Missionary Priests farewell their mothers

Mary Colleen Theresa Wilson

She responded to God’s love wholeheartedly: her daily prayer, her love for the Mass, her occasional retreats at the Cenacle, she responded to the Lord’s love as a dear friend. That friendship was at the very heart of her life. It was her joy and consolation.

Fr Brian Wilson

Also I want to say a word or two about today’s funeral psalm Ps 83 v.3-6,8. I have often thought of it as a special psalm for so many wonderful mothers. “My soul is longing and yearning,/ is yearning for the courts of the Lord”(Mum’s yearning to be in a quiet convent sometimes!)

“The sparrow herself finds a home,/ the swallow a nest for her brood:/She lays her young by your altars,/Lord of hosts, my king and my God.” I have no doubt that mothers above all else can relate to that – that their beloved family will find their way to God, who loves them so dearly...they would want us to find the pearl of great price, that treasure in the field, and finding it, give all that we have to possess it – and possess life in all its fullness

But there is another section to this psalm invoking pilgrims travelling through rough country “As they go through the bitter valley,/ they make it a place of springs”. There were times of disappointment, suffering, sin, failure, dillusionment. These times have power to paralyse us, and make us bitter ourselves

But some pass through the bitter valley and make it a place of springs. Mum was such a person. She experienced pain and diversity, but she was a battler who rose above the struggle with God’s grace to see her through, with gifts of laughter and good humour. She passed through the bitter valley and made it a place of
springs”

Colleen Margaret O'Neill

As the deer longs for running streams,/ so my soul longs for you, o my God. My soul thirsts for God, the God of life./ When can I enter and see the face of God?”

Fr Paddy O'Neill

I think these words of Monday morning’s psalm sum up beautifully the spirit in which Colleen spent these last few months with us - a real desire to be with God and in His presence - but it also sums up the faith with which she led her entire life.

That was Mum’s faith and that was her desire. She lived her life with that faith although it must have been sorely tried and tested in her early years. Her father died when she was only three years old and then as a young woman of twenty one her own mother suffered a stroke, lingered and also died not many weeks later. How did she feel about God when at eighteen she suffered from tuberculosis? Or striking out on her own leaving Wellington and going to work in Christchurch?

There was always more than a bit of Martha in Mum. She was always busy doing things for others. Putting her talents, her intelligence and her organizational skills at the service of the community whether that be in the parish - both here and in Whataroa - or through the Country Woman’s Institute or the Catholic Women’s league. Her causes were always those that gave pratical expression to her Christian faith - her work for the Missions and missionaries, for the sacredness of Life, for the poor and for the sick.

But Mum was always like the mature Martha of our Gospel today for she also knew the importance of a time to contemplate and to pray as well as devote her energies to doing good. For that reason she too could echo the great act of faith that Martha made: “Yes Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.”