Farewell Party of Sr. Colette, NDS

Sr. Juliana Baldinger reports:

Sr. Colette came from a farming family in Ireland where 7 brothers and sisters helped and worked on the family farm. Her cousin, Sr. Maura Clune, a Sister of Sion, brought two of the girls to continue their education at Notre Dame de Sion School in Worthing where Sr. Colette had finished her junior high school in 1951, and from there she entered the Novitiate of Notre Dame de Sion in Grandbourg, France. After her profession of first vows she was sent to Jerusalem where she arrived on 17th of November, 1954 in Ein Karem, where the sisters worked both in the house and on the farm. She recalled, “When I came in the door the last cow was taken out. We continued to work on the farm but there was no more milking and cheese making!”

By the year 1960, the Convent was being transferred from an orphanage and a school (both a boarding day and village students) into a guesthouse. At the beginning of this transformation, our guests were sleeping in the dormitories which were divided so that men and women slept separately. The sisters ran the guesthouse, worked in the kitchen and in the garden with its many fruit trees as well as the vegetable garden. During the summer months the young people of the Village which is populated now by the Marconian and Yemenite Jewish Community refugees from Arab countries came to help us in the guesthouse.

Today these young people have children and grandchildren and still remember their days in the Convent and are grateful for their connection to the convent. They bring their children and grandchildren to see where they grew up as part of their lives. Colette has lived and seen this history as she lived all her religious life mostly in Ein Karem, Israel. Some Families with their children and grandchildren celebrated with us the goodbye for Sr. Colette.

In the early 1980s Colette took a sabbatical year, where she lived and worked for 6 months with the community of Jean Vanier in Canada. This community was committed to work with people with special needs. There her inspiration of working with the people in need was kindled even more. Colette came back to Israel asking if she could look for work in the Jewish area with, children with special needs. This request was well received in the Alyn institute (physically challenged children who have special needs) not far from Ein Karem. In 2014 Sr. Colette became a member of the international congregational Novitiate community in Ein Karem by that time she did not work full time anymore with the children with special needs, she continued instead to assist in the needs of the guesthouse. Sr. Colette’s heart stayed young and so she was a great companion sister for the young sisters who are preparing themselves for their first commitment. Her favorite verse from the gospel is, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers or sisters you do to me.”

The events of our world and of our lives urge us to hear the cry of the poor. “The people with special needs are the beauty that the world does not see!” said Colette. As a congregation we are sent to a world to work for justice, peace and love. The children and people of the Swedish

village, the poorest of the Jewish people that the Lord gave us to love, as to witness in the church and in the world that God continues to be faithful in God’s love for the Jewish people.

Colette prepared herself during this last year to spend her days of fragility in Gemenos in the south of France. There she will be with many sisters whom she knows and many she had lived with during her many years in Israel. She says thank you to all who helped her along the way to live her religious commitment in fidelity and perseverance.

She says thank you to all who came for her party. They came to honor Colette who is a great example of a Sister of Sion. Our novitiate house is full of memories of Sr. Colette. We are grateful for all the time that she spent with us in the novitiate community and in Jerusalem. We thank her for always being present and supporting us during difficult times. May God bless her as she begins a new chapter in Gemenos.