Carmelite Monastery of St Joseph, Kilmacud - Sisters' Reflections

All Creatures Bless the Lord I never cease to marvel at how God created the whole universe with such variety and diversity,     earth, oceans, sky and all living beings from the tiniest insect to the complexities of the human person. What is God trying to teach us? There is a lovely canticle we recite on Sunday which begins with ‘O all you works of the Lord, O bless the Lord. To him be highest glory and praise for ever. ’ And the canticle continues to praise God in sun, moon, stars, night day, mountains, plants, earth, fish, birds, beasts wild and tame, all creatures, humans and angels. Everything from heaven to earth, ‘bless the Lord’. Our photo shows Sr. Teresa (Roebuck Carmel) with Shula the community dog. When you visit Roebuck monastery Shula will not run to meet you she charges out the door and shows how excited she is to see you. She lifts the heart. She accepts you whoever you are and whatever way you are. St. Th é r è se before she entered had a dog called Tom. O...

  I can still see her, framed in the doorway as we said our goodbyes...our Donegal Granny, hand raised in blessing :“Sl á n Abhaile”... Long before I knew what they meant, I just felt blessed by these magic words, spoken in her soft native Gaelic.   Even though we lived only a block away they carried a protection for us every step of the way...”Safe Home”... Aren’t we always on our way home...the shorter daily mileage only a fraction of the longer life journey we all have to make....because truly we are ‘home birds’ as Sr. Fionnuala wrote in her lovely reflection last week.   Yes, we’re all ‘homing pigeons’, born with a ‘return ticket’.    There is an ache in our hearts, a sense of incompleteness, a knowing that our hearts are created to live forever...This wayward restlessness in all of us will only find peace when we rest in Him.   Our spirits echo the words of Jesus, ‘I have come from the Father... and now I return to the Father’. He has told us ...

A few weeks ago there was great excitement when we noticed activity at a birdbox on the shed wall that has been vacant since we hung it there many years ago. A pair of coal tits decided it would make a good home for their family and set about the furnishings and bedding inside. And then there was quiet for a while, but last week the activity increased exponentially, and we realised that the chicks have now hatched! We are thrilled watching mother and father coal tit flying rapidly in and out from early morning until evening trying to keep the babies fed! It is extraordinary how much food is needed and how busy the parents are trying to provide. At some stage over its empty years, the box had got a knock and is hanging crooked on the wall, but now we don’t dare to straighten it in case we disturb the growing family! Our coal tit family prompted me to reflect on the challenges of family life in the modern world. Not everyone can find a cosy home to live in. Not everyone can provide eno...

  We all associate Thérèse with roses because she promised to send down a shower of roses after her death, and the many miracles attributed to her intercession in the early years were known as the showers of roses. When Thérèse wrote her story, now known as ‘Story of a Soul’, she entitled it, ‘The Springtime Story of a Little White Flower’, which of course was how she became known as ‘The Little Flower’. She explains this title when she recalls the day she asked her father’s permission to enter Carmel.   It was Pentecost Sunday 1897.   Thérèse tells of the symbolic action her father performed, without realising its full significance. She wrote: ‘Going up to a low wall he pointed to some little white flowers…and plucking one of them he gave it to me, explaining the care with which God brought it into being and preserved it to that very day’ While I listened I believed that I was hearing my own story, so great was the resemblance between what Jesus had done for the little f...