Growing order: Good Samaritan Sisters congregation leader Sr Clare Condon welcomes two novices, Sr Juniko Toaua and Sr Tuata Terawete to the order.
KIRIBATI women are embracing religious life as two more women joined the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict this month.
Tuata Terawete and Juniko Toaua, of the Republic of Kiribati, are among the already nine women from their country who have joined the Good Samaritan Sisters.
The two Kiribati-born and raised women took their First Professions in a moving, joyful, inspiring and prayerful Mass on June 6 at St Thomas Aquinas Church in Springwood, NSW.
Sr Juniko and Sr Tuata are part of a growing group of Kiribati women drawn to the Good Samaritan way of life.
The order has already attracted two perpetually professed sisters, four temporary professed sisters and three women in the pre-novitiate phase.
For the last two years the newly professed sisters have participated in the novitiate program where they lived in the Lawson community of Good Samaritan Sisters and studied the charism and history of the congregation, the Rule of St Benedict, scripture, theology and mission.
“Tuata and Juniko have grown spiritually during these two years of novitiate,” novice director Sister Maree Nash said.
“They are joyous, thoughtful and prayerful young women. It has been a privilege to journey with them.”
While 24-year-old Sr Tuata felt “nervous” about making the next step in her journey with the Good Samaritan Sisters, she was “excited about it and also eager to be part of the congregation in their living and in the mission”.
Fellow novice Sr Juniko also said it was “a big step” in her vocation discernment.
“It is a big step for me, but I am so happy to continue my journey with the Good Samaritan Sister,” Sr Juniko said.
“I would love to work with my people in Kiribati.”
In the coming weeks, the new novices will return to Kiribati where they will continue with a study program and engage in ministry.
If after four years they wish to continue in the Good Samaritan way of life, they can renew their vows for a further two years or request to make their perpetual profession.
Congregational leader Sr Clare Condon said the profession Mass “united” the two newly professed women with the Good Samaritan Sisters.
“This profession ceremony is a ritual of acceptance, a ritual of invitation to belong, a ritual to be united as one with the community,” Sr Condon said in her words of admonition, an address delivered in the Benedictine tradition by the congregational superior to novices.
Lawson parish priest Fr Paul Slyney presided at the profession Mass, attended by many Good Samaritan Sisters, Good Samaritan Oblates, parishioners and members of other religious congregations.
“It is love that brings you here today,” Sr Condon said.
“You are choosing to love through a celibate life and to belong to a community by vowing your life to God through the vows of stability, conversion, and obedience as Sisters of the Good Samaritan.
“The vows that you will pronounce today bind you to the God of integrity and justice, tenderness and love, and faithfulness.
“As we heard in the first reading [Hosea 2:16, 21-22], this God seeks us first. God speaks to our heart and so we respond from the heart by seeking God with the same gift of integrity and justice, tenderness and love.
“It is this gift that you bring to the community that you join today. The members of the community bind themselves to you also today.”
Sr Tuata and Sr Juniko proclaimed their vows of stability, conversion of life and obedience, and sang the Suscipe (an ancient prayer from the Rule of St Benedict) in their own language.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, and is Australia’s first ‘home-grown’ congregation of Catholic religious women.
Archbishop John Bede Polding, an English Benedictine monk and Australia’s first bishop, founded the Good Samaritan Sisters in Sydney in 1857.
Today, there are around 235 sisters living and working throughout Australia, in Japan, Kiribati, and the Philippines. Since 1991 the Sisters have been working in the remote Pacific island nation of Kiribati in education, pastoral and community development roles.
