How great was the occasion for the Dominican Sisters when, in these times of rarity of religious vocations, a very dedicated teacher of the Holy Name Secondary School committed her life to God as a Dominican Sister on the feast of the Birthday of Our Lady, September 8, 2010.
Renée Hall hails from San Fernando where she received a good Christian upbringing from her beloved parents. It was there also that she was well educated: seven years at a Government school, seven years at the St. Joseph’s Convent Secondary School and the University of the West Indies.
It was at the Cave Hill Campus in Barbados that Renée Hall met a Dominican, Sr. Martin Dominic Allum, who became for her a pillar of support and opened new horizons for her.
These horizons became even vaster when she took part in the 2005 World Youth Day held in Germany. It was on this occasion that she was given, as it were, to feel the vibrant pulse of the Roman Catholic Church and this experience had a great impact on her faith life.
Then the time had come for Renée Hall to “launch out into the deep” and say “yes” to Jesus’ call which – she admits- she had heard for some time but had tried to ignore it. So one day she knocked at the door of the Dominican Sisters in Arima, and it was decided that on September 7, 2008 she was to be received into the Novitiate. A new dawn was then shining on a new phase of her life.
Renée’s gifts of enthusiasm for life, her “joie de vivre”, sense of service, eagerness to study and a deep spirit of prayer could only but bloom during her period of formation in the Dominican way of religious life and this led to her official commitment to God when she made her first Religious Profession in the Holy Name Chapel on September 8, 2010. The words of a hymn composed by Br. P. Jordan OSB resounded in her heart on that special day: “Do not be anxious/Don’t be afraid/God is sufficient/God is enough for your life.”
The chief celebrant of the Mass was Fr. Gregory Augustine CSSp. Throughout the Mass there was a most joyful singing rendered by a group of Holy Name and Fatima students.
And now go forward, dear Sister Renée, our prayers accompany you.