the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Well, greetings to everyone. In the style of the press, we shall reflect upon the charity of God and others as we consider the story of our sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I will share something of our unfolding story. I will have spoken at the beginning of our retreat about how God, Anglican sisters, became Catholic nuns. Today, I will describe something of how our journey has continued, how our physical journey of trying to find a building to live in impacted upon our spiritual journey of creating a spiritual home for a new community, and how the corporate journey has affected each sister's personal story. Finally, I shall seek to draw out from this all our experience of God's charitable grace and blessing through the charitable fellowship of others.

[01:05]

Shortly before we were received as Catholic, I warned of the possibility that each person wanting to be received as a Catholic had to be prepared to walk down a drive with such fortune to carry in a vast inner hand, leaving anything else behind, without any guarantee for the future, just going forward in blind faith in accordance with their conscience. both those wanted, went forward and were received into the Catholic Church on the 1st of January 2013. The morning after our reception, we made our debut as Catholics, for the first and last time, in a convent, which until then had been our spiritual home. After Mass, the twelve of us, with our essential personal possessions, ordered a coach and set off. We had no money, no home, we left with no financial settlement for our faithless community, no damage, just the firm conviction that becoming Catholic, with our response to our mortally troubling call, could hollow me. We arrived at the 16th Abbey right on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is a small island, traced off the mainland of England. It's part of England, but you have to go on a ferry, or what, on a hovercraft? You have to go on a hovercraft to get there. So, we went on a ferry, and we arrived at the 16th. We were supposed to be there for 6 weeks, but it turned out to be 8 months.

[02:10]

Basically, after we left, we got a coffee. we didn't find a new home. There were times when we wondered whether we were being called to remain with our sisters. We loved them and felt their own love for us. It's our call that discerned us for us, that God was calling us to continue our journey elsewhere. But where and how would it be possible? Despite the fact that we had no money, we wished to acquire a suitable property. In fact, I and another sister found a state agent particular and visited promising possibilities. We and others traced perfectly to our homes. The answer to all our prayers came in the following way. An American religion officer from a national religion down in Tennessee was ordered to go to the Institute of Birmingham, the first homage of John F. Kennedy Newman. She was studying there doing a PhD, which she did quite a bit of learning, and was constantly known for her and her community. So she came to visit us on the Isle of Wight for a couple of nights, staying outside the enclosure, because on the Isle of Wight they had paper enclosure, so even for other religions they couldn't come into the enclosure. As I waved her off, my last words to her were, as soon as you get to Maryville, go to the chapel, get on your knees, and beg Blessed Joy Henry Newland to find us a home.

[03:15]

She begged and requested. That same night, she emailed me to say that as she left the chapel, she logged into one of her supervisors, and she said, where have you been? And she said, I've been visiting the colony found on the Isle of Wight. And this supervisor said, How would I know? There's a convent allowed to be cock-and-trailed up the road. So she emailed me with the details. I tracked down the Sister Superior. This was Wednesday evening. And by Friday evening, I'd spoken to the Sister Superior on the phone. She told me that they had already moved into the Presbyterian Bottom Road, because the community was growing smaller. So it was just three of them that were based there. The rest had gone back to their main convent in Ireland, because they were Irish nuns. Or they were sorted around the country, but it was just three left there in the convent. So they'd moved into the Presbyterian Bottom Road, and that's why they moved to a fairly decent convent. But she told me she had already moved into the sedentary, and found I was about to lose all the furniture and fakes as items that they could not take with them. How soon do we need to view, I asked, and she said, as soon as possible. So, the next morning, I was in the first hovercraft that left the island white, accompanied by another hipster, and we raced to Birmingham to do the condoms. Clifford Superior showed it around and explained that the convent had been privately sold to them 50 years before, but they now needed to sell it because their leaders were too old to carry on there, and the elderly needed to bring care homes, so they just didn't need it anyway.

[04:27]

They had desperately not wanted it to be sold to developers, but could not imagine that any other religious community would come forward to buy it. Because of the prices that's high on the Isle of Wight, if we were to get back that night, we had just over an hour to view the convent and to set off on our own journey. When the minute was arriving, we knew it was the right place. It's perfect, we said to a clearly delighted Sister Superior. Very good, she says. She's beaming. But we have no knowledge of it, was the next day after. She's... I said, uh, but the defense says the Lord wants us here. He will provide what we need. Her expression didn't change. This mighty woman of faith agreed, but it didn't change her at all. As Sister Superior opened the cleaning cupboard full of mops, rags, and cleaning liquid, she said, oh, I'll get rid of all that before you come. And we went, stop. Leave everything. If you don't have anything, everything you don't need, just leave. I mean everything. No one will deal with it. And that's exactly what happened. Those exiles were fully furnished with condoms because they didn't need anything. And so we didn't have to worry about beds, sheets, anything. It was all there. This is a period explained. This was on a Friday. No, it's Saturday.

[05:28]

This is a period explained that the property would take to go on the open market in two days' time, on a Monday. Well, that's saying one thing already. But I asked her to contact the estate agent and to tell them not to put it on the open market. I said, just give us time to raise the purchase price. This wonderful faithful sister agreed to do just that. She told me substantively. The night we spoke on the phone that Friday, I told the other sisters we were coming to view tomorrow morning, but I said to them, it's only fair that they should bring their heads out, but I'm going to keep an all-night prayer vigil. You're welcome to join me. And the other sisters were too exhausted, but this little period stayed up most of the night, crazed that we would agree to buy them a fair content. Eventually, after loading the night up without sleep, when she felt too tired to carry on, she told the Lord, Jesus, I'm going now, take up to you." And she went off to bed. And she now described the whole thing as a miracle of fate. The next day when we arrived, we were uncritical in our desire to purchase it, although we didn't have any money. Well, I told her the Lord was the right, it was the Lord's will, and she agreed. But she cancelled the house for the academy, stopped the intake engine, and we waited. Within a couple of days, we had confirmed that the benefactor, who wanted to remain anonymous, had heard of our plight, and decided to buy the condos, allowing us to make their paying rent.

[06:35]

and it's indeed a miracle, and that's the first equivalent of charitable friendship. We have come to appreciate the meaning of charitable friendship through God's grace and blessings, and we've experienced it through those bride sisters, and now we're going to come and live with them for eight months, but now it's time for us to depart. So I'll let one of the sisters take up the story of our departure from marriage. The reality of our departure gradually grew as did the pile of luggage that we had to carry at the bottom of the main stairs. While the date had formed, it was perhaps a good thing that the search arrived earlier than expected, as the practicalities of loading, de-loading and tick-mix and rounding up systems took charge of those very final minutes. The coach driver was our old friend who was brought up to the Isle of Wight, who wanted all those ones to go. Did he remember us? He certainly did. And he also had serious notice of getting the coach stuck and attempting to bring us up the Abbey Drive. Thankfully this time all was well, as the coach had been brought to the right entrance and loaded there. The two communities gathered together for the last time to pay their well, aware as in God, we were now united by our love and prayer that had been forged between us. Once again, we were off on a journey of faith across the water to what was to become Ireland's home."

[07:39]

Seven or so hours after our boarding the coach, we arrived at our freedom home, and the first thing we did was to go to chapel to oblige our repair and thanksgiving to God for his provision in bringing us to this place. This holiday had been crated a freaky year, and indeed the chapel had never been empty. In recent years, it has been adapted to the elderly religion, so there are handbells and walking showers suitable for the needs of our more elderly sisters already in faith. The sisters are dressed up in bed sheets and furniture, so we have a fully functioning cupboard, and our kind sisters on the isle of Wight have arranged for a delivering food so that we would not need to worry about a spicy meal. We truly felt God's forgiveness and charitable fellowship, which was demonstrated once again. Over the next few months, we started the process of breaking down physical and spiritual roots. There were then 12 of us, and our only regular income was 8 basic gold extensions that the Lords provided. Members of the top 10 were the ones who provided a little more complicated powering than I did. What actually happened was, in England, if you pay your national insurance contributions, when you come to an old age, you're entitled to a paid pension. But, as Anglicans, we've always done that, so the aged Christians who were of that age were eligible for their pensions.

[08:42]

And the idea was that we must pool our pensions, and we thought we could start with our Minister of Profitability, pay for death, do it in retreat, etc., to prepare our livings. But the problem was, there was a hold-up between our pension and our pensions. pensions from our Anglican community. So initially, we were literally left without any money. So we were actually borrowed from our Anglican family, etc, and they were actually going to leave us to leave without a penny. And I said, if I'm going to take the guide, I don't actually have any money to pay for coffins. Can we have a response of what is our entitlement, our pension? Anyway, so they gave us £3,000, between 12 and us, to cover the cost of the coffin, etc. We had £3,000 initially, that was eight months ago. After that, for some reason, it couldn't seem to sort out any of our money. It went on and on and on. The amount we were living on was getting smaller and smaller. I overheard some of the other sisters one day comparing how much weight they were losing, because we were trading our maid's food for the elderly sisters. At that point, I got a message from them, pretending to be loud throughout the interview, and said, Dear Father, the sisters are hungry.

[09:44]

There was no reply. I got a reply three weeks later, saying, I'm sorry to hear the sisters are hungry, but right then I've taken action. I went to the parish street and to the praetory and being able to say something. I wasn't able to come through yet and I'm having a bit of problems looking after the churchgoers. What do you call the parish? So what happened to us? Various people brought us food and that coming up, that is the first few weeks. So it's the first day that we were provided, that time provided. Members of the parish brought us a bit of food and it slowly became a regular captive. There was also a lunch club on a Tuesday. They had a fish club for the elderly in the parish on Tuesday. They let those families come to us. and they're always good enough with more than one red chocolate, etc. And then the cash kindly decided to provide us with a two-week copy of sugar every week and another one ten of the ingredients every week for our main Sunday dinner. And that's what happened, so we got our old money coming through. The cash basically took care of us. In other words, the Lord talks after us to the local parish. Within two months of our arrival, two of his younger, physically fit citizens, separately dispersed a quarter of the community.

[11:10]

One of the citizens that was caught in the back of the community on the Isle of Wight was only there for eight months. The other was the one who had originally come from a different Anglican community. Remembering the public health emergency, she was the one who joined us. We soon felt drawn to a more active Catholic community. But we discerned that it was right to let both citizens test their senses accordingly, but inevitably there were serious implications. It meant that we were community-intensive citizens, with only myself and another sister in those state pension age. We didn't have the choice that God would sometimes take care of the future. As confirmation for us, it only immediately came that, almost immediately, we heard from them that they were ready to be baptised properly as a fully autonomous monastery of Benedictine spirituality within the Paschal Ordeal area. The usual process takes years, but they've actually done it all in exactly one year. One year on, from the day we were received into the church as Catholics, we were treating the electives, and we were the elective community in the church. Brilliant. So, on the 3rd of January, exactly one year after we were received, we were fed up, and we reaffirmed our vows. Our vows had been rectified by those, but we re-pronounced those cognitively as Catholics, in benedictine formulary, so that everybody would be able to see us and hear us doing that, and that would be the next stage of our lives.

[12:17]

Now, Rosa's sisters are at that point two and eighty-four, and she'd been with us five to sixteen years, wrote an article to us at the time to explain how it had been for her, and this is what she said, and wrote, When I was in my mid-fifties, I visited the wife of a sister in our infirmary, and I asked her what advice would she give someone of my age about preparing for death. She paused for a moment and then said, Practice letting go. In living wabbitage, we've all had to let go of so much that belonged to our personal, as well as our shared past. I certainly had to let go of the interesting works and many personal contacts. For all of us, the condoms that did our homes, for some of us, including myself, were more than we typically did, but it was only through letting go of the old life that a new life became possible for us. I knew that having to let go was an unavoidable aspect of getting old. I used to think that with the onset of old age, there would be a gradual progression from flewing to being. In fact, it was not gradual for me. There was a sudden and lasting loss of mobility, bringing with it the loss of independence. It would be a case of one challenge after another, and of learning in ways not immediately clear to me.

[13:18]

God was working in my life and asking me to trust Him. So I find myself thinking that if this is indeed the way of God for this stage of my life, I will always be calm, And it is not enough to accept it. I must learn to embrace it. And that in itself is the next challenge." Ending quotation. She is not the only sister who had to embrace the challenges that faced us in those months. Shortly before Christmas that year, that first year, a sister in her 80s was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy, followed by a course of daily radiotherapy for weeks. Another sister spent three weeks in hospital over Christmas that year for heart failure. Another sister was hospitalised for the drug to take. And these three sisters were all in their eighties, but they still all felt they were living in great old days. As one of them explained, I quote, I read recently about a founder of a religious community in the 19th century, who after a wonderfully strenuous and interesting life, found herself an old age, a nobody, petrified and forgotten. She confided to a priest who visited her, I think that you have lost everything you had in the world as I have. Such a wonderful new life comes into you.

[14:20]

I think about her words and admire and hope their consultation. We said all is patiently unknown, there's no guarantee for the future. Do we regret it? No. No sister has regretted the selection of Tilton. We gave up as a youthful historic conference with a 24-hour staff dictionary, and we have given it a perfect health conference. We look on to each other with the generous support from the National Health. We have to leave behind our ancestors and sisters. We have been given Catholic sisters and brothers who have, by their love and affection, shown us what it means to be part of a Catholic worldwide family. We have truly come home in the church. We have all lost friends. It is furthered who our true friends really are. We have been shown the most extraordinary charity, by God incorporating us into his church, and by providing us with all our spiritual and temporal needs. By the right hand, providing us 12 strangers with a home for 8 months, by the generous benefactor who purchased our monastery and allowed us to rent it, by the local parish providing us with food and donations to keep us going, But we are living in challenging times. Just before Christmas, last Christmas, we were told by our landlords that the scientists wanted to sell the land for joining our convent.

[15:24]

But our landlord is not moving us out, but warned us that if the adjacent property is sold to developers for a small residential estate, which will come right up to the boundaries of our property, we're likely to be in for 20 years of mindlessly building work. Further, the very nature of property is worse against us, but so to say a quiet repant so far will be no longer. But on that side, that step now is the time to move. First of all, we haven't found the right property to move through, and there's a real issue about land deposits, on what we're just getting on with trying to find where we're supposed to be. But we feel that there is charitable grace available for every challenge, and that even our challenges can bode well as a shower of blessings. But sister, one of the two sisters who left, if you remember the two of the other ones, one did transfer to right, she transferred to the left, and she had to go to her own position and start all over again, but she came from the south, and she's very happy there. The same sister has come from the north community, she entered to a more active community, and started off in the tent, and then thought she'd made the biggest mistake of her life, and I'll come back. So she has come back, and we've welcomed her back with open arms, and she's fully one of us again, et cetera, and life carries on. We do feel that process is kind of a bit funny, because this is from Henry, who's been looking after us,

[16:29]

And then he was given a little illustration, which little did I know would be all right. Shortly after we arrived, I mean, we hadn't got very much money, etc. and we were being very careful. One of the physicians said to me, he said, Mother, we don't actually have enough bread to go to one morning's breakfast. I didn't quite know what we were going to do, so I thought we were just going to have to go out on our own and buy some bread. So I said to her, after you got there, either you or I would go out and get us some bread. We were shocked it was open. During the supper, the doorbell sounded. It was a parishioner, for we didn't know, who brought us a carrier bag for the shopping that she bought with white news, and in the bag was two loaves of bread. And that when we looked up, thought, you know what? The doorbell had sounded upon us. The attention was right. When we moved from place to place, they were sounded. And we truly felt at that moment that we were experiencing once again charity fellowship with this kind parishioner. We have confidence in the future, because we have confidence in our loving God, whose charity towards His children is boundless. The subject of this retreat, a theme suppressed for the benefiting understanding of the thesis. To do this, we've looked attentively at five specific areas, using the rules and techniques of the Framework, the life and writings of St John Henry Newman as our guide.

[17:34]

And those areas were rhymes of energy, obedience, lyrics of transcendency, holiness, heart's simplicity, prayer, love, bond, the love of God, and love for labour, and charity, fellowship, the charity of God, and others. He knew this to be true, but knew himself as a saint, and that's precisely why we can relate to him, because he was ordinary. He struggled with life's challenges as we do. In coming to on these early sainthoods, he has followed. I have nothing for the saints about me, as anyone knows, and it is a severe and solitary mortification to be brought saints' daughter on. I may have a high view of many things, but it is the consequence of education and the opportunity of constant internet that is a very different thing from being what I admire. I have no tendency to be a faint. It is a sad thing to say. Faints are not literary men. They do not like the classics. They do not like tales. I may be well enough in my own way, but it is not a high line. It is an ugly thing to blacken a faint's shoes if a faint is faint, usually blackened in heaven.

[18:37]

The aim of our spiritual journey has been to draw closer to God. So let me invite you for the last time to hear the Lord speaking to you, and in a way these words sum up the whole retreat. Put your health end, my dear child, into the hands of your loving Father and your King Earth, who knows and loves you better than you know or love yourself. He has appointed every action of your life. He created you, has thanked you, and has marked down the going way and tower, which He will take you to Himself. He learns all your thoughts, and deals with you in all your strife, more than any creature can deal, and accepts and makes note of your prayers, even before you make them. He will never fail you, and He will give you what is best for you. and that he tries you, and pleads to withdraw himself from you, and afflicts you, still trust in him. For at length you will see how good and gracious he is, and how well he will provide for you. Be courageous and generous, and give him your heart, and he will never repent of the sacrifice.

[19:45]

Amen. And the final screen, oops. Oh, I know it. I totally know it. Yes, yes, yes. Ah, yes, yes. Ha ha [...] I couldn't help but think that if you struggled in multiple games, the first competence you had you gained up with this. One little bit of work, one little travel on my own life, having to move out of the way to work on a day or a night's work. Come, what do you think of this? You agree that the game's way too tough? What do you think about my school kids? Listen, they can't listen unless you let them go. I was thinking, I hope I'm not telling this whole story of you letting go.

[20:52]

I need to start to meet Batman, though, kind of way. The other thing I was wondering, I don't know if this is enough in person, but there's a washing shower. Ah, right. No, it's basically, the shower, it's actually tucked away in the, um... You pull the door open, and you just walk into it. There's no step or anything. Oh. Sort of, um, so it's brilliant for, um, people to come and put their beanies or whatever. They don't have to step over anything. They just, um, just walk in, and then you just pull the door. I never described something, they didn't know what it was describing, hopefully. Now I know. In fact, when we read the first publication by Gabriel Handel now, it's one of the most scriptural things. I happened to be reading a book, it was Peter, in his column, where he goes into his book, and he mentions, uh, apparently the same master, you know, the confessional, and I've taught anything, you know, and I had to speak, it was a lot to do for it. So, there's a certain, another way, and it's a similar thing. Going out, but not fishing. I'm a fisherman.

[21:56]

I've been doing this for years. We're going out at noon, the worst time to go. Abundance, good point. It's available for people to read it. That would be amazing. Oh yeah, yes.

[22:26]

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