by Sr. Margaret Anne Meyer MMM USA 11.04.2024
Finally, the time had arrived for a little breathing space. Well, this was what we thought when we heard that we would be studying the “small parts” connected with our final medical exam. Eyes, Ears, Nose, Throat, and Psychiatry would be the main subjects of our lectures. We would not have a written examination but would have a clinical and oral examination. The best part of this year is that we went to outside hospitals who specialized in these fields.
I will never forget our first day at Grangegorman Hospital. We were all waiting to see a psychiatric patient and as soon as he entered the room, he asked us “What is wrong with all of you? Why are you not talking to each other? Is your hypothalamus not connected to your cerebellum?” I could feel the cold sweat dripping down my back as he continued to tell us he was Jesus Christ who had just landed in Howth. I was beginning to feel like I was the psychiatric person, and this happened repeatedly in their presence throughout my medical practice.
We also had lectures in Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology because we would have these exams the following November. Traveling to Crumlin Childrens’ Hospital took over an hour on the bicycle. Often Seamus Healy who was a member of our class and had a sister Roisin, who had entered the Medical Missionaries of Mary, very kindly gave us a lift to these far places. We would cycle to Earlsfort Terrace where he would meet us in his car. We all enjoyed those rides. Another treat at Crumlin Hospital is that we could buy a cup of coffee and have delicious Jacob’s macaroon biscuit for 2/6d.
Around this time our tutorials in Medicine and Surgery continued in the late afternoons and some evenings we stayed for a few hours in the Casualty Department. I found it all extremely exciting and interesting but sometimes I felt faint at the sights I was seeing large needles injected for diagnostic tests in someone’s neck or back. I am so glad that I never had to use those tests and today’s tests are done in a much simpler manner.
Another subject we had was Forensic Medicine. The lecturer gave us dramatic descriptions of what one would suspect to witness foul play. One sees all these in mystery movies but the way he had the lightning striking one could almost feel that one was actually at the crime scene. We had a textbook but the week before the exam I realized that I had not opened it very much. The saving factor was that our Professor had drafted an article explaining the difference between salt water and freshwater drowning. It was written in the Irish Medical Journal. We all read the article and, lo and behold, wasn’t it on our exam paper. Somehow, we got through.
Yes, Spring seemed to come fast that year 1963, and I would like to tell you about some of the exams. The young fellow that I was to present told me a story of how he did marvelous feats on the Dublin buses. He would jump off a bridge to catch a ride on one. Sometimes he would get a fit. I remember retelling his entire story and the psychiatrist said “Did you believe him?” I then realized he might be telling me a wild tale. I decided to tell the truth. I said, “Yes I did believe him.” Then the doctor said, “what is the diagnosis?” I said, “Temporal Lobe Psychomotor Epilepsy.” That was the end of my exam. I did not fail it, but I still do not know if the lad told the truth or not.
I did well on the Ear, Nose, and Throat exam. I was asked about “Otis media ” and the treatment. It was the only exam I got a Second Class Honors for which I thanked God.
Thus, the small part exams were finished and beside the three of us rejoicing we also rejoiced in the success of the four ahead of us Anne Merriman, Rose Ann Houlihan, Catherine Fitzpatrick, Annie Chitalilpilly, to complete their final Med successfully, knowing that next year it would be our turn to complete the ordeal but that is another story.
by Sr. Joannes Meehan MMM (1917 – 1979) Ireland 09.04.2024
First published by MMM in 1977
Every vocation is unique. Each can speak of the wonder and the marvels of his or her call and ultimate response. Perhaps the summons came through an acquaintance, a chance meeting, an event, a grief, a great joy, the loss of a beloved one. God works God’s plan in this way.
I can speak of my own experience. God’s plan for me was working in the Civil Service, getting married, being widowed and then total commitment to missionary life as a Medical Missionary of Mary. Following profession and a period of preparation for the apostolate, I was sent out to bring the Good News to Turkana, Kenya.
Missionaries were not allowed into this part of Kenya until 1961 when, following three years of drought, the people were faced with starvation and death. Almost all the livestock had died. Turkana comprises 25,00 square miles of desert and semi-desert land in Northwest Kenya. The people are a nomadic tribe who roam the vast wilderness in search of fodder and water for their herds of sheep, goats, and camels. They live, eat, and sleep in the open. Their diet is milk mixed with blood from the camels which they bleed occasionally. In December 1961 MMM went out to to set up famine camps. Today (1977), these camps have almost disappeared, but there remains the duty to help these people to become self-supporting and combat the two main scourges: malnutrition and lack of water.
Under the direction of Monsignor Mahon SPS, Prefect Apostolic of Lodwar, I started a Montesorri Nursery School at Turkwell. This gives me a special relationship with the parents and adult population, so that I can help them too. Above all I must strive to convey to them God’s loving care for them in their needs.
I cannot but marvel at the way God has shaped my life. Even though I had my share of crosses. May it be an encouragement to others who feel thwarted in their hopes and help them open their hearts to God’s plan for them.
by Jo Doyle Ireland 07.04.2024
I walked with Jesus.
A follower, a friend.
I knew he was different and that he was going to take us to victory over the Roman soldiers.
So I walked with him.
I loved that moment in time because I loved him and felt that he loved me.
That brought me joy.
Looking back I realized that I had no idea what he was talking about.
The Kingdom!
His father and him were one?
Ludicrous stuff.
But none of that mattered to me, his company was infectious. I felt happy and I had spent much of my life joyless.
There seemed to be a purpose when I was with him.
He enjoyed life, enjoyed his family, friends, and I would describe him as a man who included everyone.
I never thought that by him doing that, that everyone would turn on him.
It became dangerous because he kept including people and then he started healing them!
It was amazing, awesome, but problematic.
Rules, so many rules were broken, and he was being noticed, telling men to pick up their mats on the Sabbath.
Not allowed!
Healing the blind! Cleansing demons!
Who did he think he was? And then of course he told them.
Blasphemy!
I became frightened, cautious, but I never believed that I could turn my back on him so easily.
We all did.
The mob went mad and so did we.
I hid in the alleyways that day. Cowardly I was.
Oh my shame at watching him pass with the blood and mess, I hid, I was frightened of death, and I left my friend.
For days after he died, none of us could look at each other, there was no word for the shame we felt.
A few of us went back to fishing, there was nothing else to do.
Then Peter saw him.
I thought I must have fallen asleep and was dreaming, but it was him.
My head was splitting, lost to confusion and disbelief. I stood on the banks of the lake until he turned and looked back, and I cried. I was ashamed that he held no hostility to my cowardice.
That first evening was so painful. He held no malice.
But later in the dead of night I heard him sob on Peters shoulder saying,
‘How could he? How could Judas believe that I didn’t love him?’
That next morning I arose. I knew what I was to do now.
So, on that day my journey began.
Jo Wardhaugh Doyle is farming in Kildare with her husband Matt. She has worked in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, but more recently has worked with Sr Rita Kelly MMM doing the REAP programme in the Irish Missionary Union (IMU).
by Nadia Ramoutar MMM Communications Coordinator Ireland 05.04.2024
I was talking to a friend who lives in New Zealand. He told me how things are cooling off after a very hot summer and the leaves are turning brown, rust and gold. It was interesting to listen to him as the opposite is true here in the Ireland at the moment. Yesterday was the first day that Spring actually felt like it was with us even though it is April. How strange that our reality in this hemi-sphere is opposite to what he is experiencing there literally on the other side of the world. It is ethno-centric of me to think it is Spring everywhere when it is not.
Another friend of mine is traveling at the moment and sending me messages from India. He is 4 hours and 30 minutes ahead of me. I could not believe that India had a time difference that included 30 minutes and not just hours! Again, my sense of time and space comes into question. I was very thrown off my the half hour increment a decision that was made in 1947 after it became an independent country.
I share this with you because there are a lot of things we treasure like time and weather which are in fact almost an illusion – nothing is actually as it seems. Without meaning to we are often attached to what we consider to be reality when in fact it is not in any way permanent or fixed. Is it possible that we attach ourselves to facts, ideas, thoughts or attitudes that actually hold us back or limit?
One of my hobbies that helps me to cope with stress and gives me the pleasant experience of being outdoors is gardening. I moved into a house that is terraced so my back garden has walls on all sides. I look out to the garden while I work from my desk and I wanted to invite more wild birds to be part of my plan. I got a bird feeder but I didn’t have many plants in the garden yet. The birds didn’t come. I could hear them around but none visited. I realised if I wanted them to come, I needed to create a “habitat” so the birds could flit onto the feeder and feel safe. As soon as I did this, they came.
Birds are wise enough to know not to take food if they cannot protect themselves and based on the number of cats roaming the neighbourhood, I think it is wise. By adding some plants and shrubs and creating a habitat, I changed the nature of my back garden. I could have given up, but I didn’t. I ask you what parts of your “reality” do you need to question? How could you challenge yourself to have faith to see things in a new way? Perhaps to create safe places for other living beings? I believe that human kind can do better.
by. Sr. Anna Finnegan MMM Ireland 03.04.2024
In November 1980, I was at home ready to return to Nigeria after my Final Profession. Our Congregational Leader, at the time, Sr. Jude Walsh, rang me and asked if I would do something a bit unusual. Would I bring a little ten-month old baby back to Nigeria?
The father was Nigerian, and the mother was Irish. The mother was very young, and she did not feel able to look after the baby herself. The father wanted to have him back in Nigeria. She was very agreeable to this and together they worked with Social Services to make it possible.
I said I would be happy to bring the baby back with me. I was well used to caring for children being one of a large family, and with my previous experience of working in the Childrens’ Hospital. Before I left, I checked things out with the social worker and was satisfied to know that the official documentation was in order.
The morning came in mid-November for departure. Two of our MMM Sisters left me to Dublin airport where I was to meet the mother and baby. There was no sign of them when I arrived, and my flight was called three times. Then in the distance I could see a young fair-haired girl running across the airport with the baby in her arms. She gave me the baby and a bag containing the baby’s items. Before we left, she wanted photographs taken with the baby and asked me to write to her when the child had reached his father. At the Aer Lingus departure desk, I passed the baby Ahmed’s ticket and my own to the lady. She looked up at me in surprise, as I was dressed in my full grey habit. She smiled and said, “Are you taking that baby all the way to Nigeria?”
When we reached Amsterdam, we had a few hours to wait until the next flight to Lagos. Ahmed was quite happy and content. Then came the longer flight to Lagos. I had a very comfortable seat at the front of the plane with extra room for baby Ahmed. He was a happy child and danced up and down on my knee until he fell asleep. The air hostess was very helpful too when I needed hot water, etc, for the baby’s food.
When we arrived in Lagos, one of our MMM Sisters was there to meet us. We waited around for a long time – no sign of the father. It wasn’t any surprise because communication between Ireland and Nigeria was very slow at that time, an there were no mobile phones!
We took the late afternoon flight to Port Harcourt. I had a ticket only as far as Lagos for the baby, but I boarded the plane that afternoon with the baby and no one raised an eyebrow! While we walked across the tarmac, sisters from another Congregation, who were waiting to pick up their passenger, were eyeing us and were surprised to see myself and a baby arriving in!
In Port Harcourt one of our MMM Sisters was waiting there with the driver to bring us to Urua Akpan. It was only in Urua Akpan that the baby began to fret. He was not used to all these young girls wanting to pick him up and play with him.
Now, how to find the father? On Friday, the next morning, we travelled to the town where the father worked and went to the factory. Unfortunately, he had a day off work that day and no one could locate him. After leaving messages that he should be at home the following day, we went to our nearest MMM house for the night. Next morning, we were successful. The father was waiting outside his house, happy, excited and nervous to see his little son again. Ahmed cried when he left my arms, and it was hard to say goodbye. The father assured us that his own mother was going to help him take care of the child.
When I got back to Urua Akpan, I wrote to the mother as promised, and she wrote back thanking me. She had also received a letter from the father.
As I write this in April 2024, Ahmed, the baby, is now 44 years old. I often think of him and pray that he is happy and that he is doing good for the people of Nigeria.
By Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 01.04.2024
Today is April 1st and Easter Monday. It is a nice kind of co-incidence. Although the origins of April Fool’s Day cannot be known for certain, some people believe that it originated in France. After the Council of Trent, France made the shift from the Julian Calendar, where the New Year began in Spring, to the Gregorian calendar that we use today (January 1st). So those who continued celebrating in the Spring were laughed at and called Fools. Other people think it began in England, much earlier than that, in the time of Chaucer.
No matter what its origins, Easter Monday is a call for us to make a new beginning. We have prepared ourselves during the season of Lent for this great feast. We acclaim in words and song, “Christ has risen!”.
Now we are away from our church services and back into daily life. This is when the fun begins. In some ways we believe and have experienced the Resurrection if we call ourselves Christian. From now on we are challenged to put that belief into our humdrum ordinary lives. I think it asks of us a positive attitude to life. Yes, there is evil in the world, there are wars and natural disasters, but deep down we know and trust that with the Resurrection everything has changed. Christ has risen not just for Himself and the Father, but to assure us that we too will overcome, will rise with him. I think this is a comforting message for us in times of bleakness. It is the rock to which we cling.
On a much lighter note, the other day I remembered a famous April Fool’s joke that the BBC played. It broadcast a film in their “Panorama” current affairs series purporting to show Swiss farmers picking freshly grown spaghetti, in what they called the Swiss spaghetti harvest. The BBC was soon flooded with requests to purchase a spaghetti plant, forcing them to declare the film a hoax on the main news the next day!!
I am always a sucker for April Fools jokes – I wonder what one I will fall for this year?
by Rev. Canon Susanna Gunner England 31.03.2024
Editor’s Note: This reflection was written in 2020, just as the pandemic was taking hold, and still relevant today. The image is from the Benedictine Sisters at Schotenhof, Belgium.
Take a moment to look at this sculpture made by Belgian nuns… We see two Roman guards in their boots and helmets and chainmail, sitting at either end of a stone grave slab, scratching their chins in disbelief, looking at where the body was and now is not. Carved into the bronze above them is a spiralling disc, rays emanating from it in all directions. And cut into the disc and its rays is the unmistakeable shape of a figure, head up, arms outstretched. But it is nothing but an outline against the bluest of blue skies. There is no actual figure, only the space where it has been and a wonderful sense of freedom.
This sculpture teaches us something very profound: we cannot look at Jesus’ raised body, but we must somehow understand the world through it. The resurrection, says this sculpture, must be our viewfinder, through which we see everything else. In all four resurrection narratives, Jesus is constantly saying, “Don’t hang on to me now but go on, go ahead…” For the disciples, everything changes with the resurrection. They must start looking at Jesus, at themselves, at their lives and the future in new ways.
What do we see as we gaze at this sculpture in the context of coronavirus?
In rising from the dead, Jesus gives us not only the Christian hope that death is not the end. He also gives us a new world now full of the possibility of resurrection. He offers us our earthly lives transfigured by hope. Through the lens of his new risen life, everything looks different. Death, despair, disappointment, though still devastating, no longer have the last word. How might the frustrations and domestic tensions of lockdown be transfigured by looking at them through the viewfinder of Jesus’ new risen life? And what about illness and trauma and bereavement? The sharpened sense of our own mortality? And the markedly changed world in which our future lies?
Rev. Canon Susanna Gunner
Church of England Diocese of Norwich
Chaplain to His Majesty, the King
by Jo Doyle Ireland 30.03.2024
Inspired by an Ancient Homily in the Office of Readings.
Something strange is happening. There is a great silence on earth today.
Christ was mortally wounded and died, and the earth shuddered.
These are some words that are helpful in this Holy Saturday descent.
Wounding, crisis, call, promise, transformation.
This reading explains the journey of these words. What is the call of such a great wounding?
Is there a meaning to our suffering?
In Greek the word ‘Wound’ means to pierce. Often we ignore, minimize or spiritualize our piercing and in that, we don’t recognize our call, not just to change but to participate in our transformation. We are asked on this day to enter our own piercing to receive something new.
Crisis is most often the only thing that will impel us to radical transformation.
We can try to stay neutral to our piercing or attend to the wound.
There has been so much activity on Holy Thursday and Good Friday that we don’t know what Holy Saturday in our lives is for. We pick daffodils, clean windows, prepare the leg of lamb to celebrate the Sunday Resurrection, yet we have not transformed, we may only have changed. Maybe we changed our jobs, houses, cars, countries, but this Saturday space is different.
We are invited to descend with him to join his wounding and piercing and in that darkness or crisis we are asked to wake up.
The Descent
Often we are wounded by a traumatic event. Not all traumatic events are evil, but some are. If you look at the book of Genesis where we are told not to touch the tree of good and evil. Its power is too much for us mere mortals. However, if the tree of evil steps out and touches us, what happens to our spirit and soul. We can be overwhelmed and only need to look to our Evening News to see the results.
Our wound opens and our pain ignites into bitterness and hatred, often we can be engorged in our own suffering and have notions of revenge. We can become so consumed with pain asking ‘Why?’ There is often no answer to why something happened, and we can become overpowered by darkness leading to addiction, depression, hopelessness or suicide. Another way is to follow the wound, travel into the Eye of God’s grief to experience the gaze of love. This descent into hell is experienced as the absence of love. It is a felt sense of being alone with grief, isolation, detachment and a felt sense of abandonment. In that desolate Holy Saturday place, Christ descended and waits to gaze on us, to pierce us with his Love and let us know from that moment on, that in our darkest moments we are not alone.
The Call
It may seem like an annihilation, but the promise of the wound is not annihilation but consummation with Christ. This is the promise of the Holy Saturday reading, our life’s journey into God. We are not just being taught that we are not alone but now we know it. God is with me is the gift of mystical union. What do I learn? The mystery of forgiveness, love, new purpose and the question,
‘Can anything good come from journeying the ‘Way of the wound?’
Remember, Resurrection happened in darkness, and nobody recognized Him when he rose from the dead.
Jo Wardhaugh Doyle is farming in Kildare with her husband Matt. She has worked in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, but more recently has worked with Sr Rita Kelly MMM doing the REAP programme in the Irish Missionary Union (IMU).
by Jo Doyle Ireland 29.03.2024
Gulu, Northern Uganda, June 1981
I saw him die, a brutal death.
Beaten by the soldiers chains and whips.
Unnecessary cruelty.
He was the wrong tribe. The tribe of Amin.
So he must be killed.
An innocent boy, living in a violent world that was just waiting for an excuse to hate, to be enraged.
Outrage, outrage! At being different.
No solace for anyone who does not fit in.
There were two of them, one dead already.
I felt the breathless fear of the other, waiting for that same outcome.
Such horror.
Death. Not yet.
“I am too young and innocent,” he whispers.
But no, he was different so must be killed.
The chains crashed into his head, his red blood screaming violence against his glistening black hair.
His vision blurring with disbelief that this could be happening to him.
His vision blurring by the blood and sweat of violence.
His vision blurring as his life began to drain away.
I stood at the side of the open-back Jeep, wanting to give him something. My hanky to wipe the destruction off his face. But my arms were lifeless, lost to fear.
I gave him all I had.
My eyes, my sight, my love.
We held each other’s gaze.
It was an unearned intimacy at a depth which imprinted life onto my soul.
He was murdered, caught in the gaze of my essence.
We shared a full lifetime in these few minutes.
Who was he? What was his name?
On reflection, years of un layering these few moments.
This was Good Friday.
An enactment of sorts.
The innocent Christ was dying in the arena of fear where no one stood beside him. There was one, a woman named Veronica.
An unknown anonymous woman. There is no mention of her, even in the Bible.
Although terrified, she reaches out. She sees the streaming blood fall on this man’s face and the unwarranted violence perpetuated. He had no friends on that journey. T his deserted man.
Alone with the alone in the crowd of perplexing misery.
She loses her fear to compassion and reaches out with her veil to wipe his face. A touch of love.
Oh the softness of her fabric, the smell of freshly baked bread upon it. Humanity is held gently upon his brokenness in a courageous act of mercy. The imprinted face of suffering forever on the veil of this Veronica.
I often felt I was a coward, unable to move, but I gave that young boy my eyes and let his life imprint my soul.
Now with this unknown woman. This hidden Veronica not mentioned in the Gospels is every mother, sister, woman who is unbearably called to witness violence.
She is the woman of Gaza holding her dead child for no purpose other than vengeance upon innocence.
She is the woman of Ukraine being bombarded with power, a demolition of grace, whilst her sons die for greed of another.
She is the woman of Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, weeping because her children are no more.
These are the hidden true women of this world.
The Vero-iconos of Christ, which means True Image in Latin.
True image of womanhood.
True image of courage.
True image of compassion.
We are these women, the Vero-iconos.
The gazers of mercy, or at least we are called to try.
Jo Wardhaugh Doyle is farming in Kildare with her husband Matt. She has worked in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, but more recently has worked with Sr Rita Kelly MMM doing the REAP programme in the Irish Missionary Union (IMU).
by Sr. Jo Anne Kelly MMM Ireland 28.03.2024
It was early years after Vatican 11 and we were only learning about the liturgical changes for celebrating the Holy Week ceremonies. Our people in the leprosy village could not go out to the parish church but we were blessed to have our own ceremonies in the village church. I especially remember one Holy Thursday. The ceremony is a very beautiful celebration of thanksgiving recalling the last supper Jesus had with His disciples, when He first gave us the Eucharist and established the priesthood before He went out to face His passion and cruel death. To set an example for those who would follow Him Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and asked them to do it in memory of Him.
Our preparations included choir practices, preparing the church, the altar and finding twelve people who would have their feet washed. It was left to the village leader and his councilors to choose them. It was not an easy task. So many of the older permanent village people had bandages on their feet and others were reluctant as they thought nobody would want to wash their feet.
However, twelve of the elders were chosen and agreed, all of them men. They came early to the church to sit in their special place dressed in their best clothes. One was in a wheelchair, some were using crutches, and the rest came walking freely, but all of them with feet somehow damaged as a result of their illness. They were happy and enthusiastic at taking part.
We began the ceremony with a hymn for the feastday with drums and instruments and many voices. At the Gloria bells were rung as well and the church was filled with the sound of music. From then on however the tone changed and the drums and instruments were silent, only the human voices remained.
In the village we had people from 13 different tribal areas, each with their own language so the common language was pidgin English and we all spoke it. However, this year we had a new young priest who had not yet learnt pidgin so when it came to the homily the catechist offered to interpret for him. It was a simple, most beautiful homily about the great love that Jesus has for all of us and the example He gave of loving service, of washing the feet of his disciples. It was a lovely homily. The catechist knew his congregation, so the pidgin version was sometimes more powerful than the real English!
As the priest began the washing of the feet, he greeted each one. He took time and great care with the washing and drying. It was a very touching little ceremony. Tears came to my eyes.
The Mass continued after which the altar was stripped and we prepared to keep vigil with Jesus as He faced his passion and death.
Before the people left the church, I went to greet the men who had their feet washed. They were so excited and happy and thanking God for everything. They are such a gracious people.
One old man said to me “Sister, this our Jesus, He pass all” – meaning He’s the greatest.
