Left to right: Srs Frances Kennedy, Patricia O’Donovan, Marie Cox Personal Profile
Sr Marie Cox holds music close to her heart. It brought her to where she is today and has connected her to people all over the world since she joined the Mercy Sisters in January 1979.
Hailing from a small village called Arney in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, Marie was introduced to music the way many young Irish children are; the tin whistle. “Music would have been very important in the family ,” says Marie to The Irish Catholic.
One of her brothers, Gerard, has recorded several albums with Marie and including her first CD titled ‘The Water is Wide’. Marie’s most recent album was recorded in 2019. Her brother also taught her to play guitar at the age of nine after she had learned the tin whistle and picked up violin.
For Marie, music and faith have always been intertwined. It was actually music that made her consider joining the Mercy order in the first place.
“For about five years before I entered, when I was in school, I played in a band then I became enthralled with the Charismatic Renewal. Again, it was the music I suppose that drew me into that because I used to go regularly to the Charismatic Renewal, once a week, and I used to play for it and sing.”
She says it wasn’t only the music that appealed to her, but she felt that religious life was calling her, and she had to do something about it. So, a year after she left school and with a year of administration experience under her belt, she joined.
“To be totally honest I didn’t really think I would stay. As I say I entered in January 1979 and I’m still here.”
Marie was encouraged to continue with music as she trained. At one stage she spent two years in music college in Dublin. On a part time basis, she would go every week for piano and violin, “At the time the sisters hoped that I would go teach music, but I never really wanted to teach music, so I don’t. I never felt my calling was to teach,” she says.
She has always worked as a secretary or in administration. Including the four years when she worked on the Mercy mission in Kenya. “I went out for six months and I ended up staying four years,” says Marie. She had gone out to visit a friend also named Marie (IC 06/02/20) who was working in Our Lady of Lourdes Mutomo Hospital in Kenya.
“I had no interest in going out on the mission, but I went out to visit her with a friend and I just felt it was a place where I could actually do something,” says Marie.
“The hospital had been gifted at that time was a small petrol generator and the first computer which was still in a box, so I decided to go back out for six months just to see what I could do.”
At that early stage the hospital wanted to start putting their records on a computer, “I used to have to go and start the generator outside the window and then go in, but I mean that was high tech at that time,” says Marie.
The area, at the time she was there between 1993 and 1997, was impoverished, there was no running water or electricity apart from those petrol generators and that was only on for a few hours daily for the hospital.
“It was very tough for the people, but it was a great experience to have been there I suppose.”
Marie felt that there was no end of help to give to the people there and there was no question of whether any job was useful because any help made a big impact on the area.
“Here sometimes it’s a bit harder to know what to be doing to be meaningful,” she says
Music followed her to Kenya too, some of the volunteer doctors and nurses would gather with her to play music. If there was a St Patrick’s Day or Christmas Day there would always be a gathering of missionaries, “Then they always ended up having music and singing and that so that was great,” says Marie.
When she returned home in 1997 she began her current admin role in the diocese of Clogher and continued with her music.
“Being able to sing and play particularly at eucharistic celebrations on thought is something I value a lot.
“You never know how it affects people and from time to time people will come up and express their thanks and how much it means. That means a lot to me because then as long as I think that people are getting something from the music.
“I know personally when I go to something and the music, if it’s good, very often that means more to me nearly then words,” she says, explaining how really, to her it is prayer.
Marie says she would love to inspire people the way she felt inspired by the music at the Charismatic Renewal meetings.
“I’m hopeful that people get something that means something to them, and I may never hear that. But it doesn’t matter, as long as it means something to people and people take something away from it.”
Marie has made 11 albums, seven of those were more religious albums on the women mystics. These were composed by Sr Briege O’Hare who is a Poor Clare sister and asked Marie to sing her pieces.
On December 4 her and two fellow Mercy Sisters, Frances Kennedy and Patricia O’Donovan launched an album titles, ‘May hope be yours’, of which all the proceeds will go to The Society of St. Vincent de Paul.