IHM 180th Founders Day Celebrated

The 180th celebration of IHM founding was held at the IHM Center with prayer and dinner on November 10, 2025. Sister Katie Clauss welcomed all and offered the following reflection at the prayer service which can be viewed at:
https://video.ibm.com/recorded/134589212

On behalf of the Leadership Team, I warmly welcome all of you—our Sisters, Associates, and friends—those present here at the Center and those joining us from Our Lady of Peace and beyond. How good it is to be together, both in person and virtually.

Today we gather in gratitude and joy to celebrate the 180th anniversary of the founding of our Congregation—a moment that continues to echo with grace, courage, and deep faith. On this sacred day, we remember with reverence the strength and bold vision of our foundress, Theresa Maxis, and her founding sisters, Charlotte Schaff, and Theresa Renauld, whose faithful “Yes” to God became the seed of a mission that continues to flourish across generations.

“In the evening hour of Sunday, November 9, 1845, were gathered Louis Florent Gillet, thirty-two years old, and not yet three years in America; Marie Therese Maxis, three years his senior; Charlotte Martha Schaff, thirty-six the previous June; and Theresa Renauld, but three weeks away from her twenty-fourth birthday. On the morning of November 10, the three women met in the church for the Mass which Father Gillet offered. After Mass, he returned to the sanctuary in surplice and stole and motioned them to come to the altar rail. Reciting a prayer over them, he rested the stole for a moment on the shoulder of each. There was probably no precedent for the little ceremony in any ritual, but to the three pioneers it signified cooperation in the work of the Church. They were filled with a great peace as they returned across the way to the little house on the north shore of the river.” – No Greater Service, Sister M. Rosalita, IHM

In the flickering light of that November evening, these women, alongside Father Louis Florent Gillet, stepped into a liminal moment—a threshold of possibility. Their prayerful commitment, marked by the tender gesture of a stole laid upon their shoulders, was more than a ritual. It was a consecration of hearts, a covenant of service, and a prophetic act of love.

Let us pause and allow this founding story to draw us once more into that same thin place—the place where the founding grace that filled the hearts of Theresa Maxis, Charlotte Schaff, and Theresa Renauld continues to stir our hearts. That grace still calls us today. It invites us to become a mystical presence—to embody and to live God’s redeeming love, and from that love to respond with contemplative awareness and courage to the needs of our time.

As we honor the 180th anniversary of our foundation today, let us also renew our commitment: to be accessible and available to God and to God’s people; to seek the common good; and to proclaim with our lives that God’s love has the power to heal, to unite, and to transform.

May the spirit of all our IHM Sisters who have gone before us intercede for us. May it inspire us anew to meet the needs of this time and place with confidence rooted in faith in God’s providential love. Happy Founders Day!