DLT £10.95 (0-232-5259-5) Church Times Bookshop £9.85
THIS refreshingly honest account of time Noreen Mackey spent exploring a
Carmelite vocation in France has an interesting subtext: the writings of St
John of the Cross.
The story begins in Luxembourg, where she was working as a lawyer in the
European Court of Justice. One sleepless night she took down a copy of
The Spiritual Canticle and experienced a beguiling sense of call.
Within three years this led her to a Carmelite monastery at Aubépine, a name
she uses to describe the remote spot where she joined the community in 1996.
There follows an engaging account of her 18 months there. She already knew
the lure of a Carmelite vocation, for she had been a novice at a monastery in
Ireland when she was 18. What makes this second attempt noteworthy is the
complete sense of purpose, and the apparent desire for self-oblation, with
which she undertook the journey.
She describes her rediscovery of prayer, her longing for solitude, and yet
her difficulties with community life and with the sisters in charge of her. A
conflict of intelligence as much as interests, one suspects. She writes of
Aubépine with huge affection and, at times, regret; but what is clear by the
end of the book is that her time there was a bridge leading her back to a way
of living her Christian vocation in the world. She returned to the law,
and headed Ireland’s investigation of an international fraud known as the
Ansbacher Affair.
We are left with the sense that writing the book has enabled her to make
sense of her experience, and to accept God’s strange dealings with her. We
share her hopes, her pain, and her ultimate healing.
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