The events blur a little, now that I am 86 years old, when I try to recall how I discovered my vocation to Carmel. About seventy years ago, at the age of sixteen, I went often to Church and prayed there before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
Then, nine years after our large family emigrated from Ireland to the United States, and four years after an older sister entered the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, I knew that I too felt called to this vowed life of prayer and work.
While I am no longer as active in our apostolic work as I once was, I now pray before the Blessed Sacrament evermore frequently and I recall the words of a decades-old hymn:
I rise from dreams of time,
And an angel guides my feet
To the sacred altar throne
Where Jesus' Heart doth beat.
Ever pleading, day and night,
Thou can'st not from us part;
O veiled and wondrous Lord,
O love of the Sacred Heart.
The lone lamp softly burns
And a wondrous silence reigns,
Only with a low still voice
The Holy One complains.
Long, long I've waited here
And though thou heed'st not Me,
The Heart of God's own Son
Beats ever on for thee.
Perhaps an angel guided my feet to the sacred altar throne in January 1939 when I entered the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm. Perhaps an angel continues to draw me ever closer to the heart of God's own Son.
Now, sustained by the graces received from my prayer life and supported by the Community that I love, I give thanks to God for the gifts and blessings he has given me as a Carmelite Sister for the Aged and Infirm.
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Sister Stephen