by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM         Ireland            09.08.2022

MMM history can teach me many lessons. When I was scrolling through some material the other day, I found an excerpt from a draft version of our MMM Constitutions from 1978.  It made a lot of sense for me that day as I live in the Motherhouse and daily encounter Sisters who are even older than I am!  I thought I would share it as living with older people is a reality for many of us.   Slightly adapted it reads:

“Be grateful for your friends and relatives who are old.
Be open to them that you may learn from them. Their serenity and peace speak to you of God’s faithfulness.
Their wisdom, born of experience, and their sense of humour tells you about the world, about life.
Life is not something to be grasped but a gift, always new, to be received and shared.

In a world orientated towards power and success, a world which tends to consider other people only for their own achievements, they reveal to you the true meaning of poverty and of rootedness in Christ.
To be is more important than to have. To be for Christ, rooted in love, is more important than to do.

And when your friends and relatives are no longer preoccupied with their own usefulness, they render a service which was not planned: they become teachers.

They teach you about your illusions of immortality and invite you into creative contact with your own ageing.
Ageing is no longer to be feared: it is the beginning of a promise, the promise of a new life, the fullness of God, who is All.
Only in the depths of your heart, in quietness and prayer, will you discover your own capacity for the Light, Life and Love that is God”.