New book: Krijn Pansters and Willem Marie Speelman, Completion: How the Story of the Franciscan Sisters of Veghel Continues (Veghel 2024).
The legacy of the Franciscan Sisters of Veghel speaks not of an end, but of a life that goes on forever. Yet the Sisters – after the four distinct eras of genesis (1844-), growth (1870-), renewal (1950-) and aging (1985-) – are now in an era of completion. Looking into the future thus becomes a looking into the past and into what really matters: living through deep values, which want to be passed on. Seen this way, this final phase is only a transitional one. For a century and a half, the central focus for the Sisters was to live out spirituality: in community and prayer, out of love for God, through concrete acts of service, caring and humanity. Over the past half century, however, it has increasingly been about passing on spirituality, in the realization, namely, that one’s own community was finite and finitude was also a reality. How could the confronting fact of approaching completion be made fruitful in a “spirituality for later”? How, in other words, could the story of the Sisters of Veghel continue?
See the English version here.
