The Brigettine sisters...

...at Maryvale in Birmingham  invited me to the Silver Jubilee of Mother Giacomina. It was a real delight to be at Maryvale again - I have not been through those gates since I gained my degree a couple of years ago, receiving it in due course from Archbishop Bernard Longley in St Chad's Cathedral.

In all the years I studied at Maryvale, praying the daily Offices and attending Mass in that lovely chapel, I never went into the gallery. So today was a first - I was ushered up there because I arrived a bit late, and the rest of the chapel was packed full. So was the gallery, but a space was made for me, and  as I joined in the Mass I felt the years slipping away and remembered the many Maryvale days that began with Mass here...and then a breakfast (you had to "tick for an egg" on the notice-board) followed by a morning of lectures...During the Mass Mother C. renewed her vows in a strong clear voice, a moving moment. She had several members of her family with her from India - the ladies in the most beautiful saris.

And then there was a delicious buffet lunch and the pleasure of meeting many friends...

An odd link with my very first visit to Maryvale, back in 2008: I had forgotten my spectacles and that first weekend of lectures and introductions and discovering the layout of the place etc proved a bit more of a challenge than I had planned. On this visit, some half-dozen years later, my spectacles snapped in half as I made a grab for them while sharing a hymn-sheet. So again, I was operating under slight difficulties all day...

Oh, but it was a happy day and a joy to be with the Brigettine sisters. It was through meeting them at Maryvale that I came to write the book  which was in due course presented to the Pope and which tells of the heroic Mother Riccarda Hambrough and her care for Jews in Rome in WWII...