By Susan Gately - 19 July, 2014
Sr Phil Tiernan RSCJ
The Australian nun who died on the fateful Malasian Airways flight MH17 was prepared for death, according to the Irish nun who was her spiritual director for the final weeks of her life.
Sr Phil Tiernan RSCJ was one of 298 passengers who died on the Malasian Airways flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpar which is believed to have been shot down by Russian separatists in Ukraine.
Sr Phil was returning from a sabbatical period.
The final portion of the period was doing a guided retreat at Joigny in France, birthplace of the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart in which Sr Phil had given her life since a young age.
Leading Sr Phil in the retreat was an Irish nun, Sr Aideen Kinlen RSCJ, former Provincial with the Society of the Sacred Heart in Ireland.
She said she was “dizzy with shock” after she heard the news of Sr Phil’s death early yesterday (Friday) morning.
“It is so strange to have accompanied a person during the last days of her life without realising it,” she told CatholicIreland.net
Sr Philomene Tiernan RSCJ, always known as Sr Phil, was chaplain to a secondary school in Sydney but spent recent months on sabbatical in Europe.
In May, she did a month long course in All Hallows College in Dublin, staying in a house in Achill Road, close to the order’s Provincialate in Drumcondra.
Sr Aideen Kinlen RCSJ
devastated and “dizzy with shock” at loss of friend.
At a conference in June in London, Sr Phil met Sr Aideen and the two travelled via the chunnel train to France to the village of Joigny, birthplace of Madeleine Sophie Barat who founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800.
There Sister Phil had an eight day guided one-on-one retreat, with Sr Aideen as her spiritual director.
In the course of the retreat, which was broken up half way through by a four-day workshop, the women became very close.
“She was an exceptionally warm person, kind and sensitive. She had a great sense of humour and her goodness was in keeping with that,” said Sr Aideen.
Joigny breathes the love of God, says Sr Aideen and Sr Phil was well prepared to meet her maker.
While the retreat followed the pattern of other retreats, Sr Aideen recalls two strong promptings she experienced which she passed on to Sr Phil.
One was a writing entitled So what will matter which she felt urged to give the Australian nun.
It begins “Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.”
“What will matter is not what you got but what you gave, not what you learned but what you taught, not your memories, but the memories that live in those that loved you.”
Another day, out of the blue, Sr Aideen thought of heaven.
“It is not a subject I’d normally dwell on,” she recalls. She shared her reflections with Sr Phil who at that point in the retreat was passing from a reflection on the Passion to the Resurrection.
When the Australian nun left on Wednesday (16 July) she was “in a deeply happy place and yet rooted in reality,” recalls Sr Aideen. “I helped her pack and we tried to reduce the weight of her luggage as she prepared for the long journey home.”
Sr Phil worked at Kincoppal Rose Bay Catholic school, Sydney, an establishment she had been associated with for more than thirty years, holding a variety of roles including Director of Boarding and teaching thousands of students, while providing pastoral care inside and outside the school.
“We are devastated by the loss of such a wonderfully kind, wise and compassionate woman, who was greatly loved by us all,” said Hilary Johnston-Croke, Principal of the school.
“Phil contributed greatly to our community and she touched the lives of all of us in a very positive and meaningful way”.
