It was the day after Mercy Day – unusually warm and sunny for the last week in September – when I visited the quiet cemetery of the Mercy Sisters in Ennis, Co Clare. Once in the centre of a well-kept convent garden with its pathways and flowerbeds, the cemetery is now a walled oasis between one of the town’s shopping centres and the St. Francis’ Credit Union building. The remains of one hundred and sixty five Mercy women lie buried here to await ‘the day of the Lord’. One among them was not a professed member: Miss Catherine Kenny was the sister of Rev. John Dean Kenny who invited the Limerick Sisters to open a house in Ennis in those post-famine days of 1854. Catherine’s name, along with the first fifteen Sisters to die – between 1865 and 1885 – is inscribed on a large Celtic Cross at one end of the cemetery, opposite the one hundred years old iron gate, flanked by two evergreen trees, at the other.
Convent Cemetery, Ennis
It was Catherine Kenny’s generosity that enabled the purchase and furnishing of the original house. She lived with the Sisters till her death and was amongst the first to be buried beside the old convent. Reading the names on the traditional black and white crosses that mark each grave, I marvelled at the incalculable love, service and sacrifice represented here in this still, green haven. Many contemporaries of the early Sisters lie in graves far afield in Meridan and Middletown, Connecticut, USA, in Singleton, New South Wales, Australia, in Hokitika, New Zealand and a mere twenty miles away in Ennistymon, Co Clare is the resting place of Mother Mary Vincent McMahon the first Leader who carried that responsibility for twenty four years.
Last week as Marion Ryan made her Profession of Perpetual Vows in a packed St. Anne’s Parish Church in Booterstown, Dublin, I remembered these women who did the same in Ennis since 1854. I was very moved by Marion’s ceremony. A young woman’s public proclamation of commitment to religious life is surely a counter-witness in today’s culture of pursuit of wealth, possessions and pleasure. It was a call to me to return to my own profession commitment made, along with four companions, many decades ago!
On the eve of Mercy Day this week the recently ordained new Bishop of Killaloe, Kieran O’Reilly, had celebrated Mass in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, Ennis. It had been arranged by the Boards of Management, Principals, Staffs and Parents of the Junior and Senior Holy Family Primary Schools as a token of appreciation and thanks to the Sisters of Mercy for their dedication to primary education in the town for 156 years; Sisters, former staff colleagues and the people of the parish had been invited and turned out in great numbers. The last Sister on the staff retired in June of this year. It was a wonderfully joyous celebration, made all the more memorable by the singing and prayers of the children. Afterwards refreshments were served in the school hall. It was an occasion for reminiscing. So many of the Sisters buried here had served in these or other schools. Many of them I remember well as I ponder the mystery of life after life.
To return to the cemetery: many died of tuberculosis in their prime – what might they have done had they been spared? One died in her early twenties in a car accident, another drowned in Spanish Point. Marie and Norbert were Novitiate companions of my own whose lives were cut short by cancer. Others lived long lives and worked hard, sometimes in difficult conditions. Some were well known, others lived quiet lives away from the limelight. Go ndéana Día trocaire orthu uilig is ‘I líonta Dé go gcastar sinn’!
Canice Hanrahan rsm
South Central Province
