Reason to Hope

By Amanda Peter

Reason to Hope is a true story of a young woman born into the privileged life of a white, middle class family in South Africa at the height of apartheid.

Despite having a bright future with a promising career and prospects of marriage, she decides to forsake the freedoms, comforts, and pleasures of this world to follow God in poverty, chastity, and obedience for the salvation of souls inspired by the message of Fatima of 1917.

Eventually, after a convoluted journey taking her across continents, she would become a temporary professed sister in the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Emotional, thoughtful, and spiritually enlightening, Reason to Hope describes the pivotal moments of Amanda's life with honesty and openness. With humility she shows the reader what she believes and why even all these years later.

This book is perfect for those who are curious about faith, religious life, spirituality, Mother Teresa, Catholicism or even just a different side of life that is rarely portrayed in our modern times. Its call to hope is an inspiration for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490746968

Amanda Peter

Amanda Peters memoir is an inspiring story woven in love, suffering, sorrow, joy and hope. She is married and lives in London, engaged in the field of pharmaceutical research and clinical trials, for the development of new medicines.

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© Copyright 2016 Amanda Peter.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

Names of certain individuals have been changed to protect their identity. Everything written is true.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4696-8 (e)

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Dedicated to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Three in One. Through Mary Most Holy, Mother of God, Theotokos, most perfect handmaid of the Lord ever to live, my ‘Mother’ and exemplar.

‘Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria.’

Contents

Preface

The Conversation

A Backdrop

First Beginnings

A Short History of South Africa

The Influence of Culture on our Thought, Behaviour, and Development

An Early Awakening of God

Desire to Become a Saint

The First Big Sin

Realization of other Faiths, Cultures, and Beliefs

The Crisis for Truth

Christianity or Judaism after the Advent of Jesus Christ

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Further Enquiry

Deepening in the Truth

Fatima and Our Lady

Growing in Faith

The Communion of Saints

How Far Are You Prepared to Go?

Take all but give me Souls

Durban

Mother of Sorrows

Spoilt for Choice

The Journey to Rome

San Vittorino

Novena to St Therese of the Child Jesus

Life as an OMVF Postulant

True Devotion to Mary

Lock-and-Key Mechanism

The Hour Has Come

Suspended in Darkness

Come and See

New Dawn

The Great Trial

Life in the Novitiate at Tor Fiscale

New Crisis

The Tiber Beckons

Meeting a Saint

Blessing in Disguise

Return to Rome

Return to the World

Providence of God

Shadow of the Cross

The Phone Call

Conclusion

Preface

I will sing forever of your love, O Lord;

from generation to generation my mouth will proclaim your truth.

Of this I am sure, that your love lasts forever,

that your truth is firmly established as the heavens.

—Psalm 88 (89) v. 2

I t is with you dear reader, I come to sing of the mercies of the Lord. To sing of a God who is faithful, loving, trustworthy, and even providential towards us. No matter how difficult or painful our life can at times become, we should never give up hope. No matter how many twists, turns, betrayals, disappointments, and sufferings we may experience in this life — meaning, purpose, joy, hope, and happiness can still be found.

You may wonder how or why it is possible for me to say this. I say it because this has been my own experience. I have come to know and experience that God is not just a God up in the heavens, remote from us, dwelling far away in some rarefied air. No, he is not remote: He is our Emmanuel. He is our God ‘who is with us’. Who dwells with us. All suffering, all pain can have a higher purpose, meaning, even be redeeming, and lead to salvation, to the waters of everlasting life!

The sacred scriptures, in the book of the prophet Isaiah, says:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.

Fear not, for I am with you.

—Isaiah 43:1-3

King David of Israel had an experience of God that gave him complete confidence, hope, and trust in God’s mercy. With this knowledge of God as Emmanuel, he lived this hope, this joy in God despite his grave sins of adultery and murder for which he confessed and repented. He composed that wonderful psalm, ‘In te Domine speravi, non confundar in æternum!’ ¹ From his heart he prayed, ‘In you O Lord I hoped; I will not be deluded forever.’ That was my experience and continues to be my experience.

It is not only for King David to know and experience this love, joy, and hope in God. The invitation extends to each one of us while we are still pilgrims living on this earth. He measures his providence towards us according to our attitude in relationship to him. The more we abandon ourselves to God, the more his providence enters into the least details of our life. While there is life, before our time of judgement, truly there is hope. We have been redeemed; we have been called by name. There is reason to hope.

The Conversation

I t was a Saturday evening in Harley Street. That famous street in London for doctors in the medical profession who have, ‘made it’. Barry, himself a dentist, was throwing a Bollywood-themed party for his friends in his house on Harley Street. Downstairs was his surgery, and upstairs his living quarters. He had been a very good friend of my husband for many years.

That particular night, for some inexplicable reason, I did not feel like going to this party. I wished my husband and I could have had a quiet night at home, but my husband was keen to go. When the time came to get dressed for this Indian-themed party, I hoped I would not be too out of ‘in keeping with the spirit’, as I did not wear a sari. Who of them were to know, I secretly thought, that for eight years of my life I had worn a sari daily?

That evening at the party, Naz, herself a dentist, was standing behind me in the queue for the curry, plate in hand. Suddenly, in a rather inquisitorial tone, she said, addressing me from behind, ‘Amanda, I have always wanted to ask you …’

I spun around.

‘I heard you were once a nun in Mother Teresa’s order, and look at you now. You seem so happily married. I have always wanted to ask you, why did you become a nun? What was your reason for doing that? I am really curious to know. Please, will you tell me your story?’

She continued, probably reading the look of huge surprise on my face. ‘I would love to be married like you. How is it that you go to the convent, completely sacrifice the idea of marriage and children, and then when you end up leaving, you find some really nice man to marry when you are already in your thirties? You are so lucky. How did that happen for you? I am already thirty-seven, and I still have not found anyone suitable to marry. I did not go and lock myself away in a convent, but you did. Why did you go to the convent, and why did you leave? And how did you meet your husband? Please tell me your story.’

I don’t think I had ever been asked such personal direct questions touching on my sacred secret.

‘Naz,’ I asked, ‘what do you know about catholicism and religious life in the Catholic Church?’

‘Not much really, only what they show us on the TV. I have heard of Sister Act. I don’t really know that much. I was raised a Muslim, having been born in Northern Ireland. My parents came from Pakistan.’ She went on, ‘Barry told me you also had a number of boyfriends and proposals of marriage before you went to the convent. He also said you had finished your degree in pharmacy and even worked for a while.’

She continued, drawing in a deep breath, ‘You had everything going for you. Everything a young girl could possibly want. Your degree, your career, opportunities of marriage. It was as though you had a sugar cube in your mouth then you took it out and put it back in the bowl. Tell me why you did that! I really want to know!’

That eventful evening, Naz tapped something deep within me when she asked why, as she put it, I took the sugar cube out of my mouth and placed it back in the bowl. My reasons and secret had until then been very private and not something I wanted to talk about either with family or friends.

That night, as Naz and I began to talk, I understood that by sharing my story, by revealing the road I had travelled and the path along which God had led me — taught me — perhaps I could help inspire other’s to hope especially when all seems lost, dark and confused, as it had at times seemed to me.

Somehow I always came to the surface when I felt I was drowning. God never let me down even when I was sorely tried. I trusted in the Divine Holy Trinity, in our Lord Jesus Christ — the Word made flesh — who dwelt amongst us in Israel all those years ago and who continues to dwell among us in the Eucharist, in all the tabernacles of the world.

I have experienced he is truly a loving, caring God and Father, even if he is also a just God. We should never take His love and mercy for granted or abuse it.

Sharing my story has meant being stripped naked to a point — but if it helps others to have hope, the sacrifice will be worth it.

I personally knew and loved Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or ‘Mother’, as we —the sisters called her in the order she founded, known as the Missionaries of Charity. I will always consider it an honour and a blessing to have been — ‘one of them’ — to have worn the blue par sari. It was a privilege to have had the opportunity to sleep under the same roof as she did in Rome, eat at the same refectory table, pray in the same chapel. It was a privilege to have been a direct recipient of her teachings on the interior spiritual life, and to have been a direct witness of her discipleship of Christ, the Word made flesh. It was something I cherished deeply and kept hidden in my heart.

Now many years after her death, at that evening on the night of the Bollywood-themed party on Harley Street, partly due to the questions posed by Naz, something happened. I felt an angel take the coals, pass them over my lips, and instruct —‘Speak!’²

I do not have a shadow of a doubt the road I journeyed, with all its twists, turns, surprises, and sufferings, was God’s will for me. I have not always understood the reasons for things happening the way they did. At times I was sorely tested. I felt completely abandoned, forgotten, crushed. I did not have all the answers. When the situation seemed hopeless, all I could pray was — ‘Even if you kill me yet will I trust you.’³

If there is one thing I do know with absolute certainty—it is this: ‘For those who love God everything works unto good’.’⁴ God can most definitely write straight on a crooked line because he is God. He can change hearts. For our part we have to trust Him, turn to Him, and not lose hope.

If we do this, we will see how true it is that he can write straight on a crooked line. His providence will never fail us. All suffering can have meaning and value—and can be redemptive. If only we know how to unite our suffering with Christ on His Cross. Salve Crux, Spes Unica—Hail Cross, our only Hope.

The journey travelled was not without tremendous difficulties, with very dark nights of trials, sufferings, and uncertainties. Yet within it all — peace, joy, and happiness. After each night of trial and darkness, eventually the light of a new day would dawn.

The cycle of life still goes on. I am still a pilgrim like you, a wayfarer in this life, in this vale of tears, among the poor banished children of Eve, journeying sometimes in the dark night of faith, but always with the bright light of hope. The race that St Paul refers to in his letter to the Corinthians, for me and for you reading this, is still being run. It is not over yet. It is your face we seek, O Lord — show us your face!

This is the story of why I chose to forego the joys of marriage and children—to choose a life of atonement as a ‘nun’, if that was God’s will for me. Why I chose to leave the seemingly envious pleasures of the world behind, and swap them for a life hidden in the convent. Why I chose to embrace all the austerities of a strict religious life in poverty, chastity, and obedience for a period of nearly ten years.

Initially I was devastated when it became apparent I was not to renew my religious vows in the convent and the road had yet another twist. This is the story of how I took the bend, returned to the world and how I came to be happily married, not however without the shadow of the Cross.

I have never regretted the journey I began or the reason for taking the sugar cube out of my mouth. If I had my life all over again, I would have done exactly the same as before. I would have trodden the same path that God had led me down. I have no regrets for the road I took in the journey—only deep gratitude.

Mother Teresa would often say, ‘God can never be outdone in generosity.’

Yes, Mother Teresa was absolutely right. The more we give to God, the more we are blessed in return, and we can never love or serve God in excess. We can never love too much, even if we love to the point of death on a Cross.

This is the story of how God in all my trials turned my mourning into dancing⁵—and can do the same for you. It is with deep gratitude I lift my voice to sing with the words of the psalmist — ‘How can I repay the Lord, for all his goodness to me?’

And my answer is, ‘I will raise the chalice of salvation and invoke His Name.’ ⁶

A Backdrop

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the early 1960s, in the height of the apartheid regime. Growing up as a middle-class white person in apartheid South Africa meant a very privileged existence. I never had to make my bed, wash a plate, or cook a meal. Like many white families who shared my neighbourhood, we had servants who took care of that.

My mother was born in the early 1930s in the Transkei in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, a few years after Nelson Mandela, who also hailed from the same region. My mother’s father came from Lebanon and settled in a town called Butterworth, established as a Wesleyan mission station in 1827 north of the great Kei river. The reason he immigrated to South Africa was due to the difficulties Christian Maronites suffered at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the Turkish Ottoman Empire still ruled in Lebanon. Many Christians were made to suffer for their faith and belief in Christ and found it hard to secure work under Ottoman rule.

When my grandfather came to South Africa, he started out as a humble hawker and slowly built up his business in textiles and clothing and ended up a well-to-do businessman. He was forty years old when he married my grandmother who was only eighteen at the time. The twenty-two-year age gap that existed between them did not seem to bother them. They were blessed with four children and a happy marriage for 23 years until his death leaving her a widow at age forty-one.

She continued to live the rest of her life in East London, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. She was the only grandparent of my four grandparents I ever knew.

Once a year in the summer she would visit us for a few weeks. She never did like the Johannesburg winters. Being a city nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, at such high altitude where water boiled at ~94°C instead of at 100°C, it could get quite cold and icy.

I remember how I used to look so forward to my grandmother’s annual visit. I loved her company and delighted in her cooking, which was exquisite. She also had a deep Catholic faith in God and a deep intimate relationship with her Jesus and Our Lady. It was from her that first I learned about the ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ and the apparitions of St Margaret Mary Alacoque in France. It was in her hands I first saw the rosary dangle, as she would thumb the beads with each Hail Mary.

My father’s parents were married in Lebanon, and later together with their first two children they left, immigrating to South Africa. They settled in Natal and it was there, in the capital city of Pietermaritzburg their third child (my father) was born. My paternal grandparents left Lebanon for the same reason as my mother’s family. They left for a better life in South Africa, free from religious persecution for being a Christian.

When the Ottoman Empire fell and Lebanon became a French protectorate, life for Christians in the Middle East improved somewhat. My grandfather set sail back to Lebanon in the 1930s, passing through Genoa. On their return, they had their fifth and last child of the family. They lived back in their beloved Lebanon for the rest of their lives and upon their deaths, even to this day, the soil of the cedars claim their mortal remains.

As most of my father’s formative years were spent growing up in the Lebanon, he became a fluent speaker in Arabic, English, and French. He went on to study at the American University of Beirut, known as the AUB. After graduating with his BSc, he returned to South Africa curious to visit the land of his birth.

He was entitled to South African citizenship as a birthright, which meant he had the right to work without the hassle of visas. It was there that he met and fell in love with my mother and married her, leaving behind his family in Lebanon. Fortunately for him, he had one immediate relative who preceded him in returning to South Africa — his older brother.

For my parents, growing up in different countries on different continents during that time, the likelihood of them ever meeting seemed very remote. I do wonder at the providence of God at how they met, when international travel was not what it is today. The world was not the global village, as we know it, with the modern means of instant communication, technology, and the digital age. Statistically the odds were stacked up against them to ever meet, marry, and have a family together.

Another one of Mother Teresa’s sayings was, ‘Nothing ever happens by chance. It is all God’s providence.’ I am so glad their paths did cross — otherwise I and my brothers and their descendants would not be here today.

First Beginnings

M y parents first met each other in Johannesburg, in a town foreign to their origins, without any close family. Even that had the hidden designs of providence. After marrying, they happily lived together in Johannesburg, until the end of their lives. They were blessed with four children of which I was the second-born and only daughter. We were a close-knit family of six, growing up with no uncles, aunts, cousins, or grandparents, living in the same city. We loved each other very much, compensating for the paucity of an extended-family presence.

My mother’s siblings all married and remained in the Eastern Cape to raise their respective families. Often at Christmas each year we would have a family reunion with her side of the family. Her one brother had a holiday cottage by the seaside in the Transkei, at a place called Cebe. It was there we had very memorable family Christmases.

I loved those annual extended-family reunions with uncles, aunts, cousins, and our one and only very special and dearly beloved granny. I have such happy memories of these maternal family gatherings at Cebe.

Christmas was always a hot summer’s day spent in our swimming costumes on the beach. I used to wonder why Bing Crosby would sing on the radio, ‘I am dreaming of a white Christmas,’ until I was old enough to understand the southern hemisphere had opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere. A South African summer meant a European winter and vice versa.

My parents always said that when they were looking to move out of their flat to buy a house after their first child was born, the thing that clinched the deal for them to buy 10 Shirleydale Road was the fact that it was down the road from Maryvale Catholic Church. It meant a lot to them to buy a house near a catholic church.

The church’s official name was Our Lady of the Wayside or, in Latin, Maria Della Strada, in the suburb of Maryvale, Johannesburg. The original icon of Maria Della Strada after which the church is named is in the magnificent church of the Chiesa Del Gesu, home to the Jesuits in Rome, where the tomb of St Ignatius of Loyola can be found.

The location of the house in Shirleydale Road was considered ideal as it was not only down the road from the church but also down the road from St Paul’s Parochial School for Boys and the Assumption Convent Maryvale School for Girls, which were considered two very good schools at the time. A school being something important every parent needs to consider when moving into a neighbourhood.

So 10 Shirleydale Road was bought and remained in the family for fifty years until the death of my father. It was heart wrenching to sell it, although I was already married and living in London for over ten years. We took the decision to let some other family enjoy it rather than run the risk of it getting ruined and trashed, as sometimes can happen when a home is only rented and the tenants do not take good care of the property.

What happy memories the parental home had held for me. It was the only home I had ever known while growing up. Selling the family home in South Africa was yet another death, a painful letting-go. It seemed as though I was losing the last connection I had with the land of my birth, the land of my roots, even if my ancestors had come from another country.

Anyone who has wound up a family home after the death of the last parent will know the heartache of letting go. I mourned for the loss of the parental home and all it contained. With a heavy heart, I agreed to the sale of the house and felt an acute, keen loss for what was once so much a part of us. I had to let go. It would no longer belong to us. All things pass.

Life is a journey, and nothing on earth is ever permanent. We have no lasting city here below. We are pilgrims passing through this life, whether we like it or not. The wound of death hangs over all of us. All the riches of this world, all the power and technology, cannot save a life in the truest sense and meaning of the word — it can only at best postpone a death.

We cling to money, power, and possessions for our security. We make false idols of many things except the one thing necessary. Our lasting city is meant to be with God. We are made in the image and likeness of God, which means we are made for eternal life. We were made to know God, to love Him and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next.

We are immortal souls in mortal bodies. Our souls will always be in existence. However, whether we will always exist — damned in hell or exist saved in heaven depends on our choice. Mother Teresa would often tell us, ‘God created you without your will, but He will not save you without your will. We become saints by God’s grace and our wills.’

We cannot save a temporal life. We must one day die, however long we manage to postpone death. No-one gets out of this life alive. We must strive to save our souls. The world we live in at the dawn of the twenty-first century is fixated with the material and gives so little thought to the spiritual. Yet everything material comes to an end.

As a child, my world revolved around my family, school, tennis club, and church. These would have played a role in influencing my formative years. As all facilities were in easy walking distance of where I lived, I enjoyed a certain amount of independence. I would walk to school by myself in the mornings just as soon I was ready and come back from school whenever I chose to. I could stay for extramural sports, tennis, hockey, netball, and athletics or just chat to my friends until their mums would fetch them. Then I would walk home on my own. The only proviso for this full independence was to prove to my parents I could read a traffic light and know when to cross the street. The route home only ever involved one, single traffic light to cross or robot as we call them in South Africa. I used to walk to school and back for nine years of my formal schooling while I was a pupil at Maryvale Convent.

Being born into a Catholic family of Lebanese descent meant I was introduced into a certain culture both inherited and unique. My father, for some reason known to him alone, never taught us or spoke