Keeping the Faith

The bells of St Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn rang in celebration on the Feast of St Benedict as Sister Beatrice Brady made her Solemn Profession, committing her life permanently to cloistered life.

Less than a week later, the same monastic community gathered again in prayer - this time to mourn the death of Sister Mary Reidy. The two events unfolded within days of one another, and reflect the rhythm of monastic life: beginnings and endings, burdens shared, fastened by unwavering faith.

On July 11, surrounded by family, friends and the 26-member Cistercian community, Sr Beatrice professed vows of stability and fidelity to the monastic way of life until death.

The solemn liturgy was presided over by Dom Michael Ryan, Abbot of Bolton Abbey, Co Kildare, together with other concelebrating priests from Sr Beatrice’s days as a student, and friends in Religious life which included Fr Gerry Comiskey, former Parish Priest of Drumlane.

Mother Fiachra Nutty, Abbess of St Mary’s, received the Cavan woman into the Conventual Chapter.

Within the Mass, Sr Beatrice signed her schedule of profession of vows on the altar before formally receiving the black veil and monastic cowl, outward signs of her lifelong consecration, before being embraced by her fellow sisters and welcomed fully into the community.

For a Cistercian nun, Solemn Profession is one of the most significant moments of her Religious life. After years of discernment, formation and temporary vows, a sister freely offers herself to God through a lifelong commitment to prayer, work, and obedience.

That her profession took place on the Feast of St Benedict carried particular significance. For more than 1,500 years, the Rule of St Benedict has guided monks and nuns in seeking God through a life prayer, humility, hospitality and mutual charity.

Formerly Emma from Drumbarlum, Belturbet, the daughter of Michael Brady, former owner of Butlersbridge Farm Supplies, Sr Beatrice entered Glencairn in September 2018, just months after graduating from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Law and German. She is part of a small, but encouraging group of younger women to embrace this contemplative life.

Alongside two other sisters in their thirties, and at a time when religious vocations in Ireland remain rare, many communities face ageing populations (the average age of a nun is over 80 years), their presence in Glenairn represents a sign of renewed hope.

Founded in 1932, the monastery lies back from the road, shuttered by over 200 acres of land and livestock in rural Waterford. Its discreet entrance is such that it could easily be missed, while the community who live there follow the Rule of St Benedict - practising a disposition of silence rather than a literal vow - as part conversion to foster a prayerful inner presence with God.

Each day begins before dawn, with the sisters rising at 3:50am for the first of seven gatherings for prayer. Hours between are devoted to work that sustains the monastery. The sisters farm, bake Eucharistic altar breads, run a guesthouse, produce greeting cards, restore books, as well as welcome guests and care for the practical needs of general community life.

The Abbess chose her religious name at Sr Beatrice’s First Profession in 2021, named after Blessed Beatrice, the Cistercian nun of Nazareth (1200-1268), whose most famous text, 'Seven Modes of Love', a very influential text in Cisterian spirituality which, in broad terms, deals with how one can dwell in God’s love, is still relevant today.

‘Exciting’

Speaking to the Celt shortly after her formal Profession last month, Sr Beatrice described the day as “nerve-wracking, but also very exciting”.

“It’s the final step in the formation process and a definitive commitment to God and to the community,” she explains.

Formation in the Cistercian tradition is gradual. A woman entering the monastery first spends a year as a postulant, becoming familiar with monastic practices and values while continuing to wear her own clothes. She then spends two years as a novice before making temporary vows, which are renewed annually for five years.

“The first year is really a time of asking whether this is the life God is calling you to,” Sr Beatrice says. “The community is discerning that with you as well.”

Much of her own formation coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. While lockdown brought isolation for many, Sr Beatrice found it unexpectedly deepened the sense of embracing the Cistercian way - one of prayer, chant and manual labour.

“We have a guesthouse, but during COVID that all stopped,” she said. “It was just the community together. It created an even greater intensity in our life of prayer. There were far fewer external distractions.” Although naturally outgoing, and with a passion for social justice, which led her to studying law, Sr Beatrice initially saw her future differently. But the “calling” was strong and, as she began visiting active congregations, she gradually became convinced that Glencairn was where she belonged.

“Every time I visited and left, I just wanted to come back,” she said.

The seeds of vocation were present long before if truth be told. As a child, after meeting a Mercy Sister at school in Belturbet, she remembers asking a practical question: How exactly does someone go about becoming a nun?

“I wanted to know the steps - who do you call? Is there an email? Do you write a letter?” she recalls with a laugh.

Those questions remained quietly through her adolescence, while attending Loreto College in Cavan. A documentary about the Medical Missionaries of Mary working in Kenya left a lasting impression. “It was obvious they were living for something greater than themselves, ultimately for God. They were so alive, and that stayed with me.”

She attended World Youth Day in Poland as a university student, meeting young priests, sisters and friars further convinced her that religious life was not simply a tradition of the past but “an authentic way of life”.

“In my teens there was a rejection of a desire I knew was in me. And as I became more involved in religious life, I suppose my family wondered how it might all work out.”

Since entering Glencairn, Sr Beatrice says she has learned more than at any other point in her life.

“You learn practical skills through the work we do, but you also learn how to pray, how to live in community, and a great deal about yourself - why you react the way you do, what your limitations are and where you need to rely on God and other people.”

She describes monastic life as “certainly the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.

“Our work life, our social life and our family life are all here in one place,” she says. “There’s nowhere to escape. If there are difficulties, you have to face them.” Far from escaping the outside world, Sr Beatrice believes life in the monastery brings a person closer to reality.

“People sometimes imagine that religious life is about running away from the world or avoiding life’s difficulties,” she said. “That’s really not true. In the monastery you’re constantly facing yourself and other people. In reality, the joys and sorrows of every sister become your own.”

Silence and solitude, she adds, reveal things that people often spend years trying to avoid.

“Someone who comes to a monastery simply to escape life’s problems will soon discover it isn’t the place to hide.”

Those words take on particular significance days later.

The community that had celebrated Sr Beatrice’s profession so joyously gathered to remember the life of Sister Mary Reidy, whose own religious vocation had been marked by decades of selfless service.

Originally from Lancaster and born to Irish parents Patrick and Catherine Reidy, Sr Mary entered the English Province of the Daughters of Jesus following secondary school. After completing her novitiate in France, she made her religious profession in 1970 and later trained as a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital in London. There she spent many years in nursing ministry before eventually entering the Cistercian community.

Reflecting on Sr Mary’s death, Sr Beatrice spoke of the distinctive way monastic communities experience bereavement.

“We’re responsible for one another,” she said. “Death is experienced a little differently in a monastery because our faith in the Risen Christ is so central. Of course there is genuine sorrow because we miss our sister and what she brought to the community, but there is also hope and a sense of celebration of her journey to God.”

Although the monastery is a life of separation from many aspects of modernity, Sr Beatrice does not see it as rejecting the path forward.

Technology has a limited but purposeful role. The monastery maintains a website and features on social media, but only as a way of making the vocation visible.

Asked whether she is happy with the choice she has made, Sr Beatrice suggests that happiness alone is not the right measure.

“It’s a question religious [people] are often asked,” she replies, before offering: “Yet it’s not really a question people ask married couples.”

She compares religious life to marriage, where a person chooses to place one relationship above all others.

“These relationships are challenging, and they stretch us,” she quantifies. “It is more about a deep-seated contentment and the rightness of doing what one was made to do than it is about happiness.”

For Sr Beatrice, fulfilment comes through seeking God within community.

“Happiness lies in searching out and finding what God has made me for, and trying to embrace that fully as a living witness to a real relationship and reality in Christ and in community.”