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On Saturday 22nd August, Bernie Porter RSCJ will quietly celebrate her Golden Jubilee - fifty years since she made her First Vows in the Society. Here, she shares a significant memory, and how she has already been marking this milestone.
On August 22nd, 1976 (Feast of the ImmaculateHeart of Mary) RSCJ from England/Malta Province and ‘the Porter Family’ converged on Woldingham to witness my first vows in the Society. I was 24 and had just completed my second year of noviciate teaching in Fenham. There is little I can remember of the day other than Father Howell, from Tunbridge Wells parish, using a quote from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem
Elected silence sing to me,
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be,
The music that I care to hear.
I was enchanted with those four sentences and have often recalled them in the noisy, sometimes difficult, many times joyful, world-full-of-ambiguity religious life that we have lived out together over these past fifty years.
In April and in June of this year I recalled that day in two different ways. The first was to do a renewal programme for three weeks in Rome, the theme being to renew our relationship with St Madeleine Sophie. The second action I chose to take was to renew vows publicly with other RSCJ who were gathered for the Digby Stuart Association Day. Roehampton and Rome are both very significant places in my life, and it felt absolutely right to reflect with my Lord, both quietly in retreat in Rome, and rather noisily with former and present staff and students of Roehampton.
This coming Saturday, I will simply go about ordinary life….but I will quietly be singing to myself “Elected silence sing to me…” To continue in Hopkins’ words “From there (silence) where all surrenders come….”
We send our prayer and congratulations to Bernie, with gratitude for all she has given, and continues to give to the Society.
Whenever we renew our vows we do so 'with all my heart'. Please pray for Bernie and all of us, that we may continue to live 'with all our hearts' our vows and our commitment to our mission, to glorify the Heart of Jesus by discovering and making known his love.
