This third Good Samaritan partnership gathering will bring together Good Samaritan oblates and associates, partners in mission and friends from around Australia and the Pacific to explore the theme “Stewarding the Good Samaritan Benedictine Charism into the Future”.

“The gathering aims to provide an extended opportunity for all associated with the Sisters of the Good Samaritan to gather, to explore, and to deepen our experience of living our Good Samaritan Benedictine spirituality and way of life into the future,” explained Sister Bernardina Sontrop, one of the organisers.

While presenters are yet to be finalised, Bernardina said the program will include a variety of experiences, including prayer and reflection, plenary sessions, small group workshops, as well as sharing at table and experiencing aspects of community life.

She also said the 2013 gathering will be “an ideal opportunity for formation in the Good Samaritan Benedictine charism for those former Good Samaritan schools that are endeavouring to keep the charism alive in their school”.

Anyone interested in experiencing the Good Samaritan Benedictine way of life is warmly invited to attend the gathering from October 5 to 7, 2013 at St Scholastica’s College, 2-4 Avenue Road Glebe Point.

Gathering attendance fee $200 (includes all sessions, workshops and meals). For accommodation options download the flyer. Registrations close August 31, 2013.

Download the flyer here

Download the registration form here

For further information, contact Ian Faulkner, E: ian@empowering.com or Bernardina Sontrop SGS, E: bsontrop@goodsams.org.au

Mary Barker SGS

Mary Lee Barker was born on July 18, 1923 at Bairnsdale, Victoria. Mary was the eldest child of John and Mary (née Lee) Barker.

In her early years, due to the exigencies of the Depression era, the family moved several times as Mary’s father sought employment. This caused him to have frequent absences from the family. During this period Mary’s family lived, at various times, with her mother’s parents at Richmond. Hence, Mary’s early education began with the Sisters of Charity at St John’s School, East Melbourne.

With the assistance of her aunt, Sister Mary David, a Good Samaritan Sister, Mary was accepted as a student at Santa Maria College, Northcote, where she obtained the Leaving Certificate.

She began employment in an office where she learnt how to operate a ledger-keeping machine, a skill which she put to good advantage when employed in the Electricity Supply Department of the Melbourne City Council. During these years, Mary also continued her studies in music gaining the Diploma of A.Mus.A, which would stand her in good stead in the years ahead.

Mary answered the call to religious life in 1947, supported, she would acknowledge, by her former teacher Sister Mary Laserian Crowe. Upon joining the Good Samaritan novitiate on July 2, 1947 Mary was given the religious name of Sister Mary Gemma. She made her first profession of vows on January 6, 1950, and moved to St Scholastica’s Convent, Glebe Point.

Plans for classroom teacher training were altered when circumstances at the time required her service as a music teacher – a ministry she followed for the next 13 years in schools in New South Wales and in northern and western Queensland. She would later complete her teacher training through an in-service program.

In 1964 she began her career in the classroom – a ministry which would span 23 years in schools in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. In the latter years of this period, Mary’s ministry was as an assistant librarian and remedial teacher.

For the next 12 years, Mary carried out the ministry of visiting the sick and housebound in North Fitzroy and Collingwood North, before retiring to the quieter pace of life at Marian House, Northcote. However, Mary continued her much appreciated ministry of playing the organ for the parishioners at St Brigid’s North Fitzroy.

It was necessary in 2004 for Mary, along with many other elderly sisters, to move to South Morang Mews due to changes in government regulations. Then in 2010, an opportunity arose at Villa Maria, Bundoora, for all the sisters at South Morang Mews to join other Good Samaritan Sisters in community. There Mary spent the rest of her life.

She died peacefully on April 15, 2013. Her engaging smile and sense of humour endeared her to the staff, residents and chaplain, who miss her presence among them.

Sister Mary Adams SGS

Good Samaritan Sister, Mary Adams, celebrated her 100th birthday on April 16, 2013. Anticipating this significant milestone, Bernardina Sontrop SGS caught up with Mary at her home in Kangaroo Point, Brisbane.

BY Bernardina Sontrop SGS*

“I’ll never forget that the Good Sams welcomed me.” That was Good Samaritan Sister, Mary Adams’ opening remark in a conversation looking back over 100 years since her birth in 1913.

As Mary reflects on her 100 years, 82 of which have been spent as a Good Samaritan Sister, she recalls some of the challenges she’s faced along the way. Past feelings of hardship and challenge have given way to growing peace, gratitude and faithfulness.

Born in Toxteth Park, Liverpool, in England, Mary was one of five children. She spent the first six months of her life in the UK before the family moved to Tasmania. “The early years in Tasmania were difficult years,” says Mary.

She remembers her father being away at the war and her mother working on the land during her early childhood. Her mother died while Mary was still young and, at age ten, she was placed in an orphanage in the care of the Sisters of Charity. It was through Mary’s association with these sisters that her desire to “give her life to God” grew.

At 14, having completed her primary education, Mary left the orphanage and was employed in several places, doing “menial work”. “No one really wanted me,” explains Mary. “I had nothing; no education and no money and struggled to support myself.”

She often talked with her dearly-loved friend, Charity Sister, Inigo McBreen, about her desire to be a nun. “I wanted to be a nun from the time I was a young girl,” says Mary.

After writing to several religious congregations, including the Good Sams, whom she’d never encountered, she was delighted when Mother Basil, then Congregational Superior, replied to her, saying, “Come as you are. You don’t need to bring anything. We’ll look after you”.

Leaving Tasmania, Mary travelled to Sydney and joined the Good Samaritan Sisters in 1931. She found the novitiate hard, conscious of her lack of education. She would have loved to be sacristan, but was assigned to other necessary, but less desirable, duties. Though she was credited with “a lot of common sense”, she “seemed to be always doing the wrong thing”. But she says, “I struggled through as best I could”, and in 1934, Mary made her first profession, which to her delight, was attended by her father.

In earlier years, Sister Mary with Sister Mary-Lynne Cochrane SGS

Mary’s first ministry appointment was to St Magdalene’s Retreat, Tempe, in Sydney, where the Good Samaritan Sisters looked after girls committed to their care by the courts. This two-week temporary appointment became a 26-year ministry!

While she found the physically hard manual work and supervision of the girls challenging, Mary enjoyed preparing the girls for the Sacraments of Communion and Confirmation. She identified with the girls and their circumstances and grew to understand and love them.

Mary says her greatest joy during her time at Tempe came after the arrival of Sister Paula Caduch and the introduction of concerts staged by the girls. When the work of the day was done, Mary spent her weekends and ‘spare’ time preparing the girls for concerts which were performed for invited guests, including social workers and magistrates from the courts. She loved the enthusiasm and delight of the girls as they looked forward to the arrival of Sister Gabrielle Healey, who accompanied them in their singing.

“The girls loved to perform and I loved the girls. They were very happy times,” says Mary.

Mary’s pastoral heart continued to grow as she engaged in other ministries over the years, including supervising boarders at St Scholastica’s College, Glebe, working with sick and elderly sisters in the infirmary, and working in the sewing room at the novitiate, of which she says, “I knew nothing of sewing”!

In 1967, Mary was appointed to the boarding school at Lourdes Hill in Brisbane, where she spent the next 16 years, both in the kitchen and supervising students in the dormitory.

In the 1980s, Sister Clare Condon SGS (now Congregational Leader) worked closely with Mary at Lourdes Hill. “Mary took a great interest in every girl in her care, and over the years, she has kept in contact with many of them,” says Clare. “Her gentle nature has endeared her to all who know and love Mary. She is a wonderful ambassador of Good Sam life.”

Sister Lia van Haren SGS, a long-time friend of Mary’s, describes her as “a woman of much wisdom”. She echoes some of Clare’s thoughts. “[Mary] has been the perfect role model of a Good Samaritan Benedictine sister. She has lived her life totally dedicated to the love of God in her ‘neighbour’,” explains Lia.

“Her ministries in the congregation were always ministries of service to others. She carried these out in complete humility and obedience but at the same time with the greatest care and love for those in her care.”

In earlier years, Sister Mary Adams during a pastoral visit

In her later years, Mary lived in several communities around Brisbane and was involved in parish life. She especially loved visiting people in the community, taking communion to the sick and housebound.

When her eyesight weakened and her energy began to wane, Mary felt it was time to move into hostel care. Mindful of her early association with, and love of, the Charity Sisters, Mary became a resident in Marycrest Hostel at Kangaroo Point, operated by Mary Aikenhead Ministries.

Now, as Mary celebrates 100 years of life, she expresses her deep gratitude for that life. She likens her coming to the Sisters as a living expression of the Good Samaritan Gospel saying, “Like the Good Samaritan in the Gospel, the sisters did not pass me by, but came to my help. They stopped, saw my need [her desire to be a nun] and picked me up and, though I had nothing, welcomed me”.

Mary has witnessed great change in every aspect of life over her hundred years. Personally, what she has valued most, in all that has happened over the years, is “growing into an easy freedom that gave me the power to be myself”. Counting her blessings, Mary says, “I still have my mind and I can still reason and argue a point with my friends”, something she does graciously and with both great determination and delight.

Mary’s needs now are very simple. She is deeply appreciative of the care provided by the staff of Marycrest and her own Good Samaritan Sisters and friends. Though she tires easily, she enjoys times spent with the many friends who visit her regularly. She always welcomes phone calls from friends and loves to hear about what is happening in the Congregation. She enjoys, “and needs”, more time for rest and sleep these days.

As our conversation draws to a close, Mary reflects, “You know, I have had a richly blessed life, because I have always known, even when I fell by the wayside during the busier times of my life, that my life was in God’s hands. God has lavished his love on me despite the ups and downs of life. This sense of God’s presence has grown stronger over the years and my constant prayer these days is simply Abba, my Father, in your great love I trust.”

* Good Samaritan Sister, Bernardina Sontrop, has many years experience in education and pastoral ministry. In 2011 she was elected to the Council of the Superior of her Congregation. Before this appointment, she was Pastoral Mission Co-ordinator at St Benedict’s Pastoral Mission, Mango Hill-North Lakes, a rapidly growing housing development on the northern outskirts of Brisbane.

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 99KB)

Patty Fawkner SGS

Don’t we all miss out when women’s experience is ignored, asks Patty Fawkner SGS.

BY Patty Fawkner SGS*

For 50 years we’ve known that “fight or flight” is the classic human response to danger and stress. But is it?

In a recent article, Benedictine Sister, Joan Chittister, a writer as prolific as she is prophetic, referred to a study which found that the participants in five decades of research into “fight or flight” theory were primarily men. When the University of California researchers, led by Professor Shelley E. Taylor, used women rather than men in their research, they found that “fight or flight” was not women’s primary or normal response. Under stress women “tend and befriend”.

Trusty Google told me more. When stressed, both sexes have the capacity for fight or flight and tending and befriending. It’s just that men are more likely to become aggressive and confront a stressor, or flee, either literally or by emotional withdrawal and engagement in substance abuse.

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to respond to stressful situations by protecting themselves and their children through nurturing behaviours and forming alliances with a larger social group. Under stress, women take care of their children and take care of one another.

Fight and flight is not the full story because for years researchers did not take into account the full gamut of human experience. Women’s experience was rarely included.

One is reminded of Daniel Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning and development, which I embraced non-critically as a trainee teacher. It wasn’t until the 1980s when Carol Gilligan queried why women were seen to be less morally developed than men in Kohlberg’s schema, that the male-centred focus of Kohlberg’s stages was exposed. Kohlberg, too, had used predominantly boys and men as the subjects of his study.

Gilligan, the first moral philosopher to listen to women’s moral voices, found that where men’s moral reasoning is dominated by concerns for justice and individual rights, women’s moral reasoning is dominated by a care perspective, interpreting issues in terms of human relationships. They develop morally, reason and talk about their moral decisions “In a Different Voice”, the evocative title of Gilligan’s study.

I discovered only recently that faith development guru, James Fowler, had the same blind spot. Women scored less highly on faith development interviews than men and proceeded to the more “advanced” stages of faith development when older. Yet again, Fowler used mainly males in his research. When females were the focus of study, researchers discovered that faith develops not only by cognition, an approach favoured by men, but is also shaped by emotion, imagination and relationship, women’s favoured approaches.

Research results are skewed when half the population do not participate in the study. Academics such as Taylor and Gilligan are not suggesting that women’s different voice is ‘better than’. They are not opting for an unhelpful ‘men-from-Mars-and-women-from-Venus’ polarity. Instead, they are suggesting that female and male sexes tend to favour particular behaviours and that there is a broader range of ways for human beings to deal with stress, to grow morally and to deepen faith.

Kohlberg, Fowler and company acted in good faith but were ‘deaf’ and ‘blind’ to women’s voices and women’s experience. They reinforced a “masculine universalism” by mistakenly presuming a gender neutrality in their research. Don’t we all miss out when women’s experience is ignored? And isn’t this the case in the Church where masculine universalism is endemic. In language, in liturgy, in symbol, in office, women are absent or present in embarrassingly token ways. But no one seems to notice.

Many women in the Roman Catholic Church have an ‘Alice-through-the-looking-glass-experience’. “I don’t think they can hear me, and I’m nearly sure they can’t see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible,” cries Alice.

Maybe there’s a sliver of hope with our new Pope. But poor Pope Francis! I join the throng of hope-starved Catholics longing for Church renewal. My hopes are many and specific. I hope Pope Francis continues his refreshing inclusive symbolic gestures. I hope he expands his belief that women have a “special and fundamental role” in the Church. I hope he augments this with real structural reform. I hope he breaks, or at least weakens, the implacable nexus that currently exists between ordination and decision-making in the Church.

Finally, I hope that Pope Francis listens to his fellow Argentine, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri who, prior to the papal conclave, said that the new pontificate needed to be more open to women contributing to all aspects of Church life.

Specifically, he called for women to be appointed to key positions within the Vatican administration. The sprawling Vatican bureaucracy has numerous departments. Women can only reach the position of under-secretary and are accountable to the department president and secretary, both clerics. Currently there are but two female under-secretaries.

Cardinal Sandri added further encouraging words. Women, he said, “must also be co-participants in the dialogue and the analysis of the life of the Church… even in the formation of priests, where they can play a very, very important role”.

Many women have engaged in their own fight with and flight from the Church. Others, like myself, ‘hang in’ wanting to tend and befriend all those involved in the Church’s life and mission.

During these complex times, do those governing the Church wish to tend and befriend women by honouring their insight and their experience? Pope Francis’ endorsement of the Vatican’s report into the US Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is cause for pause. Yet, one still wonders and one still hopes.

* Good Samaritan Sister, Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator. Patty is interested in exploring what wisdom the Christian tradition has for contemporary issues. She has an abiding interest in questions of justice and spirituality. Her formal tertiary qualifications are in arts, education, theology and spirituality.

You can follow Patty on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PattyFawkner

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 92KB)

Richard Rohr OFM

Real interior silence, not just the absence of noise, is a foundational spiritual discipline. So why are we so resistant to enter into it, asks Richard Rohr OFM.

BY Richard Rohr OFM*

When I first began to write this article, I thought to myself, “How do you promote something as vaporous as silence? It will be like a poem about air!” But finally I began to trust my limited experience, which is all that any of us have anyway.

I do know that my best writings and teachings have not come from thinking but, as Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, much more from not thinking. Only then does an idea clarify and deepen for me. Yes, I need to think and study beforehand, and afterward try to formulate my thoughts. But my best teachings by far have come in and through moments of interior silence – and in the “non-thinking” of actively giving a sermon or presentation. 

Aldous Huxley described it perfectly for me in a lecture he gave in 1955 titled “Who Are We?” There he said, “I think we have to prepare the mind in one way or another to accept the great uprush or downrush, whichever you like to call it, of the greater non-self”. That precise language might be off-putting to some, but it is a quite accurate way to describe the very common experience of inspiration and guidance.

All grace comes precisely from nowhere – from silence and emptiness, if you prefer – which is what makes it grace. It is both not-you and much greater than you at the same time, which is probably why believers chose both inner fountains (John 7:38) and descending doves (Matthew 3:16) as metaphors for this universal and grounding experience of spiritual encounter. Sometimes it is an uprush and sometimes it is a downrush, but it is always from a silence that is larger than you, surrounds you, and finally names the deeper truth of the full moment that is you. I call it contemplation, as did much of the older tradition. 

It is always an act of faith to trust silence, because it is the strangest combination of you and not-you of all. It is deep, quiet conviction, which you are not able to prove to anyone else – and you have no need to prove it, because the knowing is so simple and clear. Silence is both humble in itself and humbling to the recipient. Silence is often a momentary revelation of your deepest self, your true self, and yet a self that you do not yet know. Spiritual knowing is from a God beyond you and a God that you do not yet fully know. The question is always the same: “How do you let them both operate as one – and trust them as yourself?” Such brazenness is precisely the meaning of faith, and why faith is still somewhat rare, compared to religion.

And yes, such inner revelations are always beyond words. You try to sputter out something, but it will never be as good as the silence itself is. We just need the words for confirmation to ourselves and communication with others. So God graciously allows us words, and gives us words, but they are almost always a regression from the more spacious and forgiving silence. Words are a much smaller container. They are always an approximation. Surely some approximations are better than others, which is why we all like good novelists, poets, and orators. Yet silence is the only thing deep enough, spacious enough, and wide enough to hold all of the contradictions that words cannot contain or reconcile. 

We need to “grab for words”, as we say, but invariably they tangle us up in more words to explain, clarify, and justify what we meant by the first words – and to protect us from our opponents. From there we often exacerbate many of our own problems by babbling on even further. In Matthew 6:7, Jesus had a word for heaping up empty phrases: paganism! Only those who love us will stay with us at that point, and often love will also tell us to stop talking – which is precisely why so many saints and mystics said that love precedes and prepares the way for all true knowing. Maybe silence is even another word for love?

Most of the time, “to make a name for ourselves” like the people building the tower of Babel, we multiply words and find ourselves saying more and more about less and less. This is sometimes called gossip, or just chatter. No wonder Yahweh “scattered them”, for they were only confusing themselves (Genesis 11:4-8). Really they were already scattered people: scattered inside and out because there was no silence. 

We are all forced to overhear cell phone calls in cafés, airports, and other public places today. People now seem to fill up their available time, reacting to their boredom – and their fear of silence – often by talking about nothing, or making nervous attempts at mutual flattery and reassurance. One wonders if the people on the other end of the line really need your too-easy comforts. Maybe they do, and maybe we all have come to expect it. But that is all we can settle for when there is no greater non-self, no gracious silence to hold all of our pain and our self-doubt. Cheap communication is often a substitute for actual communion.

Words are necessarily dualistic. That is their function. They distinguish this from that, and that’s good. But silence has the wonderful ability to not need to distinguish this from that! It can hold them together in a quiet, tantric embrace. Silence, especially loving silence, is always non-dual, and that is much of its secret power. It stays with mystery, holds tensions, absorbs contradictions, and smiles at paradoxes – leaving them unresolved, and happily so. Any good poet knows this, as do many masters of musical chords. Politicians, engineers, and most Western clergy have a much harder time. 

Silence is what surrounds everything, if you look long enough. It is the space between letters, words, and paragraphs that makes them decipherable and meaningful. When you can train yourself to reverence the silence around things, you first begin to see things in themselves and for themselves. This “divine” silence is before, after, and between all events for those who see respectfully (to re-spect is “to see again”).

All creation is creatio ex nihilo – from “a trackless waste and an empty void” it all came (Genesis 1:2). But over this darkness God’s spirit hovered and “there was light” – and everything else too. So there must be something pregnant, waiting, and wonderful in such voids and darkness. God’s ongoing – and maybe only – job description seems to be to “create out of nothing”. We call it grace. 

God follows this pattern, as do many saints, but most of us don’t. We prefer light (read: answers, certitude, moral perfection, and conclusions) but forget that it first came from a formless darkness. This denial of silence and darkness as good teachers emerged ever more strongly after the ironically named “Enlightenment” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Our new appreciation of a kind of reason was surely good and necessary on many levels, but it also made us impatient and forgetful of the much older tradition of not knowing, unsaying, darkness, and silence. We decided that words alone would give us truth, not realising that all words are metaphors and approximations. The desert Jesus, Pseudo-Dionysius, The Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross have not been ‘in’ for several centuries now, and we are much the worse for it.

The low point has now become religious fundamentalism, which ironically knows so little about the real fundamentals. We all fell in love with words, even those of us who said we believed that “the Word became flesh”. Words offer a certain light, but flesh is much better known in humble silence and waiting. 

As a general spiritual rule, you can trust this one: The ego gets what it wants with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence. The ego prefers light – immediate answers, full clarity, absolute certitude, moral perfection, and undeniable conclusion – whereas the soul prefers the subtle world of darkness and light. And by that, of course, I mean a real interior silence, not just the absence of noise.

Robert Sardello, in his magnificent, demanding book Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, writes that “Silence knows how to hide. It gives a little and sees what we do with it”. Only then will or can it give more. Rushed, manipulative, or opportunistic people thus find inner silence impossible, even a torture. They never get to the “more”. Wise Sardello goes on to say, “But in Silence everything displays its depth, and we find that we are a part of the depth of everything around us”. Yes, this is true. 

When our interior silence can actually feel and value the silence that surrounds everything else, we have entered the house of wisdom. This is the very heart of prayer. When the two silences connect and bow to one another, we have a third dimension of knowing, which many have called spiritual intelligence or even “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:10-16). No wonder that silence is probably the foundational spiritual discipline in all the world’s religions at the more mature levels. At the less mature levels, religion is mostly noise, entertainment, and words. Catholics and Orthodox Christians prefer theatre and wordy symbols; Protestants prefer music and endless sermons.

Probably more than ever, because of iPads, cell phones, billboards, TVs, and iPods, we are a toxically overstimulated people. Only time will tell the deep effects of this on emotional maturity, relationship, communication, conversation, and religion itself. Silence now seems like a luxury, but it is not so much a luxury as it is a choice and decision at the heart of every spiritual discipline and growth. Without it, most liturgies, Bible studies, devotions, ‘holy’ practices, sermons, and religious conversations might be good and fine, but they will never be truly great or life-changing – for ourselves or for others. They can only represent the surface; God is always found at the depths, even the depths of our sin and brokenness. And in the depths, it is silent. 

It comes down to this: God is, and will always be, Mystery. Only a non-arguing presence, only a non-assertive self, can possibly have the humility and honesty to receive such mysterious silence.

When you can remain at peace inside of your own mysterious silence, you are only beginning to receive the immense “Love that moves the sun and the other stars”, as Dante so beautifully says – along with the immeasurable silent space between those trillions of stars, through which this Mystery is also choosing to communicate. Silence is space, and space beyond time. Those who learn to live there are spacious and timeless people. They make and leave room for all the rest of us. 

* Richard Rohr OFM, a Sojourners contributing editor, is founder of the Centre for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This article was first published in the March 2013 edition of Sojourners.

Reprinted with permission from Sojourners, (800) 714-7474, www.sojo.net

This article is not to be re-published without permission from Sojourners.

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 106KB)

The peaceful grounds of Mount St Benedict Centre

Behind the imposing brick walls of the Mount St Benedict Centre at Pennant Hills in Sydney, just a stone’s throw from traffic chaos, is a beautiful oasis of peace, calm and spiritual nurturing, writes Debra Vermeer.

BY Debra Vermeer*

Drivers crawling along busy Pennant Hills Road in Sydney may have wondered from time to time what lies behind the imposing brick walls of the Mount St Benedict Centre. The answer is that behind those walls, just a stone’s throw from the traffic chaos, is a beautiful oasis of peace, calm and spiritual nurturing, and all are welcome.

The Mount St Benedict Centre is a retreat, spirituality and conference centre, run by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan.

Director, Sister Elizabeth Brennan SGS, says the ministry at the centre attempts to respond to the thirst for meaning in life.

“I see it as a place that offers opportunities for quiet, reflection, study, learning, and just to have one’s spirit nourished,” she says. “It offers people the opportunity to be able to step out of the busyness of life. That’s a great gift in this busy world and I think it’s what people are looking for. People are searching for centredness in a fragmented world.”

When one does step out of the busyness of life and arrive at the centre, the distinctively Benedictine and Good Samaritan spirituality of the place is immediately apparent.

The first thing you notice is the natural beauty of the gardens, the sense of space, of quiet, of peace. Nobody rushes here. All is well.

The second thing that strikes you is the warm welcome at the big wooden door at reception. “All guests are to be received as we would receive Christ,” says the Rule of St Benedict (RB 53), and so it is that you are enveloped in graciousness and warm hospitality from the moment the door swings open.

It is no surprise then, that the centre is a popular place for both groups and individuals to take time out for nourishment and formation.

Indeed formation is a theme which runs strongly through the history of the Mount St Benedict Centre. From 1927 until 1999 more than 776 Good Samaritan novices lived and studied in the grand old building.

Mount St Benedict Centre

The original house, called Regenbah, was built in 1906 by Edgar Olley Jones, on the highest part of the hill. Mr Jones sold it to the Sisters of the Good Samaritan in 1922 and it became the residence of the sisters from March 19, 1925. In February 1927, the foundation stones of the chapel and the novitiate building were laid by Archbishop Michael Kelly.

Elizabeth says a feature of the Regenbah house was the original cloister. The architect of the novitiate building extended the cloister right around to the new building, where it remains a striking feature today.

“The purpose of the cloister here is as a reflective space to prepare oneself as you move from work to prayer, or simply as a place of quiet where one can walk up and down while one allows the softness of the arches to impact on you,” she says. “The arches are continued into the chapel.”

The big old novitiate building which now houses the centre is full of soaring ceilings and natural light, with spaces for all sorts of quiet reflection or group activity, such as painting and artwork. Upstairs there is guest accommodation for 37 people in the rooms that were once home to the novices.

One of the women who passed through the novitiate in the 1960s was Dawn Peat. After leaving the Good Samaritan congregation in 1970, Dawn went on to marry and have a family, settling just a short drive from Mount St Benedict.

These days, Dawn is one of the valued volunteers who help out at the centre each week, and she is also a frequent attendee of events at the centre.

“My link with this place goes right back to 1962 when I came here as a postulant,” she says. “I have very good memories of that time. I received a great formative experience of being around luminous women of great education, insight and warmth.”

After she’d raised her family and finished working as a teacher, Dawn once again looked to Mount St Benedict.

“I thought it was time I give something back,” she says. “So I asked them if they needed help with anything.”

Dawn Peat with Vivienne Claxton SGS

Now she heads up to the centre each week and does “whatever needs doing”. That can include everything from flower arranging to reading out journal articles onto CD for the sisters to listen to as they travel about or relax.

“I see my role as just freeing them up here to do what they do best,” she says.

When she’s not volunteering, Dawn can often be found taking part in some of the various activities on offer.

“I come here to take part in e-conferences, as well as things like the Advent Festival, and I recently came to a card-making day that Sister Judith Souter SGS, who is a very talented artist, put on,” she says.

“They are spiritually nurturing things. I think this is a spiritual oasis for a lot of people. A place like this offers the opportunity for people to just stop. We can get so tied up with what we’re doing in our life that we become like downhill skiiers – we can do almost anything except stop!”

Among those who come to use the centre are Catholic Education Offices from the Sydney Archdiocese, Wollongong Diocese and the Broken Bay Diocese, who hold teacher and staff formation days. In addition, teachers, mission leaders and others involved with Good Samaritan Education’s 10 Colleges around the nation, make use of Mount St Benedict for their formation.

The centre is also home to reflection and planning days for parishes (including Anglican and Uniting Churches), school boards, Sydney Alliance, Engaged Encounter, Probus groups and View Clubs, The Broken Bay Institute, CatholicCare’s pastoral care workers, Catholic Health Care, Disability awareness formation, lay missionaries through PALMS Australia, and interfaith groups.

Religious congregations make good use of the centre, including the Sisters of the Good Samaritan themselves, who hold formation and reflection days, retreats, planning and governance days there.

Elizabeth Brennan SGS, Director of the Centre

“We also host programs here for people experiencing different types of anxieties,” Elizabeth says.

“Vulnerable people who are grieving the loss of a child through abortion come here for Rachel’s Vineyard retreats. Others who are starting over after a loss through death or divorce or relationship breakdown come for the Beginning Experience weekend; and the Solace Association offers grief support for those grieving over the loss of a partner.

“People don’t always come to take part in groups. Recently three women who were very fragile in their inner beings came for quiet and restoration. One of them said she was not a believer, but she needed to be restored in mind and spirit by having some time out.”

Others come to Mount St Benedict seeking spiritual direction, which is available with Sister Carol Tomlinson SGS, whose ministry experience has also included teaching, adult faith education, especially in the area of spiritualty, and retreat direction. She describes the spiritual direction process as “happening in a relationship between two people, where both are focused on the gradual recognition of God’s action in the here and now”.

There are three full time sisters and three part time sisters on staff at the centre. They are supported professionally by an executive assistant, librarians for the theological library, housekeepers, cleaning staff, a gardener (one of the sisters is a trained horticulturalist), catering staff and three valued volunteers.

The extensive theological library was once the novitiate library but is now open to anyone who is associated with the centre, for a membership fee of just $30 a year.

Librarian Rose Rogenmoser says the collection has a broad range of theological and spiritual books and journals as well as audio books, CDs and DVDs.

“We have a very good collection of Benedictine material, as well as spirituality in general, and psychology,” Rose says. “And we have a wonderful journal collection, which we’ve started putting onto CDs. That has been well received. Some of the sisters who drive a lot listen to them in the car and they are popular with teachers too.

“We invite everyone who has an association with us to make use of the library and the catalogue is also online so people can order a book and we will post it to them. That works very well for people in rural areas.”

A visit to the Mount St Benedict Centre reveals that its ministry of hospitality and spirituality is so multi-faceted that it doesn’t fit neatly into a box, and that’s the way the sisters like it.

It means, says Elizabeth, that they can concentrate instead on meeting the different needs of the people who use the centre, a freedom of ministry that goes right back to the founder of the Good Samaritan Sisters, Archbishop John Bede Polding.

“It’s a lovely freedom, to be able to meet people’s needs,” she says. “It’s that freedom to respond to people that really makes this a Good Sam ministry in its essence.”

Visit the website of Mount St Benedict Centre here.

* Debra Vermeer is a freelance journalist working in both the Catholic and secular media. When she’s not working, she loves early morning walks, summers on the beach and long Sunday lunches with family and friends.

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 82KB)

Clare Condon SGS with Germia Tocama SGS

For Good Samaritan Sister, Germia Tocama, last Saturday, April 13, was “one of the greatest days” of her life. Germia (pronounced Hermia) made her perpetual profession as a Sister of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, the second Filipina woman to do so.

“The celebration was wonderful and joyful,” Germia told The Good Oil.

The Rite of Perpetual Profession took place during Mass at Holy Family Parish Church in Bacolod, Philippines, in the presence of about 200 people.

Those gathered included Germia’s family and friends, Good Samaritan Sisters living in the Philippines and a number visiting from Japan and Australia, children and parents from the Good Samaritan Kinder School, friends from Bacolod’s squatter settlements where Good Samaritan Sisters minister, local parishioners and members of other religious congregations.

Cistercian Monk, Father Filomeno Cinco OCSO, who has journeyed with Germia for many years as her spiritual director, presided over the Eucharist.

During the ceremony, described as “full of life and energy”, Germia proclaimed her vows of stability, conversion of life and obedience in her own language, Ilonggo, and the sounds of Filipino music filled the church.

“The ritual is rich in meaning with both word and gesture and [is] very participatory,” said Sister Clare Condon, Congregational Leader.

“When Germia had made her commitment, many of the kinders [from the Good Samaritan Kinder School] came running up the church to kiss her and to sit with her!”

Germia is well known to these children and their parents through her Family and School Liaison role at the Good Sam Kinder School.

Good Samaritan Sisters who joined with Germia for her perpetual profession in the Philippines

For the many Good Samaritan Sisters unable to be physically present with Germia on Saturday, they were gathered in prayerful support in their communities throughout Australia, in Japan, Kiribati and Timor Leste.

“Many sisters in Japan and Australia have walked with Germia during her time of temporary profession, so it is a time of great joy,” said Clare.

“My gratitude to all those who have prayed and journeyed with me during my preparation and also on the day of my profession,” added Germia. “Thank you very much to all the Associates, Oblates, and Sisters of the Good Samaritan.”

Born and raised in a suburb of Bacolod City, Germia, age 40, first met the Good Samaritan Sisters in 1998 through a family friend. She had not long finished a business degree at the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos, and was working as a finance clerk for a local non-government organisation.

Over the next 15 years, Germia’s connection with the small cross-cultural community of Good Sams in Bacolod grew, and in 2002 she became a pre-novice. Then, in 2005, she took the next step and made her temporary profession.

In 2013, the Good Samaritan community in Bacolod remains small in number (there are seven sisters) but is a vibrant mix of Filipina, Japanese and Australian sisters.

“It is our most international community, where three very different cultures live, pray and minister together,” said Clare.

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 82KB)

Sandie Cornish

Have you found the meanness, fearfulness and negativity of our national political discourse soul-destroying, asks Sandie Cornish.

BY Sandie Cornish*

Have you found the meanness, fearfulness and negativity of our national political discourse soul-destroying? I think we need to refocus our national conversation on fostering the common good – which is the purpose of the State. To do this we need to nurture a socially engaged spirituality.

According to theologian, Philip Sheldrake, spirituality refers to the way in which our values, lifestyles and spiritual practices reflect understandings of God, what it is to be human, and the material world. It is something lived by a person or community in a specific, concrete historical and social context. It seems to me that how we participate in the national conversation is an expression of our spirituality – it is informed by our understandings of God, of what it is to be human, and of the material world. Our spirituality, then, can be a catalyst for change in the political discourse.

What’s God got to do with it?

If we believe in a God who became human, we will take everything human very seriously. We will engage with social issues in a person-centred way. We will want to vote for people and parties whose policies we believe will foster human flourishing.

If we believe that every person was created in the image and likeness of God, we will want to reverence every human person and uphold their dignity. We will recognise each other as sisters and brothers, children of the one God. Respect for human dignity will lead us to foster and defend human rights.

If we understand God as a trinity of persons, who is and who makes community, we too will want to foster community. We will be concerned about social inclusion. We will seek policies that protect and care for the most vulnerable members of the human family and which enable every person to participate in economic, social and cultural life. We will want to close the gap between the economic and health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those of other Australians.

If we understand ourselves to be social by our very nature – persons in community not just individuals – we will want to be in solidarity with others. We will feel that we belong to one another, are responsible for one another, and that our relationships help us to grow and to achieve our potential.

If this is how we understand what it is to be human, self-interest will not determine how we cast our vote. We will want to build up the good of all – the common good:

“Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is liked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of ‘all of us’, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society… To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the polis, or ‘city’.” (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, n.7)

We will seek a national conversation that encourages every group in society to take into account the rights and legitimate aspirations of other groups, as well as the well-being of the whole human family.

Already in 1965, the Second Vatican Council had a global vision of the common good:

“the common good… today takes on an increasingly universal complexion and consequently involves rights and duties with respect to the whole human race. Every social group must take account of the needs and legitimate aspirations of other groups, and even of the entire human family.” (Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, n.26)

If we believe that to be human means being in a family relationship with every other human being, we will support policies that focus on the needs of humanity rather than being narrowly focussed on our own nation. We will want to talk about how we might best help people fleeing violence and injustice, dehumanising poverty and environmental disasters, rather than talking about boats or legal status.

Our understanding of the material world will also guide the way in which we engage in the shared life of our society. If we believe that the material world is God’s creation, entrusted to our stewardship, we will seek to care for the material world and to respect its integrity. We will look for policies that promote sustainability, protect sites of cultural and environmental importance, and foster reverence for the beauty of God’s world.

If our national discourse has become dispiriting, we need to inject a bit of soul by the way in which we engage, and through the understandings of God, of being human, and of the material world that we bring to the conversation. These things should be reflected not only in our spiritual practices, but also in our values, lifestyles – and votes. We need to change the national conversation through our words and through our actions. Pope Francis is showing us the way.

* Sandie Cornish has worked in Catholic justice and peace agencies at the diocesan, national and Asia Pacific levels. She is currently Province Director of Mission for the Society of the Sacred Heart in Australia and New Zealand, and is a doctoral candidate in the School of Theology at Australian Catholic University.

Read more of Sandie’s work at her website www.social-spirituality.net You can also visit Sandie’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/socialspirituality or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SandieCornish

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 92KB)

Ailsa Piper

As Ailsa Piper grapples with sadness, she comes to see that this oft-suppressed emotion can be a gift.

BY Ailsa Piper*

I woke today feeling sad.

Usually, I can rid myself of my cares with a good long walk. Send me out onto a dirt road with a sack of sorrow for four or five hours, throw in a few hill climbs, some bracing winds from the south, and a goodly dose of solitude, and I’ll return red-cheeked and grinning, the sack empty of all save a few crumbs of woe – the ones that humanise and soften.

Since Easter, I’ve walked miles under skies of all hues, and I’ve swum in Port Philip Bay on a day designed to dazzle. I have talked with those I trust, worked with words I love and listened to music that usually heals. I’ve given myself a solid talking-to and I’ve counted my blessings – that took longer than all the other activities put together.

Yet still I feel sad.

There’s no reason for this sorrow. Yes, on Good Friday I was reminded, as always, of death and suffering. In Melbourne it was a grey, mournful day, and I decided my melancholy was brought on by a convergence of scripture and weather, and it would pass on Easter Sunday in the uplift of resurrection and chocolate eggs.

It didn’t.

Instead, I noted the fall of leaves, the fade of light, and the chill of evening. I focused on media coverage of murders and bombings, and fixated on the abuse of children, feeling my stomach turn, yet unable to avert my eyes.

I don’t enjoy melancholy, and I’ve no taste for gloom. When sadness does creep up on me, I feel ashamed. How dare I be sad when I get to do something I love, when my body is healthy and I live in a wealthy democracy? Mine is a blessed and sunny existence, and my persona is predicated on optimism. I was once described as “relentlessly happy”. I’m blonde, for heavens sake! I have no right to feel this way.

And yet, something is shifting.

I weep at inexplicable moments – seeing the silhouette of a dog sprinting along a ridge against the blaze of sunrise; watching a dreadlocked mother kiss her daughter’s nose as they sit unmoving on a park swing; noticing how the cry of a gull and the trail of a jet-stream unite overhead; hearing my father’s familiar two-note “hel-lo” down the phone.

What is the point of all these tears, I ask myself. There must be a reason, or else they’re grotesque. Something useful must emerge, or this sadness is simply indulgence.

No answer comes.

It feels as though my internal support structures could break open, crack to form fault-lines, and if they do, there will undoubtedly be change. Nothing will be as before, if that is what is required by this sadness, and I know from previous experience, that ultimately, it will be to the good.

Ultimately.

In the meantime, there is discomfort, uncertainty and fear, and there is the challenge of how to live with that trinity.

Like many, I’ve become skilled at covering anything that looks like vulnerability. Heaven forbid others should know I’m afraid, or not coping as well as I might if I was the person I pretend to be. I pride myself on my ability to put on a happy face. When I teach, I often ask people to force their facial muscles into a smile and observe what happens. There’s always a change. Knowing this, I slap on my grin like war paint and forge into the days.

Except just now, I can’t get away with it.

The smile makes my face ache.

I want to understand this nonspecific sadness, to treat it and move it along, so that the next thing, the yet-to-be-born thing, can emerge. I am impatient, a child of the quick-fix, name-it-and-medicate-it culture in which we live. I want to be doing and creating, because there is so much to cram into that space we take for granted – the one between first intake and final exhale. I have had more than a passing acquaintance with death, and it has left me with an imperative to fill every heartbeat.

And besides, I want to be that sunny person again. This sad sack is no fun at all.

I try the way of stillness. I sit in the red chair in the corner of my office, but I hear the clock ticking and I squirm. I don’t want to work for the lesson of this sadness, much less wait for it. I want answers right now, wrapped in crisp brown paper and tied with a shiny crimson ribbon.

It’s strange.

I’ve never felt this lumbering sadness in the presence of death.

I remember the marvel of brushing my mother’s hair when she was dying – an intimacy we had not shared since my childhood – and the fragility of her bones as I massaged favorite creams into her chapped skin. My only thought was to ease her way.

I think of the constructed family that came together to nurse a friend who was dying of AIDS. One night, faced with his anguish at constantly baring his frail body for treatment, we all shed our trousers in solidarity with him. We were in despair, but determined to reduce the status of our healthy bodies in the face of his helplessness. He died with courage and hilarity, and we who nursed him were remade by the experience.

Death is clear. It can chew us up and spit us out, but if we are heartbroken we know why – and it leaves us with the concrete, comprehensible emotion that is grief. No matter how agonising it is, we recognise it for what it is, and for why.

Death.

We turn our eyes away from it, inclining toward stories of birth and beginnings. We prefer the Sunday resurrection to the Friday crucifixion.

Of course.

And yet, death is honest. It has never lied to us about its intent or its inevitability. It will come. It will claim us. So why look away from the one certainty of our lives?

I’m grateful to death, and to my varied experiences of it. It gives me a scale for comparison, so I can tell myself, as I weigh this dull weight in my chest, that yes, it is sadness and must be given its due, but it will not be the end of me, or of someone I love. This is not the black dog of depression, which has savaged some I’ve loved before taking them to meet with death.

No, this is sadness. It’s trying to offer me something, but like a spoiled child demanding more, I want my world to look like it did before. I don’t want the upheaval, or change, that sadness portends.

But change, like death, is inevitable – and there are endings that don’t involve the cessation of heartbeats. This sadness may foreshadow the conclusion of a way of seeing or being, of a construct that has not served, or a belief that must be let go. It may mean the breaking of a pattern or the shedding of a layer. It may mean the removal of a veil, so the world can be seen more clearly.

So for now, I’ll try to treat this sadness as a kind of death, and then maybe I’ll know better how to deal with it. I will make space for it. I won’t force it to hike or take it out in wild weather. Instead, I will acknowledge it, observe it and be patient with it. I will wait for it to talk to me, observing the silence it demands. I will allow it to be a mystery until it’s ready to be known. Whatever is contained in this sadness, I must trust that it will decide the time and place to give me its gift.

For a gift is what it will surely be, eventually.

Whether I want it or not.

And while I’m sitting here waiting, maybe I will let the muscles of my face relax, and be brave enough to tell the world that I’m not entirely chipper. Maybe I’ll experiment with that kind of courage – the courage to be true. Vulnerable.

Human.

* Ailsa Piper has worked as a writer, director, teacher, actor, radio broadcaster and speaker. She was co-winner of the inaugural Patrick White Playwright’s Award for her theatre script Small Mercies. 2012 saw the fruition of several cherished projects: the airing of her episode of ; Bell Shakespeare’s production of her adaptation of Duchess of Malfi; and the publication of her first book, Sinning Across Spain, which tells the epic story of her pilgrimage across 1,300 kilometres carrying a swag full of the sins of others. She is passionate about walking and words, believing that it is our stories that define us.

Sinning Across Spain is in bookshops and online right now. Read more of Ailsa’s work at www.ailsapiper.com You can also visit Ailsa’s Facebook page for news https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ailsa-Piper/144581425660345 or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/AilsaPiper

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 81KB)

Clare Condon SGS

Perhaps a commitment to vowed religious life is more significant than ever before, suggests Clare Condon SGS.

BY Clare Condon SGS*

I write these musings from the Philippines. I am in Bacolod on Negros Island, to receive the commitment of our Sister of the Good Samaritan, Germia Tocama, to the Benedictine vows of conversion, stability and obedience for the rest of her life. In religious life we call this commitment the act of perpetual profession, the lifelong choice to live religious life within a particular community.

I ask myself again: What relevance does such a commitment to vowed life have in our twenty- first century world of globalisation, consumerism and secularisation? Isn’t the prevailing paradigm one of self-advancement, immediate gratification and attention to the here and now, on what can life give me now?

For many in our world, even in Catholic Philippines, where a recent survey showed that 1 in 11 Catholics is leaving the Church, God is dead – or at least ailing badly – and God is not deemed to be so relevant in the daily activities that fill up the airspace between people. The din of the world around them blocks out any capacity to know God. In my own country of Australia, the faith of many people is sorely tested by the sexual abuse crisis.

My reflected response to this question of relevance is that perhaps such a commitment is more significant than ever before. There is still an underlying yearning in people for an authentic spirituality. On a universal scale this has been evident in the global interest in the election of Pope Francis. The desire for spiritual leadership has been articulated strongly.

On a personal level, as a perpetually professed Sister of the Good Samaritan, Germia is dedicating her life to the ongoing seeking of God, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. For her, God is not dead. God is indeed alive and active in her life and in the lives of all people. In fact, she sees that God is alive in all of creation. Her daily search for God is evident in the living out of the values found in the Gospel stories. She encounters God in her daily prayer, in lectio, the sacred reading of Scripture, in participating in the prayer of the Church – the Work of God – by allowing the psalms, God’s poetry, to wash over her morning and evening, every day.

Germia witnesses to the perennial values of life-long conversion. It is a journey of spiritual and personal growth. She places her trust in God’s forgiveness and compassion so that she can grow more fully as a human person. Her life is a counterbalance to those who believe that one can only achieve happiness by self-assertion and dominance of others.

Her vow of stability seems anomalous in a world that is changing by the minute. How can one be stable in such a dynamic universe? Yet, this is not a vow by which one stands still. It invites her to remain in relationship – in relationship with her sisters and her God within this unstable world. She is called to ‘hang in there’ when it would be easier to run away from herself and from others.

And finally, there is that very unfashionable and misunderstood word – obedience. In popular parlance, to be obedient is to be weak, incapable of deciding for oneself, to be subservient to another. However, this is far from its true meaning. This vow of obedience invites Germia to listen – to listen deeply with a unity of heart, mind and spirit. It is to listen wholeheartedly to all of life and to make decisions from a thoughtful and discerned position.

Obedience is a counterbalance to individualism. It invites one to decide in collaboration with others for the good of all – for the common good. Such an approach to life requires a depth of maturity and of humility.

This act of perpetual profession is an act of faith, of love and of trust. It is an act which recognises God as the author of life. It is an act which identifies one’s own human strengths and limitations as gift from God. It is an act which affirms God as God. It states that God does matter. It is a ‘yes’ to God with all the inherent risks that life will bring, with all the uncertainties about one’s future. It is an act of courage, because it declares that one can live a life full of meaning and that one can be happy living a life contrary to the prevailing paradigm.

* Clare Condon SGS is the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict.

Download a printer-friendly version (PDF 86KB)