Heroic Women: The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration 1874-2014

The Book of Proverbs asks: 'who can find a valiant woman?' (Proverbs 31:10). The text goes on to describe a woman who displays endurance, courage and resilience. Are not these the characteristics that Queenslanders have recognised in their own home-grown Sisters of Perpetual Adoration? Always a relatively small group, and despite what might be judged as overwhelming odds, these women achieved the seemingly impossible. People might judge that it was through sheer persistence and hard work that they succeeded. But there is only one source from which such energy can be found, and that is Love. Eucharist, the Sacrament of Love, tells us of life given, love poured out for the life of the other. This is what the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration learned as they spent hours each day in the company of the Sacrament of Love and then took that Love to others in the nitty-gritty of life's realities. It is what we, too, can learn, as we enter into the story of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.