“Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart is the founder and servant mother of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth in the Archdiocese of Boston. She lived through four wars in Middle East. In 1993, as a young lay woman, she started a lay movement called Love Your Neighbor. She invited young men and women from Christian and Muslim communities to be part of this community to serve the needs of the poor in a war-torn area. In 1995, she established the order of Marth Mariam Sisters- Missionaries of the Virgin Mary, the first order for Religious Sisters in the Assyrian Church of the East in 700 years…”
Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart
Readers of this column might recall that one of many blessings that I received when I attended the National Eucharistic Congress in the summer of 2024 was hearing a reflection given by Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart. If you have not heard that reflection – or would like to listen to it again, you can find it here.
I had never heard of Mother Olga before I heard that talk. I have since learned a few things about her background, “vocation story,” and ministry. You can learn more about Mother Olga’s story and ministry by going to the website of the Religious Community (see link above) she founded in the Archdiocese of Boston in April 2011, with the support and encouragement of Cardinal Sean O’Malley.
So, I was excited to learn, on this past Saturday, Feb. 21, that the Hallow app, as part of their “Lent Pray 40 Challenge,” was offering the opportunity to listen to (and watch) an interview that (scripture scholar) Jeff Cavins recently recorded with Mother Olga. For readers who have the Hallow app, I hope you have already watched and/or listened to the interview, or that you will find the time to do so. For those who do not have the Hallow app, you can download it for a free 90-day trial.
I hope that the interview might soon be more widely available (on YouTube, perhaps). I encourage you to listen to the interview, not only because it is a powerful testimony of “living faith,” but I think it is a unique opportunity to hear the testimony of someone who is allowing the Holy Spirit to guide her so that she may love and teach others to love as Jesus loves us. I will try to describe a few of the moments during the interview when this “unique witness” is particularly evident, so that those who have been able or will be able to listen or watch can ask themselves whether or not they agree, and those who may not have the opportunity to hear the interview can have some sense of what Mother attempts to share.
At the beginning of the interview, Mother Olga tells us that she came to this country 24 years ago in order to study and that she was not planning to stay for a long time. She found it very difficult to adjust to the cultural differences from what she was accustomed to in the Middle East, and she found it very difficult to be able to learn English – she obviously overcame those difficulties. She then describes “Cardinal Sean’s” invitation for her to begin a religious order and the four years of discernment, including an eight-day silent retreat in Guadalupe, during which, she says, “Our Lady formed my heart for this mission,” leading her to say “Yes.” She describes choosing the name for the community and that she couldn’t see herself as a “Sister of Mary,” but that she wanted “always to be her daughter.”
Jeff Cavins then asks Mother Olga about the charism of the new community. Mother speaks about her coming to this country, to Boston, just as the priest sexual abuse scandal was beginning to unfold. She says, “…there was a lot of pain in the Church at that time. People were angry and rightly so, and upset. Many chose to leave the Church. I remember telling Cardinal Sean … we can choose a charism that, if people don’t want to come to the Church, how we can bring the Church to them. She then goes on to speak about the life and witness of St. Charles de Foucauld and the “life of Nazareth,” the “hidden life of Jesus,’ the 30 years he spent in Nazareth, and how he “sanctified the people of Nazareth by just being present. That’s when I started to pray with the spirituality of St. Charles de Foucauld and the life of Nazareth. How we can create little Nazareths wherever we go and bring the presence of Christ, and hopefully, when people fall in love with Him again, then they are going to come to Him again, into His Church.”
Mother Olga goes on to describe the ministry that she and her sisters carry out in “hidden, unseen” places, such as eight non-Catholic Nursing Homes where they bring Communion to 400 Catholic residents on a weekly basis, getting to know those residents and (sometimes) their families. She tells a beautiful story about a family being comforted to know that their Mom had returned to the practice of the faith when four sisters attended the Mom’s wake service. Mother and her sisters also minister at hospitals where children are receiving treatment for cancer.
Thirteen minutes into the interview, Mother Olga says, “Without Him, I am nothing. If it is not with the prayer life, with spiritual life, with saints … Mother Teresa used to say, ‘We are not social workers,’ we do what we do because we do it with Jesus and for Jesus. So, some of the challenges for me, again, are the current culture. How can I help people to understand…” It would probably take me two or three pages to try to describe the following two minutes of the interview, when Mother Olga tries to describe the help and inspiration she receives from St. Teresa of Calcutta (St. Mother Teresa), one of her “spiritual heroes,” and how she feels Mother Teresa’s “closeness to me often.”
I have tried to describe about 20 percent of Mother Olga’s testimony and beautiful stories in a 24-minute interview. It’s one thing for you to read my attempt to describe Mother Olga’s testimony, but it is very much something else to hear Mother speak in her own voice. I hope you will have that opportunity. Another reason that I wanted to write about this interview on the Hallow app is that it points to the vibrancy of our Catholic Faith and Church, despite all the challenges that we face in today’s world and culture. 1.7 million people have joined, are participating in, and praying together as part of Hallow’s Lenten challenge. We can try to prayerfully imagine the impact that Mother Olga’s testimony will have on the lives of those who, not only hear her, but consider that Jesus is calling each of us to an intimate relationship with Him, so that we can get to know Him and know His love and tell others about Him, as St. Mother Teresa did and as Mother Olga of Sacred Heart does in such a powerful way.
