Statuses

Maria Elisabeth Caspar was born on July 7^th 1918 in Berschweiler, diocese of Trier, Germany. She was called Liesel, a short form of her name Elisabeth. Later, in Peru, she was called Isabel – the Spanish form of her name. 

Until 1930 she attended the local Elementary School and then, for four years, the Grammar School in Saarlouis. Liesel grew up in a deeply religious family. Her own sister was also a Pallottine Missionary Sister of the English Province. Her father, an upright and loyal catholic and headmaster of a school, underwent considerable suffering during the Nazi period. 

Liesel felt drawn to missionary life early on. In 1934 she joined the mission school of the Pallottine Sisters in Limburg, and shortly afterwards was sent to the Convent High School, Rochdale, England. She passed her London Matriculation Exam in 1938 and, on October 20^th of the same year began her postulancy in Limburg, Germany. On August 16^th 1939 she became a novice. She took her first vows on August 17^th 1941 and her final ones on August 15^th 1947. 

Like so many young professed Sisters at the time, she had to help nurse the sick in the hospital that had been established in the mission house of the Pallottines in Limburg. Here she obtained her Nursing Certificate in 1945. After its closure in 1947 Sr Liesel helped in the office of the Sisters’ motherhouse Marienborn, until she joined the staff of their children’s home in Facit, England. When in 1952 staff and children moved to Pallotti Hall, she was transferred there. 

In 1956 Sr Liesel returned to Limburg, Germany and soon afterwards was sent to the mission in British Honduras, now Belize. At the time her health deteriorated and in 1963 she had to return to Limburg. A few years later she returned to England. 

During her time in England Sr Liesel was able and willing to turn her hand to various ministries. The Pallottines remember her with fondness, for she helped in their college in Thurles, Ireland, and in the Provincial House in Golders Green, London. She was also one of the pioneers who helped get the Westminster Pastoral Centre at London Colney into some form of habitable state. 

One of her happiest periods was the time spent in the mission field of Peru. In 1977 she willingly agreed to help a missionary team from the Diocese of Leeds. One of the Sisters of Mercy who worked there fell ill and Sr Liesel “temporarily” took her place. On 23^rd of December she arrived in Huambo in the Diocese of Chachapoyas in the Amazonas region. 

At first Sr Liesel worked in this isolated and poor area in the Andes. She writes of the village: “It could be a replica of Nazareth or Bethlehem with its living quarters and children, donkeys and horses, with its rough streets and insanitary conditions.” Of her first Christmas in Peru she says: “Christmas is everywhere, also in Huambo. Tonight I shall experience it quite differently. He became poor for the poor, and lived with the poor. It makes me very happy to share some of that poverty with Him in order to help these people find happiness in Him. They are all Catholics of a sort, but full of ignorance and superstitions, helpless and hopeless, because they can’t believe that they can improve things with God’s help and their own efforts. Yet they are friendly, open and affectionate and welcomed me like a miracle. May I not disappoint them.” 

She worked very hard in Huambo. Often they had to ride out on donkeys or horses to reach isolated areas where the sick and lonely were waiting for Holy Communion, where children had to be baptised and where the poor waited for comfort. From the beginning she was much involved with catechesis and the formation of catechists. After some years she moved to the episcopal town of Chachapoyas. 

When the team dispersed in 1987, Sr Liesel and Fr Gerry Hanlon, a priest of this missionary team of the Diocese of Leeds, moved into the Cathedral Town of the Apostolic Vicariate of Iquitos. Here Sr Liesel took care of passing missionaries, continued catechesis and preparation of liturgies, was spiritual director of the Legion of Mary, and above all became absorbed with work for street children and drug addicts. Just before her death she had begun begging for money to foster a fishing project, which would enable a number of fathers to make a living for their families. God alone knows the many efforts she made for the poor of the town. 

In November 1996, Sr Liesel suffered from a severe pulmonary illness aggravated by embolism. She rallied but still needed medical supervision. In January 1998 she wrote: “I feel well and strong. I take my weekly day off to go into the country and I take it easy.” In the same letter she wrote: “The next big event will be the General Chapter starting in March.” She followed closely the events of her Province and of the Congregation. 

Unexpected by the Sisters of her Congregation, she died on 14^th April 1998 in Iquitos, where she was buried.

Christine Bohr sac – London – ENGLAND

05.10.15

borh@talktalk.net 

Fr Gerry Hanlon, on whose invitation Sr Liesel had gone to Peru and with whom she worked most of her time there, remembers her nearly seventeen years later: 

Sr Liesel arrived in Huambo, our extremely remote village, on the top of an open truck on Christmas eve 1977. 

When I was appointed to Chachapoyas she followed me there and became diocesan bursar, making sure the priests and sisters who came in from their remote parishes, got enough money to live on.

Then, when I moved to Iquitos in the jungle area, she followed me there. We lived in a mission house and said morning prayer together before having her special breakfast. I was involved in education, and she attended Legion of Mary meetings, and monitored all the Masses at the Cathedral. She also bought food and took it out into to the country every Saturday to a drug addiction rehabilitation house.  

Needless to say I greatly enjoyed her company and she was extremely kind to me. 

Thousands turned out for her funeral, and it was most moving to see ex drug addicts carry her coffin. Their comment was “She was a mother to us all”. 

This comment courtesy Sr Adelheid Scheloske sac, archivist for the Pallottine Missionary Sisters, Germany

To be part of a first Christian church.

The members of the delegature of the Irish Province in the Argentine gathered in the retreat centre of Villa del Huerto, Cortinez, in the Province of Buenos Aires on Monday October 12^th. The Sisters of the Congregation Nuestra Senora del Huerto (Sisters of Our Lady of the Garden of Gethsemani) welcome the community here most years for the annual retreat and we all feel very much at home in this house. It is a simple house, on nicely kept grounds, but now what was once a secluded spot is just next to a national motorway and the noise of the traffic provides an undernote of movement twenty-four hours a day. It is remarkable that it does not impinge on us after a while and seems to be just a noise in the background.

This year the retreat was animated by Fr. Jorge Oesterheld, of the Diocese of Moron, parish priest of a busy city parish. He focused on what is central to our lives as Christians, the presence and activity of God in our midst and through his presentations led us to reflection. He is a practical man and has ‘the gift of the gab’ but also a very sure turn of phrase and the ability to relate the theme he is speaking on to the concrete realities of life as a priest. An example of his use of the concrete: he invited us today to imagine that we are going to make a journey, to climb a mountain, and we can carry what we need for the journey in a back-pack; on the journey, in climbing the mountain, even an extra toothbrush in the back-pack will take its toll on us. Hence the need to choose carefully what to take for the journey, to focus on what is essential and what will sustain one on the journey of living as a disciple of Jesus Christ and then leave the rest aside and continue the journey.

One of the concepts that he developed struck me and has guided my thinking and praying in these days. In speaking of the early Christian churches he made the point that they were made up of persons who had known Jesus and who had been transformed by that encounter. The next generation was one of persons who encountered persons who had been transformed through their encounter with Jesus and were in turn ‘infected with’ their experience of Jesus. Throughout my life I have often wondered what it would have been like to be part of such a Christian community and have felt that what we are living now is a very watered-down version of what they were. However, Fr Jorge stressed that we, the Christians of today, are part of the first Christian Church because every community, every church is in a true sense a new church, a first Christian church. New and original in that Jesus is present, just as present as he was in the communities in the first, second and third centuries; Jesus related to Peter, to the other apostles, to Mary Magdalene, to Paul, and he continues to relate to you and to me in the same manner today. Therefore we can believe that we, you and I, are part of a first community. Each of us came to know Jesus through the lives of others who had themselves known him through encounter with him; we in turn will pass on our enthusiasm and conviction to others who will seek Jesus.

The same characteristics that identified, formed and sustained the first Christian churches are those that identify, form and sustain us today, the living presence of Jesus, the action of the Holy Spirit, the fact that we gather together with Mary to pray, the trust we have that the Holy Spirit will continue to act in our hearts. And, the means that sustained the first communities are part and parcel of our community today: the gift of faith, a living and breathing faith, the Holy Spirit, enthusiasm for the message of Jesus, being transformed by the experience of Jesus, the presence of the community, the enthusiasm generated by a common experience and conviction, and the celebration of the Eucharist. As members of a Christian community, as disciples, we bring the Gospel to the situations we encounter today in our day-to-day experience. Pope Francis is urging us by word and example to bring the Gospel of Jesus to bear on the experiences and situations of daily life and living; our community will be a ‘First Christian Community’, to the extent that Jesus’s presence and activity is acknowledged accepted and transmitted to others.

If, and it is a big IF, I can realize that I am part of a first Christian community, then I know that the future is uncertain, I cannot predict it nor imagine it, I do not know even if there will be a future or much of a future, but I can trust that the living presence of Jesus continues to give life and meaning and direction to the Community-Church that has lived and grown over two thousand years. I want to be part of that church community.

Derry Murphy, SAC, October 2015.

My nephew is a very good body builder and he invited me to the Mr. Ireland show that he was competing in last Sunday. I’m not all that keen on big muscles, though maybe I’m envious, but I went anyway because I love him. And there I found myself in a big long queue outside the Olympia, easily the oldest and smallest man around.

About an hour into the show my nephew’s group arrived on stage – 23 of them all tanned and oiled in speedos. They did their 35-second routine as a group and out of this group six were chosen to contest the final. When they called my nephew’s name as one of the six I let out an uncharacteristic roar of delight. I was hooked! As he came on to do his solo routine my heart pounded and I trembled for him. And then something happened to me, to my vision, my way of seeing – I no longer saw the muscles, I was no longer observing on the edge. I saw my fine handsome nephew, a young man who has a hard time of it in life, and I was proud of him, rooting for him with my whole being.

And his late mother, my sister, was in the air between us. The audience didn’t know it but I knew that he was doing this for her and I was filled with tears, the stronges of emotions. Love and loss!

I understood that it was no longer me looking at him with my limited vision but it was Love that looked at him, it was God Himself seeing my nephew through me and I was seeing with the eyes of God. There’s an ordinary way of looking at people and life. And there’s a godly way of looking.

This is what Jesus is doing with the young man in today’s gospel. He looks steadily at him and his gaze is filled with love and truth and it is under this beautiful gaze that the man is offered an opportunity to grow and to advance further on the road of Life – the freedom of the children of God. But, sadly, the man did not accept the opportunity offered because it demanded too much of him.

The journey into the fullness of life is very demanding, in the way that an athlete prepares for competition. My nephew gave 16 weeks of rigorous training for last Sunday and I found myself saying that if I put as much effort in building up my soul, then I’d be in great shape altogether. The condition of the soul is infinitely more important than that of the body but we don’t give it the kind of attention necessary for eternal life.

Our question to Jesus is, “what must I do to build up my soul so that I am fit for Life eternal?” and Jesus gives two answers – one is keep the commandments and the second is that you need to do something more than the commandments ask. He looks at you now with love, sees you with loving eyes and says “you need to do one thing more”.

Ask yourself, what is the one thing, what is the one thing that is blocking your way to fullness of Life, what’s stopping you living the kind of life that Jesus calls you to live?

When confronted by the horrific tragedy of the families in Carrickmines today, we need a Godly way of seeing such tragedies. When a pregnancy doesn’t work out we need a Godly way of seeing, when a loved one is trapped in addiction we need a Godly way of seeing. When faced with a person that I do not like, someone I find difficult to get on with, I pray to see that person as God sees him or her.

In all our struggles we need to learn to see as God sees, to understand as He understands, to Love as He loves and in this to discover hope for our own personal journey and that of other people.

Sunday 28, Mark 10:17-30

Fr. Juan Sebastian Velasco, Provincial Delegate in Argentina, communicated the sad news of the death of Fr Carlos Cravea last evening. Carlos had been hospitalized in recent months with recurring thrombosis in his legs; he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer just two weeks ago.

His funeral Mass will be celebrated today in St Patrick’s Church, Belgrano, he will then be taken to Mercedes where there will be a funeral service in St Patrick‘s Church there and then buried in our plot in the municipal cemetery.

A very happy feast day of Mary Mother of Divine Love to each of you. 

May our Mother lead us deeper into God’s infinite love this day.

1. This is Our Life

The seed of religious and consecrated life is always germinating from the arable and nutritive divine landscape. Its beauty is never seen and vitality is never experienced without being connected into the mystery of the Trinity and the redemptive love as experienced and lived by the person. In the experience of the call and the living of the call itself, the gift of consecrated life is surfacing to nourish and share the joy of being graced by participating in the salvific mission of our heavenly Father and that of the church.

As consecrated life takes the image of Christ in the calling, in its formation and in mission; in it is a personal decision to walk the talk by leaving everything and fundamentally making one’s life ready to faithfully live the big Yes, the yes that says ‘here I am.’ Thus Lumen Gentium reminds us of the Yes of our baptism which is completed and perfected when we consecrate ourselves wholly to God in the totality of love.   

The Christological and Pneumatological nature of the consecrated life invites the participant not only to follow and live Christ radically but also to open oneself to the workings of the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The imitation and the special gaze on Christ’s face are to illumine our deepest selves so that we may joyfully radiate the presence of Christ to all and at all times. Our partnership of life of our very selves, with the gifts of the Spirit are for constantly being renewed and energized to live to the demands of our call and the mission ahead of us, as Vita Consecrata says, there is ‘going up the mountain and coming down the mountain.’

The joy of accepting the invitation of Christ has to be the joy that accompanies us in living our call and mission. When the year of consecrated life was announced, the message that is accompanying us to ponder and reflect is the reality of this joy. In whatever moment and situation, Pope Francis is inviting us to rediscover the deepest root of our calling in joy. Our lives individually and communally, in mission and apostolate are to continually radiate the presence of joy, to the extent that where there is a consecrated person, there is joy.   

2. It is in Us……Joy

Consecrated life is never a life of emptiness and in emptiness. As it has its foundation, its mission and gracious return in faithfulness and joy; in it are the consecrated men and women who heed to its demand and its call. There are different calls into it as important as the other, and this year, joy is our necessity and in deed our greatest demand. It is never a small matter because it holds certain other things that open up further understanding of our relationships and mission.

Since time in memorial joy has been fundamental to the existence of humanity and to its well being. It is a word and an experience that has been accompanying men and women of this world. When denied, life and its dimensions are denied. Life is turned upside down and becomes gloomy, dull, miserable, dysfunctional and dreary, depressing … etc. When freely lived and shared, joy brings delight, humor, content, friendship, love …etc.

The anthropological experience of man in his state of being and nothingness reveals his different capacities, both positive and negative. Not only can he transcend the state of life’s limits, he can also vision ways of living a better life. He operates in this through hope which is in him making the spirit of yearning and eagerness important factors. As joy could be minimized to the periphery of one’s life, it is the yearning for goodness within the capacity of our being that can once again revive and centralize joy in our lives. The tension between consistency and inconsistency in maintaining the state of goodness in joyful endeavor may be corrected and balanced by continually reviving our yearning, our goodness and understanding our limits for better complementarity. It is our faithfulness, our consciousness, it is our state of being in choosing what build our anthropological relationships than what leads to its collapse.

When saint Augustine says ‘my soul shall not rest until it rests in God,’ it reminds us of this spiritual and anthropological yearning which transcends us to the divine presence. We have been created for a great and valuable life. Hence when we open ourselves to the divine and higher values, we are exposing ourselves to that contact with our Creator who is the first source of our joy. We rise beyond human capacities and limits because we are no longer the ones but “the spirit comes to our aid” to help seek what is deep and fundamental to our spiritual corporality.

When we sing ‘give me joy in my heart keep me praising…’ we seek divine intervention and presence, we seek the perfection of what is ordinary for the greater well-being of the body and soul in union with God. Jesus speaking to his disciples before his departure in the gospel of John, insisted on joy being perfected, being fulfilled in them. As it is never fulfilled when it is too human, the invitation is to ground that joy in the continual loving relationship with God. At this point, this is how it opens itself; joy is love, joy is relationship and joy is connected to other dimensions of our call and life as Christ’s true followers. That is why in Paul joy is part of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5).

What is our call in this divine-man relationship? A life of deep and persistent joy elevated to the divine presence indicates that we live the life of the Spirit and have immersed ourselves in the Divine presence. In it and in the consecration of our life, we continue having a shining star, to guide and motivate, to instill in us a persistent walk of great moments of rejoicing. We become the manifestation of true liberation in spirit and a sign of gratitude to our different situations and circumstances in maturity, in true nature and true interaction. Our joyous present moments in spirit are not isolated from our future dream of encounter. Thus joy is eschatological when is enriched and graced with our hopes. It points to the future, the destiny of our faith and our commitment to its values. Its sacredness is in its goodness, its transforming power. Its sacred inspiration is its constant call to embrace the source of all joy, God himself.

3. Experiences of Joy

Joy is a human experience with its own signs, symbols, gestures and moments in human terminologies. As is our reality of our everydayness, joy helps to us learn, remember and adapt. Joy makes us who we are, what we do, why and how we do it and to whom. Joy has its own intensity, force, power and strength when experienced and lived. And we have to agree that to rejoice, to be joyful is a decision, a choice. Look at St. Paul in 1 Cor 6:4-10 when he says “…we are treated…as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing…” Job also in 19:25-26 sounds the same.

In the midst of troubles, problems, difficulties, mysteries, paradoxes, sickness, brokenness, fragility …what is my reason of acceptance and of rejoicing. What is the reason of the sick men and women who are in constant pain and tribulations (like Paul) but are never silent of their hopes and their joy? How many times have we seen our sick brothers and sisters portraying a stronger inner energy and a greater sense of acceptance compared with those who are strong and healthy?

What was the source of joy of the first missionaries, the joy of those who go to open new missions, the joy of those who take risky and challenging apostolate? How about the joy of consecrated men and women whose thoughts and energies are directed to places where things have not been easy, places where everyone else pulled out, but are determined to stay put and share their love and joy? How about those who from the first day of their consecration and apostolate placement have seen life in its periphery and is their joy to be where they are mostly needed?

As consecrated men and women, our choices on the state of our life and our being are crucial to the foundation and development of the person. If we responded to our divinely inspirational call of ‘rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice…’ we would be walking on a greener path of the presence of life, joy and love. Not only would we encounter the shining light but we would radiate that presence. We would echo back the great sound of personal victory which speaks to our hearts and spirits invoking strength and determination no matter what. We are brought to that relationship with divine gifts, grace and strength. All these are to aid our human nature to discover true value in rejoicing.

A consecrated man and woman never define himself or herself without his or her fellow kaka (brother) and dada (sister). This is what defines us as people with communitarian character. We not onlyt live and stay together, but we journey, share and experience the dynamics of our life and apostolate together. It is pity for a newly consecrated kaka and dada to begin his/her responsibility in a non-joyous community or where personalities are never in communitarian spirit. The begging question is: have we prepared him/her for such a situation? Are we confident of his/her tools of interaction in that reality? Do we have to think twice before such a decision?

In all that we do and think as consecrated men and women how are we perceiving and expressing the sense of community life? As this is a place of ‘together we journey, together we rejoice,’ its fundamental details need to be revived and its spirit needs to be rekindled. It was never wrong in the African systems of thoughts and life when it was said ‘I am, therefore we are.’ And it is never wrong in our consecrated life to continue saying the same, and even more so in the words ‘I rejoice and therefore we rejoice’ and vice versa. Thus in this year of consecrated life, let it be the year that I question my role in building up a community. Lets question our status of communitarian character. Let’s question our fraternity, our love, our forgiveness, our support for each other to heal ourselves and heal our communities.

We need to carry in community living four things: love, forgiveness, joy and hope. Do they substitute each other? Is one better than the other? Our deepest ambition should be to bring them together in the bigger basket of consecrated life. It is this ambition and desire in us that will set a purposive direction; bringing to light what is valuable for each one of us. A life of self-giving love is what we are reminded about, a life of generosity, of service and of practicality as we commit to each other in following Christ, as I borrow these words of Saint John Paul II in Vita Consecrata. As consecrated persons in our communitarian life we are invited to love and care with the heart of Christ. It is the invitation to amend and heal with the compassion of Jesus, to welcome and to give hope. We are to joyfully celebrate our communion and companionship in the light of divine presence. 

If communities of consecrated life are to embrace our Lord and the gracious presence of our heavenly mother Mary, will never be lacking love and joy. Our communities of consecrated life will never be a place of inner and silent death. We will never suffocate each other, exclude each other, eliminate each other, suppress each other or speaking evil to each other. As we embraced Jesus with the ‘Yes’ of consecrated life, we will embrace each other mercifully, lovingly and joyfully.  

Let’s Question Ourselves Joyfully:

1. Am I finding meaning in my consecrated life in the presence of God?
2. As consecrated person, where am I searching for my joy? Is that a real joy in the consecrated life?
3. In my involvement as an entrepreneur of joy in its divine and bigger picture, is my personal goal contributing to that of the other?
4. Am I widening the circle of information on the beauty and goodness of joy, communicating it, coordinating it?
5. Do we still have hopes and joy to continue working despite the challenges, resistances, failures …etc.?

Consecrated life is a precious and beautiful life in itself. It is a gift, a special divine gift. Our commitment to it is in loving our God and the mystery of our salvation in the life of the Trinity. In moments of Eucharistic celebrations, prayers of the church, meditations, our spiritual renewals in recollections and retreats, personal and community prayers, we are brought close to God and to each other. In them, together as consecrated persons, we walk on the road leading to joyful sanctification.  Constantly we are to ponder God’s ways and God’s word to understand the dimensions of His great love for us, and vision our joyful response. The fragrance of our consecrated life is to perfume the individual person first, then spreads and perfumes my kaka and my dada and brings us closer to the source of its joy and its beauty which is God. In the beauty of its fragrance, together we rejoice and are glad.

“The joyful heart sees and reads the world with a sense of freedom and graciousness.”

John O’Donohue