As usual, my monastic Christmas, celebrated with the community of St Cecilia Abbey, Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, brought me many graces, but chief among them was to assist at the death of one of the community: 93-year-old Mère Stéphanie Mathieu.
On Christmas Day at the end of Mass I left the altar with the Blessed Sacrament and passed through the monastic choir into the enclosure to take Holy Communion to the infirmary. As I was returning through the cloister I was told by the infirmarian that Mère Stéphanie was dying, so I hastened to her cell where I gave her the Anointing of the Sick and the Apostolic Pardon and prayed the Commendation of the Dying, with some of the community kneeling round the bed. She lingered for the rest of Christmas Day, the Abbess having predicted that she would go home on her feast day, St Stephen’s. Sure enough, not long after Mass the following day her soul departed her frail body and I was summoned to her cell again. The community filled the room and the corridor outside, kneeling. There was something serene and peaceful in the sight. Kneeling is the language of acceptance; of worship before some greater mystery than what is merely human; of being awed by the recognition of one’s need for love. Then the nuns began to sing the Subvenite, calling on the saints to aid her and the angels to take her soul and present it in the sight of God’s majesty.
