And Here Begin the Work of Heaven

The Spirituality of Eileen O'Connor, Co-Founder of Our Lady's Nurses for the Poor.

Smitten with spinal tuberculosis and severe curvature of the spine, Eileen O'Connor suffered greatly from a very young age. Her ailments saw that she grew to a height of only 115 centimetres, and they would end her life when she was just twenty-eight years old.

Yet her afflictions became a means of grace, and not for herself only but, primarily, for others. Inspired to help the most needy, she co-founded our Lady's Nurses for the Poor, a religious institute committed to caring for the sick and dying poor in their own homes.

With the Virgin Mary as her model, Eileen's writings - both mystical and practical in nature - reveal how sacrifice and suffering can work to break open a soul to its depths, and can do this even in a consumerist world of shiny surfaces.

Eileen's meditations, and the reflections on them in this book, it is hoped, will help readers come to a fuller understanding of the mystery and workings of God's grace and love in the life of Eileen O'Connor and, indeed, in the life of each of us.

'Love. Work. Suffer.' Eileen O'Connor