About Sisters of Mary Immaculate
The foundation for the Sisters of Mary Immaculate was laid by His Grace late Archbishop Most Rev. Dr. Oswald Gomis in 2002. He explained me his desire for this foundation as he insisted that there have been two local congregations when his Eminence Most Rev. Dr. Thomas Benjamin Cardinal Cooray was the Archbishop of Colombo. His Eminence has tried to amalgamate these two local congregations with some foreign congregations. I was told by His Grace Bishop Gomis that later His Eminence was deceived by this foreign congregation and as a result the local congregations have lost many of their vocations. His Grace Bishop Gomis intended somehow to restore this by founding a local community, respecting the vision of his late Eminence Thomas Cardinal Cooray and honouring him he was tended to name the sisters ‘Mary Immaculate’.
His Grace Bishop Gomis wanted from the sisters to develop a deep spirituality through the education specially to provide a helping hand to those who are in great need and those who are not able to express it. As I firmly know that it was echoed in his mind that he wanted the sisters to follow the steps of Jesus very closed by, as Jesus walked throughout Galilee and help the poor and needy, he wanted the sisters to do the same by reached the poor and needy and he thoroughly rejected the method of helping the poor by sitting on a chair. It was his Grace’s desire to see the entire life style of Jesus in the Sisters of Mary Immaculate but not partially. He wished that the Sisters live through their deep prayer life the bond Jesus had with His Father. He believed that the modern world today is losing the value of prayer, meditation, reading the word of God, reciting the liturgy of hours (Breviary) etc., and he often repeated that man is nothing without God so especially religious men and women must be armed with the prayer life and he wanted the sisters have a such a life style withing the community, in few word the search of ‘God alone’. He demands to revive the religious life as it was in the first Christian community and not to being trapped only to focus on the social work. Naming the sisters ‘Mary Immaculate’ he reminds how mother Mary was closed to the first disciples of Christ and how they moved with that confidence being so closed to her. He very often repeated that the sisters have to live their first apostolic mission in front of the Holy Eucharist because how much we filled ourselves with the love of Christ can convey the same amount of love to the world, otherwise we will carry our emptiness wherever we go. His Grace, was longing for this deep spiritual life in the community and the deep community live in the community, such as an equal respect to everyone, having the same food in the community, no one is above the other and
sharing the same fraternal love with everyone and wearing the same habit without and differences. When it comes to the habit (dress) of the sisters was designed to convey the idea of total belonging to God. There is no exact shape but looks like a cross brings the simplicity to the community life because our community is built on simplicity, humbleness and obedience. His Grace has always the idea of attending the sisters to the school of Jesus. He believed that the sisters should learn from Jesus by remaining close to him just as Martha and Maria. He said as Saint Benedict said it is impotent to admit to the ‘school of God’, as Saint Francis insist to see the simplicity and humbleness through our life and as Saint Theresa of child Jesus said ‘turn every act a moment of love’. With his vision we could spread our mission to foreign land with the blessing and acknowledgment of his Grace. We sent our sisters to Italy and we continue to carry our mission there including assisting and helping elderly homes, helping the poor (Caritas), and caregiving the children etc.
