Sr Pamela's Golden Jubilee

Sr Pamela, today we gather to celebrate your fifty years of religious profession, which includes twelve years with the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, and thirty-eight years as a Cistercian of Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey.  A day of joy and thanksgiving.

During a retreat in 1982, the year you made the decision to leave the Dominicans to become a Cistercian, you heard Jesus ask you: “Will you walk with me to Jerusalem?”  Your Jubilee card bears these treasured words along with a Chinese brush painting, which you chose as a visual representation of your call.  The image shows a steep path up a mountain, with two figures at the base setting out to climb to the peak where there sits a small house.  I do not profess any expertise in the symbolic world of brush painting, but I would like to spend a little while exploring these three elements:
The steep road – struggle.
The two figures – company.
The little house at the top – the goal.

First, the way that leads up the mountain looks impossibly steep, vertiginous, in places, almost vertical.  Like the icons of the Christian East, which use improbable rock formations in the background as an expression of the arduous spiritual journey, this motif seems to be kind of visual hyperbole.  In gospel language, it says: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.  How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.  And those who find it are few” (Mt 7:13-14).  Fifty years of religious life has taken you through much challenging terrain.  You have followed Christ, who “because his face was set towards Jerusalem” (Lk 9:53), found that “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:58).  The way to Jerusalem has not always been easy to perceive, while climbing around rocks of hardship, crawling through tunnels of obscurity, sometimes seeming to backtrack, and at certain moments finding yourself hanging from a sheer rock face.  And yet, in spite of it all, there is a recognizable path.  After fifty years, you can look back on all the twists and turns and see the lineaments of a way.  Perhaps the way was created by your walking it.  Today, you rejoice and thank God for every blessed inch of the way that has brought you closer to him.

Second, the two figures who set foot on the way also tell us something important about the spiritual journey.  We do not walk alone.  You have walked with your family, in which faith, care and mutual support allow each one of you to work out your salvation.  You have walked with friends and confidants, with whom shared experiences and reflection have helped to make the way clearer.  You have walked with two different religious communities, in which spiritual formation and fraternal support have provided necessary and precious resources for growth.  There have been moments, no doubt, in which all these sources of support have seemed to fall away, leaving you feeling alone and lost.  And yet, at no other time was it so clear that one companion was always ready to fall into step with you.  In the crucible of the fourth step of humility you found your life bound to that of the Lord.  You learned by experience what it means to: “share through patience in the sufferings of Christ and so deserve also to share in his kingdom” (RB Prol. 50).  Today, you rejoice and thank Jesus for walking with you the way to Jerusalem.

Finally, that little house perched on the top of the rock is barely visible from the base, and yet it is the reason for the climb.  It represents that vision of unity in love which fired your heart begin the journey, as expressed by the chosen readings for your Jubilee Mass.  John lays out the wonder of the invitation extended to all humanity to share in the intimate life of God: “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us” (Jn 17:21).  Paul explains what this means in human terms, with his vision of the transforming power of Christian community: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.  And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection” (Col 3:12-14).  The little house on top of the mountain is not a private retreat from the world and its pain, but a high place from which we can, with St Benedict, view the whole world in a single ray of light.  You look upon the people of the world, with all their struggles, joys and sorrows and pray for them.  In a particular way, you have felt drawn to hold the people of China, and especially the Church of China in the house of your heart.  Within this house there is a table at which all may sit.  Today, you rejoice and give thanks to Father, Son and Spirit for your small part in their loving plan to bring all people into one.

On this Jubilee day, we rejoice with you and thank God for your fidelity to the way, and for his fidelity to you on your walk to Jerusalem.