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DTSTAMP:20260518T175341Z
UID:57-1016113@holyhermits.com.au
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251130
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251130
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20250926T122457
DESCRIPTION: Mary/Maria Boulding (3 May 1929 - 11 Nov 2009) \nLife\nAn
  English nun\, writer and translator\, born in Surrey to a Roman Catholic 
 convert and his second wife\, her mother’s early death made her responsi
 ble for her younger siblings at the age of sixteen. As a good student\, Ma
 ry was offered a scholarship to Oxford\, but she declined in favour of joi
 ning Stanbrook Abbey in Worcester in 1947\, given the name Ethelburga\, an
 d taking solemn vows in April 1952. She described herself as “intellectu
 ally frustrated\, stagnant and unhappy”\, so the abbess encouraged her t
 owards theology. Mary became an external student of the University of Lond
 on\, and was a staunch supporter of renewal and openness in the Church.\nH
 er first book was published in 1973\, entitled Contemplative Nuns - are th
 ey Wasting their Lives? when she returned to using the name Maria. She joi
 ned the theological commission of the English Benedictine Congregation in 
 the late 1970’s\, and published a number of books on monastic life. Alth
 ough rarely appearing in public\, she made a conference tour of the Holy L
 and\, Australia and Japan in 1980\, then lived as a hermit from 1985 to 20
 04 with her dog and her cat.\nFrom 2004 until her death in 2009 she travel
 led and continued translating and revising\, including a translation of Th
 e Confessions of St Augustine\, before being diagnosed with cancer in 2008
 . She insisted that no Latin be read at her funeral in 2009.  \nSome Writ
 ings\n“Prayer is a listening to the creative\, life-giving word that lov
 es us into being.”\n“In today's world silence is in short supply\; thi
 s is a serious problem for our society\, and anything we can do to help pe
 ople recover a sense of silence as a necessary and positive element in hum
 an life is a contribution to the general sanity.”\n“Flesh is the turmo
 il of times of change. Flesh is the opaque\, ambiguous\, messy character o
 f most of our human experience. And flesh is precisely where the paschal m
 ystery operates.”   \n“In the lives of those who believe and pray\, 
 there are bleak winters of the spirit. We seem to go along well for a whil
 e in prayer and relationships and life generally\, but from time to time w
 e disintegrate. It is very painful. You may suspect that this will prove t
 o be a creative disintegration\, that God is re-creating you\, putting you
  together in the likeness of his Son at a new and deeper level. Certainly 
 this does happen: growth is not easy\; there is a probably distressing per
 iod for the caterpillar on the way to butterflyhood. We are all participan
 ts in this experience from time to time\, and a chrysalis needs sympatheti
 c understanding\, so we should be gentle and patient with ourselves\, as w
 ith others. Nevertheless\, they are hard to live through\, these winters o
 f the spirit. When you know yourself to be sterile\, helpless\, unable to 
 deal creatively with your situation or change your own heart\, you know yo
 ur need for a Savior\, and you know what Advent is. God brings us to these
  winters\, these dreary times of deadness and emptiness of spirit\, as tru
 ly as he brings winter after autumn\, as a necessary step towards next spr
 ing. But while we are in them they feel like a real absence of God\, or ou
 r absence from him… In the winters of your prayer\, when there seems to 
 be nothing but darkness and a situation of frozenness\, hold on\, wait for
  God. He will come.”  \nBooks\n\nContemplative Nuns - are They Wasting 
 Their Lives? (1973)\nNuns - What Are They For? (1974)\nMarked for Life: Pr
 ayer in the Easter Christ (1979)\nPrayer: Our Journey Home (1980)\nThe Com
 ing of God (1982)\nA Touch of God: Eight Monastic Journeys (1983)\nwritten
  with Philip Jebb Gateway to Hope: An Exploration of Failure (1985)\nGatew
 ay to Resurrection (2010)\nThe Confessions of St. Augustine (1998) transla
 tion of this and several other works of St Augustine\n\nExtra reading on M
 aria:\nWikipedia\nhttps://plex.page/Mary_Boulding \nA blog reflecting on h
 er Obituary from The Times
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T122457
LOCATION:Remember
SUMMARY:Holy Hermit Sr Maria Boulding
URL;VALUE=URI:https://holyhermits.com.au/events/holy-hermit-sr-maria-bouldi
 ng/2025-11-30
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