Carmelite Monastery of St Joseph, Kilmacud - Sisters' Reflections

  Rabbi Hugo Gryn used to tell of his experience in    Auschwitz as a boy.   Food supplies were meager, and inmates took great care to preserve every scrap that came their way.   When the Festival of Hanukkah arrived- (a celebration known as “The Festival of Lights” which celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after the victory of Judas Maccabeus over a Seleucid King who had tried to outlaw Judaism.)- Hugo’s father took a lump of margarine and, to the horror of the young Hugo, used it as fuel for the light to be lit at the festival.   When the young Hugo asked his father why he had wasted the very precious food, his father replied, “We know that it is possible to live for three weeks without food, but without HOPE it is impossible to live properly for three minutes.” Soon we will begin the beautiful season of Advent and here at the monastery we have the custom of lighting the candles on the Advent Wreath each evening in our chapel as ...

  I heard recently that Alfred Batzdorf died on April 2nd 2022, at Santa Rosa, California, aged 100. Alfred was the husband of Edith Stein’s niece Susanne, now 101. Together they have done great work to promote holocaust awareness. In November 1988, the Batzdorffs’ began speaking publicly to churches, community groups and schools about their flight from Nazi Germany. Alfred, known as Al was born in February 1922 in Breslau, Germany. In 1994 he gave an oral history interview for the holocaust Memorial Project. He told of his experience on Kristallnacht November 9th-10th 1938, that terrible Night of Broken Glass, when synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed and over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Al’s father who was a surgeon had already registered for emigration and was in Berlin that night. On the morning of 10th the storm troopers entered the Batzdorff’s apartment intending to arrest him but when they found he was away they took Alfred ...

               There’s a song I love written by an Ursuline nun in Cleveland called ‘In the name of Love’ which goes like this:  Do you remember the Call?  When did you hear your name out loud?  Can you remember the word that you heard when the story began in you?  Listen remember, catch glimpses of springtime  And roots sinking deep in the heart of our God  and you were carried.  Green and stretching to life in the name of Love.  The call to love – we can all relate to it. It’s the vocation of every human person on the face of the earth.  God is love and we were made for love and to give love.  Do you remember the Call ? Thats the oft repeated line of the song and it awakens in me a delight as I remember the call of God in my own life and in the lives of the other sisters I live with.  Here is how one of them who in now in heaven describes her call:   “I’m so glad for you that you have ...

The photo shows two inexperienced sisters with a very trusting little visitor to our monastery.  This little boy trusts us while at the same time he keeps a watchful eye on the faces of his loving parents. What joy he brings to his family and to all of us. Your heart can’t but melt when you see him. Looking at this photo made me more aware of our responsibility to make our world a better place for him and the next generation. Sadly, at the moment we are failing in many areas. All around the world we are conscious of so much human suffering.  But one person who is calling us to look at our lives and make a difference is Pope Francis. He is the person who speaks often and calls us to a Revolutions of Tenderness. Yes, a Revolution of Tenderness! When I first read these words I wondered what the Pope could possibly be referring to. When I think of revolution I think of some violent events in history like the French Revolution.  When I looked up the meaning of Revolution, just...