On 3rd August 2012, when the time for her departure to her beloved was nearing, Sr. Julie gasped for breath but through the oxygen mask we could hear her say, “Amen, amen” as though responding to the repeated words of Sr. Leony: “Jesus, I surrender myself to you”. The previous day she seemed to have said that she was happy to go home and spoke for long with the sisters who visited her. Did Sr.Juliana get a premonition that she would leave this world that day? She seems to have been ready to face her Master, as she offered all her suffering for the Love of Jesus! In her autobiography she wrote that her favourite quotations were, “Abide in Me and I in you.” “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus concerning you.” “The happiest moments of the day are when I am in communion with Him.” She concluded her life story thus, “For all that has been I thank God, for all that is to come I say “Yes” knowing that I am His beloved one.”
All the messages that have come from different sisters, faculty, students, friends and well wishers, confirm that she lived a life pleasing to the Lord. She witnessed to God’s love for all those who came in touch with her. She made no difference in her dealing with people but rather she considered them all as children of God. She treated each person gently and this gentleness touched the hearts of all including hard core prisoners.
In the Gospel of St. Mathew we read about Jesus saying, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” (Mt. 16:24) There is nothing attractive, easy, secure, comfortable, convenient, strategically efficient, economical, or self- fulfilling about taking up a cross. And yet, says Dietrich Bonhoeffer in ‘The Cost of Discipleship’.
“To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity…the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a person, he bids him come and die.”
Editorial Team:
Sr.Fatima Furtado fmm,
Sr.Kochuthresia Poulose fmm