RIP, Joan Fisher MSC,
a memento today as we celebrate Joan’s requiem and funeral.
Our prayers and sympathy to our Sisters in their grief.
“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” (Ps. 42:1)
Joan Fisher
Born: 21-8-1931
First Profession: 3-2-1953
Entered Eternal Life: 29-3-2024.
Sr Joan was born in Melbourne in the suburb of Coburg. She was one of four children, three sisters and one brother. She was raised in a Catholic working-class family. Sadly, Sr. Joan’s mother died when she was still a young teenager. Sr. Joan always felt deeply the loss of her mother.
During the years 1954 – 1984 Sr. Joan served in Administration and Nursing at many of our hospitals and Age Care Facilities. Joan served at Mena House Hospital, Sacred Heart Hospital, St. Joseph’s Tower Aged Care, and Mary’s Grange Aged Care in Tasmania. In 1977 whilst still living at Mary’s Grange Sr. Joan began a new ministry of Pastoral Care at Sandy Bay Parish.
Joan speaking at a Chapter meeting
From 1984 till 1990 Sr. Joan travelled to America and spent time with our MSC Sisters at the Annunciation House of Prayer in Reading. She trained in Spiritual Direction at St Joseph’s College Connecticut, and the Jesuit Spirituality Centre in Wernersville Pennsylvania. Sr. Joan entered an internship Program for the Life’s Healing Journey Retreat at Sacred Heart Spirituality Centre in Youngstown Ohio. Her personal experience of this Retreat had a lasting impact upon her and the direction of her future ministry in the area of Spirituality.
On returning to Australia in 1990 Joan joined the MSC Retreat Team at St. Mary’s Towers Retreat Centre in Douglas Park, NSW, eventually becoming the Director till 2003. The spirituality of Life’s Healing Retreat was always very close to Joan’s heart. She gave this retreat in many parts of Australia and further afield in South Africia and Papua New Guinea. She also conducted Seminars in South Africa on the Spirituality of Ageing.
In 2006 Joan returned to Melbourne. She continued to give Spiritual Direction and some Retreats but on a lesser scale as she desired in her autumn years to live a more contemplative lifestyle. She recently wrote; “The Trinity has become very much a part of my life, and my desire is to enter more fully into that circle of Love within the Trinity.”
Joan at a recent MSC Sisters' celebration, Sisters and MSC confreres
During her last illness, Joan’s desire to live a more contemplative life was sorely tested. She found herself journeying through deep valleys, large crevices, vast plains, and dry deserts. It is significant that she died on Good Friday, finally uttering the words with her beloved Jesus ‘It is complete’. May she now be finally at peace in the joy of the Resurrection. And may she truly be enfolded in God’s Trinitarian Love.
On behalf of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of the Australian Province,
Sr. Theresia Veenker msc