No year begins without its reminder to all of us that we share a collective responsibility for the charism
of mercy – a gift that God has entrusted to us on behalf of our world. Mercy is not something we can
hold to ourselves; it is one of the gifts of the Spirit, to be cherished because it helps to reveal, to us and
to those we encounter in love, what God wants for our world. Mercy makes God’s love visible; mercy
is our mission, but it is God’s first of all – God’s gift to a world that has been created in love, for
love. Mercy is a legacy we have inherited from the pioneering women who came to this land, knowing
next to nothing of the life that awaited them. What they left us has survived and flourished, only to
the extent that we have continued in the McAuley tradition to divide and share, and to search for new
patterns of ministry in an unfolding future.

The charism of mercy cannot last if we simply keep doing what we have always done. Sustaining
mission involves us in a never-ending process of re-inventing ourselves. Mercy survives when, like
the rest of creation, it enters the constant cycle of letting go, dying to old ways, and being reborn in
new forms.