From Black Sabbath to Carmel

Today is the Feast of St Dorothea and I was surfing the net to find more about her, because I know that Sister Lucia of Fatima fame spent a period with the Sisters of St Dorothea.  By chance I then came across an interview with a Sister Dorothea OCD who is a Carmelite in the convent in Christchurch, New Zealand.  She explains how she became a Carmelite nun.  Here is an extract:  She recalled: 'I was at a huge... Black Sabbath rock concert... the music was pounding into me and there was a burning cross on the hill.   'I started to see all my life going in front of my eyes. I knew there was something not quite true in that life. … there's not something true in relationships that are not wholly pure relationships. I didn't want to do this anymore. So that's when I started to set my sights on the contemplative life to pray for others [so] that they would be also liberated from the things that were binding me to living a life that was not a happy life.  Sister Dorothea ended up entering the Christchurch convent when she was 28 and she said the toughest thing was leaving her family behind as they were not Catholic and so 'you can imagine that wasn't easy for them.'  Asked if she ever questioned the sacrifices she had made by becoming a nun, she replied: 'Not exactly question them but I've certainly felt the desire for those things that I've left.  'We give up being able to have a family, being able to have your own husband. You can still have those longings, we're still women and we've got many womanly instincts and needs.  '[But] if we know ourselves and we know why... we've given them up, then it's easy to work through those things.'

Intercessions:

Cancer: Brian Davis, Bernard (and wife Angela caring for him), Jacqui, Theresa K, Fr Jon Bielowski (Plymouth Diocese), Catherine, Alex (43 with five children), Marie

Illness:  Katy Keeling

Siena, Elara – sick children

David OCDS – housebound

Sophia – blind infant

Grace – troubling ailments, job difficulties, family (deceased mother and health of father)

Lucia – Overwhelmed by weariness

Mark – brain infection

Michael – youngster with occult influences

Defence of the unborn and the elderly

RIP Roy Seymour, Richard Parker, Joy Smith OCDS, Dr Alan Rodgers