Blogging With Purpose

Presentation Sisters first arrived at St John’s in Newfoundland from Galway, Ireland in 1833 to set up a school there.  Another journey led the Congregation of Presentation Sisters  in Newfoundland and Labrador to come together with the Union of Presentation Sisters. The Decree of Fusion of the Congregations was granted by the Vatican in November 2014 and celebrated officially in 2015. Together with ...

Throughout the almost three and a half weeks of the 2018 Presentation Sisters Congregational Gathering (CG2018) delegates were very much aware of the real reason they had all converged in Ireland, drawn from 16 countries around the world.  It was and is all because of one woman, Nano Nagle, and because in our world “people still suffer and cry out for ...

I was reminded today of these quite extraordinary sculptures that were created by the French artist Bruno Catalano, by a Facebook Post from the Chapel of Unity at Coventry Cathedral @chapelofunitycoventry. In 2013, he created an extraordinary series of eye-catching bronze sculptures called “Les Voyageurs” in Marseilles that depicted realistic human workers with large parts of their bodies missing. The ...

  I beseech you be gentle. Be gentle to the men & the women and to the children, who hold their life in their hands, like a flower. They have all gathered the flower of life, and because it is gathered it is fading, it fades swiftly, like the loveliness of a candle that is lit. Dying and flowering are ...

It is a New Year and indeed, that time of year when one reassesses many things past and opens doors to all things new.

“She who was blessed because she believed, sees blossom from her faith a new future and awaits God’s tomorrow with expectation”.  – Pope Francis According to the story, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, who had been without children, received a heavenly message that they would bear a child. When a girl was born, the parents went in thanksgiving to the ...

‘All of us who have been privileged to know the past and present Sisters have no doubt that the spirit of Nano Nagle is still alive and thriving’. I can almost unconsciously fall into holding a mental picture of ‘pilgrimage’ not so much as a personal opening and connection, but more akin to the ‘old fashioned’ idea of going around ...

Good stories travel fast.  I think that is still the case, because almost spontaneously when I hear something beautiful, inspiring or newsworthy I feel the inclination to want to share it immediately with someone else. There are of course some stories which are just written for the times we are in, and others transcend time and place and speak to ...

It takes time to begin to get to know someone. Often it happens bit by bit as you get close up to their life. You hear things they have said and done and you listen to stories retold and shared by those who know and love them. But often it is the case that you get to know and understand ...

The tercentenary of Nano Nagle’s birth in 2018 will be an occasion for widespread celebration in all the places where Nano is known and loved, and where her life still speaks through the ministry of Presentation Sisters working and living at home and overseas. It will also be an opportunity for a great many people to ‘get to know’ who ...