The Missionary Sisters of Service gathered on Sunday to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of their founder, Fr John Corcoran Wallis.
Ballarat Bishop Mark Freeman celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving for Fr Wallis at St Thomas the Apostle, Blackburn.
Among those present were Missionary Sisters of Service, members of the MSS Stewardship Council, some of Fr Wallis’s nieces and nephews, including Bernadette Wallis MSS, and many friends whose lives had been shaped by his ministry.
Welcoming everyone, Sr Stancea Vichie MSS reflected on the joy of gathering together within a parish where several sisters worship.
She described Fr Wallis as “a remarkable man” who spent his life in “love and service” of people across Australia and beyond.
“He lived the spirit of the Gospels and the vision of Vatican II,” she said. “He really lived it to the full.”
Fr John Corcoran Wallis was a diocesan priest of the Hobart Archdiocese. He was a gifted spiritual director whose ministry profoundly influenced generations of priests, religious and lay people.
Ahead of his time in pastoral outreach following the Second Vatican Council, Fr Wallis encouraged the Church to “go to people wherever they are”, living his conviction that the Gospel was to be found not only within church walls but out in the “highways and byways” of Australia.
In his homily, Bishop Freeman reflected on Fr Wallis’s extraordinary faith and the way he responded wholeheartedly to God’s invitation throughout his life.
Drawing on the Scriptures of the day, Bishop Freeman said Fr Wallis heard God’s call to “come”, “listen” and “give them something to eat yourselves”.
That invitation led him to found the Missionary Sisters of Service so that isolated families might encounter the Gospel and “come to the fullness of life”.
Bishop Freeman also spoke movingly of visiting Fr Wallis during a difficult period late in his life, recalling that even in the depths of suffering, “nothing could come between him and the love of God made visible in Christ”.
Reflecting on one of Fr Wallis’s best-known expressions, Bishop Freeman said that for Fr John, mystery was “not a problem that has to be solved, but rather a deep encounter to be entered into”.
He concluded simply with Fr John’s familiar words: “Mystery, mystery, mystery.”
FULL STORY
Remembering Fr John Wallis, 25 years on (By Fiona Basile, Missionary Sisters of Service)
