Reception Ceremony

The Leadership Team of the Presentation Sisters (North East Province) Ireland are pictured with Gabrielle (2nd left) at her Reception Ceremony on 2nd February 2020.  On this day  Gabrielle took the next step on her journey to being a Presentation Sister by commencing her Novitiate in Portlaoise. Her gifts to the Warrenmount community (where she has lived over the past year) were celebrated and her journey to Portlaoise was blessed.

Over the next months through a novitiate programme of scripture, liturgy. community prayer, reflective living and compassionate service Gabrielle will prepare in  the Portlaoise community for the covenant of first vows.

We remember in our prayers Gabrielle and all who are discerning their call   ‘May we share her joy and be blessed in God’s abundant love’.

(In the photo (l-r): Sr. Maura Murphy, Gabrielle, Srs. Margarita Ryan (Provincial Leader), Concepta O’Brien, Bernadette Flanagan, Anne Codd and Mary Rossiter).

“If we believe, that we, members of the Presentation family […] have been gifted in differing ways with sharing in that original divine shaft of energy which Nano received, and if we believe that we continue to sing her particular song in the Church and in the world, then certain things follow.  The first is that we […] have a responsibility for doing ‘all in our power’ to ensure that the song does not stop with us.

Her [Nano Nagle’s] song once filled the slums of Cork city – surely ‘an alien soil’ to one accustomed to the luxury of the Parisian court – and the song has endured to this day.  Her human voice is stilled, but her song continues to echo in the lives of her spiritual family”.

[…] “The Gospel was Nano’s preoccupation and her focus.  From this came her passion  for justice, for healing, for liberation, for ‘any service …in any part of the globe’.  Touching in to the depth and breadth of her gospel vision and translating it into our present cultural milieu is part of today’s challenge for all who walk in her shoes”.

(The text is  an extract from: ‘The Song Must Not Stop with Us: investing in the Future of Presentation’ by Sr. Mary T. O’Brien, pbvm (pages 223—233) in the book ‘Nano Nagle and an Evolving Charism’ by Bernadette Flanagan, Mary T. O’Brien and Anne M. O’Leary).

One step beyond

Who will light the lantern
and keep it burning bright?
Who will search the darkness
where shadows seek the light?
Who will find the courage to sing a different song?
Who will light the lantern and go one step beyond?

(~ refrain from ‘One Step Beyond’, Liam Lawton)