TWO things happened to Sister Margaret Therese Cusack when she was a teenager which made her want to devote her life to the Catholic Church – a death and a sign.
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When the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart came to comfort her neighbour and playmate after his mother passed, she was moved by their compassion.
“It was the most terrible of circumstances,” Sr Margaret said. “But when they entered the room, the atmosphere changed.”
Now, after five decades of service to the order, she attributes this moment as the human inspiration behind her decision to enter the convent.
It was a sign which triggered Sr Margaret’s spiritual inspiration.
“But it wasn’t a vision or anything romantic like that,” she said.
It was from reading the Agony in the Garden within her Lilyfield church. It quoted from the story of the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus found his disciples asleep on the night of his arrest.
“It said, ‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’” Sr Margaret recalled. “And I thought, I want to watch with you for more than one hour. I will watch my entire life with you.”
On March 19, St Francis Xavier Catholic Church celebrated 50 years since Sr Margaret followed through on that teenage decision and took her vows.
Along with 29 other sisters from across Australia and New Zealand, Sr Margaret had celebrated her Golden Jubilee in Sydney earlier this year.
But the Moree service was held so another inspiration behind Sr Margaret’s life-long devotion could attend, her mother.
Stella Cusack came to Moree from Sydney in the wake of the 1971 floods because she wanted to teach among poor rural and Aboriginal children.
It is no coincidence then that her daughter chose to become a Josephite. The order was founded by Australia’s only saint, Mary MacKillop, and established schools and welfare institutions across the country, focused on addressing disadvantage in the bush.
Today, Sr Margaret teaches music to a number of Moree students.
As a sister she has taught everything from biology to theology from Bellambi to Toowoomba. Her journey as a Josephite has also taken her as far afield as Ireland and East Timor.
While driving up a winding mountain track in East Timor she heard the story of Sister Joan Westblade, from the Little Company of Mary Congregation.
The Australian sister was sheltering a group of Timorese children from the bloodbath which followed the country’s independence from Indonesia.
“She could hear the dogs and the guns and the soldiers closing in all night,” Sr Margaret said. “When the soldiers arrived, one of them – a muslim – put himself between the guns and the children and he said, ‘if you want to kill them you need to kill me first’.
“And the commander said to the sister, ‘you must disappear into the hills now’.”
Sr Margaret said stories like Sr Joan’s continued to strengthen her faith.
“I grew up with Saint Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus,” she said.
Sr Margaret’s own father was hit by a stroke and left invalid when she was a teenager.
“That connection only deepens as I grow older.”
Ageing is also what drew Sr Margaret to Moree.
Her mother, though “fiercely independent” is turning 90 and Sr Margaret is her part-time carer.
But after 10 years here, Sr Margaret said her connections now went well beyond family and she still had at least a few more years of service at St Francis Xavier’s Parish.
“There is still plenty of work to be done in Moree,” she said.
