True To Herself Even At 100!

The following reflection was given by Sr. Leonie Boland during the Mass of celebration for the 100th birthday of Sr. Assisium Skelly in McAuley House, Beaumont.

All over Ireland on this very special day, (Wednesday, 23rd February, 2011) Sr. Assisium is being remembered by appreciative and grateful past-students of Carysfort Teacher Training College, past-students who have heard of this ‘Big Birthday.’ Further afield, in Canada and in the United States, in Chile and in Kenya, in Zambia and South Africa, and in missionary outposts in every corner of the globe she is fondly remembered. In fact, anywhere I have travelled and come across Carysfort past-students, especially student sisters who were resident in the Sisters’ Hostel, where Assisium lived for a significant part of her teaching life in Carysfort, there invariably have been fond enquiries for her, and happy and grateful reminiscence of memorable student days. Here present today, to rejoice, on our own behalf, and on behalf of the hundreds, no thousands, of educators of young children (a profession which I believe is one of the most formative and significant of all professions) are quite a number of us who have been taught by Assisium, and we feel great joy to see this day.

Our Lady of Mercy College, Carysfort Park, Dublin

I first met Assisium 65 years ago when I arrived as an 18 year old in Carysfort College. Relatively recently Assisium reminded me of that first meeting. It was at the foot of what was known as the back stairs: students didn’t come down the front stairs. Assisium was standing at the foot of the stairs and it seems I arrived down in a manner considered inappropriate to a would-be educator. Needless to say, I was told so in no uncertain terms! Then there was the first assignment – an essay. I considered myself a good essay-writer, and put a reasonable amount of work into the assignment without over-stretching myself. I expected to get a fairly decent mark. The essays were returned in due time, and to my dismay mine got the worst mark I had ever got for any subject in my life! I was not among the stars! My idea of a good essay and Assisium’s were radically different.

Later when I joined the Congregation I discovered gradually that we differed radically not only on what was a good essay, but on much more important matters! Truth to tell, we differed radically on most things, more especially when it came to things theological in the transition stages of the 1960’s – each of us convinced, like the blind men of Hindustan who went to see the elephant, that the little glimpse each of us had gleaned was the whole picture: time taught both of us to broaden our horizons. The strange thing is that though we saw things so differently we continued to remain friends. That brings me to what I want to mark and honour today, on my own behalf, and on behalf of the very many past-students who remember Assisium with gratitude and affection. I know no one more ready to call a spade a spade than Assisium. You got the unvarnished truth. If others said what Assisium said, one might easily take offence, but not with Assisium, because one knew that what she said emanated from a basic sense of honesty and sincerity and was said without malice of any kind. It was meant to help rather than to hurt. It was an expression of the truth as she saw it at that moment, and so it became an endearing feature rather than an offence, and one’s reaction would be to smile rather than to cringe. The latest doubtful compliment she gave me was after reminiscing about the 18 year old she remembered, she looked at me, and sadly said, ‘All beauty gone.’ I smiled and said, ‘True to herself even at 100.’ And that I think is the secret of Assisium’s lovely gift of the capacity for enduring friendship – a basic honesty and sincerity, qualities on which any authentic friendship must be based – friendship with God as well as friendship with our brothers and sisters. Her friendship with God we celebrate today, 100 years of fidelity and commitment. As well as enduring friendship with past students, Assisium maintained close friendships from her own early schooldays; among her past novices she is fondly remembered, and also, throughout the Congregation.

Among her Carysfort College colleagues she had close friends. Recently she gave me a very special gift; something another would have been reluctant to part with, but she gave freely and without a qualm. It was from a colleague, a very special colleague, in fact, a Nobel Prize-winner; it was a gift to her from Seamus Heaney – his 1975 collection of poems, ‘North.’ For me the significant feature is the dedication it bears, which is as follows:-

‘For Mother Assisium,
‘The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship,’

and he adds

‘after a first happy year in Carysfort.
Seamus Glanmore Cottage, 21st March, 1976’

The gift of the poet is to be able to put a finger on the pulse of things, to name accurately and concisely the truth we struggle to express in mere prose. I think he does it here most beautifully. In the book was enclosed a card written three years later: a treasure! It is not every centenarian can boast of a poem dedicated to her by a Nobel Prize-winner, a Nobel Prize-winner who is regarded as the foremost poet writing in the English language today.

Corncrake

For Mother Assisium
In the wet catacombs of the grass
A loner with a breaking note
Prays tenebrae.

He is the mendicant of these acres
and makes his own responses
Litany of solace and reproach.

My windows open for the cool
So he takes advantage
All night his beads go ratcheting.

And he concludes most fittingly as I would like to conclude:

‘Gaudeamus igitur’