Summer greetings to you all! I hope that you are all having a good summer and have had some opportunity for rest and relaxation. We had a good retreat with our sisters in Brownshill with input from Fr Martin McLoughlin, OSB, former Abbot of Prinknash Abbey. Now various sisters are profiting to have some time away and a bit of a break. Sr Mary Stella is in France at La Plaine where she will celebrate her jubilee (60 years of profession) with Sr Bénédicte and Sr Martine (50 years of profession).
I recommend to your prayer two Bernardine sisters who have recently died. The first, in July, was Sr Maria Teresia of our small community in Japan. She was 92, and for the last few years has been in a care home run by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Sr Pascha from our Mother House in France was able to go over to Japan for her memorial Mass. This leaves only two elderly sisters in Japan, the last of our mission there. They are both in the same care home, living in a spirit of faith. The other sister is Sr Marie Xavier, who died last week, aged 90. She had a very missionary heart, to the point that she had leave of absence to go to Romania for several years where she taught French and English and had an outreach to young people. A most unusual way of living her Bernardine vocation but she did an enormous amount of good. She returned to France for her last years. May they both rest in peace and intercede for us.
At Hyning, Sr Evelyne will be leaving us on the afternoon of Sunday 23rd August. She is looking forward to returning to her native country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and hopefully she will be going to university in the Autumn. Life in Goma remains difficult; the epicentre of the current ebola crisis is only a few hundred kilometres away and the source of much fear. We thank Sr Evelyne for all she has done -we will miss her very much.
Meanwhile, we will be welcoming a young Vietnamese sister in the coming months, when we can sort out the immigration paper work. Her name is Sr Marie Bernadette Phuong. We look forward to having her as part of our Community.
On Friday 28th August and Thursday 8th October, there will be evenings of Taizé prayer at Hyning - lasting about an hour - I do hope some of you will be able to come and swell the ranks. There is a poster attached, please share the news.
One of my summer 'holiday' jobs has been to tidy out our liturgy cupboard in which I have found lots of treasures!! We have a large number of tatty old psalm books (grail psalter translation - the one we use in our Divine Office) and also some old Terce booklets. Also lots of copies of Folk Hymnals and Songs of the Spirit available, if anyone has a touch of nostalgia for the 1960s, 70s and 80s! Should any of you want any of these, please let me know in the next week and I'll save it for you. Otherwise they will go to recycled paper.
