Susan Gately
Eucharist is essential food for the daily journeys of a group of sisters, writes Susan Gately
The Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, dressed in white habits, arrived in Roscommon town last May. “People are very open and friendly. They meet us on the streets and beep their horns at us because most of the children know us by now,” says Sr Ruth Maria O’Callaghan, leader of the new Irish convent.
Bishop Kevin Doran invited the sisters to the diocese, but their arrival was particularly poignant, as two months after their first meeting with him where they planned the new convent, an Irish member, Sr Clare Crockett (33), was tragically killed in an earthquake in Equador. At the time she was teaching guitar to five young postulants who also died. Bishop Doran attended her funeral in Derry.
“For many years I have been praying for a foundation of Servant Sisters here in Ireland,” says Sr Ruth, who comes from Finglas in Dublin. “Being a teenager and a young adult I never knew the richness of the Catholic Church, the life of grace and everything that the Lord has to offer us.” Now through the Home of the Mother, she has found the ‘hidden treasure’ “which is the Lord Himself”. My greatest joy is being able to transmit this to people and bring them hope, she says.
True love
The Roscommon convent is made up of six young sisters – four from the United States, and two from Ireland. At 40, Sr Ruth is the eldest. She was 20 when priests from the order came to visit her parish.
At the time she was toying with the idea of religious life. “They transmitted a true love for the Church, of being authentic before the Lord without any masks. They had a true joy that came from their intimacy with the Lord.”
She joined the order, spending eight years in Ecuador and two in Spain. Ironically it was her friend Sr Clare Crockett who came out to Ecuador to substitute for her, allowing Ruth to leave for Spain.
In Roscommon, they are nicknamed ‘Nuns on the Run’ as they lead such busy lives. “Before we begin our day we always have an hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Without this we cannot do anything,” says Sr Ruth.
“People are surprised that we have no television, but being with the Lord before the Blessed Sacrament, this is where the best films go on.” They go to Mass in the morning too.
In the town they are involved in lots of different activities, including visiting homes and helping with Confirmation retreats in schools in Roscommon and Castlerea. “We go into one of the hospitals in Roscommon and we have a holy hour on Thursday. We’re always very busy, thank God.”
The biggest challenge in Ireland is overcoming fear, says the Dublin nun. “Fear of speaking the truth, fear of being rejected and fear of being afraid of what others might think of me because I am a true Catholic with all its consequences.” But to follow Jesus means we will be persecuted. “We know this,” she says.
Disputing the hackneyed phrase ‘the Church is dying out’, she refers to St Paul who says when you have hope you have joy: “Ireland needs hope and needs to remember that Our Blessed Mother has already won the battle, we just need to unite ourselves to her and offer ourselves to her for whatever she needs.”
The Home of the Mother, an International Public Association of Faithful of the Catholic Church, was founded by a Spanish priest Fr Rafael Alonso Reymundo, in the 1980s, receiving its ‘Definitive Decree of Approval’ in 2016.
Fr Reymundo received, in his own words, three missions from God: “The defence of the Eucharist; the defence of the honour of Our Mother, especially in the privilege of Her virginity; and the conquest of young people for the Lord”.
As a newly-ordained priest he surrounded himself with young people and tried to “cultivate their spiritual life, so that they might live in the grace of God” encouraging them to “lead a serious prayer life, to confess frequently, to receive daily Communion if possible, and to pray at least one mystery of the Rosary each day”.
In July 1982 before St Peter’s tomb in Rome, six of these young women committed themselves to live its spirituality. Three of them went on to co-found the women religious branch – the Servant Sisters.
With a Carmelite spirituality, it now has branches for priests, brothers, sisters, lay people and youth – the Servant Priests born in 1990 and the branch for lay people in 1995. In 2001, in response to St Pope John Paul II’s appeal for Christians to enter the media, the Home of the Mother began a television station in Spain.
Today the Servant Sisters have 19 foundations – 10 in Spain, four in Italy, three in Ecuador, one in the US and their most recent addition in Ireland. The Servant priests have seven foundations in Spain, Italy and Ecuador. The founder, Fr Rafael Alonso Reymundo, is still alive, calling himself “a qualified spectator of what God is doing”. He is “absolutely astonished by the growth of the lay members” of the Home of the Mother.
Although the Irish foundation is less than a year old, for years the sisters ran summer camps and pilgrimages here, and as a result six women have joined the order and two men. “We still count Sr Clare Crockett as being one of us, although she has with the mercy of God, founded a new house in Heaven,” says Sr Ruth.