Sr. Shanti

MY VOCATION STORY



You wont believe it if I said that I never dreamt of becoming a nun more so a Canossian when growing up. I am now in my 8th year in the convent from the time I began my journey..how time flies., I cannot believe it myself at times!!Why a nun and why a Canossian, you might ask. I grew up a Canossian I guess…Why, because ever since I was young I knew the Canossian sisters and my mum is a Lay Canossian. So we always had articles or something in connection with the Cannossian lying around the house. I knew them but did not want to know more than that!!

I must say big gratitude to Sr Retta because if she had not challenged me then I would not be where I am today. I was single, available and enjoying all the trimmings the world could offer. I had very good job, a car, a lifestyle that would be very girls dream but yet there was always something missing. I could never pin point it anyway until Sr Retta brought to light that I wanted more out of my life. I wanted a Spiritual experience, an intimate relationship with God. I was missing that.

It was not an easy decision telling my family, being the only girl and youngest really did not help the situation either. I took a lot of courage. I know I hurt my mum the most surprisingly even though she was a Lay Canossian. I think it was the hardest for her. Dad was more acceptable even though it was he who gave me the best education anyone could ask for!!. I had everything in my life!!..well at least I thought so.

As I look back I am indeed very grateful to my family. It is not I who did the sacrifice its definitely them. To sacrifice me after giving everything they could give to their only daughter and sister was something BIG. I thank them for that.

It has been a very interesting, exhilarating and remarkable experience indeed. I am not saying that everything is a ROSE garden. You will find a thorn or two along the way but I always tell myself that I came here on my own free will and I will stay on my own free will. God has been great. He has been a very faithful, supportive and strengthening figure in my life. I could have not reach so far without Him!! Thus far he has been with me and I know he will continue His journey with me. I am after all an UNFINISHED PRODUCT….He is the POTTER I AM THE CLAY….

Love

Sr Shanti A Mariadass

Sr. Agnes Norris

Sr Agnes writes: ‘it was the Lord who arranged everything…..’

She was initially a pupil of the Infant Jesus Convent in Victoria Street but was transferred to St Anthony’s Convent School, Middle Road as Agnes’ mother was a close collaborator of the Canossian Sisters in catechism teaching, home and hospital visitation .

It all began with Mother Christine Rozario, a Sister-in-charge of the Boarders at St Anthony’s Convent. She invited Agnes and Helen Fernandez, while waiting for their Senior Cambridge results, for a holiday at the Sisters’ Changi seaside residence together with the boarders and some Sisters.
At the seaside, Sr Christine casually asked Agnes ‘what do you want to be?’
Taken by surprise, Agnes replied that ‘I would like to be a Mother like you’. (in those days, the Sisters were called ‘Mothers’).

Her reply to be a religious received a quick response from the Mother Delegate of Singapore-Malaysia, Mother Victoria Garre. She informed Agnes’ mother of her religious vocation. Later Agnes confirmed with her parents the call to serve the Lord as a religious sister. They were very supportive of her vocation as Agnes’ brother had been a priest ahead of her. He was Fr Lionel Norris.

Agnes began her formation as a religious in Hong Kong in 1937. After her first profession on 1 January 1939 she returned to Singapore as a teacher. Had her final vows in Melaka, 1 January 1944. She was then posted to Segamat and remained
a resident in Malaysia till this day except for a short return to Singapore for a short period.

Sr Agnes says: I am thankful and grateful to our heavenly Father for choosing me to be the ‘spouse of Jesus’ His Son who has kept me in this Canossian Religious Order for more than 60 years.

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Sr Agnes is 92 now - still agile, humorous, continues to serve the community in household chores in spite of her age. Her hobbies are gardening and card-making.

Praise the Lord indeed for the gift of Sr Agnes Norris as a Canossian.

Sr. Gerry and her call

Vocation Story


(Sr. Gerry on the right)

God indeed is the designer of one’s life.

How of personal vocation:
Was supposed to be in a Chinese school. A neighbour, teaching in the Canossian KG registered me in the KG with my parents’ consent. Thus began my 11 years of education in the Canossian Convent Primary and Secondary Schools.
It was the beginning of my faith development in Christianity through bible knowledge, prayers at school assemblies, weekly catechism classes and visits to the school chapel during recess with my catholic friends.

Who, why and what of personal vocation
Sisters’ enthusiasm and passion in their Ministries of Charity especially to the poor greatly impressed me.
Visibly seen and experienced were their
* Care for the needy (students, families) regardless of race and religion
* involvement in weekly parish faith education and formation to youth
* regular home and hospital visitation.
* Humble attitude and simplicity
* Kindness, their being religious, their humour, their presence as a community in prayer and at work speak much of who they are to people around them.
.
The Sisters who greatly inspired vocations through their ministries and personhood –
Srs Elvira Forbice, Dorothy STa Maria, Lucy Lau, Joy Shelley, Angelica D’Piazza and Teresina Rajaratnam.


When of personal vocation
There were a lot of encouragement and constant care for ‘aspiring’ candidates to the Canossian way of life. Invited to a vocation exhibition and get-together in Singapore. Met Sr Agnes Liew who was then a postulant. Follow-up by Srs Joy Shelley and Elvira.

Went to the Juniorate at St Anthony’s Convent, Singapore as an aspirant after 2 years of temporary teaching in Segamat and Kluang.

Entered postulancy on 15 September 1969, novitiate for 2 years;
lst profession to the religious life in Singapore, May 1972; perpetual vows in Melaka Convent, July 1980.
All with God’s grace and love.


(Sr Geraldine Tan)

New Christmas

It was a busy new Christmas in Jinjang Utara!

1. To our benefactors: Furits Hamper.

2. To our Staff: Each sister cooked a dish, prepare lunch for the staff and their family members, most ot them are Hindus......

3. The Parish Youth came for the caroling.

At the eve of Christmas, we have the installation of new Superior, Sr. Christie Ho, new community

JESUS: the LIGHT and HEART of CHRISTMAS!


The ADVENT candles made the Christmas a waiting and hoping moment!

I Chose you

An invitation to share my story with all people of our time – the story of God’s great love – this is inline with the theme of the 14th General Chapter of the Canossian Institute to which I belong. Indeed, it is through my own little stories from time to time that I have made known Jesus more and more to persons in my case – giving ministry since my baptism at 20. God grows to be much, much more than … through His faithfulness and boundless loving kindness.

CALL
As I re-read my life… The God of my childhood… though I was an unbaptised Methodist, the songs that I like “I will make you fishers of men if you follow me” (Sunday school). Jesus lives me, this I know (my mother’s favourite lullaby) are significant to me. Five of my elder siblings were baptised as infants while my younger brother and I were left unbaptised. The migration into the Catholic Church took place when I was 10. My favourite hymn was “I will go up to the altar of my God – the joy of my youth”. After my Form 5 results were out, I was led to India for study in Providence College. 10 years of a growing desire for baptism and Communion saw the dawn of the day 19th March 1976, when I became a daughter of God in Coonoor, India – away from family but in the midst of hostel friends and a brand new godmother. Amid a busy life of questions, study and weekend leisure in the hill resort, the call became loud and clear, “Will you give me your life forever and for others?” The call to seek His kingdom and enter His “university” attracted me when I encountered the different forms of poverty of others, shared my blessings and experienced the meaning of giftedness of self and others.

RESPONSE
I encountered Abba’s love for me as greater than my own father’s and mother’s. The redeeming Love of Jesus and comforting presence of the spirit became active experience in my life. In my vulnerability and joy I responded to His proposal – He called me, singled me out and Himself offered the honour of His love – my first Love. Other human (attractive proposals!) followed but His captivated me enough to withstand the strong objection of my father who was utterly disappointed as he had great plans for my future.

Human encounters / experiences of joy, sorrow on my road of life, left me in wonder…how much, much more the Father must be!

3 years later, my “YES” to Religious life led me to the Canossian Convent in 1981. I received my father’s fullest blessings and my family was convinced of my calling during the 3 years home / family formation and presence to mum & pa very specially. To day, my family is an ecumenical witness!

MISSION
These 25 years have unfolded Abba’s will for me an ever present Father – watching, leading, providing, comforting, correcting, disciplining, delivering, sheltering, refuting, nourishing – so tender and compassionate. My father had initiated me into the Catholic Church but at one to me I had to share it with his as he went through a faith crisis. What an experience of family sorrow! But only 4 months later, he proudly proclaimed the experience as a miracle – “I have come to know and love the one above!”

Then came a time of accompanying him through his struggle with renal failure and kidney dialysis. He yearned for physical healing but surrendered to spiritual healing – he had a beatific vision 7 weeks before death and I had a privileged conversation with him as I witnessed his total surrender, gratitude and joy at the end of the journey i.e. 2 days before death and his countenance of radiance 3 hours after death! Such affirmation of Abba being so close to us!

Then a few years ago, during my personal trial and suffering I felt sheltered and carried in His very heart and a new ministry unfolded.

My present apostolate together with another 2 Canossian Sisters – is our joint collaboration with the Gabrielite Brothers of Montfort Boys Town. In August 2002, we began the Montfort Girls Centre in Montfort Boys Town for 11 girls – providing residential care for teenagers (age 16 – 19). At present we have 20 girls from underprivileged family background who pursue a 2 year course on graphic design & multimedia. We Sisters provided administrative, pastoral and nursing care. There were 60 girls when I left Montfort. Now my present ministry is at ASAYO (Archdiocesan Single Adults and Youth Office), Parish visits and CHOICE, Communion minister to the homebound and parish.

To abide in you forever
To make you known and loved!

By
Sr. Yvonne Francis, FdCC

Conversations of Jesus to
Sr Josefa Menendez (1890 – 1923)

Prayer: O my Beloved Jesus, who is also my God, make my heart a flame of pure love for you

Jesus Speaks:
I want souls to know me thoroughly, and that they may make me known to those I place in their care. I want all to know how eagerly I seek them out; how I long for them that I may fill them with happiness. Tell them not to be afraid of me and tell sinners not to flee from me. Let them come and take refuge in my Heart! I will receive them with the most tender and paternal affection. If you resolved to be faithful, I will pour into your heart the flood of my mercy and you will know what my love for you is.

As soon as you wake, unite yourselves to me, and offer your whole day with a burning desire that my Heart may use it for the profit of souls. When with love you perform your duties, hour by hour and moment by moment, how great is the treasure you amass in one day!

I desire and want my entry into your heart to be daily more of an event, and that your desire be so keen, your hunger for me so great that your very soul faints – if you only knew how much I love you. Souls are too little conscious of how much I want to help them and how much I am glorified by their trust. I am your Father, Mother, God, Creator, Saviour and Bridegroom and none equals my Heart in loving. The less there is of you, the more I shall be your life, and you will be my heaven of rest. On earth my heaven is in souls. Beg for souls this burning love of Jesus.

Tell me that you love me; that is what I like best to hear. My Heart longs to burn and consume hearts in the glow of its fervent love. The coldness of souls who make no return for my love wound my Heart. If you could but understand my sadness that my love meets with no return. One single act of love, in the loneliness in which I leave you, repairs for many of the acts of ingratitude of which I am the object. My Heart counts and collects these acts of your love as a precious balm. It pleases me to see you famished for my love and burnt up with longing to see me loved. That by itself is consolation to my Heart.

I come to rest in you, for I am so little loved. I am in search of love and meet only with thankless neglect. Rare are the souls that truly love me. Say you love me often, to make up for the forgetfulness of so many.

All I ask of souls is their love, but they give me only ingratitude. I should like to fill their souls with grace, but they pierce my heart through and through. I call them and they turn away from me. If you accept, I will give you charge of souls, and by your sacrifices and love, you will win them for me.

Many souls think that love consists in saying: My God, I love you. No, love is sweat, and also acts because it loves, and all that is does is done out of love. I want you to love me in that way, in work, in rest, in prayer and consolation as in distress and humiliations, constantly giving me proofs of your love by acts - that is true love. If souls really understood this they would advance in perfection rapidly and how greatly they would console my heart.

Watch and pray, fight your evil inclinations and suffer them not to grow into confirmed habits. So must work be carried on in souls and evil tendencies carefully corrected. Do not imagine that it is always a serious fault that leads to the worst sins. The greatest faults are often the result of neglect of little things; a small satisfaction indulged in, a moment of weakness yielded to, a consent to do a thing in itself lawful but immortified, a pleasure not sinful, but ill-advised here and now. All these things recur unheeded and little by little the soul is blinded, grace loses its power, passion increases and finally triumphs. How infinitely sorrowful for the Heart of God, whose love is boundless, to see so many insensibly approaching nearer and nearer the abyss.

I know the depths of souls, their passions, their attraction for the world and its pleasures. I have known from all eternity. How many of them fill my Heart with bitterness, and that for a great number, both my suffering and my blood will be in vain. But having loved them, I love them still. My Heart is not so much wounded by sin, as torn with grief that they will not take refuge with me after it.

1st fall of Jesus: obtain for sinners rooted in evil, the grace of conversion. 2nd fall: encouragement for these weak souls blinded by sadness and anxiety, so that rising they might make a fresh start in the way of virtue. 3rd fall: to help souls repent in the supreme hour of death

Many believe in me, but few believe in my love, and among those who do, too few rely on my mercy. Many know me as their God, but how few trust in me as their Father. I ask nothing of them that they do not possess. But I do ask that all they have, they should give to me, for all is mine – if they possess nothing but miseries and weaknesses, these I desire – give them to me, but trust my Heart, I forgive you, I love you, I will sanctify you myself. I long for love in response to my own. I want them all to have confidence in my mercy, to expect all from my clemency and never to doubt my readiness to forgive. I want to forgive. I want to reign over souls and pardon all nations. I want all people to know my love. Do they know what I have done for them?

The thirst for contentment and love can never be appeased by earth and fleeting gains which will always leave you hungry and unsatisfied. Perpetual conflict, sadness, anxiety, and affliction will still be your portion. Here below you will never obtain all that your heart desires. I have come to show you where true peace and happiness are to be found. Humankind was not created to live forever here below. He was made for eternity. If then he is immortal, he should live, not for the passing things of time, but for that which will never die. Youth, wealth, wisdom, human glory, all that is nothing, it will all end with this life. God only will endure forever. Live by faith and you will escape eternal death

.

The Holy Eucharist:
If it was bliss for me to think of all those in whom I should be both companion and heavenly food; of all who would surround me to the end of time with adoration, reparation and love, this in no wise diminished my grief at the many who would leave me deserted in my tabernacle and who would not even believe in my real presence. Sacrileges and outrages, and all the nameless abomination to be committed against me, passed before my eyes – the long lonely hours of the day and of the night in which I would remain alone on the altars and the multitudes who would not heed the appeals of my Heart. It is love for souls that keeps me a prisoner in the Blessed Sacrament. For nearly twenty centuries I have dwelt there night and day, veiled under the species of bread and concealed in the small white host, bearing through love, neglect, solitude, contempt, blasphemies, outrages, sacrileges….I stay there that all may come and find the comfort they need in the most tender of Hearts, the best of fathers, the most faithful of friends, who will never abandon them. The holy Eucharist is the invention of love, which spends and consumes itself for them!

PRAYER to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
(composed by our Mother Mary)

O Sweet and dearly loved Jesus, you are my Saviour and my Bridegroom and your Heart loves me with the most tender and burning love, as no other heart can love. Would that I could correspond with this love of yours for me. Would that I had for you, who are my only love, all the ardour of the seraphim, the purity of angels and virgins, the holiness of the blessed who pass you and glorify you in heaven. Were I able to offer all this, it would still be too little to honour your goodness and mercy. That is why I offer you my poor heart such as it is, with all its miseries, its weakness and good desires. Deign to purify it in the Blood of your Heart, to transform and inflame it yourself with an ardent and pure love. I ask of you, O gentle Jesus, to give my heart the very sanctity of your Heart, plunge it in your Divine Heart, that in it I may love and serve and glorify you and love myself in you for all eternity. I beg this same grace for all those whom I love. Amen

.

My Vocation Story

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Jn 15:16

I come from a Catholic family of two brothers and two sisters, I being the second youngest in the family. As was the practice among Catholics in Melaka, all of us children, except my older sister, were sent to Catholic Mission schools. And so, from aged seven, I was enrolled in Sacred Heart Canossian Convent School, Malacca. I grew up as a normal teenager, with the energy and interests of young people. So in school, I took part in the many activities, from being a member of the Crusaders, the Legion of Mary, and I enjoyed sports like badminton, netball and athletics

I was at that age very interested in Bible Knowledge which was taught in school as a Cambridge paper, and also in faith formation or Catechism, in preparation for my first Holy Communion and Confirmation. I remember listening with a keen mind and heart to the stories of the New Testament and to the stories of my Catholic faith, drinking in every word. This keen interest was to continue as I grew up, and it helped me come to know about Jesus and his love for us. I have always found reading and listening to the ‘Word of God’ a fascinating experience, and the Word would continue to touch and form me through the ups and downs of life.

A further grace of God paved the way that God would continue to show me, through the preached missions in my parish, and most of all through the retreat for school leavers in my school. It was at this particular retreat that Jesus called me to follow him – one evening when I was at prayer alone in the Convent chapel I felt the attraction of Jesus, inviting me to the religious consecration. The Sisters of my school encouraged me especially Rev. Mother Franguelli, to think seriously of this call. It would mean leaving behind family and everything else. But Jesus’ words “I have called you by name, you are mine” Jer. 29:3, continued to attract me.

After I had completed my Form five studies, and spending one year in the ‘aspirandato’ in Singapore, for those searching and discerning their call, I was given the invitation to join the Postulancy, the first stage of the two years religious training for Canossian novices. I was just barely eighteen, but in those days, in the 60s, girls were encouraged to enter young to safeguard their call to follow Jesus. Although I was still very inexperienced especially in the things of the world, I felt ready, spiritually and emotionally, to leave all and just say ‘yes’.

When I asked my parents for their blessing, they did not object, although my Mum was very sad to let me go. Somehow the Lord at this point, would ask me to have faith in him, that he would give a hundredfold, not only to the one who left all to follow him, but also to the family we leave behind, for their sacrifice in letting go.

Looking back now, after more than forty years in religious life, I see the marvels of the Lord, how he planned the journey and mission of each of his spouses, with so much love and care. “I know the plans I have for you – plans to give you a future with hope” Jer. 29:11. It is only in having trust in God, answering the personal call of my Lord Jesus, and placing the love of God above all, that I feel fulfilled in my purpose-driven life.

God uses us “to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere like a sweet perfume.” 2 Cor 2:14.

Blessed be the Lord now and always!

By Sr Esther Thomazios, fdcc