World Day for Consecrated Life

2^ndFebruary, which is the feast of the Purification or Candlemas as we used to call it, is a special day set apart to thank God for the gift of the Consecrated life.  That is the gift to the Church and the world of those people who vow to live their lives as Religious priests, brothers or sisters.
 

It was the late Pope John Paul II who started this special day of prayer, to celebrate the witness of those who have chosen to follow Christ by living a vowed life of poverty, chastity and obedience for the sake of Christ and his Church.

He wanted it to be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for what he called “this gift which enriches and gladdens the Christian community with its multiplicity of charisms and by the witness of so many lives given wholly to the cause of the kingdom of God.”

He goes on to say that this gift is at the heart of the Church, and it is that unselfish giving of their lives which gives that Church its vitality and richness. 

We are reminded by those words of the desire of St. Therese of Lisieux, a young Carmelite nun of the last century who wanted to be “the love at the heart of the Church.” It is that love that we are celebrating on February 2^nd.

February 14^th is of course, traditionally celebrated throughout the world as the day we put love at the centre of our thinking, but February 2^nd comes first, although few will recognise it as the celebration of love also.

To be a religious is to have answered the call to love.  I remember well the time I first got the call to do just that.  I was dancing at a formal ball, dressed in my first long evening gown – that is, not counting a bridesmaid’s dress – and feeling on top of the world.   Everything was all right in a wonderful world for me.  The music was superb, the partners charming, the feeling of being for once well-dressed and looking good put a smile on my face. I managed all the difficult steps too (bite the dust Strictly!).

And then it came -  that feeling that this wasn’t enough. It wasn’t for me.  I had experienced that kind of doubt before, and always managed to put it away from me, but this time I knew. It was, unmistakably, my call to leave one kind of love to follow another one.  I wasn’t ready, or equipped or holy enough, but I knew I had at least to try. So that is what I did, eventually.

I belong to a Congregation called the Poor Servants of the Mother of God – SMG’s for short.  Our Founder was Frances Taylor, who later became Mother Magdalen.  She was an Anglican convert who found her own vocation while nursing the soldiers in the Crimea. It was there that she became a Catholic after witnessing the faith and trust of the young Irish soldiers who died far from home, in inexpressible agony, yet with the trust that somehow this would be all right, and, as she looked at their cracked lips trying to articulate a prayer, she knew that her faith wasn’t enough, it was no longer for her.  What they had she needed.  The rest, as they say, is history.

She founded us, like St. Therese, to put love at the heart of the Church and of the world.  She wanted us to reach out in love to the poor, the lonely, the disenfranchised, the marginalised and to show them love, to respect their dignity, to make them feel better about themselves.  I loved that – it seemed to me to be what I had wanted that evening on the dance floor, although I couldn’t express it.

Now I know what drew me to this particular Congregation, and my years in it have been happy and fulfilled ones, thank God.

If you were to ask me nowadays why I answered that insistent call to love, and why I am still here, struggling of course, but still reaching out to that wonderful love which is still drawing me on, I would put it in the words of that lovely hymn “Will you come and follow me?” which of course wasn’t around when I entered religious life.  I can only quote the first verse here, as space is limited, but look it up and pray it.  It is a marvellous hymn:

 

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known.

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

 

Put like that, I’d have to answer with a resounding “Yes” wouldn’t I? To do that, is to say “Yes” to putting love at the heart of the world.  That is what the Pope was talking about.  That is what I, with thousands and thousands of others, have found.

Please pray for all those wonderful Religious -  men and women who are carrying the Gospel message with so much love to the furthest corners of our world.  They are the real A-teams, the genuine stars.   They deserve our thanks and our prayers.  Let’s give them generously.
 

God bless each of you, and have a lovely Candlemas Day.

 

 

To be a good shepherd...

...you have to be half a sheep yourself!

The old shepherd's words rang around the kitchen of the hillside farm in the Lake District.  His companions looked up, fascinated.  "What do you mean?" one of them said eventually.  The apple-cheeked shepherd smiled.  "I think I mean that to be a good shepherd, you have to learn to be half a sheep yourself", he replied.  "You see, sheep are strange creatures, they run away, get lost, fall into holes and crevices, get burrs and thorns in their coats, don't listen to what the shepherd or the sheep dog is persuading them to do, go the wrong way and end up in a slimy pool or a muddy ditch..."  He grinned ruefully. "Come to think of it, they aren't much different from ourselves!" 

"Thank you!" whispered one of the crew of cameramen grouped around the table. The others looked at their host enquiringly. "You really think we are as daft as that!" another said.  "Maybe not", the shepherd replied.  "You appear to be very clever, especially when you point those lens at something that looks like a shrivelled bit of human hair, and when you put it up on the screen later on, it is beautiful - magic!"  The crew sipped their drinks reflectively.  The compliment seemed to be a little two-edged, but they let it pass. "Tell me", a third one asked the old man "how on earth did you find that shivering bundle over there and realise it was your lost sheep?"  "I've told you", said the shepherd, "but I'll tell you again."

"An hour ago, if you remember, you came with me to look for one of my new lambs that had got lost."  They all nodded their heads in agreement.  "You came with me in the storm to film what I did, and to tell the public who watch your programme on the BBC what a real shepherd does in lambing time, and especially what skills he uses to find an errant lamb who is out there, defenceless, cold and possibly suffering from an animal form of hypothermia.  Okay?"  They nodded again. "Well you found out tonight didn't you?"  "Not really" said the youngest crew member.  "It was pelting with rain, the wind was howling fit to blow us all over that hillside, and you want us to believe that you heard that lamb over there," as he pointed to the little new-born creature who was lying contentedly beside the open fire, sucking on a miniature bottle of warm milk "bleating piteously for it's mother!"  "Well, not exactly"  said the old man,  "but yes, I did know that he was somewhere down there, crying out for help.  Call it an instinct, if you like.  I prefer to call it 'being half a sheep yourself'  after fifty years or so working on a sheep farm!"

"Now you are going to ask me again what on earth I mean by that!" the shepherd smiled. "Yes we certainly don't know what that means" the youngest cameraman replied.  "Please tell us. Our viewers would be interested." The old man smiled. "For me, that means knowing your sheep so well that they become part of your family, part of who you are yourself.  To be half a sheep means that I learn to understand them, to protect them, to anticipate their needs, and to really love them.  That way, I can look out for them and guard against any dangers that might come to them. They are my life." 

There was a silence in the room.  "Yes, I begin to see," said one of the cameramen who had not spoken up to this. "You have to think like a sheep, feel like a sheep, know what dangers they are likely to get into, so that you can be a good shepherd to them."  "To put it in a nutshell!" answered the old shepherd.  "Would you like my job?"  They all laughed. "I think it's going to be a good series" said the chief cameraman. "We'll call it  'The Good Shepherd'. "

That BBC production is now gathering dust in the archives of that august organisation, but it made a real impact when it was released.  Many letters were received asking about the work of shepherds and some even made reference to Jesus as the one who called himself The Good Shepherd.  He became the full sheep of course, taking on our nature, leaving behind the glory that was rightly his to live our life with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and disillusionments. 

Did you know that one of the earliest representations of Jesus is that of the Good Shepherd?  I remember being in the catacombs and seeing a rather crude etching of a young shepherd with a lamb across his shoulders carved on the wall opposite me.  It was so vivid and seemed to reach out through the centuries to tell  me something about how those early Christians saw Jesus.  They were imprisoned, frightened of persecution, hidden away from the Roman authorities and the groups of dissident Jews who would condemn them and execute them for their beliefs.  Yet they comforted themselves with the Jesus many of them had known personally by depicting him as the Saviour, the Good Shepherd, the one who would look out for them and lead them to safety.   The Good Shepherd. The words he used must have often been read in those twisting passages of the old Roman cemeteries on the outskirts of the capital city:

"I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays his life down for his sheep. I know my sheep and they know me.  I have other sheep who are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them too. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd."

John 10: 14-17

This Sunday we keep the remembrance of this wonderful image of Jesus as Saviour.  The Resurrected Lord who reaches out through time and space to us, his sheep, his silly sheep, his wandering, unfaithful sheep and offers us that same protection, love and contentment that he first gave to the First Christians. 

Frances Taylor, our Founder,  made her First Holy Communion on Good Shepherd Sunday!  Not in a lovely ivy-covered Church in the safety of the country, but in the kitchen of a military hospital out in the Crimea in the middle of a blood-bath!  She always loved to think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd who took on our life to lead us to his.  Praise him!

Do you like this hymn she wrote to celebrate this feast? Here is the first verse and chorus:

I met the Good Shepherd but now on the plain

As homeward he carried his lost one again.

I marvelled how gently his burden he bore;

and as he passed by me

I knelt to adore

O Shepherd, Good Shepherd,

thy wounds they are deep;

the wolves have sore hurt thee in saving thy sheep.

Thy garments all-over with crimson are dyed;

and what is this wound they have made in thy side?

(Mother Magdalen)

Have a lovely feast day, fellow sheep!  Thank Jesus that he became a whole  sheep to save us and to protect us from the enemy!  God bless.

Just for Love - In Thanksgiving

This is belated, for which I apologise – but, like wine, thanksgiving keeps, warms and enriches! 

I want to say a fervent ‘thank you’ for your support, interest and prayers for our 140^th year, and particularly for its culmination in the Mass celebrated in Soho on the 11^th February 2012.  Let me tell you a little about it.

St. Patrick’s Church, as you know, is a very special place. It is situated beautifully in Soho Square, and seems to nestle comfortably into the corner of a bustling, lively London Piazza, if there is such a thing – but it has an Italian air about it – a little imposing, but also very welcoming, warm and well-used as most Italian churches seem to be.  Of course its congregation is wide-reaching and international; that gives it a gracious, open feeling, and a sense of the universality of the Church. 

We felt very privileged to celebrate our special anniversary there, particularly as our Foundress and the early Sisters in the Congregation worshipped there.  They walked the wide squares and narrow streets of the area way back in the late nineteenth century, visiting the tenements and crumbling houses which were the places where the poor lived then. Perhaps ‘existed’ might be a better word, for the great facades of the time hid the dirty, fetid, unhealthy rooms where they huddled around a few sticks in a grate – if they were lucky – to warm themselves.

Soho was then a violent, corrupt place, where pimps operated ruthlessly to extort money from the poor women who plied their trade as prostitutes to provide bread and other necessities for their children.  It was to these that Frances Taylor – Mother Magdalen – reached out.  She understood their sense of hopelessness and their fears.  Because she believed passionately in the dignity of each human being, she fought to give back to these young women the self-worth and confidence they had lost.  She gave them a listening ear, a smile, a respect they very much appreciated.  She taught her sisters to do the same, and never to judge them as many others did.

So for us, Soho is a special place.  One of the Convents they lived in is now occupied by the Fox Film Company.  It is right opposite the Church.  I went in there the day after the Mass, and the people who worked there were very interested in our history and in what the early Sisters had done in that building and in the surrounding districts.

St. Patrick’s Church has now been restored and is very beautiful. As we went in, we were greeted by a sense of love, unity and shared celebration which was lovely.  Every pew of course was packed with people of all ages who had come to share in our special day.  We began by taking up the flags of the countries in which we work throughout the world which set the scene for a very colourful and meaningful day.

L to R: Cardinal Murphy O'Connor,
Bishop Kieran Conry,and Fr. Alex Sherbrooke,
 Parish Priest of St. Patrick's Soho

The chief celebrant at the Mass was Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton.  He has known us all his life, as his Aunt was an SMG for over sixty years.  We were privileged to have the Cardinal Emeritus of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor with us, and also many priests who work with SMG’s in different parishes throughout the country.  It was a striking picture of the Church in miniature, which our Foundress would have loved. 

Sr. Mary Whelan, SMG
and Kenneth Campbell

It was moving and enriching to see the symbols of our past and present SMG life placed on the altar at the beginning of Mass and we felt that those who had started the SMG tradition here approved.  The liturgy was a mixture of past and present as we held hands with those who had gone before us in spirit, and embraced all that is happening to us today. 

Painting of the Sacred Heart pleading
by Gagliardi

Sr. M. Whelan, our Superior General, gave us her usual warm, loving and eloquent welcome, and she also put words on the symbols as they were brought up. Chief of these of course was the painting by Gagliardi of the Sacred Heart pleading which Mother Magdalen commissioned. It was the centre of our celebration as it showed so clearly what she wanted of us – to be friends of the poor.  “True devotion to the Sacred Heart”, she always said “means a real, practical love of Our Lord, and an actual realisation of his love for us.”  By that she wanted us to understand that devotion to the Sacred Heart was not about pious practices, but is an acceptance of his wonderful, all-embracing love for us, which invites a response of love in return.  The response she wanted was to show that love through reaching out to the poor, the lonely, the bewildered, and the lost.  That is why this special picture was at the heart of our celebration. Everything that followed reflected this, and the place we were in reminded us of the love of those first sisters, who, to quote St. Therese of Lisieux, “put love at the heart of the Church” -  and the world of their time: thus challenging us to do the same today.

Marriage in Cana, Giotto c. 1304

We were reminded in the Word of God of the heart-warming phrase “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring Good News!"  How beautiful indeed, and the Good News on that day was the Cana event, which brought the light of hope not only to the wedding pair, but also to all those who were guests – in fact to the whole village, and later, from them to everyone they met!  So it is with us, we are, as our Foundress put it, meant to be Christ bearers who bring hope and light to all those around us.  That is what she did.

Fr. Alexander Sherbrooke, the parish priest spoke movingly of the work of the Sisters and how it is carried on today in the parish – the Holy Hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the outreaching to the poor, and much more.  It was very uplifting to hear him.  At the end of a wonderful celebration, Sr. Frances Ennis also spoke in her inimitable way of the life, times and continuing inspiration of Mother Magdalen in a world of darkness and division.

I do not have space to say much more, but the kaleidoscopes keep returning – the meeting for refreshment after the Mass, the delight at seeing old friends and colleagues – the noise, laughter and joy...  the enjoyment of the huge birthday cake, and so much more. 

Sr. Mary Whelan, SMG
with Kenneth Campbell
and Sr. Joseph, SMG

Kenneth Campbell and niece Julia

We were so privileged to have Kenneth Campbell, his sister Julia and his daughter Jacqueline with us. Kenneth and Julia are the great grandchildren of Charlotte Dean, Mother Magdalen’s sister, so they are very close relatives of Mother herself.  Charlotte became a Catholic two years after leaving the Crimea.  She was very close always in thought and in affection to her youngest sister, and having experienced the horrors of the Crimea together, the bond was strengthened.  To talk to Kenneth, Julia and Jacqueline brought the whole story of the SMG’s to life – this was part of the family from which the first SMG came.  It was awesome! 

We’ll end where we began – with a fervent thanksgiving.  Thank you to all who organised the service and did the refreshments, to all those who so lovingly participated, and to all of you who faithfully prayed for us. 

Let’s remember to say together: “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!” 

Thank you.

Birthday of a Victorian Lady

Today, 20^th January, is the 180^th birthday of Frances Taylor, the Foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.  She was born in 1832, a special year in many ways in the history of this country.  It was then that people began to realise that the slave trade mightn’t be a good thing, that reforms were needed in the law, the army, the way people were treated.  It is often called the year of change.  Of course as you know, change takes place slowly, and it took many years before any of these proposals which came before the Parliament of the time, were looked at, still less changed.  Yet it was interesting that matters of justice and the way we treat one another were brought to the public arena at that time. I say this because Frances Taylor seemed to be imbued with a passion for justice and a conviction that the way we treat one another has far-reaching consequences, not only for ourselves, but for the world. 

She was born in a vicarage in a small village in Lincolnshire called Stoke Rochford.  Her father, Henry Taylor, was the Rector of three parishes in the district, and was known as a very prayerful and upright man, while his wife, Maria, was a woman who seemed to radiate love and compassion, especially for those who were sick, lonely or old.  Frances was the youngest of ten children, and spent an ideal childhood having no school to go to, as it wasn’t then compulsory to attend one of those rather forbidding institutions which were all that was available at the time.  She was taught at home by her parents and by her older sisters, but she herself said in later years “I wasn’t over-burdened with lessons!”   She had plenty of freedom to roam about the lanes surrounding her home, and a chance to poke into those interesting hedgerows and woodlands as well as to try her hand at fishing in the local stream.  As well as that, she made up stories of adventure which she told to the village children, weaving a piece of string in and out of her fingers as she unwound the plot for them.  No wonder she became a writer in later years!

She went with her mother to visit all the parishioners who were sick, lonely or unable to get about, and she told them stories too, making them laugh as she took out of her basket the goodies provided by her mother, freshly-baked bread from the big kitchen in the Rectory, fruit and vegetable from their own gardens and things like that.  It was a lesson that Frances learned early on – that life isn’t always rosy, and that many people are poor and lonely.  She remembered this when many years later she founded her own Congregation of Sisters. She was to say when in old age herself, “I never forgot the lessons my mother taught me in childhood”.  That’s nice isn’t it?  I suppose most of us can say that now that we have learned some wisdom!

When she was ten, her father died, and of course the family had to move away as the house went with the job as they say. So they went to relatives in London, feeling very lonely and heart-broken after their Father’s death.   But the years in London were good.  You’ll know what Victorian London was like if you have read any of Charles Dicken’s books, and of course you have read them all!  It was noisy, dirty, exciting, dangerous and like no other place on earth!  But Frances noticed the poor, and the contrasts between the haves and have-nots.   In a way, she was already forging her future.

When she was 22 she went to the Crimea and worked in Scutari Hospital under Florence Nightingale.  This was to be a life-changing experience for her.  “No one” she was to say later, "could have prepared me for the horror of war !”  The Crimean War has gone down in history as the most mis-managed, the most tragic, the most inhumane of recent times,  yet it brought Frances many blessings.  Looking at the sufferings of these young men, many of them not much more than teenagers, brought out in her the most profound compassion.  The faith of the Irish soldiers, in particular, and their courage in dying a pain-filled and unjust death was to be the spur which made her look calmly and dispassionately at her own faith.  They were never to know it, but their example was to change her life.  She  became a Catholic in the Easter of 1855, having been instructed by Fr. Woollet who was staying in Koulali where she was working, while he was waiting to be called to the Front.  To leave the Church of England, and to ‘go over to Rome’ as they put it then, was a risky thing to do.  There was a lot of prejudice around, and she was to find out how lonely life could be for a newly converted Catholic when she returned to London later that year.

 But she was fortunate in getting to know Fr.Manning. Many years later, as Cardinal Manning of Westminster, he was to become one of her chief supporters in her work as the Foundress of a new Congregation. He was then parish priest of St. Mary’s Bayswater, where  she went to Mass.  He too was a convert from Anglicanism, and he understood how Frances felt.  There were people who really thought that if you converted to Catholicism you were damned, as you were unfaithful to the religion in which you were born.  That was very hard to take as she loved the Anglican Church in which she had been brought up, but she knew God had called her into the Catholic Church for reasons of his own.  But it was a lonely place to be.

Fr. Manning showed Frances the other side of the great, glittering, successful city of London –  he took her to the places where the poor lived or rather, existed.  Dirty, fetid, unhealthy rooms  where rats scurried about, and children died of terrible diseases.  He showed her the workhouses of Marylebone and St. Pancras, where she visited twice a week, giving those poor fragmented people hope because she bothered to listen to them and to speak for them, instead of merely giving them a little help, then departing to shrug off their problems in the enjoyment of her own busy life.

Soon she realised that she couldn’t do all this alone, so she gathered around her like-minded women and that was the beginning of our story.  We started in a small room in Tower Hill in 1869 with four women including herself.  We became a recognised Religious Congregation when Frances made her vows for life in February 1872. She called us Servants, people who listen, people who are willing to go about the miserable, mean streets and alleyways of our big cities, and bring to the poor  whatever comfort they could.  One of our first missions was in Soho. The Sisters worked in the red-light district with the prostitutes, and eventually Frances, who was now called Mother Magdalen, invited those who wished to train for employment which would provide an income without having recourse to prostitution. She provided buildings which were attractive, with rooms full of light and colour and warmth.  Here she taught these poor women new skills:  boot making, lace-making, laundry work, and printing. In fact,  anything that she could think of that would be useful and help to put food on the table.

She  wanted us to be a voice for those who could not speak for themselves, so that they would get justice, she hoped that we would, like her, reverence each human person, give them the dignity they deserved as children of God, and, like Therese of Lisieux, try to be the ones who put love into the world we live in.

 Are you glad a person like that was born?  As we say ‘Happy birthday’ today, we pray for all those who never have a birthday to remember, who never experience love.  Have a good day, and pray to Mother Magdalen won’t you?  She will help you, especially on her birthday.  Who wouldn’t do that, if asked?  

Bless you. And thank you for taking the time to read this! See our websites and Facebook links on the right panel for more information.

Happy birthday, too, for all those whose birthday it is today.  May you have a happy, fulfilled, useful life as she did, and may she be your special friend from now on.