Dr. Mary Elsbernd teaching at the Institute of Pastoral Studies (Photo: Loyola University)
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Mary Elsbernd Remembered
April 24, 2010
Sr. Mary Elsbernd died this afternoon.
Mary was one of the incandescent guiding lights of the Institute of Pastoral Studies (IPS) at Loyola University Chicago. A former director, she recently had been in charge of the Masters degree program of the institute’s Social Justice Track.
Most profoundly, she was a compelling and gifted teacher who imparted an indelible vision of dignity and justice for all. I know this from my own 
encounters with Mary (for the past few years I’ve taught part-time in the institute) but also from seeing the enormous impact her teaching and guidance had on her many students.
Nowhere was this more evident than at the fête and prayer service held for Mary ten days ago.
A hundred people gathered in a conference room at the Archdiocese of Chicago’s pastoral center (across the street from the IPS offices) in the River North area. I arrived just before the event began. As I was slipping into one of the remaining chairs, my eye was drawn to two looming projection screens. While IPS professor Eileen Daily was diligently tapping away at a nearby keyboard, Dr. Mary Elsbernd’s image suddenly materialized.
This was a moment of connection. Of communion. Of a crossroads betwixt and between the immaterial past and the unknowable future.
For some time Mary had been living at what Catholic women’s congregations call their Motherhouse, in Dubuque, Iowa, four hours west of us. Her cancer had dramatically spiked over the past couple of months; there was no question of her traveling. Hence this twenty-first century solution: Mary was with us via Skype.
They were having trouble getting the audio to work – but the sputtering, popping noises could not distract me from the silvery image that flickered on the screen: Mary peered out at us, it seemed, from another world. The vagaries of web streaming produced an evanescent image. She was wearing a headset.
The sound problem lingered.
There was the usual breathless anxiety that begins to creep in whenever there is a technical difficulty with a big group on hand. As one minute dragged into the next – with Eileen trying everything, and asking Mary, in turn, to do the same – the dull tension spread across the room.
I began to think of this as a form of displacement therapy. It was easier to rivet our attention on malfunctioning technology than on the infinitely more disturbing malfunction of cancer.
Of course, in the end mortality and its truth could not be evaded – it was palpably before us, in streaming and oscillating bytes. But there was more here than that. The technology had made possible, for the moment, a hallowed visitation.
The wan imprecision of Skype’s weak signal seemed, ironically, to sharpen the sense of presence in that charged moment. A moment of connection. Of communion. Of a crossroads betwixt and between the immaterial past and the unknowable future. The momentary pure present, presided over by Mary’s fullness of body and soul.
The recalcitrant sound finally kicked in. But its sudden appearance deepened, rather than diminished, the disorientation of this decidedly post-modern upper room.
The service began with Abby, Bob, Jerica, Jake, Beth, and Erin summoning their gifts of powerful word and anguished heart and dispatching all of this in real time to Mary, who in turn was solemn but also astonishingly comforting. “I’ve been thinking of you, Abby,” she says, “I thank you for all the letters you have sent me. I want to talk with you. Let’s do that soon.”
We gathered in this room wanting to bless Mary, but it is she who was blesssing us.
A Pilgrimage for Justice
Why were we huddled together here for this moment of poignant celebration and consecration? Because of a long string of decisions Mary Elsbernd had made, going back decades.
A brief bio compiled by one of Mary’s family members (which I turned up via Google) offered the framework in which these decisions were woven:
Born in Decorah, Iowa in 1946. Joined the Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque, Iowa in 1964. Graduated from Briar Cliff College in Sioux City, Iowa in 1968 with a degree in French and German and a secondary education teaching certificate. Taught French and Religion at Aquin High School in Cascade, Iowa for six years. Taught Religion at Wahlert High School in Dubuque, Iowa for five years. Completed a Masters degree in theology at the St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota in 1977. Began teaching at Briar Cliff College in 1979. Studied for a doctoral degree in theology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Completed both a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Social Ethics) and a S.T.D. in (Moral) Theology before returning to Briar Cliff College in February 1985. Taught there until 1992, when she came to the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola. Completed another Master’s degree in Human Resources in January 1999.
This “road map” highlights the milestones of a life of teaching and service, but only provides the barest clues as to why we were gathered.
Mary joined a religious order at the very moment the Second Vatican Council was making groundbreaking decisions in the life of the Roman Catholic Church – transformative decisions that, among other things, underscored the dignity of all and, in turn, the biblical call for social justice. Like many others who came of age at that historical moment, Mary’s work and studies not only were deeply inflected by this call but, in fact, ratified and deepened it.
Her publications developed the implications of this new direction: Theology of Peacemaking: A Road, A Vision, A Task (1989) and When Love is Not Enough: A Theo-Ethic of Justice (2002). And her work at IPS helped make it one of the most fruitful graduate programs in Social Justice in the country.
Mary’s legacy is her students (some of whom were huddled together under the hovering screens to honor her) and all those who, in turn, her students have touched and will touch. The transforming fire of justice was lit along the way (in Iowa and Minnesota and Belgium and Chicago) and it has now passed into a vast skein of lives in a mysterious yet unmistakably palpable way.
Gathered together under Mary’s watchful cyber visage, ancient Catholic hymns and prayers were offered across space and time. IPS Professor Fr. Steve Krupa closed the service by leading a “prayer of healing” — a deeply moving rite of blessing for Mary: blessing her eyes, her feet, her mouth, her head, her hands.
We thank you, Mary, for the embodied healing that your choices for justice and peace have yielded – and will yield – in this wounded and sacred world.
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