In a spirit of great joy and anticipation, Sr Corrie van den Bosch MSS launched her new book, Graced Beyond Telling – A Soul’s Dark Journey in Melbourne this month.

More than 100 guests attended the launch at St Thomas the Apostle school and parish hall in Blackburn, on February 15, which included many of the Melbourne-based Missionary Sisters of Service, friends from the Victorian Bushwalking Club, her many prayer and reading group friends, former work colleagues, members of the MSS Stewardship Council and members of her family.

*Sr Corrie van den Bosch MSS with her new book, ‘Graced Beyond Telling’. PHOTO: MSS website/Fiona Basile.*

Former executive director of The John Wallis Foundation (now Highways and Byways, Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves, Together), Liz McAloon, served as MC for the evening, with congregational leader Stancea Vichie MSS providing the Acknowledgement of Country and giving the audience some background to the MSS story. She explained that Corrie’s book launch also served as the first official event to mark the MSS’s 80-year anniversary of foundation.

Professor Gabrielle McMullen AM officially launched the book, providing some key reflections on Corrie’s insightful, raw and moving writing.

Taking to the podium, Corrie shared with those gathered something of what writing this book had done for her, of how she came to take up journal writing which she says, “has been such a powerful means of coming to understand my inner life”. She also spoke of the presence of God, working unrecognised through the messiness and brokenness of her life.

“Only in retrospect did I begin to recognise it. And now, reading those journals years later, I kept being astonished at how clearly God was present and working,” Corrie reflected.

In her remarks, Prof McMullan said it was a privilege to be invited by Corrie to launch her book.

“Furthermore, I am going to suggest, the nature of this book is such, that a journey through its pages will also be a privilege for each reader,” she said.

“It seems appropriate that this occasion is the first event to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Missionary Sisters of Service.”

Prof McMullan said the foundations of the book, which give it its strength and authenticity, are Corrie’s journals, written faithfully for some 45 years.

“Being called to journalling was a ‘lightbulb’ moment for Corrie and profoundly influenced her spiritual journey and ultimately gave us this inspirational book. Through her journalling, she became ‘aware of the extraordinary power of words’,” she said.

“This realisation has been reinforced in the re-reading of her journals half a lifetime after some of them were written and in Corrie capturing their essence in this book.

“It is the story of her becoming ‘the Corrie [God] made [her] to be’. ‘Love and gratitude … pervade [her] journals’ and correspondingly this volume.

“This book recounts Corrie’s parallel journeys – an historical journey on the highways and byways with the Missionary Sisters of Service and a spiritual journey of understanding her place in the Cosmos.”

Corrie writes: “This book is first of all the story of grace, of God’s gracious working in my life … Only secondarily is it my story.

“While I was going about my ordinary daily life, unbeknown to me, the One who is mighty was doing great things in me. I needed to write this story … It is my hope and prayer that my journal journey may serve as something of a mirror in which readers may recognise more deeply the Spirit’s working in their own lives.”

This article was drawn from information on the Missionary Sisters of Service website.