"WHEN I was a child, Presentation nuns ran our local national school and I was always struck by their example. I think that the seeds of my vocation might have been sown at that time.

"At secondary school, a sense of being called to something flitted in and out of my thoughts but I never bothered much about it.

"When I started studying Arts at university, I enjoyed college life but there was a yearning in me for something beyond what I was experiencing, a hunger for some deeper fulfilment.

"A spin-off effect of this was my increasing involvement in societies in college and in campaigns, which focused on human rights and fair trade. Most of my energies were spent in the Pro-Life Society.

"In second year, I decided to take a year out to go teaching English in Quebec, Canada. Living far away from home gave me a whole new perspective on life.

"So I found myself in a church one day, on my own, in a foreign country, praying as I had never prayed before, a plea from the very depths of my soul, asking God to guide me along the right path.

"Shortly after this, I had a very profound experience of God's love for me. He had suddenly become real to me, no longer a concept of the mind but a person known by the heart.

"I had begun drifting towards a career in law and I more or less took it for granted that one day I would get married and have my own family. I knew, though, that my deepest happiness would only come in doing God's will, whatever it might be.

"The Poor Clares was the first order that came into my mind and the only one that I considered in any serious way. I remember hearing that they were the nuns who get up at night to pray. There seemed to be an aura of mystery about their life and I felt attracted to it.

"When I came home from Quebec, I finished my last year in college and I joined the Poor Clare Community in Galway a week after I graduated. It was hard to tell my family but I never experienced anything but love and support from them all."