Sr Monica, RIP

Last Friday, May 23rd, at around 10.15 p.m. our Sister Monica O’Daly died, in the Mercy Hospital, Cork.

She was 83 years old, and had been in poor health for some time, but her decline in the last few days of her life was very rapid and took us somewhat by surprise.

Mona O’Daly was born in Dublin in 1924.  As a young woman she was a member of the Legion of Mary, and with some friends from the Legion she used to visit Mellifont Abbey.  This contact with Cistercian life sowed the seeds of her own vocation, and led her ultimately to join the community at Glencairn on the feast of the Epiphany, 1950.  She made first profession of vows on June 24th 1952, and final profession on the same date three years later.

During her 58 years in the monastery Sr Monica worked in many capacities and undertook many services.  In her early days she worked on the farm, milking the cows when it was done by hand – “no easy task for a city girl!” as Mother Marie commented in a tribute to Sister Monica at the end of the funeral Mass.  She worked in the dairy (making butter), in the kitchen, and in the sewing room.  Especially gifted with her hands, she was accomplished in knitting, crochet, and leather work.  She continued this work even when her eyesight had become very poor indeed, crafting such items as tea cosies, badges for children making First Communion and Confirmation, rosary beads and purses.  A few months ago she made me a leather purse for a set of keys, which is quite perfectly executed even though it was done more by touch and feel than by vision.

But above all, Sr Monica was a woman of prayer.  She loved the Divine Office, and when bouts of sickness kept her out of choir she was always anxious to come back as soon as possible.  She would come to the church in plenty time to mark her book at the right psalms, which took her some time when she could hardly see the pages, even using a special big-print psalter.   She also loved the Rosary.

Just a week ago medical tests confirmed that she had a recurrence of the cancer which she had fought a few years ago.  It seems that she was ready to go to the Lord: this time there was no fight on her part, but a quick journey home to the Father’s house.  Her grand-nephew, Ross, and our Sister Ann were present when she passed away peacefully on Friday night.

Her body was brought back here to the Abbey church on Sunday 25th, feast of Corpus Christi.  I was struck by the many references in the liturgy of the feast linking our reception of the eucharist with eternal life: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have everlasting life, says the Lord.”

When a sister dies, we keep watch by her earthly remains day and night until it is time for her burial, two sisters at a time taking turns to sit by the deceased sister, praying the psalms. 

Yesterday we were joined by Sister Monica’s brother and sister-in-law, her nieces and nephews and their families, and by friends and neighbours of the community, for her funeral Mass.  The chief celebrant was Fr Aodhan McDunphy of Mt Melleray Abbey, whose family and Sr Monica’s family were neighbours in Dublin.  “For us,” he said, “death does not have the last word.  There is another chapter in Monica’s life.  Her story has no end, because the Lord has promised her that she will live for ever.  Today it is a temporary farewell.  She will live, she will rise.  This is our belief.  God has spoken his word to us: Those who trust in me will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with me in love.”

May she rest in peace.

Free2Become

Free2Become is a vocations discernment group in England.  The homepage of their website says “We are a group of Catholics aged 18 – 38 meeting regularly in central London and in Essex, for mutual support, prayer and teaching from guest speakers so as to grow in the maturity and freedom necessary to make good choices about jobs, relationships and vocational states of life. We also help others from further afield through this website and occasional national events.”

Check out their website by clicking on the Free2Become link in the Vocations / Discernment section on the right of this page.

Sam is back!

Meet Sam, who joined us last week!

Sam first stayed with us in 2007, when her owner, Louise, went to work as a volunteer in East Africa.  On Louise’s return, they were reunited.

But now Louise and her new husband feel that Sam needs more space than they can provide for her in Dublin, and thought it better for her to return to Glencairn.   We are glad to have her back – as you can see:

 

 

She and our older dog, Barney, will get on just fine. He’s getting lots of TLC to help him cope:

 

 

Sr Sarah has her hands full!

 

Testament of a murdered monk

On May 21st 1996, twelve years ago today, seven monks of the Cistercian Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, near the village of Tibhirine in Algeria, were executed, fifty-six days after being abducted.  They had refused either to be sucked into collaboration with the armed groups perpetrating mounting violence around them, or to flee the area; they chose instead to remain, to live out their commitment to a life of prayer and simplicity, faith and love, in solidarity with the poor people of the locality.  They knew that this choice involved very high risk. 

Fr Christian de Chergé, superior of the group, wrote the following “Testament”, discovered after his death.  It has been called “one of the great spiritual classics of the twentieth century”, in which he expresses in advance his forgiveness of the one who would kill him:

Facing a GOODBYE…. 
If it should happen one day – and it could be today -
that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf
all the foreigners living in Algeria,
I would like my community, my Church and my family
to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country.
I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life
was not a stranger to this brutal departure.
I would ask them to pray for me:
for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?
I ask them to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones
which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other.
Nor any less value.
In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.
I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil
which seems to prevail so terribly in the world,
even in the evil which might blindly strike me down.
I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity
which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God
and of my fellow human beings,
and at the same time forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a death.
It seems to me important to state this.
I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice
if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder.
It would be too high a price to pay
for what will perhaps be called, the “grace of martyrdom”
to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he might be,
especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.
I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately.
I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters.
It is too easy to soothe one’s conscience
by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists.
For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul.
I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it.
I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel
which I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church,
precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.
Obviously, my death will appear to confirm
those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic:
“Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!”
But these persons should know that finally my most avid curiosity will be set free.
This is what I shall be able to do, God willing:
immerse my gaze in that of the Father
to contemplate with him His children of Islam
just as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ,
the fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit
whose secret joy will always be to establish communion
and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.
For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs,
I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely
for the sake of that JOY in everything and in spite of everything.
In this THANK YOU, which is said for everything in my life from now on,
I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today,
and you, my friends of this place,
along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families,
You are the hundredfold granted as was promised!
And also you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing:
Yes, I want this THANK YOU and this GOODBYE to be a “GOD-BLESS” for you, too,
because in God’s face I see yours.
May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

AMEN !   INCHALLAH !  

Algiers, 1^st December 1993 
Tibhirine, 1^st January 1994 

  

Christian +

 

 

 

 

For more on the lives and death of our brothers of Atlas, see here and here. 

 

Consecrated widowhood

Over at “A Nun’s Life“, Sr Julie has posted about an address of Pope Benedict to consecrated virgins who are meeting in Rome at present. 

Another vocation in the church, with a rather similar spirituality, is that of consecrated widowhood.  A few years ago I published an article on this topic in Spirituality, and now I am adding it to a new page on this site (permission from the editor of Spirituality pending).

St Carthage, monk

 

It is said that the land on which our monastery stands once belonged to the ancient Celtic monastery of Lios Mór (Lismore), founded around the year 632 by St Carthage. 

 

The feast of St Carthage is celebrated on May 15^th.  In our liturgy today we sing an antiphon at Lauds and Vespers: “On hearing the monks chanting the psalms Carthage, inspired by the Holy Spirit, followed the bishop to the monastery.”  It comes from the story of his life according to which, as a young boy tending his father’s herd, Carthage one day heard the chanting of some monks who were passing nearby in procession.  Enchanted by the beauty of their singing, he left the animals and followed the procession to the monastery.  At this time he was too young to become a monk, but the desire remained in his heart, and later in life he was able to fulfil his dream of dedicating himself to God as a monk.

 

His life-journey in the service of God ended in Lismore, where he established what was to become one of Ireland’s most flourishing monastic communities. 

 

Today the psalms are still sung, seven times every day, in another monastery in the Blackwater Valley.

 

Please feel welcome to join us for worship at any time.  (Liturgy times are listed in new page here).

 

 

New video on the web

The webmaster at Vocation-Station has very kindly made a new video about Glencairn, using material already on the web or in the public domain, and posted it on his site.  Thank you, Emile-James!

You can find it here.

Discernment and Pentecost

A young woman that I know is discerning her path in life.  She feels that she needs to “take the next step” on her vocation path, but she doesn’t know what that next step is.   So about ten days ago she began a time of more intense prayer and reflection on her options, leading up to Pentecost.  Perhaps you could do the same?

The gifts of the Holy Spirit have already been given to us at our Baptism and Confirmation, and one of those gifts is the gift of knowledge.*  This is not any scientific or academic knowlege, but knowledge of God and the things of God, including knowledge of God’s path in life for us. 

As we celebrate the feast of Pentecost next Sunday, we “remember” the first coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and also on us when we received the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.  Our liturgical “remembering” means that we celebrate the memory of those events in such a way that we make the grace of those events effectively present, here and now, and can enter anew into them.

If you are discerning your path in life, why not spend the days between now and Pentecost asking particularly for a special release of that gift of knowledge which is already in your heart, to show you which path to follow?  Take some extra time for prayer.  Quieten down, shut out other voices.  Open yourself trustfully to God.  And God will hear and answer your prayer (though maybe in an unexpected way).

When he was Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Martini guided many young people through a year-long discerment programme about their vocation in life.  Two things he asked them to do were (1) to cut out watching TV for the year – its voice is a cluttering, unhelpful voice, and switching it off gives greater opportunity for hearing the voice of God; and (2) to have no worry, but to trust firmly that God would answer their prayer. 
Even if you are giving yourself to a discernment time of much shorter duration, those are good principles to apply: make space to hear God, and be confident that the way forward will be made clear by the God who loves us.

And in these days coming up to Pentecost, let those of us who are not at such a discernment point in our lives support those who are, by our encouragement and especially by our prayer.

*The “gifts of the Holy Spirit” are traditionally named as wisdom, understanding, right judgment (or counsel), courage (or fortitude), knowledge, reverence (or piety) and fear of the Lord.

Australian vocations website

A reader has pointed me to the Catholic Vocations Ministry Australia website, and I am delighted to add a link to it from here. The purpose of the CVMA is to “foster a vocations culture”, and includes “educating people about the nature of vocation” and “actively promoting vocations to the ordained ministry, consecrated life and societies of apostolic life”.   

On their site I particularly like the long section on discernment; the information on many possible “Catholic life choices”, covering not just religious life and priesthood but also marriage, consecrated virginity, eremitical life, deaconate, and various other options; and the extensive FAQ section.   Well done, CVMA!

[There's not much on monastic life there (yet), so when you're finished browsing there do call back here for more on monastic themes].

 

Ascension – a monastic slant

Whether you have already celebrated Ascension on Thursday or have yet to celebrate it on Sunday, there is a monastic slant to this aspect of the Paschal Mystery which is worth pondering.

Dom Jean Leclercq OSB puts it much better than I can:

“The Jerusalem above is the end the monk strives for.  He will rise towards it through everything which calls to mind – and gives reality to – an ascension, and this introduces a whole series of themes.  First, that of the Ascension par excellence – of Christ our Lord: This is one of the Mysteries of Christ on which St. Bernard left the greatest number of sermons, more even than on the Passion.  The monk leaves the world.  Like every Christian, he detaches himself from it.  But even more, because of special vocation, he separates himself from it.  He goes away into solitude, often onto a mountain, the better to fulfill the precept that the Church, on the feast of the Ascension, gives to all the faithful: “To live in the celestial regions” (in caelestibus habitemus).  When the Lord had disappeared in the cloud of His glory, the Apostles kept their eyes raised to Heaven.  Two angels came to tell them that they would not see Him again until such time as He would return.  Soon would come the time for them to spread out over the whole world, to sow the seeds of the Gospel, to plant the Church.  Monks, however, have the privilege of continuing the watch.  They know that they will not see the Lord; they live by faith.  Nevertheless, there they will remain.  Their cross will be to love without seeing, and yet to watch constantly, to keep their eyes on nothing but God, invisible yet present.  Their testimony before the world will be to show, by their existence alone, the direction in which one must look.  It will be to hasten, by prayer and desires, the fulfillment of the kingdom of God.”

Jean Leclercq OSB, “The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: a Study of Monastic Culture”,
chapter 4, Devotion to Heaven