RITE & REASON:Nano Nagle founded the Presentation Sisters in the 18th century but her way of life is as relevant as ever today, writes SR BERNADETTE FLANAGAN
THIS WEEK we commemorate the 225th anniversary of the death of Nano Nagle on April 26th, 1784. Accounts of her life commonly highlight the founding of the Presentation Sisters as one of her notable achievements.
If the Presentation Sisters as an organisation is sharing in the decline affecting most congregations of religious women in Ireland, and the ongoing absence of new members seems to highlight such a situation, then commemorating her anniversary poses challenging questions. Did Nano Nagle leave a legacy for future generations of Irish people or a heritage fused to a passing way of life?
Nano Nagle’s own journey began with a recurrent dream. In the dream she heard distressed people in Ireland address her. She sought advice about this dream and courageously changed the direction of her life on the strength of the guidance which it held. Her belief in her dream was soon tested by deep family opposition to her efforts to set up schools for poor children. The dream incident, and the insights into the other inner sources of guidance which shaped the decisions she made throughout the journey of her life – as indicated in her letters – point to the central place of spiritual intelligence in guiding her life.
Nano Nagle found it difficult to write a rule for the way of life she and her companions were living, not least because the written rule had to reflect the inner journey from which her outward, innovative social interventions emanated.
Accounts of her life record the various rules of life she collected from Europe and studied in order to find a model for expressing her own inspiration.
Perhaps the phase in Nano Nagle’s life in which she was intuiting parallels between developments in socially engaged spiritualities in France and Italy and her own insights is worth considering in a new way at this time of commemorations. Nano Nagles search for a rule was an unfinished project. These new times may require that the project be taken up in new ways.
One way for envisaging a contemporary container for the type of innovative, socially engaged spirituality that Nano Nagle launched is a movement that has been entitled “new monasticisms”, “monasticism without walls” or “lay monasticism”.
One often-quoted source for this movement is Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), who wrote that “the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism . . . lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ”. Various expressions of this new monasticism are springing up in abundance around the world.
This new monasticism shares with the long tradition of monasticism a deep commitment to learning the ways of the Spirit by living a disciplined, contemplative life. Education in the practices of contemplative living is provided for all new members. Members give ongoing support to each other in the art of discerning the Spirit in the practicalities of daily life. The hospitality to strangers and solidarity with the voiceless that characterised the life of Jesus are the core attitudes that each member strives to live, whether in advocacy, care provision, fundraising or publishing.
Members support each other in living core commitments through a formalised practice of communal support. This support can be offered from dispersed locations, across faith traditions and embraces single and married forms of life.
At this time of commemorating the 225th anniversary of Nano Nagles death, the challenge may be to search again through the new expressions of spiritually motivated social commitment that are emerging in western societies and to find among them new modes of enacting her legacy today.
Sr Bernadette Flanagan is a Presentation sister and director of research at All Hallows College (Dublin City University)