A Conversation with Barbara Allison and Tess Hayes
Barbara Allison (BA): When I joined the Saint Mary's College community, I was familiar with the name Madeleva as a campus building and a street name. I didn’t know Sister Madeleva Wolff, the college president, poet, medieval scholar, educator, leader, and Renaissance woman. She is known and remembered by the area Catholic community and tri-campus communities. And if you don't know this remarkable woman, you should.
Today, I'm talking with my esteemed colleague, Tess Hayes, a 2025 graduate of Saint Mary's College who has done extensive research into the life of Sister Madeleva. Welcome, Tess!
Tess Hayes (TH): Thanks for having me Barb.
BA:. What did you learn about Sister Madeleva in your senior comprehensive project, and what surprised you the most?
TH: So my comprehensive essay was based on Sister Madeleva and her notion of the relaxed grasp, which would become her her own personal motto. And so this concept stemmed from a Bostonian essayist, Louise Imogen Guiney, who wrote this essay called The Precepts of Peace. In it, she refers to this concept called la sainte indiffèrence. It's essentially this Christian notion of holy indifference.
So in Madeleva’s autobiography, she discussed on the very last page her daily dreams and projects to be achieved, and how her day to day life did not always allow her to accomplish what she would have liked to have accomplished. Her relaxed grasp is about the attempt to liberate herself and as well as us ourselves, from the external noise that fills the earth, and to focus on being in the present moment. And that whatever is meant for us will be given to us by God, God's self, and it will be sweeter than we'd ever imagined.
BA: That's really beautiful. In that book, she also states,: “my best qualifications that I brought to this office were my ability to dream and my capacity to work”. This is really simple, but it's pretty deep too. What are some of her accomplishments in advancing Catholic higher education for women?
TH: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is her founding of the School of Sacred Theology at Saint Mary’s College, which actually happens to be on the same floor that you and I are having this conversation like this, this office was a classroom for this purpose. She tripled the numbers of the College, putting Saint Mary's on the map, and so because of her founding of the School of Sacred Theology, she opened the door for women such as myself. As an undergraduate, I majored in communication as well as theology. Because of her, I am able to pursue a higher degree in this field, if I so choose.
And so her leadership teaches us and taught then the importance of embodying Christ as the teacher as well as Christ as the Good Shepherd, which is also considered embodiment, which means she was a shepherd and a teacher showing others how to be shepherds and teachers and leaders in the future, whether or not she was she realized it in the present moment. And so she saw a need, and she responded to it, which is what the Sisters of The Holy Cross continue to do today, which is instill, through their Mother House, located in South Bend, Indiana, that we are called to respond to the needs of the times, which I think is a beautiful thing and a beautiful thing to live by.
BA: Sister Madeleva also connected beauty with the divine. In one of her writings, she said that truth, goodness and beauty are a Trinity unto themselves, with beauty being the most tangible. She was instrumental in creating this beautiful campus. What are some of the first impressions that you had when you moved to campus?
TH: I came from a much more, much warmer climate. In Texas, we have two seasons, summer and summer. And I fell in love with the landscape, with the pine trees that line The Avenue with the sunsets as well as the sunrises. I got a sense of being able to retreat, to go on a retreat for an entire year, to learn and to read and to write and to be in a sacred and magical place year after year. And I'm now lucky enough that I get to enter a fifth year working here and experiencing all of that in a professional way. So I learned to find God everywhere, referring back to my my comment on embodiment earlier, because my eyes were open to this concept that a tree is goodness and beauty and holy, and is God, and so people, places and things, are God's creation and are inherently Holy, even if you don't believe in God, at least every person that that graces this campus can see that this space is beautiful and is meant to welcome and comfort others.
BA: Sister Madeleva had many friends whose souls were also fed by knowledge. She corresponded with a lot of luminaries, like Claire Booth Luce, C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton. What did these friendships, especially the last one with Thomas Merton, mean to her both personally and intellectually?
TH:I think Madeleva generally was just a naturally curious person. She she desired knowledge and friendships and to be in community with others, even I call her a friend nearly 60 years after her death. So having this desire for knowledge and a desire to educate and also looking at who she's friends with, her. Friendships are models for us today that people are people, whether or not they've written something really good that's been published or not, and that we all desire a connection for safety and love and support in every season.
Sister Madeleva’s legacy reminds us of the power of history and the power of learning from our past to influence our present and shape our future. And so I find that in my own research, that there are a lot of parallels from her time period to our own in this present day. So what I take from that is, how can I live my life modeled after how this woman handled a particular situation or a particular moment or a particular comment? And so not only have I adopted her motto as living life with a relaxed grasp, but I've also started to ask myself, What would Madeleva do? And so I think she teaches us a lot about how to live and also how to die, and it's up to us or to your listeners, whether or not to choose to follow in her footsteps.
Music: "The Seeker" by The Who
