Mary Magdalene of Briar Cliff

The hungry consume his harvest,
    taking it even from among thorns,

Job 5

Job 5 in Kesey Mural

I marveled that my kindred, Mother Mary Dominica, founded the Catholic University of Briar Cliff, she naming it thus because of the thorny bushes at the edge of a cliff where the college would be built. Above, is a photograph of the ground-breaking ceremony. Most of these people are my kindred. I need this to be blown up so I can find my mother’s mother. Looks like the Sermon of the Mount. There is a Mount Saint Francis.

“In 1929, only briar patches covered a 175-foot hill on the western outskirts of Sioux City, Iowa. But two people — Mother Mary Dominica Wieneke, Major Superior of the Sisters of Saint Francis, and the Most Rev. Edmond Heelan, Bishop of the Sioux City Diocese — had a vision. They saw that hill crowned with…