"THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE"

by Paul Kelly
(Ilford, Essex, UK)

“THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE”
SYNOPSIS

JOACHIM FLYNN was born in Glasgow to Irish parents in the year 1926. He was a Catholic and went to a Catholic school with other Catholic boys, but Joachim always felt that there was something about him that wasn't just quite right. He didn't think like the other boys and the Parish Priest tried to convince him that he had a vocation to the priesthood and that was the reason why he felt as he did, but Joachim had no inclinations for the priesthood or for the married state. The other Catholic boys grew up and fell in love, mostly with Catholic girls, but some went their own way and disregarded the teachings of the church into which they were born and married elsewhere, if they married at all.
Joachim grew up too and he also fell in love, but he fell in love with God and the Shadow of God followed Joachim throughout the whole of his life with a special vocation . . . greater than the priesthood ... greater than the married state. He was born in the imitation of Christ, where like Christ he gave his life for another.
'For no greater love hath any man ... than that he lay down his life for his friend.'

SISTER MARIE GENEVIEVE OF THE SACRED HEART had serious misgivings about her religious vocation as a Roman Catholic nun. She had entered the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Orphans in 1941 when she was eighteen years of age and strove to become perfect in her calling in all she was asked to do, since she had made a vow of obedience to her Superior, in all that is not sin.
MOTHER HYACINTH OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION was her Superior and God's representative to all of her Sisters in the convent, but the abnegation of one's intellect to another, even if it is to please God, is an extremely difficult thing for anyone to do as Sister Marie Genevieve found out. The vow of obedience is the most difficult of all of the three vows she had taken; the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and it is one thing to obey, when you respect the commander, but quite another thing when you consider the person telling you what to do, to be an idiot ... and who believes that sacrifice and suffering is necessary to attain salvation even if she is a Superior Religious Nun. . . SUFFERING, SUFFERING, SUFFERING was the order of the day at the convent of the Little Sisters of the Orphans . . . but . . . Sister Genevieve met and fell in love with JOACHIM FLYNN when as a Little Sister of the Orphans, she was training as a nurse at a local general hospital and Joachim is a patient with tuberculosis. He also has a slight limp, having suffered with talipes, (club foot,) when he was born. It was Joachim's spirituality that primarily attracted Sister Genevieve, but she eventually found that her love for Joachim was greater than her dislike for her Mother Superior and she began to have doubts about where she should be in life. After much prayer and when Joachim is tragically killed in a road accident, Sister Genevieve leaves the convent and relinquishes her vows.

This is when tragedy strikes in her own life when as plain Jenny Kershaw, she takes a job nursing, again in a hospital, but she is relegated to the Special Clinic where she meets Number 346, Ashley Chelmsford, a very young man who comes from London and is as much a cockney as you could ever wish to meet, who refuses to be numbered and calls himself Ashley Bubblecock, much to Jenny's amusement and delight. A great friendship springs up from their meeting and Ashley turns out to be a very loyal friend indeed. Later Jenny encounters troubles of her own when under the influence of chloroform, she is raped; the consequences of which renders her pregnant and having worked so closely in the Special Clinic, it is feared that the rapist could have suffered from some venereal disease. Jenny is distraught and her world falls to pieces, but she will not have an abortion, believing that she should never destroy life under any circumstance, but happily she is cleared of any sign of infection and delivers a healthy young son whom she christens Joachim. The birth would have been perfectly natural, except for the extraordinary coincidence that the little boy is born with a club foot, but this is quickly remedied by surgery. It transpired that the rapist is someone who would never have been considered to have acted in this way and is a surprise to everyone, especially Jenny. He commits suicide and the child grows up into normal childhood.

Jenny returns to nursing only to find that one of her patients is none other than Mother Hyacinth of the Immaculate Conception, her Superior from her convent days and although much older and also blind, is still as cantankerous and self-willed as ever, with her eternal demands. . . The demands of one who considers herself to be very special, but her final demand cannot be executed . . .

“You would put an animal down if it became ill and suffering,” the Mother Superior told Jenny, “but you wouldn’t help me to be relieved of MY suffering….”


Paul Kelly, 19 Broadhurst Avenue, Ilford, Essex,(U.K) IG3 9DL
Email paul.kelly1@talktalk.net Te. 0207 9984808