Sisters of Saint Joseph of Annecy

"Coming Home" for the year of Consecrated Life

“Coming Home” for the Year of Consecrated Life

There have been a number of events to celebrate this Year of Consecrated Life in many dioceses across the UK. Late in 2014 I began working with two other religious vocation directors from the Sisters of Nazareth and the Daughters of Charity to plan an event for our home diocese of Motherwell in Scotland.

We each felt strongly that our own vocation story had begun in our family, school, parish and diocese. We were influenced by those around us. Therefore in the Year of Consecrated Life it felt   like the right time to come home to say thank you and to celebrate the variety there is in religious life. And so an idea and a plan began to develop.

For many years the Diocese of Motherwell has held a week of vocation awareness annually. Part of this is the Vocation Mass at the cathedral which I remember attending with Sr. Ursula and Sr. John Bosco during my own discerning days. We hoped to make use of this existing platform to celebrate the vocation to religious life. Early in 2015 we contacted the bishop to suggest that we gather the religious from the diocese of Motherwell at that Mass and then have an exhibition in the parish hall afterwards. But, as often happens, plans changed along the way and the idea grew.

Bishop Joseph Toal invited the religious living and ministering in the diocese, and those who had grown up there, to an evening of celebration. It began with a meal followed by Evening Prayer at the national shrine to Our Lady at Carfin, then Mass at the cathedral. The religious were asked to participate in the liturgy as readers, in the offertory procession etc. After Mass in a packed cathedral each congregation met with school students, parishioners and friends around their exhibition stands.

Over the years there have been 6 sisters of St. Joseph of Annecy who came from the Diocese of Motherwell, including Sr. Bernardine who was missioned to India. Sr. Anna and I both grew up there and so we attended the event to represent the Sisters of St. Joseph of Annecy.

For me it was an evening of past, present and future coming together. I looked back to my.past as I returned to the cathedral for the first time in 24 years. The last time I had been there was for this same annual Vocation Mass- just a week or so before I entered, so my thoughts were very much with the sisters who had accompanied me then. It was also good to reconnect with several priests who had been in my parish during my early years or with whom I had been at school. In the present it was a real joy to see the various religious congregations spread out across the room -truly highlighting the breadth of religious life within the Church. And I looked ahead to the future as I spoke with the school pupils and young people. While religious life will not be the vocation of many of them, it was encouraging to see they are searching for God in their lives in some form.

Sr. Anna writes:

"It was a night of nostalgia and hope for me. My father and grandparents were parishioners of the cathedral for many years and some of my cousins still attend there. I was especially delighted to see so many young people at the Mass and exhibition. They were enthusiastic in their worship and showed a real interest in what the religious in the diocese are doing. Whether we find them knocking at our doors again is another matter but we can be heartened by the knowledge that so many young people took the trouble to come to share the evening with us".

For both Sr. Anna and I it was truly a time of “coming home” to our roots in Scotland to celebrate this Year of Consecrated Life. As Pope Francis has said, it was a time “to look to the past with gratitude, to live the present with passion and to embrace the future with hope.”

Sr. Anna and Sr. Marianne