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016 marks the 20th anniversary of my leaving Mayfield. It seems only yesterday that I was doing my
A‐levels! Various friends from my year are organising an event to mark the occasion. I’m sure it will be a very joyful day and I shall be sorry to miss it, however, for the past 11 years I have allowed God to make my plans, and from Sydney, a weekend in England is not very feasible!
In the early summer of 2005, when I was working as a trainee accountant in London, having graduated from Bristol 4 years previously with a BA in French and Spanish under my arm, I made a rapid but clear decision to change my life course. Up until that moment I had thought that it was totally up to me to plan out my life and if I followed that plan - get my ACA, get married, have children - then I would be happy. A few years earlier I had been to World Youth Day and had realised that I both wanted and needed Christ to take a more important role in my life; in reality, I found it pretty difficult juggling a social and young professional life in London with a desire to live as a good Catholic.
Earlier that year I had met two Fraternas (as the members of the Marian Community of Reconciliation are known) and had been initially quite excited to practise my Spanish with them and share stories of adventures in South America. These were two young Colombian women who had left family, home and everything they knew to evangelize the English. They were living in Manchester - a place almost as far from my radar as Colombia - and had come to visit London for the week- end. As I got to know them I realised that I shared their dreams of striving for holiness by “restoring all things in Christ” and that their way of life appealed to me deeply. Within a couple of months I had resigned from my job, packed my bags and was on a train to Manchester with a one-way ticket, knowing little more than that I was going to “join the Marian Community of Reconciliation”. Although it was certainly sudden, I was excited and there was a deep and peaceful certainty that I was doing the right thing.
The Marian Community of Reconciliation was founded in Peru in 1991, on the Feast of the Annunciation, and has expanded across the world and is present not only in various countries in South America and England but also in the US, Italy and Australia. Our mission is as varied as the people and the places we serve.
After three years of formation I spent some time in the US before being sent to our Mother House in Lima, Peru. While there I spent a year teaching English at a secondary school, and also had the privilege of getting to know people from shanty towns who lived with less than what for me were bare necessities. After my first year in Lima, I was helping to develop some of our volunteer projects in Peru and elsewhere and seeking funding to help them continue to function. Whilst in Lima, I also often accompanied groups from overseas who came for a mission experience. In July 2015
I was sent to our community in Sydney, a place very different to Peru but no less in need of God.
Fraterna Accountant to
I continue to work in fundraising for the Community as a whole, but am also actively
involved in the apostolic mission of our local community here. We are five Fraternas in the heart of an ever-more secular city where many people are indifferent to God. In a nutshell, our mission is to help the laity in all states of life to be witnesses of Christ’s love in the midst of the world and we do that through activities such as faith formation groups, leading spiritual retreats and mission trips to developing countries.
Later this year - on 3rd September - I will make
my Perpetual Profession as a Fraterna. On that day I will solemnly profess my commitment to be obedient and remain celibate for all the days of my life so that I can be fully available to God and to the mission that He entrusts to me. I ask you all to pray for me as I take this transcendental step.
OC ElizabethFlynn(Class of 1996)
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The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2016
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