THE
P RTAL
February 2019
Page 7
Here am I Lord…
Ronald Crane speaks to Sister Marie Thérèse
of the Carmelite Monastery in Wolverhampton
- an ordinary person doing extraordinary work
S ister Marie Thérèse
is the Extern at the Carmel convent in Wolverhampton. Originally from
Worcester, St George’s, her Father was a Catholic and mother a convert who had a great love for St Thérèse
and the Carmel, little knowing when they moved to Wolverhampton due to her Father’s work, they would be
living just round the corner from the Monastery.
She told an interesting story of her name. “My
grandfather was principal of an art college. He painted
a lot. My grandmother was French and following, l
believe, a French tradition, she would put little holy
pictures behind the canvas of the pictures. The day I
was born a picture fell from one of papa’s pictures of St
Thérèse and that is how I got my name, Marie Thérèse.”
Sr Marie Thérèse went to school and college
in Wolverhampton. Although she had a difficult
childhood, outwardly the family was a good Catholic
one. They came back from Mass one day to find that
her father had taken his things and left to go and live
with someone else. He was on the church committee.
Eventually he and her mother sorted things out. They
celebrated their Golden Jubilee together.
“I found my father had great spiritual depth, despite
all the difficulties they encountered,” Sister continued.
“Watching my parents going through their own problems
and difficulties in their marriage, l learnt the wonderful
healing power of forgiveness and love and also the power
of prayer to transform situations and lives.”
“Where was it going? “I would sit in pubs or wine
bars out with friends and ponder, where is life going?
As a teenager she said she went through her own You’ve got a job, you’ve got a future, you’ve got a
challenges to live out her faith, though still very much boyfriend. This became a significant moment in my
involved with helping in the local Parish Church: life when I began to pray to the Lord to show me His
helping to run the crèche as well as volunteering with path for me in serving Him and others. I remember my
the Brothers o
f the Good Shepherd in the shelter for mother saying. ‘Why don’t you go see the Carmelite
the homeless.
Sisters?’”
Sister said that when at college, she became involved
with the Charismatic renewal. One day she went to a
Charismatic meeting with her mother and the priest
handed her a bible and wrote in the front cover, ‘This
is God’s love letter to man.’ She told me, “I will always
remember that.”
After a period of discernment, she joined the
Carmelite Community
. There were struggle
s
, of
course. “It was a silent order and I struggled with it.
But I gave it my all when I entered. I was scared of the
total commitment it involved when I made my final
vows, because it was commitment for life. But on that
day l found l could say, ‘Lord I give you everything.’“
A normal young woman, Sr Marie Thérèse worked
in dentistry. “But I also loved life; I used to go to
At one point she spent time away from the Carmel, and
nightclubs and enjoyed myself.” Although she had a due to family circumstances she became an Extern Sister
good time, there was always this underlying sense that for the enclosed community. In a monastic community
life was going quickly.
with strict enclosure, the Extern is the Sister who has
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