Sister Eileen Kelly
"Move out into the deep." Those were Jesus' words to Peter and the words Peter's successor, John Paul II adopted as the theme for entering the new millennium. Jesus wanted his disciples to face the challenges involved in living and teaching the Gospel message, and to do so with confidence that he would always be with them. Jesus most assuredly wants us to be as enterprising and confident today as he wanted his first followers to be.
In 1976, religious Sisters from various communities were discerning the Lord's will for them and found in Presentation Sister Eileen Kelly, a wise and intuitive religious who had been her community's superior before taking up her special service as the Paterson Diocese's Religious Life Coordinator. The Code of Canon Law's recognition of Associations of Consecrated Life provided the basis for the establishment of the Society of Sisters for the Church. Sister Eileen guided these women who without living in community wanted to benefit from a spiritual communion with one another while devoting themselves to various services within the Church according to their individual charisms.
We thank God for the blessings bestowed on the Society of Sisters for the Church for the past twenty-five years, and to thank God, as well, for the blessings bestowed on Jesus' flock through the Society of Sisters for the Church who as an Association of Consecrated Life has acquired a discernible charism of its own.
