By Brian Davies
"courtsey of Kerry Myres, Catholic Weekly"

A requiem in Autumn for 93-year old Joanna Cotter of Ireland, Sr Benedict RSJ, in the sisters' chapel Hunters Hill, celebrated and closed the last of the lives of six young girls from one Irish family who each became a nun, their childhood and vocations beginning at the dawn of the last century and ending only this year in the 21st century...all now laid to rest.

Sr Benedict RSJ was the youngest of the six whose pastoral lives enriched the Church in New Zealand and Australia - places, Sr Benedict recalled, that their mother had said, in the fine accents of Limerick, that none of her daughters would be going to...far away countries, too far away. How wrong she was. Each of the six did. And each was a Josephite nun. But not until 1955 did chance bring all six together in the photo above, when they were all in Sydney to attend a retreat. The seventh daughter, Bridget, had stayed home in Limerick to care for her parents and the girls' only brother, Timothy, but even she was persuaded to join her sisters the nuns in Australia where, after her death 16 years later in 2001, she was buried with her deceased sisters at Macquarie Park..

It was Sr Benedict - Joanna - who went back to Ireland on compassionate leave in the mid-1980s to claim Bridget, after 'winding up the family home', and convinced her to join her scattered sisters in Australia and New Zealand.

And scattered were their days and lives and personalities. The eldest daughter Mary (Molly), Sr Arsenius, and the next-born Margaret (Sr Patrick) spent their religious lives in New Zealand and both are buried with other Josephites at Panmure, Auckland. The next sister, Eileen (Sr Leila) also spent years in New Zealand but was recalled to Australia

The Cotter daughters included twins, Kitty and Ita. Kitty kept her baptismal name as Sr Catherine and Ita was professed as Sr Benita. Catherine was the most traveled of the girls - first in Western Australia, then to convents in Victoria, back to Western Australia and then to her final posting, Sydney's then outer suburbs such as Lidcombe, Panania, and Revesby. Catherine was 44-years a nun.

Her twin Sr Benita, however, was 68-years one - about 20-years in Western Australia and then another 20 years in Sydney primary schools as teacher, deputy and Principal, but with her passion for books, information and knowledge she became Librarian at the University library at Mount Street. Exploiting her openness to change and her passion for theology, ecclesiology and the human sciences, the Library expanded almost exponentially and her major assistant was a Marist Brother science teacher. They formed an expert working partnership in the management of the library and also became great friends, with Sr Benita guiding the science teacher to develop his literary and painting skills.

With six of her children gone away, a twist of fate offered their mother, and brother, in Limerick a consolation. After that photo was taken in 1955, Joanna - Sr Benedict - was sent to join the staff of the new Josephite Juniorate at Newmarket in Ireland until 1963 It was some 20 years later then that she went back for Bridget.

The years that the six Cotter sisters gave to their vocations totaled 352 years of commitment to their faith in the service of God and his people and the Josephite who wrote a memoir for them, Sister Catherine Thom, said the Gospel message 'We are already the children of God' somehow rang like a clarion call through the Chapel that day of Sr Benedict's requiem.

For Sr Thom the Cotter sisters served to remind her of yesterday and today: "So much of society today is geared to impermanence," she said.

"We are a throwaway society; instant gratification, broadband that gives us instant connectivity to anywhere in the world; equipment, furniture, utensils that are not made to last; everything has transience built into it. Forests that have lasted for centuries astound us; marriages that celebrate fifty, sixty and seventy years seem incomprehensible in today's world. But isn't there some witness value in fidelity over a life time? Does not the presence among us of people who 'stick at' something impress us? Do we not stand in awe at the daily recurrence of sunrise and sunset? If yes is the answer to any or all of the above questions, then the witness of the Cotter family speaks volumes about what is possible and admirable in human beings answering a call and remaining faithful to it for all those years...in.their life times....352 years.