by Isabel Smyth

This October I will have been a sister of Notre Dame for 60 years. It’s quite a thought. It is a time for reflecting on what has been an amazing journey. Like all human journeys it’s had its highs and lows, its joys and its sorrows.

The world I entered 60 years ago was drastically different from the way I now live. When I first joined the community life was very structured with a regular timetable of prayer, work and study and we were expected to keep silence. We wore a religious habit and were given a religious name. It was a very formal, private way of life and though sisters left the convent to teach in a number of schools, they returned each evening to live what was called a religious life. It was separate and different from that of the world.

This began to change at the Second Vatican Council when the Church embraced the hopes and fears of the world, and religious were asked to go back to the foundations of their community and reflect on the inspiration that had brought it into being.  Gradually, this led to the dismantling of that institutional way of life, as religious began to realise that the charism of their community was not to leave the world, but to serve it.

We began to live a more normal life, going back to the name we had been given at our birth and baptism, wearing normal clothes, organising our own timetable for prayer and recreation. This all happened over a number of years and at first the changes caused some consternation in the Catholic community and some anxiety even in sisters themselves. Now I live in a neighbourhood by myself with the support and friendship of many people.