On the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, Angelle Damare was invested in the Holy Habit and received her new name: Sr. Mary Brigid of the Good Shepherd.  We hope you enjoy these video highlights of the beautiful day!  Also, we wanted to share Rev. Mother Marie Andre’s  powerful exhortation on this occasion – just moments before giving Sr. Mary Brigid her new name.  Our new Novice’s patron is St. Brigid of Kildare, co-patron of Ireland.  May this great Saint intercede for her new spiritual daughter and lead her the heights of holiness and love.

“The world is topsy-turvy, isn’t it? But it always has been.  And although it does not seem so in our secular world, it is in the consecrated life that a woman and a man find perfect fulfillment. Even between husbands and wives, in families, in work areas, in schools: there needs to be a space for the Lord which makes our love fruitful. Before the eyes of an aggressively disbelieving world, Angelle is called to witness that absolutely nothing is placed before Jesus Christ…  That she sees something in Jesus that is profoundly credible so much so that her belief in Him is not shaken by the disbelief that is so loudly expressed by our culture. In fact, in the face of such evident disbelief, Angelle is certain that Jesus is Everything He claims to be!  This disbelieving world would have you believe that Jesus’ call is a hiccup in this young woman’s plans for the future (husband, family, career).  But what is viewed with incomprehension and as a contradiction and a denial is not puzzling or bewildering to the one being called and hearing the Voice of the Lord.

Just like we hope that one finds the right person and marries for love, so a young woman enters Religious Life out of enormous love; without that love, what a contemplative nun does would not make any sense. Our cloistered lives deal with reality but it is from the perspective of God and His Word. He takes our mediocrity and imperfect efforts and He makes them work!  And ours is not only a purely spiritual world that is abstract.  We live to serve the Master’s needs, to cooperate as He sees fit.  In particular, as a PCPA in the desert, we are stripped away so as to make the fundamental things appear.  Bishop Robert Barron: “In the desert there are no distractions or diversions or secondary matters.  Everything is basic, necessary, simple. ONE SURVIVES OR ONE DOESN’T!  One discovers in the desert strengths and weaknesses she didn’t know she had.”

Angelle must come to the awareness that it is not in her safety or well-being that she trusts but in the Lord’s Eucharistic Presence, and if she can do that than she is not afraid to take risks.  There is no need to be afraid: the Lord takes nothing from us.  He is not looking for extraordinary things from us:  St. Therese: she focused everything on the Holy Eucharist and lived a simple hidden life that she did with the love of God.  St. Jean Marie Vianney: he did not possess any outstanding gifts but he loved with a deep and abiding love and faith…
That is what the Lord asks: both are great saints: one patroness of the missions, one patron of priests.  Angelle will dedicate herself to a more intense life of prayer that is nothing other than a special way of living and expressing the Paschal  Mystery of Christ, which reveals the spousal love of Jesus.

Angelle: always remember that God is not hidden or seen from afar, but seen face to Face and possessed forever.  Happy Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.”

-Mother Marie Andre