Photo from the Convent at Le Bec taken by the Sisters.
At the Weekend, I posted a blog item about Sister Irène-Marie, a beautiful nun and iconographer. She was a member of the community at the Monastère Sainte Françoise Romaine, Le Bec Hellouine, Normandy. You can read more about her if you scroll back two blog entries.
Her funeral is today, Thursday 9th, at the Convent and I just wanted to mark the entry into heaven of a dear friend. So I have written the following poem.
Dear Sister Irène-Marie, bearer of Peace, held in the love of Mary, you brought a singular joy into our lives. We met you and sensed your nearness to God. We were enraptured by your sacramental eyes which mirrored the Divine.
Extending monastic hospitium , you encircled us with welcome, embracing our need with thoughtfulness and gentle love, which was kept warm within the folds of your habit.
Your listening expressed concern for a broken world from which you could draw a reservoir of experience. No hidden cell housed you. The lives of others glazed your windows and held open the door from which rays of love shone.
Most of all, you ‘wrote’ visible signs of God’s Presence in Jesus and the Saints. You dipped your brush and pen in the palette and inkwell of God. From the depth of your prayerful iconography you led us into the heart of faith which has led you now into the bosom of your Saviour, for as you said, that is what you, (and we,) “are here for.”
Thank you for opening and sharing the images of your faith with us. By you we have been truly blessed.
A Prayer for After the Earthquakein Turkey & Syria
Lord, at times such as this, when we realize that the ground beneath our feet is not as solid as we had imagined, we plead for your mercy.
As the things we have built crumble about us, we know too well how small we truly are on this ever-changing, ever-moving, fragile planet we call home.
Yet you have promised never to forget us. Do not forget us now. Today, so many people are afraid. They wait in fear of the next tremor. They hear the cries of the injured amid the rubble.
They roam the streets in shock at what they see. And they fill the dusty air with wails of grief and the names of missing dead. Comfort them, Lord, in this disaster. Be their rock when the earth refuses to stand still, and shelter them under your wings when homes no longer exist. Embrace in your arms those who died so suddenly this day. Console the hearts of those who mourn, and ease the pain of bodies on the brink of death.
Pierce, too, our hearts with compassion, we who watch from afar, as the poorest on this side of the earth find only misery upon misery. Move us to act swiftly this day, to give generously every day, to work for justice always, and to pray unceasingly for those without hope.
And once the shaking has ceased, the images of destruction have stopped filling the news, and our thoughts return to life’s daily rumblings, let us not forget that we are all your children and they, our brothers and sisters. We are all the work of your hands For though the mountains leave their place and the hills be tossed to the ground, your love shall never leave us, and your promise of peace will never be shaken.
Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Blessed be the name of the Lord, now and forever.
Icon of the Transfiguration. written by Sr. Irene of Le-Bec, in the Chapel of the Transfiguration, Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Epping, Essex.
Sr Irène
‘Pray to your Father who is in secret’. Matthew 6:6
A number of years ago I was searching for an iconographer to write an icon of St. John the Baptist for a church dedicated to him in Epping, Essex.
On a visit to Bec-Hellouin in Normandy I arrived at a Convent which sold what appeared to be original icons. When I enquired about them, I was immediately introduced to Sr. Irène. By the end of our visit she was commissioned to write the icon for us. Not, however, without a small consultation! In the original icon, the figure of John was part of a triptych with our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary. He occupied the right hand panel. Because of where he would be positioned, with his hands facing the Blessed Sacrament, I needed him on the left! Sister Irène had to consult in prayer with St Tikhon, the original writer before it was agreed! She was to write three other icons for me. Two are of the Transfiguration and one of St. John.
Tonight we have just heard that Sister Irène died at Candlemass. I was so glad that I had been able to see her again last August.
These notes are from Sr Marie-Patrick of the Community at Bec.
Of Burgundian origin, and an elder sister to three boys, Chantal Boillot – Sister Irène Marie – entered the monastery at the age of 38, after caring for her elderly parents. She joined a novitiate which was then numerous (9!) and which shook her up a bit… She made profession as an Oblate nun on the feast of St. Benedict, July 11, 1979, and was soon sent to our little foundation at Mesnil saint Loup, near Troyes. As life in Troyes proved difficult, she was transferred to our other foundation in Abu Gosh in the Holy Land, on 1 February 1984. She stayed there for a good eight years but was called back to Le Bec at the end of 1992, a decision that was painful for her and that she never explained.
Back at Le Bec, she was able to deploy her talents as an iconographer, and even organised a few training sessions in this art. Very cultured and quite original, her interventions were sometimes unexpected, always enriching, but you didn’t want to be in a hurry!
In recent years, she bravely faced serious health difficulties, with cancer spreading despite numerous operations. Heavy treatment – which exhausted her – proved necessary. Recently, the nurse who came early to take a blood test found her struggling for breath and called the paramedics. Taken to Evreux, to the department that was treating her for her cancer, she was quickly transferred to cardiology: her heart problem – which had remained in the background until then – had worsened! Under oxygen and perfusion, she did not know when she would have a heart operation; and on her last visit, Mother Prioress admired her confident state of peaceful abandonment: “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Sister Irene said to her with simplicity, leaving us with an exemplary testimony of a profound life of faith of which she spoke little. Her condition deteriorated rapidly despite the care of the clinic staff – whom we thank warmly – and she passed away at the age of the prophetess Anna, at the end of the first Vespers of February 2, (Candlemass), entering into that eternal Light to which she aspired with all her being.
If I were to try and sum her up, I would say that she was a person of deep holiness with a careful eye on the world. A writer of Icons which she infused with prayer and which she treated with utmost reverence. A woman of determination who served her Lord with dogged determination, not least through her long illness and sometimes in times of spiritual trial. All this and more framed in a gentle face with twinkly eyes and a genuine smile. We have a new and caring friend in heaven.
Many years ago now, I made a pilgrimage around some of the sacred sites of Ireland. I saw some amazing places and towards the end I visited Kildare which was the holy site associated with St. Brigid. Together with St. Patrick she is regarded as the Patron Saint of Ireland and was, in fact, baptized by Patrick in about 525AD Her feast day is February 1st so she is the Saint who brings to a close the Christmas season and points us towards Lent and Easter. Her festival day coincides with an earlier pagan festival – IMBOLC, the season which marked the coming of light after the dark days of winter.
Once again, the Christian Church displayed ingenuity and common sense in replacing a pagan festival with a Christian one, because Imbolc became the feast of Candlemass, the day when we celebrate Christ as the light of the World – the light which overcomes darkness, or to put it into the words of Simeon’s song, the Nunc Dimittis – the light to lighten the Gentiles (the world). Brigid was herself a showing forth of Christ’s light in the darkened world of her times.
She was a gentle, caring soul who had a special love of the poor. Before she became a nun and founded a monastery at Kildare she would regularly give possessions to the poor – not all of them her own! Her father didn’t take kindly to losing some of his goods and he complained to the King when he discovered that his sword was passed on to a leper. He dragged his daughter before the King who asked her if she intended also to give all his property to the poor as well. She told the King that if the whole of his kingdom was at her disposal she’d give the lot away! The King gave her father a new sword on her behalf! She regularly gave food to people. Whenever she made butter she divided it into twelve equal pieces in honour of the 12 apostles and a larger lump in honour of the Son of God.
Here also was a clue to why she cared for those in need for she said,
“It was Christ and his Twelve Apostles who proclaimed the Gospel to the peoples of the world and it is in their name that I look after the poor, for Christ is to be found in the person of every faithful poor person.”
She believed it was her duty as Christ’s servant to lead people over the dangerous bridge of this life to the gleaming country of heaven.
This was the heart of her faith. Brigid was a bridge between this world and the world of heaven. As such it is fitting that she occupies that point in the Christian Calendar which turns our thoughts and prayers from Christmas to Easter – from the wonderful joy of God coming to be amongst us in the Incarnation, saving us and the world from within to the completion of that salvation in the Glory of the Cross and through the Crucifixion.
An illustration of this bridging of the world by Manger and Cross, is through the Cross that is called after her – St. Brigid’s Cross. It is said that it saw the light of day because, when a pagan chief from the neighbourhood of Kildare lay dying, he sent for Brigid to come and to talk to him about Jesus. By the time she got there, he was delirious and raving with fever. It was impossible to talk to her nor could she instruct him about Christ. Instead, she sat by his bed and gave him comfort. As was usual, the floor was strewn with rushes for warmth and cleanliness. Brigid picked some up and began to weave them into a cross as she talked. His delirium quietened and he was able to ask her what she was doing. As she talked, she gently explained about Jesus, his Cross and the salvation he brought. In that quiet moment, handing him the little cross she moved him gently from earth to heaven as she baptized him at the point of his death. And to help her do it, she had taken symbolically, some strands of the Manger and turned it into the sign of the Cross – the Saving Sign. The straw of the Manger and the wood of the Cross.
God uses what he finds and through the simplicity of nature and the ordinariness of our lives, as with Brigid, He moulds consecrated vessels to contain His grace so that He can touch others. So it was with Brigid and it can be so for us.
High Cross, detail. Kildare churchyard
Brigid
You were a woman of peace. You brought harmony where there was conflict. You brought light to the darkness. You brought hope to the downcast. May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious, and may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world. Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all God has made. Brigid you were a voice for the wounded and the weary. Strengthen what is weak within us. Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens. May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body and spirit.
Mr G's Ponderings 