Our beloved Sr. Sagrario Núñez, acj, passed from this world on March 23, 2022, age 81. Sister Sagrario worked in many ministries both in Japan and USA and was instrumental in establishing the volunteer house in El Salvador. She spent several years as formator of younger sisters in the congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and served as Provincial twice. Sagrario is well known for accompanying many people on their spiritual journey especially directing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and was a dedicated and highly regarded spiritual director at St. Raphaela Center in Haverford. Dear to her heart was the accompaniment of the ACJ Associates in Haverford, Wyncote and also of the ACJ Associates in other places who meet online.

Sagrario’s Influence

Many of us know what a surrender it is to enter fully into a people and place unfamiliar to us, but our Sister Sagrario was able to be open to special gifts as she did this, as she was so very astute at learning and living with us. She came to know our hearts and minds and thus was able to help us discern our dreams, our plans and even our schemes. I would say that the greatest adventure for Sagrario was not the distance of her journey but her willingness to adventure with so many of us to the deepest places of the heart and soul.

Daniel R. J. Joyce S.J.
Full homily available below 

The memorial mass for Sr. Sagrario Nuñez was a compelling tribute to a holy woman of profound faith who was forever inviting each of us into a deeper relationship with Jesus. I would describe her presence in my life as one of prophetic accompaniment. A meal at Wyncote–often after evening prayer and before adoration–inevitably included a soul baring question from Sr. Sagrario that was just pointed enough to make me pause and sufficiently tender to welcome the clarity brought. I owe my own discernment for religious life in part to her challenge to be more of who God called me to be. Surely many of us are living more fully as ourselves because of her influence.

Bethany J. Welch, Ph.D.
Novice, Sisters of Saint Joseph of Philadelphia 

Homily from the Memorial Mass celebrating the life of Sr. Sagrario Nunez, acj March 28th, 2022

“….Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God….”

We ourselves, who have the first fruits of that same Spirit, are moved within our very selves – called forth to union with God and through God to one another.   – Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Take my heart, O Lord, take my hopes and dreams.
Take my mind with all its plans and schemes.
Give me nothing more than your love and grace.
These alone, O God, are enough for me.    – Dan Schutte

These few lines from The Letter to the Romans and that song which is the Sucipe of Saint Ignatius are the two texts that Sister Sagrario chose for this celebration and they spoke to me the most in reflecting on her life and God’s gifts to us through her. God’s many gifts to us.

In many ways God did take the heart and mind, dreams and plans and schemes of our Sister Sagrario Nunez and gave them special gifts – gifts that God shared with us through her. What Ignatius’ prayer,  the Sucipe, does not capture is that the in “surrender” is not the end of the act to offer and surrender. There is a loving exchange in this self-offering to God as St. Ignatius would include in his own Spiritual Exercises. A self-offering that is therefore reciprocated by what God gives back to us in that surrender. God gives us those things back with much more. A free and open surrender is made only to be filled with what is truly ours –  to be made authentically by God our true selves. 

Our Sister Sagrario knew this very well.  Called in her youth to an openness to the world and responding to that call as a Handmaid of the Sacred Heart with a willingness to go to the ends of the earth or at least to the other side of planet.  Thus Sagrario serve God’s people in a completely different culture and entered  into the complexities of different languages in Japan and then again here in the United States. It was not just her availability “to go” but Sagrario’s willingness to accept the gift of entering into the world of those whom she served. Many of us can be obedient to a call but few of us are willing to let the call pull us into a communion with the people of the place of that call. Sister Sagrario was on such rare person who could let God’s grace work in her to do that.

Many of us know what a surrender it is to enter fully into a people and place unfamiliar to us, but our Sister Sagrario was able to be open to special gifts as she did this, as she was so very astute at learning and living with us. She came to know our hearts and minds and thus was able to help us discern our dreams, our plans and even our schemes. I would say that the greatest adventure for Sagrario was not the distance of her journey but her willingness to adventure with so many of us to the deepest places of the heart and soul.

Sagrario was truly gifted as one who accompanies others in the life of God’s Spirit. She had a deep and abiding  accomplishment in the art of listening. Her listening would often result in an incisive and refinedly-focused questioning or observation. It was as if though she was able to see the very marrow and sinews of your soul.  As a typical Jesuit who was often in a place where I was  going to try to salvage at least some element of my own self-deception, I chose carefully when going into a retreat Sagrario, lest I be asked to explore the wholeness of what is going with me.  I can hear her now after listening to me for a bit then she would say “Now Dan what is this that you say …..?”  or When you say this why is that….?” And she would do this with a look in her eyes that could be equally penetrating and disarming…. and get right into the very heart of the matter.  Sagrario’s listening and spiritual direction was an art shared with her in incredibly deep and beautiful ways. A true gift of God’s very Spirit.

The Book of Wisdom says: “In the time of their judgment* they shall shine and dart about as sparks through stubble;……Those who trust in God shall understand truth, and shall abide with him in love

Well our sister Sagrario helped many of us like a brilliant spark darting that could dart around in the crevices in the stubble of our minds and hearts enabling us to see just a bit more and empowering us to let the Spirit rebuild or renew the landscape of our inner life with God.

The Jesuit Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins spoke of a thing that he called the “inscape” of our very selves. The theological idea in his work is that that God never or very rarely repeats Godself and works in us in ever-new ways – offering us fresh graces that are unique gifts within us. Sagrario understood this. She helped many of us and thousands, literally thousands more, in her long life as a spiritual companion and guide.  She helped us explore that inscape and learn its’ unique contours, opening up for us the unseen graces of this life and God’s intimate accompaniment with each and every one of us in ways unimagined before.

And even as Sagrario lay limited by her health and peacefully resigned to an end of this journey of our biological life, she was not done.  She said to me. “At this point in I my life I am feeling more than ever  led by the Spirit”. I loved the wat she said, “At this point”. For Sagrario death was just another was a point on the journey and adventure with the Spirit that continued to lead her.  She is still on mission and implying this is not the end but simply a point along the way. That is not only true for Sagrario, but it is true for each and every one of us. We should let her life and her willingness to be on that journey encourage us in that same sojourn.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans says  “…those who are led by the Spirit of God are the very offspring of God”. We ourselves  have the first fruits of that very same Spirit. And we are moved within our very selves and called forth to union with God and one another. Sagrario understood this in totality.  And She embraced this with complete openness. Those of you who had the privilege of accompanying her in these last few weeks saw this a complete and beautiful way. Cherish and savor that and recall the lessons learned from that accompaniment. But it was throughout her life, as Sagrario ventured with so many in the life of the Spirit,  that she was able to receive from God a special of gift of listening to the Spirit within us and, thus, brilliantly assist us in our own journey of the soul toward the embrace of love in God. And my friends there is no more simpler definition of the baptismal call of being a Christian that. There is nothing more clearly outlined in our being created and loved into existence by God than that.

Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, in his spiritual autobiography Journal of a Soul said: “Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do.“

Sagrario taught us to do just that and more – both in her accompaniment of us in her many leadership positions she held and in the simple act of her sisterhood, in a special way with her sisters in the Society of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart but also in the sisterhood that she offered to almost everyone she met and as a spiritual companion for so many.  She helped us seek the possible and to live the fiat of boundless possibilities with God.

Blessed are we says the Gospel. Blessed indeed are we to know God all the more in this life’s journey because we shared that journey in some way with Sagrario Nunez. 

Well,  Sagario, all is yours now. Your open heart, your incisive mind, your plans and schemes are now part of the dreams of God. The insightful twinkle in your eye now becomes the apple of God’s eye as you join Raphaela and Pilar and all of your Handmaids in the communion of those who accompany us. We shall need you more than ever is this world that has not shortage of woes and sorrows and injustices. Continue to accompany us in the inscape of our hearts so that we may transform the landscape of our society into the flourishing garden of God’s love made real in acts and deeds.

Take my heart, O Lord, take my hopes and dreams.
Take my mind with all its plans and schemes.
Give us nothing more than your love and grace.
These alone, O God, have been enough for Sagrario and they are more than enough for us.

Amen.

Dan Joyce, S.J.