9 - The Narthex and Chapel

Sister Rosemary Crumlin describes this area as follows:

Even in early Christian times the Narthex was a gathering place - a space to take a breath, to leave outside busy-ness and to gather oneself, each of us remembering why we come into this holy place.

The Chapel has always been a place of comings and goings…a place where major moments of a Sister’s life were celebrated liturgically.  One of the first comings for a young aspirant (postulant), was when she was formally invited into the community to spend two years in seclusion and training before taking vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and the service of others as a Sister of Mercy.

Each aspirant, dressed as a bride in white to symbolize all this, descended the beautiful white, spiral staircase to enter into the solemn celebration of her commitment.  At the end of her life the whole community would gather here and again sing, “Veni Sponsa Christi” – “Come, Spouse of Christ”.  This going completes a cycle but is also a coming into new life.

Today, the spiral staircase still symbolizes new life and new opportunity as it does the passing of old ways.  It spirals up and out with its reminder that the challenge to remember who we are daily, has not changed.

This job has not finished, nor will it ever be … The call is to co-creation in the present.  The future comes out of the present.

This is the dream that built this memorial to those who left everything to come to this land and these people.