Annual University Sermon preached by Newnham alumna Sister Jane Livesey

Sister Jane Livesey CJ (NC 1977), General Superior of the Congregation of Jesus, preached the annual University Sermon on 27 January 2019, on ‘The Strength of Vulnerability’.

The practice of sermons in the University Church of Great St Mary’s dates back to at least 1300 and is recognised in the earliest University Statutes. Each year prominent men and women from many different traditions deliver sermons on a wide range of topics of particular interest to students.

Jane Livesey’s sermon focused on ‘vulnerability as a crucial aspect in our growth as truly human beings and in the developing of inner strength and resilience.”

She concluded by saying “As a society we are frightened of a lot of things and we turn them into taboo subjects – failure is one of those things, pain and suffering are two others, disability another, death – the ultimate experience of vulnerability – another. However, if we consider for a moment those people whom we most admire I would hazard a guess that what we most admire about them is not how successful they are or how much they have achieved, but how they have dealt with the most difficult things which we have to face in life – with pain, with suffering, with failure, with vulnerability.”

As General Superior, Jane Livesey leads just over 1,500 Sisters world-wide. Devoted at the outset to education, the community was founded in the early Seventeenth Century by the Venerable Mary Ward, a Yorkshirewoman, in defiance of the Council of Trent and of the Church hierarchy (which attempted to suppress it and almost succeeded). Initially, the community educated the daughters of English Catholic families and it was notable not only for its pioneering work in educating women, but also for its rejection of the enclosed life.

Jane Livesey was for many years a teacher, head teacher and school Chaplain, before her election as General Superior in 2011.

The Congregation continues to empower women and girls, furthering Mary Ward’s assurance that ‘there is no such difference between men and women that women may not do great things…In time to come it may be seen that women can do much.’ Today, this includes not only educating, but also helping women victims of trafficking and modern slavery, or those who are in hospital, prison or other vulnerable situations.