... I had gone to Ireland for my University studies, and it was there that at Easter in my first year (1974) I had an experience of God’s Love. It was a wonderful experience, one that I would find out later a great many people are blessed to have in their lives.
That was very well, but then a few months later the real shock came when I experienced within me a call to the priesthood (presbyteral ministry).
I have often been asked how this call came to me. I do not recollect one single dramatic moment. It just surfaced. Because I live by the sea, I have used the analogy of a rock which is hidden under water, but which surfaces, becomes visible at low tide. That call to priesthood was like that rock.
That call was profoundly destabilising, totally disorientating. l had grown up with the complete belief that God called boys, men to the priesthood ,and only them, and I had never questioned it.
So now it was my whole sense of identity which was thrown into question: if only men got that calling, what did that make me ? I knew I was a girl, a young woman... but a girl wouldn't experience that call, so what was I?
My whole world had been turned upside down.
The calling was strong, solid...like a rock.
It totally derailed my life. ...