Each autumn, the Harvest Day at Ardfoyle brings together the people who share this place. The Horticulture LTI, run by SHEP in the old walled gardens, gathers the produce of the year and invites the OLA Sisters and others at Ardfoyle to celebrate with them.
This year’s gathering, on 13 October, held an unexpected gift.
As the Sisters celebrate the 150th Jubilee of the founding of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, the Horticulture LTI presented the community with an icon created especially for the occasion by Stefano Macovei, a member of the SHEP team.
Stefano, who is Romanian, looks after much of SHEP’s IT work. Before coming to Ireland, however, he was an iconographer in Romania. For the Jubilee, he returned to that art and to the tradition from which it comes.
Before beginning the icon, Stefano spent time exploring the OLA website and learning about the congregation, its history and its spirituality. From what he discovered, he chose to depict Mary with the apostles gathered in the Upper Room, with the Holy Spirit descending upon them: an image closely connected with the name and identity of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles.
The care he brought to the gift continued on the reverse of the icon, where he inscribed a blessing for the Sisters:
“May Our Lady of Apostles guide us.
May the Spirit continue to surprise us.
And may we, like the generations before us, keep saying yes —
with generosity, joy, and trust.
Amen.”
The icon was presented to OLA District Leader Sr Mary Crowley by SHEP Director Jim Sheehan during the Harvest Day celebrations.
Sr Gabrielle Farrel and Sr Mary Crowley with iconographer Stefano Macovei
There was something deeply fitting about receiving such a gift on this particular day. Harvest is an occasion for recognising what has grown through work, patience and care, and for gathering together around what the earth has yielded. This year, that familiar celebration also became part of OLA’s Jubilee year, as we look back over 150 years since Fr Augustine Planque founded the congregation in 1876.
The icon carried another history into that celebration: Stefano’s own. An art learned and practised in Romania found its way into the life of Ardfoyle and became part of the Jubilee through the hands of someone with whom we now share this place. His decision to first learn something of OLA, and then to create from what he found, made the gift especially personal.
The Horticulture LTI has been part of Ardfoyle since 2018, when the programme moved from Bessborough and began working in the old Laundry Garden. Over the years, the garden has become a place of learning and cultivation, while the relationship between the programme, SHEP and the OLA community has developed through the ordinary experience of being neighbours: meeting one another, sharing the grounds and taking part in one another’s celebrations.
Perhaps that is why the surprise meant so much. The icon was not a formal Jubilee commission or something chosen at a distance. It came from within the community of people who now live and work alongside one another at Ardfoyle.
One hundred and fifty years of OLA history reaches across countries, cultures and generations. At Harvest Day this year, another small piece was added to that history: an icon made by a Romanian artist in Cork, after taking the time to understand the Sisters for whom he was making it, offered by friends and neighbours, and received with gratitude at Ardfoyle.