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Embracing Faith: A Journey Transformed
This talk reflects on the transformative journey of Anglican sisters embracing Catholicism, highlighting their challenges and the experience of divine providence. The narrative illustrates their journey from initial uncertainty and financial instability to the eventual establishment of a new community on the Isle of Wight, emphasizing the importance of letting go and trusting in divine guidance.
Referenced Works:
- "The Rule of Saint Benedict" by Saint Benedict: This foundational text for monastic life outlines principles for communal living and spirituality, which the sisters align with their transition to a Benedictine community.
- "The Idea of a University" by John Henry Newman: Cited to underscore the influence of spiritual and educational ideals in the sisters' formation of their new monastic community.
- Writings of Saint John Henry Newman: Newman's ideas and spiritual guidance serve as a touchstone for understanding faith and personal sacrifice in the sisters’ journey.
- Unnamed writings by an anonymous sister: These personal reflections highlight the theme of letting go as a spiritual necessity, resonating with the community's broader narrative of transformation and faith.
Historical and Contemporary Figures:
- John Henry Newman: His theological writings and spiritual insights play a critical role in shaping the sisters' transition to Catholicism.
- The Blessed Virgin Mary: Invoked as a model for faith and obedience, her story parallels the sisters' journey of transition and adaptation to a new spiritual path.
This summary distills the critical spiritual and communal lessons from the sisters' conversion journey, offering insights into the interplay of faith, community, and divine support.
AI Suggested Title: Embracing Faith: A Journey Transformed
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Speaker: Matthew Damla
Possible Title: Retreat
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Well greetings to everyone. In this final address, So it's made from the character of course and others, and this is a physical story of the system of the metropolitan area. And this is something about unfolding story. I've always questioned at the beginning of our history, about how 12 and its existence became Catholic Naomi. Today, I'm going to describe something about how our journey continues, how our physical journey of trying to find the building to live in. impacted upon our spiritual journey of making a spiritual home for a new community, and how the proper journey has affected each sister's personal story. Finally, I shall seek to draw out from it all our experience of those challenging breaks of destiny through the charitable fellowship of others.
[01:05]
Shortly before we were in this Catholic, I warned of the whole community that teachers who all need to be received as a Catholic had to be prepared to walk down and cry with self-continuously carried in a bag in her hand, leaving anything else behind, without any guarantee for the future, just going towards the divine state in accordance with their conscience. So, first of all, since stepped forward and we were received into Catholic Church on the 1st of January 2013. The morning after our reception, we made our communion at the Kaplanitz for the first and last time in a convict that came to all then as being our spiritual home. After that, the 12 of us, with our essential personal possessions, always spoke and set off. We had no money, no home. We left through no trinatal settlement for our community and owned government with the firm conviction that to come in Catholic with our responsible engineering course to follow me. We arrived at 16 years and we arrived on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is a island just off the mainland of England. It's part of England, but you have to go with a ferry or put a public car, and you're familiar with public car, to get there. So we met on the ferry and we arrived at 16 years. We were supposed to be there for six weeks, but we returned to eight months.
[02:11]
Basically, after regress, we were told we can't come back, so we would stop there and just find a new home. They were trying to remind us that we were being called to relate with those sisters. We loved them and felt they were only enough to us, and it's our corporate treatment for us that God is calling us to continue our journey elsewhere. But where and how would it be possible? Despite the fact that we have no money, we've reached to a priority for property, in-state, I only love a sister, tell us that she's aged particulars, and visitors come see possibilities. We and others play servants in our homes. It helps to all our players in a boring way. An American Dominican sister from the National Division downtown C, As I raised her off, my last words for her were, as soon as you get to know her well, close to the chapel, get on your knees, and then
[03:13]
selected John Henry Newman to find us at home. She did this requested. That same night, she emailed me to say that, as she left the chapel, she comes into one of the civilizers, and she says, and she says, and she says, and this civilizer says, and this civilizer says, and you know, there's comments about people portraying up the road. So she emailed me with details. I tapped down with Mr. Superior. It was Thursday evening, and by Friday evening, I phoned with Mr. Superior on the phone. She told me that there's a wedding news. into the Presidency of North the Road, which is the community grows taller, so it was just near them that would be fair to respect on go back to the main convent in Ireland, they were Irishman, or they were talking about these companies that would just be there, there, in the convent, and they'd live into the Presidency of North the Road, and might run away to sell these the convent. So she told me that we'd be living into the Presidency, and she was about to remove all the structure and the state of action that they could not take assistance. How soon do we need to do, I asked, and she said, as soon as possible. So, the next morning... I will return to cover past at the Isle of Wight, I can't find another sister, and we race to Birmingham to view the convent.
[04:16]
Sister Cecilia turned around and explained that the convent had been kind of built to them 15 years before, but they now needed to sell it because their sisters were too old to carry on there, and the elders used to break hair holes, so we just didn't need it anyway. They had desperately not wanted to be sold to the Veneto, but could not imagine that any other religious community would come forward to buy it. Because of this kind of pride in the Isle of Wight, If we were going to get back that night, we had just also empower us to view the convent and to set off her own journey. When we knew it to the library, we knew it was the right thing. It's perfect, we said to a clearly delighted sister Cisteria. Very good, she said. She's aiming. But we have no money to take it, was the next thing I said. I said, I've got to recommend that if someone wants to hear, he will provide what we need. Her experience didn't change. This mighty woman at her face agreed, and we can do it at all. I think Cisteria, I think the team has good luck. bag of cleaning equipment. She said, oh, OK, where's all that? It's going to come. And we said, stop. Leave everything. You don't have anything. Anything you don't need, just leave. I'm in everything. I'm in everything. And then we'll tell it yet. And that's going to be toughened.
[05:17]
They left us a free plan of content, because they didn't need anything. And so we didn't have to worry about bed, sheet, anything. It's all there. This material explained, this was on the Friday, that it was up today. So this material explained that the policy would do to sell the open market in two days' time of a Monday, Thursday, Monday morning. But I asked her to call me up the state agent and just tell them not to put it on the over market. I said, just give us time to raise the sacrifice. It's wonderful tasteful of sister agreeing to do just that. She told me subsequently, the night we spoke on the phone that Friday, and I told the other sisters who were coming to do it tomorrow morning, and I said to them, it's only prayer that's going to bring us out. But I'm going to seek an all-night prayer to draw, who are welcome to join me. But the other sisters were too cautious, so people were cheering straight up, both of the night, praying that we would agree to buy them for their content. Eventually, after most of her mind's heart was heartbeat, and she got two times to carry on, she told the Lord, Jesus, I don't know, it's up to you, as you will today. And she now describes the whole thing as a miracle of faith. The next day when we arrived, we were uncritical in our desire to purchase a living with apparently mummy.
[06:18]
But I told her the Lord would survive, it was the Lord's will, and she agreed. So she canceled the hospital in her company, stopped in seconds, and waited. And in a couple of days, she had confirmed that the benefactor, who wants to remain anonymous, I turned to my wife and decided to provide a convent, allowing us to live there, paying rent. And it was indeed a miracle. And that's the first problem of charitable fellowship. We had come to appreciate the meaning of charitable fellowships, robust, race, and nothing, as we experienced it through the bride's sisters, allowing us to come and live with them for eight months, but now it was time for us to depart. But I'll let our sisters pick up the story about the part of the bride's approach. The reality of my departure, where I was in blue, has used a pile of luggage that we don't experience at the bottom of the main stairs. On the day 12 forms, it is perhaps the thing that the coach arrived earlier expected, as the practicalities of loading, belongings and techniques, and rounding up systems to charge those 35 minutes. The coach driver got our old friends in a quarter to the line of white, from Montage or those ones below. Did you remember us? He certainly did. And he also had three members of getting the coach stuck, so attempting to bring her up the average drive.
[07:21]
That's for me this time all was well, as the coach had been brought to the back entrance and loaded there. The two things he fell together for the last time to day so well, Awareness in God, we will now be united forever by the bonds of second prayer, which has been forged between us. What begins, we will ask on the journey of faith across the water to what was to become our new holy. End of quote. Seven or twelve hours after our boarding of church, we arrived at our new holy, and the first thing we did was to go to the chapel, to a brief time of prayer and thanksgiving, to God, for its provision and bringing us to this place. This column has been changing for 15 years, and it's used a cavernacle with never been empty. In 15 years, it has been adapted for elderly religious, so there were time drills and walking showers. suitable for the nature of our more elderly sisters already in place. The sisters were kept at bed, sheets and furniture, so we had a three-part in his office, and our kind sisters on the Isle of Wight had arranged for a delivery of food so that we would not need to worry about the first few years. We've truly got lost goodness and a charitable friendship, which was dedicated once again. Over the next few months, we started to focus on putting down physical and spiritual roots. There were then 12 of us, and our only regular income was eight basic older extensions that the board provided.
[08:26]
I'm going to stop there. When I say that it's provided, there's some more confidence in power than I did. What I think happens was, in England, if you pay your national insurance compensation, you'll come to your old age and have to pay pension. So, as our citizens, we've always done that, so the agencies who are of that age are eligible for that pension. And the idea was that we would pull out pensions, and so we could start our ministry of hospitality, judging death, doing retreats, et cetera, doing our own decisions. But the problem was to look at a holdup between our decisions from our own identity community, So initially, we were literally there without any money. So we've been different, actually, for us, from our Anglican in Hong Kong. We had such a mess, very mess. They were actually going to leave us to be without a penny. And I said, if I'm interested in size, I don't actually have any money to pay for coffee. Can we have an advance of what is our entitlement, our questions? Anyway, so we traded us, you know, £3,000 between 12 of us. So that would cost the coffee, et cetera. So we have £3,000 initially. That was eight months to go. Um, but after that, for some reason, they couldn't talk about any of our money.
[09:27]
Um, but it went on and on and on and on. So, they developed the living hours in smaller and smaller. I also heard two of the elderly sisters when the age of Perry, how much weight they were using, because they were saving our main food for the elderly sisters. So at that point, they thought I could do something. So, they just emailed to our elderly and said, dear father, um, because sisters are hungry. Of course, no reply. I got to decide three weeks later, very unspoken against sisters that are hungry, but by then I was taking action. Oh wait, the parish priest, I'm so sorry, I think I want to say something. I've only had to come through yet, and I'm having a sort of problem looking after the sisters. So the parish. So what happened was, various people brought their food, and that's how we not managed the first few weeks. So I'm saying that all provided, that parish provided, members of the parish called the sister's food, and it's always been already in a practice, but after a lunch stop on Tuesday, they had a split stop on the elderly in the parish on Tuesday. So next day the family needs to come to us, for our two-foot supper, and they always put it up for more than one night supper, etc. And then the parish kindly decided to provide us with our tea, coffee and sugar every week, and another one generally supposed to be greeted every week for our main Sunday dinner.
[10:29]
And that's what happened until we got our money coming through, so the parish basically took care of us. So that, in other words, the rules took part for us to the local parish. My spiritual party had been determined that how we might have a daily mass. The call came and they saw that the local parish church was only two dogs along, The problem was being that at the moment of Saturday in Christmas, the daily parish act was held in our pond and chapel. But I think it left this, that we would be very glad to continue to have custom. The parish then didn't need to keep my simple plan to go into the parish building during the week, and we would actually have a daily mass, so it would work out beautifully. And that's just been a great tip thing, because there were other challenges. During the two months of our arrival, children and younger physically-tip systems were put into play the call to our communities. One of the participants thought God was calling a bachelor's community on the Isle of Wight. which will lead us to eight months. The other was the one who did recently come to a different kind of community. Lesnar was a Catholic identity to proper government behind us, but she felt brought to a more active Catholic community. So we determined its right to let both citizens have their sense of calling, but inevitably there were serious implications.
[11:30]
It meant that we were committed to 10 Christians with only myself, and another sister, the most state pension age. We just had to trust that God would somehow take care of the future. A confirmation for us between the religious, saying that, almost immediately, they were ready to erect us. properly as the story of Congress and the history of Benedictine spirituality within the person or dead area. The usual process takes years, but they've actually done it all in exactly one year. 1.01, from the day we were received into the church as Catholic, we were physically erected and we were left the next community in the church. Brilliant. So, on the 1st of January, exactly one year after we were received, we were set up and we reaffirmed our vows. Our vows had been recognized by those, but we would re-pronounce them cognitively as Catholic. in Benedictine's formulary so that everybody would be able to see us and hear us doing that, and that would be the next stage of our life. Now, one of the sisters, at that point she was 84, and she'd been a member of the family for 60 years, wrote an alternative exercise that stayed tight for her, and this is what she said, I quote, When I was in my mid-60s, I was given to the wife of the sister in our infirmary, and I asked her, what advice would you give someone of my age about preparing for death?
[12:36]
She thought for a moment and then said, practice letting go. In these responses, we've all had to let go of so much that belongs to our personal, as well as our shared past. I certainly had to let go of any similar and many parts of contact. For all of us, the comments that did our toes, for some of us, including myself, for more than 50 years, was only to let me go of the old life, but the new life became possible for us. I'll never back out into let go, but with other possible aspects of getting old. I used to think that with the onset of old age, there would be a gradual progression from chewing to feeding. In fact, it was not gradual for me. There is something that must be most of maturity, bringing with it the loss of independence. It's been a stage of one challenge after another, and of learning in ways not to meet specifically, God is working in my life and asking me to trust him. So I find myself thinking that if this evening will get a post to this stage of my life and for what it will come, then it's not enough to accept it. I must learn to embrace it, and that in itself is the next challenge. This is not the only sister who had to embrace the challenges that faced us in those months.
[13:39]
In 2014 Christmas that year, that first year, a secret in the late 80s with five-notes of breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy, for a while called a daily radiotherapy for weeks. Another sister sent Phoenix in hospital over Christmas that year with heart failure. Another sister was hospitalised with a broken hip, and these three sisters were all in their 80s, but it still all felt we were living in a great field day. As one of them explained, I read recently about thousands of a religious community in the 19th century who were after a wonderful, strenuous and a special life found herself in old age, and notably, certified and forgotten. She's invited to a priest who visited her, I think that you have lost everything you have in the world as I have. Such a wonderful new life comes into you. I think about her words, and admire, and hope, and participation. We said, God is the unknown, with no guarantee for the future. Do we regret it? No. No system has regretted the fact that it's taken. We trained up a beautiful historic conference with a 24-hour staff discovery. and we are given a perfect world conference. We look after each other with additional support from the National Health.
[14:41]
We have seen behind our Asian sisters, who have been given Catholic 50-year brothers, who have, by their mouth and affection, several positive beings to be part of the Catholic worldwide family. We have truly come home in the church. We are all lost friends, which is covered throughout truth, may we really are. We have been shown the most extraordinary charity, by God in calling us in his church, and by providing us with our spiritual and central needs, by divine funds, providing us 12 strangers in the home for 8 months, by the anonymous 30 factors, from churches, and now the students, by the local parish providing us with cleaners and donations to keep up there. We are living in challenging times. Just before Christmas, last Christmas, we were told by our manuals that this giant dysfunction of southern land is joining our conference, that our manuals is not moving about, but warned us that as the adjacent emergency itself has been developed for a small residential estate, it will come right up to the boundaries of our property, for 19 years a couple of years more easily worth. Further, with registration copies of watching data, the present thing a client we've had so far will be no longer. It's all the advice that now we're trying to lose.
[15:44]
But far, we have found that we had property in the zoo, and the new issue is that like the funds, but they just get involved in trying to find where we're supposed to be. But we feel that there is terrible grace available for any challenge, and that even our challenges can fail upon us as sound accepting. So one of the two sisters to mess, if you remember the two of the other ones, one kid comes first to write, she comes first to look at them, and she goes to the end of it and starts with it again, and she's very happy there. The second sister comes from another community, she then took a little while at this community, and started off with them, and then started making a different place in her life, and asked to come back. So she has come back, and we've got to go back with her in arms, and she's fully one of us, again, et cetera, and life comes home. We do feel that kind of a diplomat, we've still collected her attendee, a big looking after her, and at least we didn't expect it to be all right. Shortly after the arise, at least we hadn't thought I would very much mind it better and we would be very careful. One of the sisters came to me and said, Mother, we don't actually have any best bread for a morning breakfast. I think that's quite well what we'll do, so I thought we'll just have to go out on the road and buy some bread.
[16:46]
So I said to her, I'll take up her, I did you or I will go out and get up some bread, because the shop was still open. During supper, the poor bell found it. It was a parishioner, who we didn't know, who brought us to carry a bag for the shopping that she bought with lightnings, and in a bag passed through loads of bread. And that was the moment I thought, you know what? The Lord depends upon us. We are going through the right. When we need something, he will send it. And we truly felt at that moment that we were experiencing once again charity fellowship, to this kind of parishioner. We have confidence for the future, because we have confidence in our loving God, whose charity towards his children is founded. Suppose for this retreat, have been the price for the beneficent understanding of peace. To do this, we can look attentively at five specific areas, using the rules and genetics as a framework, the life and writings of St. John Henry Newman as our guide. And those areas were mind serenity , spirit-time fidelity , heart sensitivity , love forms , and charity fellowships , and others.
[17:48]
Reduced movement that you may not show himself as a saint, but that's precisely why we can relate to him, because he was ordinary, his struggles and life challenges as he grew. His own cue of his own faithfulness follows. I have nothing of a faith about me, as everyone knows, and it is a severe and solitary multiplication to be taught to explore someone. I may have a hundred and many things, but it is a consequence of education and of a peculiar part of the internet that this is a very different thing from being what I admire. I have no tendency to be a saint, it is a sad thing to say. Put yourself, then, my dear child,
[18:52]
into a hand of your loving father and your hero, who knows and loves you better than you know or love yourself. He is acquainted with the action of your life. He creates you, he saves you, and is marked down the very way and hour, and he will take you to yourself. He knows all your thoughts, and feels to you in all your sadness, more than his teacher can feel, and accepts and makes notes of your prayers, even before you make them. He will never tell you, and he will give you what is best for you. And that he tries you, and seems to withdraw himself from you, and afflicts you, still trust in him. For at length he will see how good and gracious he is, and how well he will provide for you. Be courageous and generous, and gift in your heart, and you will never repent of the sacrifice. Oh, I mean, also... We were at Lye since... Oh, we were at Lye.
[20:06]
Oh, we were at Lye. [...] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [...] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that if you start the whole thing along with obedience, the first competency, and you end up with this, what a better word, not a problem, but anyway, having to move out of the way you were, from a gay or an expert, all you think of was, excuse me, the things let him go. What you think about school tennis, listen, they can't listen unless you let him go. I was thinking the whole time you've done this whole story, if you let him go. But you destroyed me, not letting him go, anyway. The other thing I was going to use is a walk-in shower. Oh, right.
[21:06]
No, no, basically, the shower injection helps the way that, um, you pull the door open and just walk into it. There's no step or anything. Oh. Because it's, um, so it brings, um, people to, um, you don't have to talk about anything. You just, um, just walk in and then you talk to the door. Okay. I knew it was a Skype topic. I knew it was a Skype topic. When you're in, when you first talk to me, like, hey, when I don't know how to move scripture, I don't think I had to be reading a book. It's like Peter, an unicorn, where Jesus goes into his boat, in which it's, here's the state master, you know, he's unintentional, I haven't caught anything, and I have to speak scripture. So it's certainly another way, and it's a similar thing of going out, but not fishing. I'm fishing. I've been doing this for years. We're going out at noon. It's the worst time to go, but they go out anyway. It's pretty deep to me, but they hear after the month.
[22:07]
And in fact, London's third point of what I read about it, since now, the amazing message that we'll put in there, you keep this available for people to read it, and that would be amazing. That would be something that I guess.
[22:27]
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