We've Gone Public!

[Feankie]

Spem, er  Sister Mary, it's been truly and honor and a privilege to walk with you (albeit on the internet) on your journey to the novitiate.  I can't begin to image the joy you have in your heart, and I pray that it keeps growing with every passing hour.  You have been blessed....and you are a blessing to all of here on Phatmass.  Godspeed, dear Sister.

[Spem in alium]

14 hours ago, MikMowse said:

https://www.facebook.com/csfnaustralia/?ref=page_internal&hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE. Many pictures rues are already posted. 

Haha, thank you for that.

12 hours ago, Francis Clare said:

Spem, er  Sister Mary, it's been truly and honor and a privilege to walk with you (albeit on the internet) on your journey to the novitiate.  I can't begin to image the joy you have in your heart, and I pray that it keeps growing with every passing hour.  You have been blessed....and you are a blessing to all of here on Phatmass.  Godspeed, dear Sister.

Thank you so, so much! Please feel free to still refer to me as "Spem". We all take "Mary" before our names, and the name I took as a novice is my Baptismal name; hence "Sr Mary Spem", or "SMS" -- though, of course, Spem is not my given name! I'm encouraging my friends and family to not worry about calling me "Sister", as it may be uncomfortable for them or not easy to remember. I am incredibly joyful, beyond belief. Today I woke up and thought -- hey, I'm a novice! I can't really fathom that it's happened and my joy is certainly growing and growing. I've been blessed incredibly by God.

I am about to leave for a three-day orientation program for an intercongregational novitiate course I'm taking. Know you will all be brought to Jesus in my prayer and that I will carry you in my heart as I walk along the seashore (it's held at a retreat house by the beach). God bless you all.

[Antigonos]

I'm very happy for you, and hope you can visit Phatmass at fairly regular intervals to let us know how you are faring.

[NadaTeTurbe]

Spem, I'm so happy for you and prayed for you at the feet of our Lady, as wel as fo all people with Moebius Syndrom. You're an inspiration for many of us on Phatmass  

[MiserereMeiDeus]

Great thread. You sound so happy. I'm praying that the Holy Spirit will keep His joy in you through everything. Please pray for me too.

[Spem in alium]

Thank you, all! I'm very happy! The orientation session was tremendous: there are eight novices in the program (one Jesuit, three Salesian sisters, three Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, and me!). I now truly have a group! The three "Josephite" sisters are all middle-aged women and their stories are particularly inspiring for me. We all get on very well and had so much fun in addition to our time of reflection and sharing -- on the first night, two novices and I sang hymns for about three hours, and then on the second night we had a cultural concert with dancing, music and singing that was truly non-stop for three hours --- the music just kept flowing, so well, in fact, that at one point one song merged into "Jingle Bells"! I also learned to dance the cha-cha even though I'm very uncoordinated, so I'd say the whole thing was a success.

Most people participating in the program were surprised to hear that I am the only candidate in formation (and the first novice in my province for 40 years). I really sense God is trying to show me something important in all of this -- I've worked out a bit so far but I'm sure more will become clearer over the next two years.

And today? I just spent over an hour pinning my veil  My formator pinned the one I was given on Saturday, but I needed to make a fresh one (I have two veils and wear a new one each week) and tried to copy her folds and pinning...all I can say is that it's an art in itself and that I'm reconsidering my decision to wear the darn thing! Just kidding --- besides a little pain around my ears because I wear glasses, the veil is very comfortable to wear and has a wealth of meaning for me. I am so happy to wear it and even more to be a novice in my province and in my congregation, and to belong to God in this way.  It all makes me do this:

 

 

 

[Feankie]

Sister,  fill me in!  I looked at your pics and cannot for the life of me see what get's pinned.  It appears that it's just one piece...but I realize I'm SOOOO wrong  

When my hair was longer and I wore a headband (many moons ago) my ears always hurt.  The nerve endings are closer to the skin and I would get horrible headaches and eventually take it off.

It's so great to hear you're loving your program and even more awesome that there are Sisters there from different orders.  What an opportunity to share!!!

You are an inspiration to us all......even if you are temporarily "veil challenged"  

[Spem in alium]

13 hours ago, Francis Clare said:

Sister,  fill me in!  I looked at your pics and cannot for the life of me see what get's pinned.  It appears that it's just one piece...but I realize I'm SOOOO wrong  

When my hair was longer and I wore a headband (many moons ago) my ears always hurt.  The nerve endings are closer to the skin and I would get horrible headaches and eventually take it off.

It's so great to hear you're loving your program and even more awesome that there are Sisters there from different orders.  What an opportunity to share!!!

You are an inspiration to us all......even if you are temporarily "veil challenged"  

Thank you for your kind words!

My veil is a bit different to my sisters' veils. Most of them, if not all, wear a white cap to which they secure black fabric and then pin to make it neat. My veil comes in one piece which looks sort of like a semicircle. To assemble it, I pull a string through it and smooth out the pleats, then add a plastic insert to make it stiff, and finally pin it! Sisters had a similar veil during their novitiate and they tell me that they used to secure it to their heads with their hair, which they plaited and tied on top!

I am attaching a picture here of the underside of my veil. showing the folds and pins.  I also would never have guessed for the life of me how many folds or pins go into the thing until I had to do it!

Pinning our veil makes it look like this from the back:

Edited February 17, 2017 by Spem in alium

[Spem in alium]

And I had to laugh...so I pinned my veil and then asked one of my elderly sisters, who I figured would know a thing or two about pinning, if it looked okay. Her response: Sister, I've been in the community 50 years and I still don't know how to pin a veil. Better to ask Sr ---". :D

[Spem in alium]

Friends, I know you are praying for me and for that I can't thank you enough. Please continue to pray and know that I am holding you in my intentions.

The last week has been a beautiful challenge. The hardest thing at this stage is that my formator is very busy (besides her responsibility as novice mistress, she is also leader of our community, which is large as far as convents go here, and also has an external ministry). This being the case, she is not home each day and unfortunately cannot attend my novitiate program with me. It was hard at the orientation last week, as most of the other novices' formators were there and many people did ask me things like, "Where is your formator? Didn't she want to come?", and so on. The other novices all have company in the novitiate, and their formators (except for one) have formation as their only or primary ministry. Most of the time, I am at home alone, which is quite beneficial for prayer but at the same time can be VERY quiet!

So I'm quite alone and am really fending for myself. It could be easy to let that alone-ness eclipse me and convince myself that I couldn't do it anymore. But...at the same time, for the past two years and until now I have been surrounded by so much love and support which goes even greater than any alone-ness. My family is honestly a blessing and I think St Edith Stein is really helping them - my mother emailed me after my acceptance ceremony and said something like, "You know what God wants for your life and I think it's great you're following that". That's the first time she's ever said anything like that to me as far as I can recall. I have a beautiful community of sisters who care about me and who want me to be here. I have a formator and a provincial who I know will help me to stay on the path that leads to God. And to top it all off, I have a God who every day reveals His love for me and reminds me that He is always with me.

[Joeysgirl]

Dear Spem, I will accompany you in your novitiate in my daily prayer, as I guess many others in the Pham family are doing - you will not be alone.  I was a novice for a short while with the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart many years ago, when our numbers were around 60 per year! So there is a small connection (my pham name gives it away) and I still keep in touch with my "year"

You have been very good to me in praying for my intentions on the prayer phorum and I am indebted to you so I am especially happy to pray for you now in your journey.  

[Spem in alium]

2 hours ago, Joeysgirl said:

Dear Spem, I will accompany you in your novitiate in my daily prayer, as I guess many others in the Pham family are doing - you will not be alone.  I was a novice for a short while with the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart many years ago, when our numbers were around 60 per year! So there is a small connection (my pham name gives it away) and I still keep in touch with my "year"

You have been very good to me in praying for my intentions on the prayer phorum and I am indebted to you so I am especially happy to pray for you now in your journey.  

I was wondering about your Joeys connection!! One of my aunts is with the SOSJs and there were a few Joeys at the program last week. How lovely!

I do pray for you and am so grateful for your prayer. Prayer is such a beautiful way of connecting with others. Today's gospel reminds me that without prayer and faith, what can we do? With the little faith I have, I believe all will be well.

[Spem in alium]

Today our intercongregational course commenced its first official session, on the image of God. During one part we had to reflect for a short time on a few points: our first encounter with God, our own personal image of God at the time, and the way in which that's changed. It was really eye-opening for me. I have memories of people telling me about God as a child, of praying and having people pray for me, of attending Mass, of altar serving, and so on, but I don't think I really "encountered" God in its true sense until I was in my mid-late teens, and more fully as I attended university. Until that time God was really at the very back of my mind, but in the most spectacular way leading me down a path that went directly to Him.

I also have a raging headcold -- the result of being in an air-conditioned space with no alternate ventilation for two hours, and then continued exposure today. My nose is beginning to resemble a foghorn in its sound and a tomato in its appearance. With my white veil, dark eyes, red nose and white shirt I'm sure I look a bit like a snowman! The air-conditioning certainly did have a hint of the Arctic about it.

[Spem in alium]

Dear friends, this will be my final post here for some time. I will no longer be responsible for our social media page and so now (thankfully) no longer need to visit Facebook. As such I will be limiting my activity online. I may be here occasionally, depending on the rules of my novitiate -- I hope at least to access the Prayer Room to see intentions. It looks like I will still have email so if you send me a PM I should be able to see it (if I don't reply, know you are still being prayed for).

Please continue to pray, as you have been so kindly doing, for my formator and for me as we journey together. She really is the best formator ever so I'm seriously blessed and feeling God's mercy. Please pray for my family -- my blood family and my congregational family. Know that you are all in my prayer, that we are never far from each other with prayer and in the Eucharist, and that I carry you in my heart as I walk with Jesus, my friend and my heart's desire. I'm grateful to and for you all.

 

[MikMowse]

Congratulations to Sr (DR) Sophie  on her completion of her doctorate degree. If you click on the photo it will take you to the full article and many photos on FB.

 

Edited April 13, 2018 by MikMowse
clarification