Remarks by President McAleese at the Poor Clare Colettine Federal Assembly, St. Columban’s
Remarks by President McAleese at the Poor Clare Colettine Federal Assembly, St. Columban's, Dalgan Park, Navan, Co. Meath
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisúir dom bheith anseo inniu. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Good afternoon everyone, thank you for your warm welcome and thanks to Sr. Bernadette for the invitation to address your Assembly in this the Golden Jubilee year of the foundation of your Federation. A Golden Jubilee gathering is a complex thing. It is an uneven mixture of pride in fifty years of individual and collective achievements, nostalgia for old friends, fond memories, and old certainties, analysis of the present moment and contemplation of the future. You do not approach any of those things, no matter how difficult, in a vacuum. You bring to them your individual faith, your shared vocation and the unique charism that belongs to the Poor Clares. These things you bring as sustenance for the present and compasses for the future.
Your Assembly brings you close to the Hill of Tara, a spot long associated with the early days of Christianity in Ireland. In the intervening millennium and a half there have been many Irelands. Christians have been tested and have sorely tested one another. Your own Poor Clares have an unbroken line of service that goes back to the 12th century and so we know that for each generation of Poor Clares, wherever in the world they have gathered, they have faced fresh challenges, new situations but always with the same source - hope and the same faith. You have brought to each of these vistas the gift of quiet contemplation and prayer. Often you have been signs of contradiction in a world always ready for action and reaction, for fighting and for conflict. Over the clamour your silence has remarkably been heard by so many people in need. I think of the path trodden by thousands of mothers to the Poor Clares in Belfast during the long years of the Troubles. I think of the bell that rings so often in Ennis as men and women facing awful problems in their lives ask for your prayerful help. I think of the children you have educated, the sick you have tended, the hurts you have helped to heal, the hope you have brought into places of deep, dark despair.
Looking back on the sweep of these fifty years you have much to take pride in. Yet in this moment even looking at the rich harvest of those years is not in itself enough to quell the anxieties of the present. Rapidly aging communities and falling vocations in this part of the world have forced many changes which cannot have been easy. Belfast has been given a new lease of life by the Filipino sisters, some convents have merged, and while the public have stayed faithful and supportive, you face major logistical and planning issues that will need serious reflection, discernment and prayer at this gathering.
You also gather at a particularly chastening time for those in religious life in Ireland. As a nun friend said to me a few weeks ago, this is a tough time to be a religious in Ireland. The Ryan Report opened a window on a shameful world where the great commandment to love one another was betrayed, where vocations were betrayed, the good work of sister and brother religious was betrayed and most wickedly of all, little children were betrayed. I know from the letters I have received, in particular from my friends in the Poor Clares, that although the order was not involved in the Ryan Report in any way, each of you was heart-broken for the victims of abuse and deeply troubled by the way in which a Gospel of love was twisted so dreadfully out of shape. The many levels of hurt and distrust, of anger and resentment, of damaged lives only half-lived, will take a long, long time to heal and we need healers, we need people to commit to the work of healing, no matter how fraught or how long it takes. I know you will play an important role in that journey of healing for you have accompanied so many people in difficult life situations. You have no source of income but that which is given to you out of charity and the fact that it is given, and continues to be given is an important vindication of the work you do and the way you do it.
I am as some of you know fairly familiar with the life of the Poor Clares. On my first retreat in Ennis eleven years ago, Sr. Anne, a good feisty Belfast woman, in the early stages of senility, demanded to know why I wasn’t in postulants garb and had Mother Angela received references for me. Later on the same day she instructed me to get the nuns out of the chapel and into the refectory for she was starving and they had enough prayers said. Her serenity through a long dying and the gentleness of the care from her community are images I will take to my grave. But it was from Mother Angela, who died just a short time ago that I learnt the importance of the slow distillation of life, the joy of quiet reveries, the wisdom of letting things take their course when they needed to and being prepared to intervene humbly to alter their course when it was the right and best thing to do.
More remarkable women, more remarkable friends it would be hard to find. Once strangers to one another like so many religious communities they become family and community to one another, and family and community to a huge constituency outside the convent walls whose cares they make their own. That care for the stranger, especially the suffering stranger is the hallmark of Clare’s charism. Your commitment to the contemplative life especially in this busy full-on, in-your-face world so full of tumult and noise, is also a vital part of that charism. You help to remind our busy world of the value of making space for deep abiding peace and quiet contemplation and especially making time for one another, looking out for one another when life brings its overwhelming sorrows.
No-one knows better than you just what those sorrows are today for they come to your doors in waves- the men and women who have lost their jobs, whose homes are on the line, the family lives that are ruined by abuse of drink or drugs, by infidelity, gambling addictions, by uncontrolled anger and selfishness, by failure to communicate, the young people who cannot get jobs and who are wondering whether to stay or to emigrate, the emigrants who have little family support and who are experiencing racist resentment, the travellers whose world is changing so rapidly but who still feel like strangers in their own country. For people who often live out of sight of the public, the public is not out of mind for you know most intimately what is being suffered and you also know how many quietly seek your help. It is good that you are there for them and have been these many years. While others sort out the public finances, the macro economy and the banks we need people who help sort out people.
Thank you for all the people you have helped, for the voluminous work you have undertaken quietly, unassumingly with no thought of thanks or recognition or reward. I hope that at this Golden Jubilee Assembly you too will find in and through each other and in and through your individual and collective deliberations, the sure-footed guidance that will help you flourish through the next fifty years.
Rath Dé ar an obair agus comhghairdeas libh. Go raith míle maith agaibh go léir.