congregation, and my personal “linens.”  It was a very freeing experience. My joy was complete. I had fallen in love with the Lord and the Lord alone. I could move from place to place with one suitcase!  My joy, to this day, is simplicity of living, having little and always trying to trim down to only the essentials. I tell myself: all you need, Dorothy Ann, is the Bible. How I wish!