Our

birthday

girl this

week is:

Patricia Redgrave 11 January

ST PAUL’S POST St Paul’s Province Weekly Newsletter: 207 11 January 2021

There is now only one telephone number

for Middleton Convent:

Tel: 0161 655 3184

The old has gone, The new has come!

2 CORINTHIANS 5 : 17

Bereavements

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Relatives/friends of Sisters:-

Marguerita’s brother, Pat;

Eily May’s brother, Tade, and her sister, Mary Philomena White;

Kay Doran’s niece-in-law, Kerry;

Rita McStay’s niece-in-law, Michelle Reid;

Keighley Associate, Elaine Plunkett;

Sheila McNally’s brother, John McNally;

Brigid Murphy’s brother-in-law, Michael Clyne;

Carmel Comerford’s sister, Clare;

Margaret Travers’ sister, Mary McLean;

Sr Monica’s brother, Donal;

Lorraine’s Mum, Mary.

Rejoice always,

pray continually, give thanks in all

circumstances;

for this is God’s will

for you in

Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians

5:16-18

Prayers are asked for the repose of the soul of Alice McCann, Sr Edith’s niece, who died today after a long fight against cancer. May she rest in peace.

Also please pray for the families and friends of our beloved Sisters: Cephas Wearden and Margaret Collins, who also died recently. Details of their lives are found overleaf.

O n the last day of 2020, 31st

December, Sr Cephas Wearden was

called home to God. RIP. Born in Farnworth, she attended Mount St Joseph School, Bolton and

subsequently entered there. Cephas was a quiet but very bright lady with a great sense of

humour. She was a very loyal friend who knew how to keep confidences. One Sister said you

could tell Cephas anything and it would go no further - a wonderful gift.

After many years teaching in Moortown, Keighley and Bradford

Cephas went to Dewsbury to work in administration, and later to

Middleton to the Province office. Laterally she returned to her

native Bolton where she was a much loved hospital Chaplin in

Bolton Royal infirmary as well as working with Age Concern and

visiting the sick and elderly in the parish. This was the ministry

Cephas really loved and it was on her way home from visiting the

hospital on January 17th 2017 that she met with a life changing

accident as she was crossing the road just outside the house in Over

Hulton. Sr.Josepha, who was the other member of her community,

looked out the front window and saw people gathering in the street,

only to find out within five minutes that Cephas had been hit by a

car and was lying on the road unconscious with multiple injuries.

For the past four years Cephas has lived with the consequences of

that accident, being unable to speak and with limited movement;

she has truly known what it means to be a follower of Jesus in his

Passion. She was loved by the staff and Sisters in East Holme who cared for her and watched

her daily efforts to communicate, learning to read what her bright eyes and smiling facial

expressions were trying to say. One of the photographs Cephas loved to show me when I

visited was of her Profession day with all her set. I eventually managed to get all the names!!!

Perhaps by reading again what Cephas had written about herself in Threads and Patches, 2000,

it will help us to understand where she found the strength to accept what had happened to

her. (Full Threads & Patches article in accompanying email to the Post)

With the realisation that all is gift, as I recall the past and remember the different

phases of my life, I am grateful for God’s unique continuous call and thank Him for

those who have shared my story.

When I look to the future, I would hope to celebrate and praise God with as much

joy and conviction as Corinthea Joseph had, when during a post-playtime assembly,

flushed with success, wearing a seraphic smile and jangling a full bag she sang out

The Lord has won marbles for me

Holy is his name.

Cephas, as we bid you farewell we are praying that you are indeed singing out with great joy in

the Lords presence forever.

Y et another of our sisters has joined our religious community in Heaven, Sister Margaret Collins entered eternal life on

24th December RIP.

Margaret who entered Religious life in her native Dublin did not hesitate to go wherever she was

sent. Consequently she spent many years in England, Scotland and finally Belfast. She passed

away peacefully in Villa Pacis where she had spent the last years of her life.

One Sister, who lived with Margaret in St Gabriel’s Hall in Manchester, described the motherly,

caring way in which Margaret looked after the students always watching out for the ones who

might be feeling homesick in their first year at university or the ones who might be struggling

with the academic side of life. She gave them the support they needed and they all missed her

very much when she was transferred to Glasgow.

In Glasgow Margaret, who was a woman of great determination with a zest for life, once again

entered into good relationships with the people in the parish making many friends. She visited

the sick and elderly bringing them Communion, especially to those in care homes. She ran a

weekly Parish lunch club and organised many day trips for the elderly. In other words she was a

people person who allowed God’s love and compassion to flow through her to others. A sense

of humour helped!!

On 10th December I had a lovely zoom conversation with

Margaret in which she spoke of her wonderful family of

three brothers and six sisters, her parents and their close

connection with the Passionists in Mount Argus. We are

very grateful that two PassionistS, Fr Pat Duffy and Fr

John Friel, were able to celebrate her requiem Mass on

30th December, after which her remains were taken for

cremation. Margaret’s ashes will be taken to Dublin for

interment when the Covid travel restrictions permit.

In the zoom conversation, Margaret also spoke of the

wonderful care she has received in Villa Pacis and I feel

sure that she will now be asking God to bless, in a special

way, all the staff who have cared for her in her final

years.

Rest in eternal peace Margaret. We also hold in prayer

her brother, sisters, family and friends who are

mourning for her.

As we came to the end of the church’s year last November we were sharing our thoughts on

the readings at Mass, all taken from the book of the Apocalypse, and we were glad to see

them come to an end, but this week Richard Rohr reminds us that:

The word ‘apocalyptic’ simply means to ‘unveil’. It was never meant to be a synonym for bad

news! Apocalyptic literature ‘pulls back the curtain’ to reveal what is real, what is true, and

what is lasting. It’s never what we think it is! That is the gift of this literature and of a time

like the one we’re living through. It shocks us out of what we take for granted as normal so

that we can redefine normal. It uses hyperbolic language and images, such as stars falling

from the sky and the metaphor of the moon turning to blood to help us recognize… it’s not

that it’s the end of the world, but it helps us imagine the end of “our world” as we know it.

That doesn’t mean life doesn’t go on, but that our lives won’t go on the way we thought they

would, could, and even should. It allows us to see that what we thought was necessary and

inevitable, simply isn’t, and that everything is eventually ‘Gone, gone, utterly gone!’ as many

Buddhists chant daily in the Diamond Sutra (scripture).

When things are ‘unveiled,’ we stop taking things for granted. That’s what major events like

the COVID-19 pandemic do for us. They reframe reality in a radical way and offer us an

invitation to greater depth and breadth. If we trust the universal pattern, the wisdom of all

times and all places, including the creation and evolution of the cosmos itself, we know that

an ending is also the place for a new beginning. Death is followed by a new kind of life.

I invite you to continue practicing some form of contemplative prayer this year. Our problems

begin when we fight reality, push it away, or insist that the way I ‘see’ reality, from my own

limited perspective, is the only valid reality. Any contemplative practice that serves to

welcome life as it is will change us. We will dive into this ‘unveiled’—and even unpleasant—

reality positively and pre-emptively, saying, ‘Come God, and teach me your good lessons.’

We need such a practice to lessen our resistance to change and our tight grasp around things.

Let us seek to pray this way for as long as it takes us to arrive at a full ‘Yes’ to Reality. Only

then can its lessons come through to us.” (R Rohr Daily Meditations Jan 8th 2021)

Pat Carney