Martin O'BrienTwo new recruits of the Belfast-based Adoration Sisters share their vocation stories with Martin O Brien
“For me, it was a real infusion of grace because from that moment, when I experienced that touch of Christ on my heart, there was a great joy and a great love came with it and that has never left me.”
Those are the words of Belfast barrister Elaine Kelly (47) describing a moment on a Sunday evening last March that has changed her life forever. It has also contributed to a renewal of hope for a rise in vocations among a congregation of sisters whose numbers slumped in recent decades.
Elaine, from Turf Lodge in west Belfast, adds: “I became aware of a very powerful experience, a very powerful touch and I knew it was the Lord. He made it very clear to me I was to be a Sister of Adoration.”
At this, her voice rises in joy. She recalls the precise moment clearly. It was just after night prayer and she was in the chapel of Perpetual Adoration run by the Sisters of Adoration and Reparation on the Falls Road in Belfast.
“It was the first Sunday of Lent, March 9, shortly after 9pm and I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.”
Her story is gripping. She tells it in simple straightforward language. Few who hear her are likely to forget it in a hurry.
Novices
We are in the reception room of the convent of the Adoration Sisters and sitting alongside Elaine is her confrere, Máire McAteer (33) a former teacher of Irish from Castle-derg, Co. Tyrone, who became a novice with the Sisters of Adoration on August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Elaine became a postulant on the same day.
Then earlier this month, Martina Purdy, a BBC political correspondent and one of the region’s most well-known journalists, announced that she is giving up a career of more than 20 years to enter a religious congregation. It turns out to be the Adoration Sisters.
Ms Purdy’s decision made front page news in all the North’s newspapers and sparked favourable comment on talk shows and in the press. She has commenced a period of discernment and could also become a postulant sometime next year.
If Martina talks to prospective confreres Máire and Elaine, she will be struck by their zeal and passion and their sheer joy at the path they have chosen: ultimately to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and devote their lives to the Congregation in the service of God.
Martina would be struck also by how normal and devoid of cloying piety are these two women who have made a radical counter-cultural choice to serve the Lord in a particularly distinctive way.
Sr Máire and Elaine, both brought up in staunchly Catholic families, have arrived at the same destination but have taken very different paths.
Elaine attended Holy Trinity Primary School and St Dominic’s High School before graduating in law from Queen’s University. She then trained under the directorship of Mary McAleese at QUB’s Institute of Professional and Legal Studies.
“I thought Mrs McAleese was amazing, a great lady who was very good to me.”
Elaine was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1991 and to the Bar of Ireland in 2004 and is a specialist in family law. She is currently winding down her practice which has given her “a good living” and “will leave the Bar very shortly”.
Marathons
Elaine is a keen runner, having completed six marathons, three each in Belfast and Dublin, and says her running is being facilitated during down time in the convent.
A senior colleague at the NI Bar said her decision was “a major surprise”.
“Elaine is very popular among her colleagues and she built up a decent practice by dint of her own hard work, ability and personality.”
Elaine says “I let my hair down at university and enjoyed the normal mix of study and partying.”
At this time, she fell away from the practice of her faith and, aged 29, in 1996, she was engaged to be married.
“We broke up and, although it was very painful, the end of the engagement was the catalyst that thankfully brought me back into my faith.”
Elaine then joined a charismatic prayer group and shortly afterwards, towards the end of 1996, started to visit the adoration chapel “where I found great peace at this traumatic time for my troubled soul… once you get the bug you can’t stop going to that chapel.
“I grew to have a greater understanding of Eucharistic adoration and the true presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.”
She kept visiting the adoration chapel regularly for the next 17 years “without ever thinking for a moment” of becoming a sister.
On Sunday, March 9, “it didn’t enter my head to go to the chapel and I felt ready for a night watching the box. But I suddenly felt a really strong draw to go there and I arrived at the beginning of the rosary at 8.30 pm.”
Night prayer followed and Mother Mary Josephine, the Superior General, asked her to read a meditation on St Joseph by the foundress of the Congregation which she found “beautiful”.
A few moments after the end of night prayer it happened: “You are in the presence of Jesus in adoration. It was very, very strong, very clear and it turned my world upside down.
“From that moment, from that touch of Christ on my heart there was a great joy and a great love came with it. And with it came the grace and the joy and strength with the love.”
Elaine spent a further two hours in the chapel trying to “take it in”. She stayed up into the early hours Googling the adoration sisters, finding an article I wrote for The Irish Catholic in June 2013.
“I was happy, elated, delighted, ecstatic, distracted, all these things!”
Schedule
Then she reorganised her schedule to visit the convent next day for Mass and to talk to Mother Mary Josephine.
In May, she spent three and a half weeks in the convent “as a live-in” and was subsequently accepted as a postulant.
From the age of four, Sr Máire McAteer, a graduate in Irish studies from the University of Ulster, has “precious memories” of telling her teacher at St Caireall’s primary school that she “wanted to be a nun” when she grew up. “My teacher asked me who told me that and I replied ‘God did’.”
By the time she arrived at university from Loreto Grammar School Omagh, Máire’s twin passions were “God and the Gaelic language”.
This did not prevent her from throwing herself into “a very normal university life” making lots of friendships including boyfriends. But deep down the desire for a religious life took precedence and she recalls being deeply influenced by a Youth 2000 retreat in Sligo. Above all, she was influenced by World Youth Day 2000 in Rome from where the words of Pope St John Paul are still ringing in her ears. “He paraphrased St Catherine of Sienna, saying if you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire, and that he saw us as ‘watchers of the morn’ (Is 21:11-12).”
Máire was keenly involved in amateur dramatics and Conradh na Gaeilge at home. She appears steeped in Scripture, referencing verses from St Paul that appear to have had a profound influence.
“The love of God ‘compels me’ (2 Cor 5:14) to follow him where he leads.”
Also, “forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead” (Phil 3:13). After university, Máire taught at Naiscoil na gCrann, Omagh, before joining a different religious congregation for a period “but I felt God was drawing me to a more contemplative lifestyle”.
Máire says she decided to approach the adoration sisters after reading my Irish Catholic article and became a postulant last February.
“I had never heard of the adoration sisters before. The article showed people the gift of positive journalism. I was struck by the sisters’ joyfulness and simplicity, by the fact that they are contemplative yet unenclosed and that they had a lovely dog, Joy.”
Joy: the Sisters of Adoration in Belfast do it very well.