Journey of the Foundresses

Our enclosure date had been fixed for October 21st, but it was decided that too much work had yet to be done about the house by the monks, so it was fixed for November  21st which seemed ages away.  We had already been a month without it.

One Saturday evening just before Reading, we heard a siren out front.  The doorbell rang.  Nobody paid any particular attention to it.  The bell for Reading rang.  The community of fourteen gathered in the Chapter Room where we had it for the first days.  Some of us were still in the chapel and heard a “large” voice in the cloister.  One by one we arrived on the scene, and saw who had been let in.  Archbishop Cushing.  Nothing could delight us more.  We practically carried him over the house.  He was on his way to make a speech, and so was all dressed up in what resembled a tailcoat.  He had to leave soon after, but up in the dormitory, of all places, he gave us a specimen of his voice and what he had said about us.  We could have listened to him all night.  His hat had been rescued the first thing by Sr. Patrick, and of course, everyone was willing to take it.  (No one thought prosaically of hanging it up).  But she wouldn’t part with it and carried it about the entire time.

Nothing untoward happened until the enclosure date, and it was to be performed by His Excellency.  So on the morning of the 21st of November 1949, a beautiful day and a most beautiful feast for our little ceremony, the monks and brothers in profusion, with very business-like airs, probably thanking God that they could now go home to their own enclosure, took over the chapel and the sacristy and gradually overflowed into the cloister.  At 7:00 a siren suddenly joined out front.  “Quick, the Bells!  It’s the Archbishop!”  Everything went ahead smoothly; there is no dallying when he is officiating.  He began his Mass immediately, a low Mass, which was really, oddly enough more satisfying to us than a sung Mass, in spite of the absence of the “grandeur.”

The procession followed immediately composed of monks, brothers, and Cross and candle bearers, the community of fourteen, and the Archbishop walking last, vested, with two monks and his own priest, blessing the house with holy water (and carrying on a slightly muted conversation at the same time), while we sang the Miserere on the sixth Solemn Tone.  We certainly didn’t feel like it though.  We went through the house, even through half the dormitory (I hope the cells were in order) and down the “night” stairs beside the chapel and into the chapel again—finishing with the prescribed prayers and versicles, etc.  Then his little sermon followed, “I stand at the door and knock.”  He was refused at the door of Bethlehem, only allowed part of Simon the Pharisee, as a guest; but in Bethany the door was always open to Him.  The whole house was His.  That was to be our aim—give Him all our heart, and let Him find a constant welcome in this new little corner.

So as that day closed, we could not help but compare ourselves to fourteen little Marys, enclosed at last in our temple, to become like her by drawing closer and closer to Him and giving great glory to God.

Epilogue I
But many other things did those Nuns of Wrentham do, which, if they were written every one, the whole of Ireland itself, I think, could not contain the books that would be written.
1 May 1950

Epilogue II
On a dark cold day in December, barely three weeks later, the newly sealed doors opened again.  It was December 17th—the first of the “O” antiphons had been sung at Vespers that day, and towards evening, without any fanfare, Sr. Julia, Sr. Angela, Sr. Pia, and Sr. Bernadette, coming from Bon Conseil in Canada, stepped across the threshold.  Such is the quiet way of God.  His gifts are silently present, only waiting to be revealed.

Some of the Wrentham novices remember vividly the joy of the new residents of the novitiate: Sr. Bernadette’s—obvious, but quiet joy, and Sr. Angela’s—she was overflowing with it.  This joy was to become the trademark of God’s gift of Sr. Angela to Wrentham that was to be remembered over the years.  The story of that revelation, already written in the hearts of the Wrentham Community, waits in the Heart of God.

The End.