Welcome Address for March 2017 Jubilee Celebration
Full text of the address given by the OLA Provincial Leader on the occasion of the platinum jubilee celebration for Srs. Eugenius Colbert and Rosarii O'Sullivan.
Srs. Eugenius (left) and Rosarii on the occasion of their repective jubilees on 11th March 2017.
Good morning. You are all very welcome. Thank you for coming to join us on this very joyful day. Céad míle fáilte to our Jubilarians, these two great women whose lives we are gathered today to celebrate: Sr Rosarii O’Sullivan and Sr Eugenius Colbert.
Fáilte to the family and friends of our Jubilarians: you are all welcome to Ardfoyle and to this celebration. Fáilte to Frs. Eddie O’Connor and Hugh Harkin SMA, our celebrants today, and thank you to all the SMAs for your friendship. Fáilte to all our OLA Sisters, especially you who have come from our other communities to celebrate with us today.
We are gathered here for a Jubilee, to celebrate the anniversary of something significant for which we are all grateful. Today we commemorate and celebrate the fact that these two great women professed their lives to God, in the service of God’s Kingdom, in 1947, seventy long years ago. Through these years, they have lived the ups and downs of their life journey, they have travelled many miles and touched many lives, have known joys and sorrows, have grown in wisdom, and they are still here with us, still faithful to what they professed, still journeying with the Lord. Sisters Eugenius and Rosarii: Today, we thank God who called you, and we thank you for your generous response to that call.
Both of you professed, here in Ardfoyle, the vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, according to the Constitutions of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles. You knew you were consecrating your life to God for God’s service, to spread the Good News, particularly in Africa. I imagine that on the day of your Religious Profession, seventy years ago, you had your dreams about what lay ahead.
The two women we are celebrating today took the same vows on the same day in the same congregation and so they must have had common elements in their respective dreams. However, their lives have been very varied. Undoubtedly, a book could be written on each one. But in brief:
Sr Rosarii, who will turn ninety-seven on the 27th March, is a Limerick woman from Athea who qualified as a teacher with a National Teachers Cert and Diploma from Limerick before entering Ardfoyle in 1944. She made her religious profession seventy years ago, went straight to college after profession and did a BA in UCC, and on the 21st Nov 1951 she went to join her sister Liam, also an OLA Sister, in Nigeria. She lived and worked in Northern Nigeria for the next fifteen years, teaching and teacher training in Kaduna, Agbor, Akwanga and Shendam until she came back to Ireland in 1968 to assume leadership as Provincial. She returned to Nigeria in 1973 and spent another twenty years between Kaduna, Jos, Asaba, Barakin-Ladi and Zawan, teaching as well as working in religious formation and in religious education. After one year working in the archives in Rome she returned to Ardfoyle in 1994 and here offered various services both in the province and in the community.
Sr Eugenius, a Cork woman born in Dungourney in 1922, is also celebrating seventy years of religious profession today. After first Profession in 1947, Eugenius qualified as a nurse and midwife and then in 1952 was sent to Ghana where she worked in Asikuma and Foso until 1960. Then to Nigeria where she worked in Benin and in Kaduna for almost thirty more good years, and will always be associated very particularly with St Philomena’s hospital in Benin. She will also be well remembered for her work with the Crown Fund which she coordinated from Rostrevor where she lived until 2014 before moving back here to Ardfoyle.
Missionary service in Nigeria, Ghana, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Rome and beyond; Serving in schools, hospitals, teacher training colleges, archives, seminaries, parishes and dioceses; Service through teaching, nursing, pastoral care, administration, leadership…. Their stories are varied, but aspects of what we call OLA charism and spirituality abound from the life story of both our Jubilarians: whether it was in Africa or in Ireland, both Rosarii and Eugenius worked energetically, generously, with audacity, with great love and self-sacrifice in the field to which she was sent. They worked for and in OLA mission, each in a different way, and they continue to do so today through their life of prayer and of witness.
Thank you, Sisters, for your commitment to God and to mission. We are happy we have this opportunity to celebrate you and your life today, while you are still very much alive and well. We pray that God may grant each one of you your heart’s desire. We also pray that young people may be inspired by you and may learn to dream generous dreams of giving oneself totally to the service of God and of others through the religious missionary life.
Again welcome and may we all enjoy our day!
I now hand you over to Fr Eddie to begin our Eucharistic celebration.
- Kathleen McGarvey
OLA Provincial Leader
