The 4th October 2012 we celebrated Rose Anna’s Golden Jubilee.
With her, we choose the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, big lover of nature and specially for his gift of contact with the Moslems. He is, in a way, the first pioneer for the islamo-christians dialogue. He asked his disciples to be a witness for the Moslems. To be “Christians without fight and without violence” He had relations with the Sultan of Egypt of that time.
We were 18 surrounding Rose Anna this day which started with a Mass celebrated by F Michel Prignot, priest of the Mission de France. He is known as Mikey ( for those who know him.) We were 8 Christians ( 5 sisters of Sion and 10 Moslems. Rose Anna has invited some friends anciennes of Sion and some of her colleagues at work. The difficulty was to adapt the liturgy for the group. We choose the 1st letter to the Corinthians ch.13 and the Gospel of the feast of the Visitation. For the songs “ The hymn to the Creation” because of the feast of St Francis ( O God your are great, you are beautiful), “I come to you with open hands” from Gianada, To seek with you Mary, God steps” plus some refrains In Arabic. One of our Anciennes, Newine started singing the refrain as soon as she got the tune. It was very moving.
Rose-Anna with friends and the community
The gospel of the Visitation, icon of what we wish to live here, brought us to a sharing of all kind of encounters since the so beautiful one of Mary and Elizabeth, each one giving to the other and receiving back from her. Here also two of our Tunisian anciennes took part in a very profound and moving way, showing what can be an encounter between Christians and Moslems. For lack of organ a “simple” air of flute closed the Mass.!
Breakfeast on the gallery
After Mass two of our friends of Nabeul helped us to set the table and to achieve the last preparations. The tables were settled in our nice veranda. We were a bit squeezed but it was OK. The weather was beautiful. Ara prepared among other things, a big paella, very appreciated by the visitors. There were also different Tunisian salads and for the end a delicious ice cream. But the most beautiful was the extremely warm ambiance round Rose Anna.
At about 6pm the friends left back for Tunis before the sunset, everybody was happy of this day of joy, prayer, thanksgiving and friendship.
Sr Agnès Perrin NDS