A Personal letter to Mother Bernarda in the year 2000

Dear Bernarda

In these last few months I learned more about you and the situation you were in. I could read between the lines. I took note of your worries and difficulties and admired your courage and trust.

I would like to thank you for your work and great love. This world can be glad to have had people like you. From you I learned how good it is to listen to the voice within. It is good to take note of one's own feelings and be prepared to swim sometimes against the current. To be consistent and not to lose courage when it means to go one's own way. From you I have learned to trust God in prayer even when it appears foolish and nobody understands.

I would like to thank you since you hardly received gratitude for your work and service during your life time. You did great things in and for human beings.

A few months ago I met and learned to know sisters who joined the congregation you founded. They try, as you did then, to walk the way of the Gospel. Like you they carry the concern for a Christian education of the young in their hearts and into the world. They meet people with their many problems of today and with them try to find new ways. It is not easy, but like you they put their trust in God that he might support and sustain this congregation and its work so that his love may become visible in the hearts of people today.

This is not an easy time. Christianity and the Church need to change. Many find this very difficult. One often hears people speak about a time without any orientation.

Is that true? I don't think it is quite so. The orientation (Christ) is there all right, one just has to search for it and allow oneself to find it.

I can imagine that your world was different. But so very different it could not have been. Of course, we have cars, aeroplanes and computers, but are we happier or closer to God because of these?

It is very important, especially today, to give our children a solid religious education. This is often the only way to convince them that it is possible to live in a world without war and starvation.

You fought. Wasn't it cheeky what these so called "great men" allowed themselves?

How much you must have suffered. Did you not feel at times like giving up and running away from it all? Well, I would have done it. But you....no. The love for God and fellow human beings kept you going as well as perseverance and faith in yourself.

You stood up for your convictions and experienced what suffering entailed. How I would have liked to have a look inside you. What was your prayer like and how did you experience God? Didn't you have doubt at times? I guess you did.

You never wrote about your inner life. I wonder what questions preoccupied your mind. Somebody in this century once said: "there are no statistics which tell how many people died of starvation emotionally because those who did experience it never spoke about it." Do you know what I mean? I am convinced you would have been able to say a lot if you had the chance. But you were and still are (just) a woman. What a pity, you would be able to tell me a lot and many others too. But even today many of us women do not have it easy. Just in our time and in this country women often have to achieve so much in order to be recognised. This applies to their position in the Church and/or in politics. It is for this reason that we need to speak out our thoughts and the goals we have and how we experience our time.

Cecile