April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH
Provincial house's 50th is all about connections
The interim residences during the creation of the 275,000-square-foot, $5 million provincial house weren't much better, but the sisters were too excited about the move to notice.
"We were squeezed together like sardines and we had to take a bus from there to where we taught at Catholic High [School in Troy]," said Sister Lamese Farhart, CSJ, remembering the former maternity hospital where she and others stayed before moving into the new building. "[But] it was just a wonderful place to be."
Sister Lamese was among the first residents of the provincial house, whose anniversary will be celebrated with a Mass in its spacious chapel June 30 at 10:30 a.m. Individuals representing lay employees and groups that facilitated construction of the building will participate in a procession; priests and bishops from several dioceses will concelebrate with Bishop Howard J. Hubbard.
Sisters say the celebration is not just about the building, but the dream by their order's Albany Province leadership a half-century ago to further spread God's love through the order's charism.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were founded in France in 1650. In the 1800s, they came to the U.S., including Oswego and the Albany Diocese, where they founded institutions like The College of Saint Rose in Albany and St. Mary's Hospital in Amsterdam.
The 1950s brought a vocations boom, so the leadership decided to sell their "antique" housing. In 1959, they purchased land on Watervliet-Shaker Road in Latham where a French aristocrat, Henriette-Lucy de la Tour, had lived for two years after fleeing the French Revolution.
The basement of her home, which started as a Van Rensselaer tenant farm, was later used to hide slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Five sisters lived there during construction of the provincial house.
The order was able to cover many construction costs, but repaid its $1.75 million loan and purchased extraneous items with help from lay groups. The sisters also held collections of Pepsi bottle caps and trading stamp rewards. They handmade more than 200 pairs of drapes for their new home.
During construction, sisters were scattered throughout the Diocese. Sister Rosemary Hock, CSJ, another of the house's first residents, remembers groups entering in batches in 1963. She tears up when she thinks of the 23 senior sisters who arrived by ambulance.
"It was an extremely happy time," Sister Rosemary said. "The thing that made it so joyful and emotional is that we were all being brought together."
Those early days weren't without mishaps: A group of sisters interviewed in 2001 revealed that a truckload of statues didn't survive the ride on move-in day. Residents were asked to lock the building's doors at night, but not all the walls had been finished. Sister Lamese remembers sitting on a pile of pews in a chapel and passing by stacks of furniture in the lobby for months.
"Every day when we came home from school, we'd see different things [completed]," she said. The chapel's mosaic and its assembler arrived from Italy; when he was finished, leaders requested that he revise Jesus' appearance to look more "resurrection" than "crucifixion."
After four months, the first Mass was held in the large chapel.
"I just felt so lucky that I was there, a part of it," Sister Lamese said. "I thought, 'a wretch like me, and here I am.' If Mother Athanasia [Gurry, provincial superior at the time] could come back now and see the provincial house, what wonder would overtake her because of all the changes."
Indeed, space at the provincial house was repurposed in 2008 for the Carondelet Hospitality Center, which the public can use for meetings and retreats. Other developments have included the Carondelet Music Center, which has about 250 child and adult students; an AV room that transmits Mass and messages to senior sisters' rooms through closed circuit TV; and the Town of Colonie's Bright Horizons adult day program. The sisters are finishing construction on a senior housing community on Delatour Road.
St. Joseph's Provincial House, which currently houses about 170 sisters, also has a gift shop, beauty parlor, drug store, woodworking room, thrift shop, sewing room, library and mailroom. Over the years, the sisters' ministries expanded and they relinquished nursing and housework to lay employees, whom Sister Rosemary calls "very much a part of us."
The sisters say the building has always been about the relationships. "And of course," said Sister Mary Rose Noonan, CSJ, director of communications, "it was our relationship with God that drew us here."[[In-content Ad]]
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