SisterJoseph Veronica Keatinge
SisterJoseph Veronica Keatinge1917 – 2014
Born: 5th October 1917
Entered Religious Life: 7th October 1935
Died: 19th June 2014
An appreciation of Joseph Veronica Keatinge
The reflection given by Sr Phyllis Behan RSC at the Eucharistic Celebration
to celebrate Sr Veronica’s life and death
We gather this morning to remember with love, and gratitude, the life of Sr Joseph Veronica Keatinge.
She was born in Kilrush, Co Clare – a Clare woman to her fingertips, proud of her home County and her roots. Family was very important to her and she retained close bonds with all the family, loved to hear how each one was doing and holding them close to her heart.
Veronica was born 5th October 1917, was called by the Lord to give her life to Him first and foremost and secondly to the Congregation of the Religious Sisters of Charity. She responded to that call at age 18 when she entered Milltown. Catherine her sister born a year later entered Milltown two years after Veronica. They both lived for a time in Ireland but only lived together for 3 years in Lakelands after Catherine returned from the United States and before Catherine died in 2001. Veronica missed her terribly.
Veronica remained in Ireland all her life and over the 79 years she spent in religious life she graciously moved where she was sent beginning after the Novitiate, in St Patrick’s Kilkenny, then to Clonmel, Cappagh, Foxford, Bray, St Joseph’s Kilkenny, Clonmel again, Howth and then when she retired she moved to Lakelands where she died peacefully last Thursday.
Life for Veronica, as for most people, was filled with ups and downs, good experiences and stressful times. Throughout it all she steadfastly held to her Lord, and in her retirement particularly, she spent a lot of time in the Chapel before the Blessed Sacrament.
Sometimes when she had had enough of the Chapel she could be heard saying: ‘O God, O God, will you send someone to take me out of here’. And duly someone would arrive to bring her out, she would see this as an answer to her prayer.
In one record we have of Veronica, she describes herself as ‘practical’ and that was evident in the many ministries she held throughout her life. She gave equal dedication and commitment to housekeeping as she did to Home Economics Teaching, Social Work, retreat work, local leadership or assistant local leadership.
Our first reading tells us that those who die in the Lord are happy because ‘their good deeds go with them’. Veronica had a long life. She would have been 97 at her next birthday. A long life in which to do her good deeds but only those who were on the receiving end of those good deeds would know about them for Veronica was a very private person. She took the Scripture passage ‘let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing’ literally. (Matthew. 6:3)
In the second reading we are reminded to ‘think of the love that the Father has lavished on us’. Veronica received that love from God, family, Congregation, friends and gave it out again. She is described as kind, generous, and helpful. She treasured friends and kept up with them and they with her, right to the last. She was a grateful woman, ‘thank you’ being constantly on her lips.
Diminishment, and dependence which were the hallmarks of Veronica’s later life, are not easy aspects of life to deal with but Veronica bore them with patience.
Jesus in the Gospel promises ‘I am going to prepare a place for you and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return and take you with me’. (John.14:2-3)
He has done that now, he has taken Veronica to Himself and she is at peace. She has as St Paul writes to Timothy: ‘fought the good fight to the end;’ she has ‘run the race to the finish;’ she has ‘kept the faith;’ (2 Timothy 4:7)
May she rest in peace. Amen.
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.
