pathways, June 09
In the spirit of the Good Shepherd we go to people wherever they are. We walk with them in the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of their lives. We bring to this ministry a feminine way of generating and nurturing the life the Spirit gives.
an article in the MSS Constitutions
A woman who had the rare opportunity to help shape a new group of Australian-founded religious women, leading them through the tumultuous post-Vatican II years, has been farewelled by her congregation, family and friends.
Delphine O'Shea MSS joined the then Home Missionary Sisters of Our Lady when the congregation was only 11 years old and had a membership of 21. Thinking about religious life, she moved to Hobart in 1955 after being challenged by her uncle, Fr Bernard O'Shea: "Has it occurred to you that it might be a privilege to join a new community?"
When only 10 years professed, aged 38, she was elected congregational leader in 1968, a position she held until 1980.
Today's Missionary Sisters of Service congregational leader Bernadette Wallis MSS said at Sr Delphine's Mass of Christian burial, "This was a very challenging time in the world, Church and in religious life.
"It was post Vatican II, when the shifting sands of life as a religious required courage, integrity, a capacity to discern the movements of the spirit, wise judgement and astute action to guide the changes and lead the congregation with a sound theological base on which changes were made."
One of the changes in the congregation during her term of leadership was the change of name from Home Missionary Sisters of Our Lady to the Missionary Sisters of Service.
She also worked alongside the congregation's founder, Fr John Wallis, who was still present in the life of the Sisters as a spiritual director and an advocate for education in what Vatican II was saying to the Church.
Sr Bernadette said that part of Sr Delphine's passion was for the children beyond the Catholic school system and where they stood in the eyes of the Church, as well as providing good Christian education for parents and adults in general.
She was one of the speakers at the first National Liturgical Convention held in Melbourne in 1968: "Parish Liturgical Co-operation in Rural Australia". In 1970 she presented a paper at the Catholic Education Conference in Tasmania: "Religious Education Beyond Catholic Schools".
In her time of leadership, the Sisters also prepared correspondence courses for adults in the Scriptures - both Old Testament and New Testament - as well as catechetical courses by correspondence, providing a great resource for people, including catechists, in the rural parishes, as well as elsewhere.
Sr Bernadette said Sr Delphine was passionate about equality and justice.
"With other religious leaders at the time, she fought for religious, who were in pastoral ministry to be paid equitably, as were religious in other professions at the time."
She could also tell stories, particularly about herself.
"Amongst us we have a store of stories that include dramas of all kinds, such as on parish missions in Tasmania with rats and mice in the sacristy where they were staying, playing an untuned organ for Mass ... and the famous story from the 1970s of listening to theologian Fr Sean O'Riorden's tapes on religious life while on a train going to Broken Hill to visit one of the Sisters there. Not only was she listening to the lectures on the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on her tape recorder, but the so was whole carriage - with much seriousness. She thought she was listening through her personal earphones - but she wasn't!"
After leadership Sr Delphine moved into spirituality and following studies in the United States, she worked in Toowoomba, Douglas Park Retreat Centre in NSW, then at Jindalee and finally, for more than 20 years, on the Gold Coast.
Sr Bernadette said that the Scriptures were her source of inspiration and prayer.
Having plumbed the depths of Ignatian spirituality, she shared this in her retreat work, spiritual direction, in Christian Life Communities and leading the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, involvement with the Arrupe Programme and the Faber Centre. She also brought much richness to people's lives in her educative role using the enneagram.
In his homily, Fr Chris Gleeson SJ said that Sr Delphine was "thoroughly imbued" with Ignatian spirituality, was on fire with its energy, and was able to share this fire with so many people.
"Delphine was a great gatherer of the scattered. She had finely tuned antennae for those who were struggling and gave herself unstintingly to helping them.
"She was a thorough professional in the field of spiritual direction and was thoughtfully demanding of those in her tutelage."
The Gospel was the scene of the Risen Jesus making breakfast on the lakeside for his disciples.
"The last two verses about the transition of putting on our own belt as young people and going where we wished to the stage of having someone else putting a belt around us and leading us where we do not wish to go - these are very poignant lines," he said.
"I think they are verses about the journey into freedom that all of us take in life, but they are also about that journey into freedom traced for us by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.
"It is the great paradox of freedom, a paradox that Delphine understood so well, that the more one commits and surrenders one's life to God, the more one allows God to put a belt around us and lead us in His ways, the freer we become.
"How else can we understand that challenging final prayer and pinnacle of the Spiritual Exercises to which Ignatius leads us unrelentingly: 'Take, Lord, all my liberty - my memory, my understanding, my entire will. Give me only your love and your grace, they are enough for me'.
"We commend Delphine today to our loving God to whom she surrendered her life so fully and helped others to learn the same freedom."
Delphine Madeline O'Shea MSS
born: September 24, 1930, Corinda (Brisbane)
professed: March 25, 1958, Hobart
died: May 29, 2009, Brisbane
buried: June 3, Mt Gravatt Cemetery
following a Mass of Christian burial at St Ignatius Church, Toowong
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