Margaret Mother of God: Renowned Dominican who helped the poor

Margaret Mary Hallahan (Margaret of the Mother of God, OP)

“To use a book all the time of meditation is very idle. You will never attain any degree of union with God unless you practice prayer and meditation. The time of meditation is to be a time of work, a time for laying all your wants before our Lord, and asking His grace for all your needs. If you could do nothing else all the time but say to our Lord—’ Lord, teach me to pray; Lord, teach me humility,’ the time would be well spent. Nay, if for three or four years you were to spend the whole time in saying, ‘ Lord, teach me to pray,’ you would make a very good prayer…. If one word suffice for your prayer, keep to that word, and whatever short sentence will unite your heart with God. He is not found in multiplicity, but in simplicity of thoughts and words. We meditate to find God, but if our soul goes to Him immediately, we put ourselves in prayer, we need no images, for we have the reality. I never could reason or make an imaginary scene in my life, and that is why the Exercises of St Ignatius do not suit me. Whilst I was trying to form a scene, I could ask for grace and mercy for the whole world, and for myself too. We are not all formed alike, and God is glorified by the variety of His creatures, so that, however holy one practice may be for one soul, it would not lead another to God, and yet all are good and holy. If our dear Lord lives in the center of the soul, (as He really does,) what need have His spouses to look for Him elsewhere? There He is, to hear and to grant all we ask; again, when we are before our God in the Adorable Sacrament of the Altar, what need we anything else but to look and ask?”

– from Life of Mother Mary Margaret Hallahan by Sister Augusta Theodosia Drane, OP

Margaret Hallahan (1803-1868) known by her religious name, Margaret Mother of God, was an English religious sister and foundress of the Dominican Congregation of St. Catherine of Sienna in England. Born the only child of poor Irish Catholics in London, Hallahan was sent to an orphanage when she was six, after her parents took ill and could no longer care for her. In 1842, she became a third-order Dominican before drawing up her own rule and making her first profession in 1845. Renowned for her work with the poor, she helped establish hospitals and orphanages even as she suffered from an excruciating back ailment. Her cause for sainthood was opened by the Catholic Church in 1937.