Hyning Christmas Newsletter 2024

CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER 2024

Greetings to all our friends and families as we arrive at the great Feast of Christmas. Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this time as our world continues to know so much suffering and uncertainty. May Christ, the King of Peace bring His light and joy to our world.

The most dominant aspect of 2024 for us has been the celebration of the 50 years of our presence at Hyning. It has been a year in which to give thanks for the ways in which God has worked here since the arrival of Sr Mary Laurence, Sr Mary John, Sr Mary Nivard and Sr Michelle Marie in November 1974.

We marked the event in a number of ways. At the end of August, three open afternoons drew about 450 visitors through the gates of Hyning, many for the first time. The varied programme included a presentation on Hyning and our Bernardine life, an icon exhibition, the opportunity to visit the garden, and, for our younger visitors, the Teddy Nun Hunt. As you may imagine, an excellent cream tea was waiting for our visitors in the Dining Room. As on so many occasions, we were extremely grateful to our volunteers and friends without whose help these days would have been impossible.

Two liturgical celebrations of our golden jubilee took place on the 19th September and the 13th November. The former was celebrated by the Bishop of Lancaster, the Rt Rev Paul Swarbrick, as well as other priests from the diocese and further afield. Local religious, friends and families, and two sistersfrom our monastery in France, joined us on this day which was also the 40th anniversary of the Dedication of our Church. The principal celebrant at the second celebration in November was Abbot Cuthbert Madden OSB who had made the journey from his monastery of Christ the Word in Zimbabwe especially for the occasion. We were delighted to see him again. He was joined by monastic brethren from Mount St Bernard Abbey, Mellifont, Nunraw, Ampleforth, Belmont and sisters from Stanbrook Abbey. Our Oblates and many friends and family shared this occasion with us. We were particularly pleased to welcome Denis Linehan, Sr Mary Nivard’s brother, who made the journey from Hertfordshire. Our sisters at Brownshill were with us on both occasions and special mention must be made of Sr Michelle Marie, the surviving foundress, who had the honour of cutting the cake. Meanwhile Sr Mary Colette holds the record for the longest number of years lived at Hyning, clocking up 40 out of those 50 years.

Sr Elizabeth Mary, our Prioress General, came to Hyning in November for our visitation and was with us for the second of our jubilee celebrations. She was accompanied by Sr Christine, superior of our Community in Vietnam. We enjoyed having both of them with us, hearing news and seeing photos of Vietnam and elsewhere in our Bernardine Order and their lovely voices in choir enhanced our liturgy.

Of course such celebrations are high points in the ordinary routine of life which continues at Hyning. After the COVID years, life is returning to normal and we have received many groups and individuals throughout the year. In January, Sr Mary Bernard was able to go to the meetings of Monastic Guestmasters’ and Mistresses’ at Buckfast Abbey and found it a very helpful experience. The various events on our programme, including icon retreats, Prayer and Gardening, and the recently established flute retreats are all popular, as are the Advent and Lent retreats, card making days etc.  We have been pleased to welcome Donna Worthington several times, whose themed days have introduced the participants to great masters of Christian spirituality such as St John of the Cross, St Brigid etc. Please do look at our 2025 programme on our website to see the rich variety of events on offer. 

Sr Michaela continues to be very involved in animating groups who come to the guest house and has many lively and stimulating talks up her sleeves. She has recently been asked to be a member of the Spirituality Commission of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales which will enable her to put her knowledge at the service of the wider Church. In January she will be starting to study part-time for a doctorate in Theology at the Margaret Beaufort Institute which is affiliated to Anglia Ruskin University. To give her the time to do this, we will be discontinuing the sale of jams and marmalades once our current stock of fruit has run out. Hopefully our guests will be able to taste the fruits of her work in a different way in the future!

As usual there has been some coming and going in the Community. Sr Mary Helen began the year with a visit to our three remaining sisters in Fujisawa in Japan. She had worked closely with them for several years before coming to Hyning, and COVID had prevented her making her last planned visit there. She was able to spend three days in Nagasaki. The city is perhaps best known for the atomic bomb of August 1945 and she visited the museum and Peace Park marking this tragic event.  However, Nagasaki is also the cradle of Christianity in Japan, and she was able to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Japanese martyrs, Ss. Paul Miki and companions and visit the excellent museum attached to it. It was a truly memorable fortnight.

In October, she flew off again, this time to the South of France where she was co-visitor of the Cistercian Abbey of Castagniers near Nice. It was a good opportunity for her to reconnect with the Cistercian world in France. The sisters of Castagniers earn their living by making chocolate so it was obviously a very necessary part of the visitation to sample the products!

Sr Mary Colette attended the meeting of the Association of British Contemplatives in Leeds in April, where the principal speaker was Dom Bernhardus Peters, Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. She returned to Yorkshire in October for a meeting of the Holy Rood Trust in York. Sr Mary Helen took the opportunity to show the City of York to Srs. Marie Cécile and Evelyne.

We have been delighted to welcome several monastic visitors this year. Sr Christine Marie, one of our elderly French sisters who had spent the previous thirteen years in Vietnam, passed three months with us and helped us out with many little services. We thoroughly enjoyed having her. Her stay overlapped with a visit from Sr Godelieve from our community in Burkina Faso, so our horizons were broadened considerably. Meanwhile, in May, we welcomed Sr Sophie of the Abbey of Rieunette in the South of France. She and Sr Mary Helen are twins and celebrated a big birthday together, which included a trip to Rievaulx Abbey. We have also been glad to welcome our own English Sisters Mary Philippa and Hilda at various moments during the year. 

July saw another type of monastic hospitality when we hosted the formation session for young (and some not quite so young) monks and nuns of the Cistercian Region of the Isles, as well as four Redemptoristine Sisters whose red habits brought colour to the occasion! Partticipants from Ireland, Norway and the UK (including our own Sr Reina and Sr Audrey)  followed a very stimulating week’s session led by the well-known Australian Cistercian monk, Fr Michael Casey. A highlight was a day out to the Lake District when a day of perfect weather punctuated the week of rain and the group enjoyed walking round Grasmere and Rydal Water, joined by Sr Mary Helen, Sr M Stella and Sr Marie Cécile. The last day of the session was the Feast of St Benedict when a beautiful Mass united our visitors, the Community of Hyning and many of our Oblates. The latter enjoyed a short session with Fr Michael to themselves before a festive lunch brought us all together. 

Our group of Oblates continues to grow and at the moment, several people are exploring the possibility of becoming an Oblate as a way to support their spiritual life. During the year, we thanked God that four people made their life commitment as Bernardine Oblates – Glynis Hartley,  Maureen Ryan-Craig, Lisa Vallente-Osborne and Pauline Wright.

In April, the Community headed South for our annual retreat with our Sisters at Brownshill. It  was preached by Mgr. Kevin McGinnell of the Diocesan of Northampton. Well known to us from our Slough days, we benefitted from his spiritual input on the Eucharist. He is an excellent liturgist and teacher and all greatly enjoyed his retreat. Later in the year, we all joined him for a Zoom session when he presented the new lectionary to us, lectionary which came into service on the first Sunday of Advent.

Our community has seen several changes of sisters this year. In October, Sr Reina left us to become part of the community of Brownshill. She is greatly missed by Community and guests alike for her kindness, good organisation and sense of humour. Fr Anthony misses her in the sacristy where much friendly banter between the two kept him on the straight and narrow!!

We were however delighted to welcome two new sisters. Sr Evelyne, who was solemnly professed in Goma in April of this year, arrived from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  She joins Sr Marie Cécile. Both are working hard at their English with separate teachers. Sr Marie Cécile has also started going to English conversation classes at Lancaster library and is adept at getting herself there by train. We very much enjoy having both of them with us and are also grateful for all their hard work.

Sr Audrey also joined us from the Community of Brownshill. Many of you will remember her as a novice. She began her time back at Hyning by renewing her vows on the 1st October. The previous weeks for her had been interesting ones, starting with the formation course at Hyning. She then spent a month at our Mother House, the Monastery of Notre Dame de la Plaine near Lille in France where she attended a session for the young sisters in formation in our Order, where she met Sr Evelyne ahead of the rest of us. About 20 novices and junior professed sisters, mostly from the Congo, Burkina Faso and Vietnam, lived, prayed, and studied together, returning to the origins of our Order in the North of France. Topics included the Psalms, the History of the Order and Obedience in the Benedictine tradition. They also sat at the feet of some of the older sisters, sharing texts from the rich corpus of Cistercian writings.

Sr Mary Stella, Sr Reina and Sr M Cécile were able to go over to France for ten days during the course and enjoyed meeting the young sisters and drinking in the lively atmosphere of the house as well as being refreshed by the multilingual liturgies and moments of relaxation. They brought their own contribution by a rendition of the Cat Duet on the 15th August!

Sr Audrey’s studies did not finish there. Barely was this session finished, then she headed off to Rome with two other young sisters to participate in the Monastic Formation Programme held at the Generate house of the Cistercian Order. The ongoing liturgy and 6 lectures a day did not give them much time to see the Eternal City but this international course is very stimulating and sets Sr Audrey up with a study programme for the year. Despite all these varied experiences, Sr Audrey settled back quickly to the ordinary routine of monastic life, taking on new responsibilities at Hyning with competence.

You may remember from last year’s newsletter that sadly, Sr Pauline (Annabelle Schaeffer) had made the decision to leave us as she felt called to a more apostolic way of life. She left us in January, and after a few months back home in France, Annabelle returned to Brighton to enter with the Benedictine Sisters of Our Lady of Grace and Compassion. The latest news is that she has just become a novice – and is doing her novitiate in India!

In May, we proposed a ‘Come and See’ weekend for young women interested in religious life. We were vey pleased to have several enquiries, and five young women, all very serious in their search for the will of God, spent a lively weekend with us.  Please do pray for vocations to our way of life. We need new sisters to be able to continue our work at Hyning!

At the other end of the scale, Sr Mary is keeping well and living in the present moment at Nazareth House, Lancaster. She is now 99 ¾ so we are looking forward to celebrating her 100th birthday on the 30th March next year. God willing, she will be our first English Bernardine to reach this land mark birthday.

We had sad news in July when we learnt of the death of Fr Michael McKenna, Mill Hill Missionary, in Freshfields in Liverpool. He served us faithfully as chaplain from 1994 to 2017 and many of you will remember him, especially for the welcome he gave in the Dining Room. Srs. Mary Helen, Sr Mary Stella, Sr Mary Colette and Sr Reina joined his fellow missionaries at Freshfields for his funeral on 31st July. May he rest in peace.   

As the Church enters into a Jubilee Year with the theme ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ our own diocese of Lancaster is also entering into its centenary year. We have been delighted to receive several groups of diocesan priests, deacons, religious  and consecrated women and parish groups throughout the year. Sr Mary Helen is a member of the newly established team for Consecrated Life in the diocese and has been involved in organising events including our celebration of February 2nd when four of us attended a gathering of over 40 religious at Boarbank Hall.

Our families have been regular visitors to Hyning. In June we welcomed Sr Michaela’s mother, Mrs Shirlee Toulmin, for a fortnight. Since then, Shirlee has moved into residential care, and Sr Michaela is a frequent visitor. The families of Sr Mary Stella, Sr M Colette and Sr Mary Bernard are also regular visitors to Hyning. On the Brownshill front we were very sorry to hear of the death of Sr Hilda’s mother, Susan Utting, in September. She was a regular visitor to Hyning in the past.

Fr Anthony continues to play a full part in the life of Hyning and his presence is much appreciated by the Community and guests. Recently Michael Dugdale, one of our regular Mass attenders, has edited and published a book of Fr Anthony’s homilies ‘Still Not Quite All There’ which is available for £10.00 (+ p and p). We are lucky to benefit from Fr Anthony’s preaching and prayerful presence every day and are very grateful for this.

Kevin Elliston and Peter Lund, our long-term employees, continue to work hard in the garden and Sr Mary Stella and her team of volunteers have brought many improvements. Much clearance has been done on the ‘Long Sweep’ and new camelias planted. Ann Lund and Debbie Mason continue to provide us with lovely meals, in collaboration with Sr Michaela. Vanessa Alpin helps us with the housekeeping with great diligence and discretion. We are very grateful to have such good staff and we thank them all. We are equally grateful to so many volunteers, too many to be named who help us with reception duty, cleaning, driving, gardening and many other activities.

As we leave our Golden Jubilee Year behind and as the Church enters into its Jubilee Year, we share with you, as a Christmas offering, the words of Pope Francis

“We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us, and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.”

Our love, thoughts and prayer are with each one.