#CONGREGATION OF MOTHER OF SORROWS SERVANTS OF MARY (OSM)
#မယ်တော်၏အစေအပါးသီလရှင်များအသင်းဂိုဏ်း (ဆဲရ်ဗိုက်စ်အသင်းဂိုဏ်း)

မယ်တော်၏ အစေအပါးဂိုဏ်းကို (၁၂၃၃)ခုနှစ် ဩဂုတ်လ (၁၅)ရက်နေ့တွင် မယ်တော်ကို အလွန်ကြည်ညိုသော အီတလီနိုင်ငံ ဖလော့ရင့်စ်မြို့ လုလင်ပျို (၇)ဦးတို့ စုပေါင်း၍ တည်ထောင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ သူတော်စင် (၇) ဦးသည် ဆင်းရဲခြင်း၊ ဖြူစင်ခြင်းနာခံခြင်း၊ ကတိသစ္စာတို့ကို ကျင့်စောင့်တည်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ မယ်တော်၏ အစေအပါး ဂိုဏ်းတွင် အမျိုးသမီးများကိုလည်း မယ်တော်အလိုရှိ၍ (၁၂၈၄) ခုနှစ်တွင် လုလင်ပျို (၇)ဘဦးတွင် တစ်ဦးအပါ အဝင်ဖြစ်သော သံအလက်စစ်(စ်)၏ တူမတော် သံတာဂျူလီယားနားက အမျိုးသမီးများအတွက် အသင်းဂိုဏ်းတစ်ခုဖြစ်သော (ဆဲရ်ဗိုက်စ်အသင်းဂိုဏ်းကို) စတင်တည်ထောင်ခဲ့ပါသည်။ မြန်မာပြည်သို့ (၁၉၂၄)ခုနှစ်တွင် ရောက်ရှိလာပြီး ရန်ကုန်မြို့ တစ်ဘက်ကမ်းရှိ ကျောက်တန်းမြို့တွင် စတင်အခြေစိုက်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ ယခုအချိန်တွင် ကျောင်းပေါင်း (၃၅)ကျောင်း၊ သီလရှင်ပေါင်း (၁၆၇) ပါး ရှိနေပါသည်။

#(၂၀၁၆ သူတော်စင်များမဂ္ဂဇင်းမှ ကူးယူဖော်ပြသည်။)

Charism - "Compassion"
Motto - "Liberating involvement with the powerless."
a. To be with those in suffering
b. To unite oneself with them in their struggles in life.
c. To work for their liberation in solidarity

#A Brief History  

It was one of the British colonies. Tamil People arrived with first group of European traders and colonizers. The Portuguese merchants first found their way to India and then to Burma. Along with them entered the first foreign Missionaries – the French Fathers of the Foreign Missions of Paris (MEP). They were all afire with missionary zeal for the called for their immediate attention.

From the very start, the language barrier posed a rather difficult problem. Circumstances seemed to be more favorable for the Tamilians, who easily fraternizes and merged with the Burmese folk around them. Hence the main aim and the first priority of these first missionaries were to concentrate their efforts on the Tamil Catholics.

Fr. Chavee at once set up his residence at the Sacred Heart Parish in Kyauktan. He had as his able assistant Rev. Fr. Louis Philip. They promptly saw the need of bringing in some Tamil sisters from India to care for their Tamilian Catholics. A flurry of correspondence followed and Very Rev. Mother Arputha Mary OSM, superior General of the Servites in India responded. A decision was taken with her full council and the first batch of five sisters was dispatched. The servite Convent at Kyauktan was officially opened on 25th March 1924.

The Sisters stressed on Education and Evangelization. Vernacular primary Schools and Boarding for both boys and girls were opened up. Slowly they could open the schools and convents in other places. Rev. Mother Madona, in her clear foresight, knew she had to strive for a particular goal- A servite Novitiate. She felt the urgent and pressing need for this. She confided her strong convictions to Bishop Victor Bazin and a few other Tamil Priests.

Again a loving gift of God! In 1954 Bishop Victor Bazin purchased a plot in Thingangyun. He very generously donated it for the Novitiate. Finally, the Novitiate came into existence in its own good time.  The first three native candidates were Sr. Louisa, Sr. Alexis and Sr. Celine (now Sr. Celine is in India). From then on it produces some three Novices every year. The first Novice Mistress was Mother Madonna. The friendship and the guiding support of the Salesian Fathers were of immense help to Rev. Mother Madonna and the sisters. They worked hand-in- hand with the Salesians for the uplift of the poor of the whole neglected area. The Sisters particularly benefitted much from the spiritual help and formation afforded by salesians.

Already at the time of Rev. Mother Madonna the idea had taken on that the future growth and development of the Congregation would be gratefully enhanced by throwing open the doors to candidates of all ethnic races. With true foresight and the express view of recruiting candidates from among the Karen girls, Mother Madonna tried and opened a House in Lethama on 26th July, 1964.

To open a community in Yangon, our sisters collected money by performing concert, and asking donations from our people and finally built this house ( Provincialate )  and blessed in 1963.

The 1st April, 1965 turned out to be a very sad distressing day indeed! A terrible and unexpected blow fell on the whole Catholic Church and in particular on the Missions schools. The Government, in one sweeping move, nationalized all private schools. All our Mission Schools were lost overnight. A further and serious tragedy was the expulsion of all foreign missionaries from the country.

There was an emergency meeting held and some major adjustments had to be made. Rev. Mother Assumpta was immediately appointed Regional Superior. The little group of 12 indigenous Sisters was left behind. Now, only five are left. Srs Louisa, Lourdes, Baptista,  Alugia  and Alicia

In particular, I would like to mention to you how the part of this Provincialte building was redeemed.

After the nationalization, when the St. Joseph sisters have no place to stay, the Bishop at that time requested to our sisters to accommodate St. Joseph sisters for a temporary period in this part of the building. Since at that time, our Servite Sisters were few in number, our Sisters generously gave the longer part of the building to St. Joseph Sisters. The temporary pried lasted 30 years. Later, St. Joseph Sisters started claiming the building as their own and treated our Sisters very badly. It was a terrible time for the Sisters. At that time, Fr. Hubert Morns was the prior General, and Fr. Bernard Barlow was the Councilor. The matter had to go to Rome. From here, Fr. Singa tried with the paper works and on the other side Fr. Barlow tried the matter. After a long time of struggle, we got the whole building back. We can never thank the Curia, for the great help we received through the help of Fr. Hubert Morns, Fr. Bernard Barlow. Many thanks indeed for all your help. 

We are working in (30) convents in 8 dioceses and our strength is 152. In addition, we have 91 final Professed, 62 Juniors, 7 novices, 13 Candidates, and 12 aspirants,  as throughout the whole of Myanmar. We are working mostly in the rural areas according to our Charism  “Compassionate Involvement with the Powerless" means empowering the powerless from the powerlessness.

Initially, we were invited by MEP Fathers in 1924 to work with them in their mission with the poor and marginalized. Since then, we have always lived and have been working among the poor both in cities and rural areas. Our main focus is educating the poor in the villages; along with we do help them with their medical need and teach rural hygiene and general cleanliness.

Our main apostolate here is Parish ministry; teaching catechism for the youth and children, assisting in liturgical celebrations by organizing and leading the singing, holding regular meetings for mothers and the youth of the Parish. We also do apostolate such as healing the sick with reflexology, running dispensaries in the remote villages where the people have no access to hospitals or clinics, etc. We teach seminarians who have to sit for the Entrance Exam as our chief apostolate. We take care of the Orphans and boarding children. Teaching nursery and English classes. Visit the sick and poor.

#Arrival in Myanmar
Date   – 25.3.1924
Place - Sacred Heart Convent, Sacred Heart Church, 49, Kyauktan, Hanthawady Dt.

The name of the 4 Sisters
- Sr. Nevis Mary
- Sr. Jeya Mary
- Sr. Susai Benedicta
- Sr. Juliath

Mother General               - Mother Aruputha Mary
* 1st Reginal Superior      - Sr. Susai Benedict Mary
                                       (1.2.1952 – 9.7.1964)

Mother General               - Mother Euphracia Mary
* 1st Provincial Superior  - Sr. Theresa Mary
                                      (14.7.1989 – 9.8.1995)

Mother General               - Mother Ladisca Mary

#Charism
- To suffer with those in suffering
- To unite oneself with them in their struggles in life.
- to work for their liberation in solidarity.

ဒုကၡသည္ႏွင့္အတူကြယ္ မွ်ေဝလို႔ ခံစားမယ္
အထီးက်န္မ်ားႏွင့္အတူကြယ္ အေဖာ္ျပဳေနပါမယ္
နိမ့္က်ဘဝရံႈးသူကြယ္ ျမင့္လို႔တင္ပါမယ္

#Servite Spirituality
Service (အေစခံျခင္း)
Marian orientation to Spiritual life                                                
(မယ္ေတာ္ကို ေရွးရႈ႔ေသာ ဝိညာဥ္ေရး)
Community life (အဖြဲ႔အစည္းသက္တာ)

#Spirit
(I) Modelling ourselves on the beautiful image of Mary
            The beautiful image of Mary entails:

(a)        Intimacy with God
(b)        Total commitment to fulfill the saving will of God
(c)        Zealous involvement with the suffering and oppressed.
(d)        Compassionate involvement with the suffering and oppressed.
(e)        Hard work done in humility.
(II) The attitude that suffering is essential for growth and liberation.
(III) Manifesting in us the power of resurrection.
(IV) Dialogic community united in sisterly friendship.

၁။ အမိမယ္ေတာ္ကဲ့သို႔ ဘုရားရွင္ႏွင့္ ရင္းႏွီးစြာေနထိုင္ၿပီး အသင္းေတာ္ႀကီးတိုးတက္ရန္ အဘက္ဘက္မွ ႀကိဳးစားျခင္းျဖင့္ ဖိႏွိပ္ခံ ဒုကၡေရာက္သူမ်ားအေပၚ ေမတၱာထားကာ ႏွိပ္ခ်ျခင္းျဖင့္ အပင္ပန္းခံလ်က္ ဘဝကို အပ္ႏွံျခင္း။
၂။ ႀကီးထြားမႈႏွင့္ လြတ္လပ္မႈအတြက္ ဒုကၡရွိရမည္ဟူေသာ စိတ္ဓါတ္။
၃။ ရွင္ျပန္ထေျမာက္ျခင္း၏ တန္ခိုး ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို႔၌ ရွိေၾကာင္းေဖာ္ျပျခင္း။
၄။ တစ္ဦးႏွင့္တစ္ဦး ညီအစ္မအရင္းသဖြယ္ ရင္းႏွီးမႈျဖင့္ တည္ေဆာက္ထားေသာ အဖဲြ႔အစည္း။

Our main apostolate here is Parish ministry; teaching catechism for the youth and children, assisting in liturgical celebrations by organizing and leading the singing, holding regular meetings for mothers and the youth of the Parish. We also do apostolate such as healing the sick with reflexology, running dispensaries in the remote villages where the people have no access to hospitals or clinics, etc. We teach seminarians who have to sit for the Entrance Exam as our chief apostolate. We take care of the Orphans and boarding children. Teaching nursery and English classes. Visit to the sick and poor.

#Yangon Archdiocese -2019

1.   MADONNA PROVINCE HOUSE         16 Sisters
2.   BAGO                                              3 Sisters
3.   BOGALAY                                         3 Sisters
4.   DALLA                                             4 Sisters
5.   DAW BON                                        4 Sisters
6.   DEDAYE                                           5 Sisters
7.   KAYAN                                             3 Sisters
8.   KYAIKLAT                                         4 Sisters
9.   KYAUKTAN                                        5 Sisters
10. LASALETTE                                        5 Sisters
11. NOVITIATE                                        2 Sisters

12.  PAYAGONE                                     4 Sisters                                                                                                                                             
13.  PRAYER HOUSE                              14 Sisters                                                                                                                                     
14. ST. MARY’S HOME                            8 Sisters                                                                                                                                      
15.  THANLYIN                                       5 Sisters                                            
16. THONGWA                                       4 Sisters                                                                                                                                     
17.  THINGANGYUN                                6 Sisters                                                                                              
18. THONEKYAING                                 5 Sisters                                                                                                             
19. WA YONE SEIK                                2 Sisters
Total                                                                   102 Sisters