Saturday, June 11, 2022
Sister Therese Aucoin was a lovely, kind woman.
During the summer of 1997 she accompanied Sr Mary Devlin who made weekly visits to our home. My husband had returned from the Regional in early August to spend his last months in familiar surroundings. Sr Aucoin could drive, Sr Devlin could not. We were so touched that Mary Devlin had suggested the weekly Holy Communion visits and had enlisted Sr Aucoin as her driver.
We had moved to New Brunswick in 1970 when my husband accepted his first position at UNB Fredericton. Of course, we could never have imagined that either of us would develop a terrifying illness at such a relatively young age. In what had to have been the most difficult time in our lives these two women helped to take the edge off our isolation by making us feel as though we were a part of their lives. They were wonderful and I never forgot it.
Sr Devlin was an honorary pall bearer at my husband’s funeral, held during the Christmas season of 1997 … and following that she called me every night thereafter until her own health began to fail in 2012. Sr Devlin was a wonderful woman and a great friend to me. I have never forgotten the lift that her and Sr Aucoin’s visits gave to us.
My husband and I thought of Sisters Aucoin and Devlin as true Sisters of Charity… meeting a need quietly and unceremoniously.
The congregation is now approaching the end of its institutional road and one wonders who among the laity will take up the task in the future that was shouldered 25 years ago by these women.
At this time we in the laity need to be thinking about this, and remembering the women, like Mary Devlin and Therese Aucoin who embraced, and fulfilled, this magnificent dimension of the Lord’s work.
