Sister Mary Henry (Winifred Jeanne Yeaman) was born on February 14^th 1929, the only child of Charles and Eveline Yeaman. She was baptized in St John’s Church Kidsgrove on June 23^rd 1936, no reason is recorded for her rather late baptism but it coincided with her beginning school, and she was confirmed by Archbishop Williams in Our Lady of the Angels in Stoke on May 25^th 1941.  Her father was the City of Stoke-on –Trent Electrical Engineer and quite a well-known figure locally. A street is named after him in Stoke, so Sister Mary Henry’s name will live on in her beloved Potteries. He died when she was eleven years old and her mother remarried though the only mention of her stepfather is that he was a cellist so obviously contributed to her love of music.

She began at her beloved St Dominic’s High School in Stoke in the prep department at the age of five, in 1934, and was there until 1947. After a short time of student teaching in Kenilworth she joined the Sisters of Mercy in September 1948. She records that once clothed she realised that she was in the

By Sr Ann Catherine Swailes

(Sr Ann Catherine works at the University Chaplaincy in Cambridge, and since January has been acting chaplain.  This speech was given at the Fisher Dinner, an annual event for members and alumni of Fisher House.)

Fisher Dinner Reflection 2022

As Henry VIII used to say to his wives – I promise I won’t keep you long.  But it’s traditional for the chaplain to say a few words at this point in proceedings, and also traditional for the chaplain’s speech at the Fisher Dinner to constitute something of a review of the life of the chaplaincy since the last such occasion, and, as your soon to be Acting Chaplain Emerita, I’m delighted – if somewhat trepidatious – to be sharing in this venerable tradition at the conclusion of what has been, by any standards, a remarkable year in the life of our community.

By Sr Rose Rolling o.p.

Introduction

Our war of the mind continues on and we come now to our third thought and the last of the temptations against our physical nature encountered on the spiritual journey. What do you get when you combine the excess of gluttony with the objectification of lust? Avarice! That’s our thought for tonight.

For those of you who attended our first session, we introduced the Desert Father Evagrius, who could be considered the father of mental combat.  Evagrius writes about “the inner thoughts that want to acquire riches and to consume the intellect with anxiety about them”[1] Avarice is precisely this mental preoccupation with money and possessions and the dedication of oneself to their pursuit and protection. It is not so much defined by the love of possessions as such but by the love of possessing as an attitude of mind and heart.  

How might this love of possessing incarnate itself? The psychotherapist Solomon Schimmel says that avarice can take the form of “the cutthroat competitor, the workaholic, the swindler, the miser, the gambler, and even the spendthrift”[2]. What is striking is that what Schimmel lists above are states of being – being a workaholic or a spendthrift is a whole way

by Sr Mary Magdalene Eitenmiller o.p

Tonight we will discuss the capital vice of gluttony. And I would like to begin with a few words from [SLIDE 2] “Evagrius Ponticus (c.346-399) in what is today modern-day Turkey. In order to deal with his personal sin, Evagrius retreated to the Egyptian desert and joined a cenobitic community of Desert Fathers. In AD 375, Evagrius developed a comprehensive list of eight evil “thoughts” (λογισμοι; logísmoi), or eight terrible temptations, from which all sinful behaviour springs.[1]