ONE OF 11 Poor Clare nuns at an enclosed monastery in Ennis, Sr Regina, is finding it hard to contain her delight as the expectancy around Christmas builds. “We are so excited to be telling someone about our life here.”
Tomorrow will be Sr Regina’s 28th Christmas Day spent at the monastery, where the nuns will take a brief respite from their life of austerity to enjoy a Christmas menu that includes prawn cocktail, melon, home-made soup, turkey and ham, and pudding.
Sr Regina confides that they have just received a boxed set so, for after-dinner entertainment, the sisters plan to watch the first instalment of Downton Abbey. “We’re told it’s very good.”
Abbess Sr Gabriel smiles and says: “We’ll be having a glass of wine as well, but don’t ask how big!”
All of the food and drink – and Christmas crackers – come from donations around the country: one woman from Clonmel sends a wrapped present for each of the sisters every year.
“People are fantastic,” Sr Regina says. “They are our bread and butter and they want us to have a nice dinner for Christmas. It is a family day and we do what families do.”
The Poor Clares have been in Ennis since 1958 and Sr Bernadette has been here for 53 years.
“It has been a good life. I can honestly say that while we have lived an extraordinary life in the sense that it is so different . . . being away from life outside and maybe not doing things I would have loved to do, I still feel that I am the person that the Lord meant me to be.”
“No two days are the same here,” Sr Gabriel says. “There is always something happening. You wouldn’t change your life for anything. No regrets. We have followed the dream.”
“I am always amazed that people pick up a certain joy when they come in here,” Sr Bernadette adds. “We never put it on. It is just us. It must be the ecstasy tablets!” Sr Gabriel retorts.
During Christmas week, the nuns have a break from their 5.45am starts, but the cycle of prayer continues seven times a day.
“We are here to pray for the people,” says Sr Gabriel. “We stand before God on the people’s behalf, that is what we are about.”
The nuns have close links with the former president Mary McAleese, who has spent annual retreats at the monastery in recent years.
While the nuns do not normally venture beyond the walls of the monastery, they are well aware of the impact the recession is having because people regularly call to the door for support and prayer.
“We have our finger on the pulse,” says Sr Gabriel, pointing out that they watch the news every night. “It would be wrong if we were isolated from the world. The world’s troubles are our concern. You could lead a very insular life, a very selfish life, but that would be wrong.”
“We are sometimes the first to hear the news because if there is a calamity outside, people come in to ask for prayers,” Sr Bernadette says.
The request for prayers from people around the country and locally has risen dramatically with the recession. Sr Regina says that in the days running up to Christmas, “the bell is going continually throughout the day with people asking for prayers”.
Aged 28 when she entered the monastery in 1984, Sr Regina says that the monastery touches on a vulnerability in people when they enter seeking support.
“It is an oasis here and we are privileged to be set apart. You would have a number of people coming in. They’re looking gorgeous. They’re made up, the hair is done and all of the rest of it and two seconds in here and they’re crying.
“That has happened an awful lot this year, so much worry and anxiety and people carrying a lot of burdens. Hopefully they feel better with a little bit more hope going back out there.”
“We are in the heart of the town,” Sr Gabriel adds. “You feel you are with the people and carrying them too.”
