Sister Olive Clarke
Sister Olive Clarke1935 – 2017
Born: 29th April 1935
Entered Religious Life: 17th October 1955
Died: 31st July 2017
The following is the reflection given at Sr Olive’s funeral Mass by Sr Phyllis Behan, Provincial Leader in the Irish Province
We come today to remember and to celebrate the life of Sr Olive who died suddenly on Monday last. She was such a presence in the community of Árd Mhuire, the Chapel here and around the Hospice that it is quite unreal to think of her as actually gone from us.
Olive was born in 1935 in in Ardee. She was very close to her mother who died in the same way as Olive, in the month of July also and of a heart attack. She loved her family, often travelled to Carrickmacross to visit her brother Ciaran and Anne and family. She often talked about Gus and Daphne who is now with God also. She was immensely proud of her nieces and nephew’s achievements in life and often spoke of them to the Sisters.
She entered the Religious Sisters of Charity at the age of 21 having trained as a children’s nurse in Temple Street. She is remembered by her friends from those days as always smiling and so was nicknamed ‘Smiley’. She loved the style and was known to own a fur coat at a time when others would struggle to have any coat at all. In that love of style Olive didn’t change.
She has spent her life mostly in the nursing profession but from our records it is clear she was very much a pilgrim person, moving when asked to go wherever she was needed at the time. She nursed in Temple Street; St Vincent’s; Kilcreene; Harold’s Cross; Kilkenny; Hackney in London, Zambia and Nigeria.
Today’s 2nd reading reminds us that those who die in the Lord are ‘happy’ because ‘now they can rest forever after their work’. Her work was mostly about caring for the sick as ward sister, staff nurse, Sister in charge and as an administrator. The Gospel too speaks of being ‘blessed’ or happy. And this is what people remember about her – that she was a lovely person; that she had time to say ‘hello’; that she was always in good form.
I am sure it wasn’t always like that for like everyone else Olive had her ups and downs. Her faith was nurtured in her home in Co Louth and developed over the years as a Religious Sister of Charity. It was her faith in a personal God, who as the first reading says ‘will take her part’. Her God was a God who was not ‘aloof’ but a ‘redeemer’. As the psalm which Bernadette sang so beautifully for us states, she was ‘carried across the years’ and led ‘thru sorrow and thru joy’ by the Lord to whom she vowed her life.
Olive was much loved by those who knew her well. For the past 12 years she has lived in Árd Mhuire, helping generously with the chores of the house. Anne Marie was only last week reassuring Philomena who is new to the house, not to worry because ‘Olive will see to this or that or the other’. She was indeed as Anne Marie said yesterday evening ‘a character’.
She was an organizer. We all saw that here in the chapel where she often read the scripture for us or was organizing others to do the same. She loved this little ministry. The last year or two she suffered a great deal with a bad knee and bad back. Up to then she would often distribute Holy Communion around the wards. The pain was written on her face at times.
She can now really hear the Lords words ‘come you blessed of my Father’ for I was sick and you visited me’. Now Olive truly has her feet up receiving the mercy promised in today’s gospel, to those who ‘do mercy’. Her love and kindness to Sr Margaret who died just before Christmas last was typical of her.
May we now ‘rejoice and be glad for her reward will be great in heaven’ as the Gospel said.
May she rest in peace.
Sr. Joseph Helen Cunningham.
We are standing this morning on holy ground: the place where Mary Aikenhead spent the last years of her life as an invalid – a woman whose vision, courage and practical common-sense gave birth to our Congregation and to our long and graced history of service of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable.Today we are celebrating the life of Sr. Joseph Helen, a woman who cherished that charism, serving those in need with fidelity and generosity, and who also spent the last years of her life here in the Hospice.
The readings this morning are both comforting and challenging.In the Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life.He invites us to put our hope and our trust in Him and in His promise to be with us, steadily and constantly as we try each day to walk his way, to speak his truth, to live his life.It is an apt description of the life and commitment of the woman whom we are remembering here.
In her 103 years of life, Sr. Joseph Helen lived through historical and global changes that are impossible for us to imagine.She experienced seismic shifts in Church and state.She witnessed wars and famines on a world scale.Through all of those yearsshe remained steadfastly faithful to the constant core of who she was as an RSC.She was born Dorothy Cunningham in Ballacolla in Portlaoise on 1st July 1908. She was an only girl, with one brother, and was much loved by all.Her childhood and youth reflected the calm ordinariness of children’s lives at that time.Following her degree studies she spent some months caring for her mother who was ill and then secured a job teaching in Mountjoy St. School in Dublin.Her father was not impressed!His comment on hearing of that place was:“It doesn’t sound like much of a job but you like working for the poor and you’ve always been good at it”.She remained there until she entered the Sisters of Charity on 5th October 1931.
In the first reading we are told that God gives strength to the wearied; that those who hope in Yahweh will soar like eagles, run and no grow weary, walk and never tire.That was so true of J. Helen throughout her active life.She was missioned back to Mountjoy St. after her religious profession and taught there for 12 years.Following a year’s further study in Scotland, she went to teach in a Secondary Modern school inWalthamstow in England for a year.And then came the call to be one of our three founding Sisters of the Zambian Region, or Northern Rhodesia as it then was.
In 1948 they set sail, travelling for four weeks by boat – The Athlone Castle –rail, bus and lorry before arriving in Chisekesi Siding on a dark morning on 28th October 1948. Sr. Helen kept a diary of the journey which was printed for the 50th anniversary and which gives a fascinating insight into their journey and how they coped with, what was for them, such a strange and almost ‘alien’ environment.
One can only imagine the anticipation and anxiety, the challenge and the loneliness, the wonder and the doubts that marked that journey and her first months in Zambia.It was a place and people that she came to love and cherish.She committed herself to the education of girls and brought the gift of knowledge and freedom to countless women who still remember her with gratitude and appreciation.There are many past pupils with sad hearts in Zambia at the moment – their sadness at her passing tempered only by their gratitude that she is free from the debilities of her age.And that mourning is echoed this morning among our sisters there in the Region and here in this Chapel in the sisters who lived with her and shared her life for those 30 years.
Her first 15 years in Zambia were spent in the Teacher training college run by the Jesuits and began her work in promoting the education of girls – beginning with the setting up of a girls secondary boarding school in Roma in Lusaka.Nine years later she was appointed Regional Leader and on Independence day 1978she was conferred with the Order of Distinguished Service for 30 years of outstanding service to the people of Zambia in the fields of Education and Social work.
While she was a formidable woman in many ways, with high standards and expectations, her devotion to her religious life and her commitment to education was recognized and appreciated by all who knew her.She was a strict disciplinarian, spoke the truth without apology and demanded very high standards.At the same time her heart was compassionate and her generosity and hospitality were known and appreciated by all.
Like all of us, Helen has known suffering and joy, tears and laughter, pain and happiness, loneliness and friendship.And she had strong relationships with herfriends – too numerous to mention – but exemplified in the love and devotion of Sr. Mary Bernadette Collins and Catherine Fallon.Up to the end she valued and enjoyed her relationships with her nieces, nephews and other family members and followed their lives with interest, with love and with prayer.
In 1978 she was missioned to Ireland and worked on our Constitutions.Subsequently she was appointed as local leader to our community in Crumlin before her appointment to our Provincial Leadership team and consequent arrival here in Our Lady’s Mount in 1981.
Sr. J. Helen’s commitment to Mary Aikenhead’s charism was single-minded and she never compromised on that.The second reading confirms her attitude to life:nothing outweighs the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus. It is only through Him, with Him and in Him that we can find life and happiness and fulfilment.Rooted in that conviction, she endorsed and embraced anything that served the people for whom she cared in a better, more dignified or respectful way.
She suffered in her growing debility and weakness these last years and all of us – family, community, friends and colleagues – were saddened as we watched her suffering and her struggle to cope.In spite of the wonderful, caring staff who surrounded her and the sisters and friends who were her constant support,she had difficult and dispiriting days.Yet she never gave up .Her faith in Providence was the touchstone of her life.In the midst of all her pain and letting-go she was confident that he was with her, holding her, comforting her and in the end, calling her to himself.And when that call came, sheyielded her spirit to the Lord, peace-filled, calm and trusting – blest with a death that had no struggle, no pain, no fear.And perhaps I can end with some words of hers, written in the diary of which I spoke, on her arrival in Chikuni:“Now that we have reached our Promised Land we must thank God and Our Lady for our very pleasant and on the whole easy journey which we have had . . . . “Those words echo, not only the journey to Chikuni, but her life journey, now at its end as she moves, we believe, into the fullness of the Promised land of God’s life and love.
