Sister-hood

Today on International Women’s Day we celebrate the lives, friendship and connections we have past and present, with so very many women who have inspired and continue to inspire us ‘day in, day out’.

A day when we look around us and recognise and appreciate those sisters, mothers, aunts, friends, colleagues, contemporaries, mentors and ancestors who are so often ‘at our elbow’ nudging us forward, and continuing to help make us who we are. Let’s also recognise a society and a world whose fabric is the richer from the feminine contribution that imbues it.

We would be remiss on this day, if we didn’t also celebrate Nano Nagle as a woman of her time and every time.  Her mystical encounter with God called her to respond with generosity, vision and faith throughout her entire life-journey.

At each point on this journey the power and clarity of her attentive awareness brought her to wisdom, love and action.

This contemplative vision is as luminous today as it was for her.  It is her gift to generations of women who have, like her, chosen to serve God’s poor with fidelity, courage and an open heart.

Nano Nagle became a wonderful agent of change and transformation for people of her day, and by the enduring power of her inspiration her charism continues to evolve as a living reality in our time.

We remember, pray for and give thanks for the inspirational and supportive women in our lives – past and present.

MEET A WOMAN

Meet a woman whose love was stronger
than the viciousness, greed and violence
that swamped her city and nation.

She was a woman of unbounded compassion,
deep contemplation, indomitable courage,
radical creativity, native shrewdness,
and indefatigable zeal for her faith.

Challenging the brutal power of her people’s oppression,
she spent her life on the ‘razor’s edge’ of danger.

~ Adapted from Salvador Fink, ofm – ‘Nano Nagle: Cork Lady of the Lantern’

If you want to know more about who Nano Nagle is see:  Nano Nagle – the Life and the Legacy   as well as  Nano Nagle and an Evolving Charism and also: Nano’s letters – a digital collection

Note: the content of this text was adapted and inspired from  ‘Praying Our Journey – A Resource for Prayer & Reflection’ prepared by the Nano Nagle Commission, to mark the Tercentenary of Nano Nagle’s Birth in 2018.