As Auckland auxiliary Bishop Michael Gielen looked out at dozens of religious and consecrated persons gathered for Mass at Owairaka last month, he commented on their “incredible vocation stories”.
“I would love to hear each one,” Bishop Gielen said at the Auckland diocese annual Mass for religious and consecrated persons on May 22. (The Mass did not take place last year because of Covid-19 restrictions).
This year, during his homily, Bishop Gielen spotted Sr Mary Irenaeus, RSM, sitting at the front of the church, and he said he had had the “delight of sitting with her and talking with her about her vocation”.
Bishop Gielen asked the Mercy sister — “how many years?” The response came back “101”. The bishop asked “101 years of religious life?” This brought forth much laughter from the congregation.
It turned out that Sr Mary Irenaeus has been in religious life for 75 years. She came to New Zealand from Ireland, and was one of many in the church who had left their home countries to serve here.
Bishop Gielen expressed his gratitude for all the religious who had done this. But he said that “here we are, serving in New Zealand, at a time when religious life is not as popular as it once was, where we are trying to respond to secularism and the challenges of Covid. And we ask ourselves again, where are you God, where are you in all this?”
In answering the question, the bishop referred to recent writing and comments by Pope Francis, where he encouraged people to call on St Joseph, the universal patron of the Church.
Like Joseph, “we need to be able to dream, we need to serve, and we need to be faithful”, Bishop Gielen said.
When God’s call disrupts whatever plans we may have made, we need to “always remember that God has dreamed of us”.
“Again,” Bishop Gielen said, “I am looking up at where the dreams have led. For many of you, who would have thought you would have ended up in this country, in this city, serving now?”
Referring to the call to service, and to religious community life, and the challenges therein, Bishop Gielen cited the example of one of
his cousins, aged in her 30s, who is a Poor Clare nun.
“When she made her final vows only a few years ago, she said she was so excited to finally put her roots down — she had discerned all throughout the world and felt called to this convent in Wales, and she had taken, as a Poor Clare, her vow of stability, and she said she was so happy to be stable and to serve this community until she died. She said within the year, the superior came and said, we are moving house. We are going to England, to Nottingham, and we are going to join with another monastery. She said, we are devastated. I said, welcome to religious life.”
Finally, Bishop Gielen referred to St Joseph’s faithfulness.
“I don’t know where you are at this time in your life,” he said to the religious and consecrated persons, “but if you are anything like all of us, there are challenges that lie ahead, there are challenges with which we are not totally comfortable”.
“Francis says turn to St Joseph . . . He says to us, have the heart of Joseph, a heart that put God’s plans and God’s ways before his own. And what an incredible story, church, has God built with his ‘yes’. . . . May God give you the heart of St Joseph, to keep saying ‘yes’.”
At the Mass, members of different religious congregations, as well as consecrated persons, laid symbols of their commitment at the foot of the altar, during the entrance procession and at the offertory.
After the Gospel, there was a simple renewal of vows or consecration made. After this, all present turned to a statue of Mary and sang Mo Maria.
After the Mass, the religious and consecrated persons enjoyed morning tea.
Reader Interactions