Mechernich – Quietly and peacefully, surrounded by her fellow sisters of the order and members of the Social Foundation Communio in Christo, Sister Dorothea Rolfes passed away on Thursday, January 15, at the Motherhouse of the Communio in Christo in Mechernich.
“With her, a loyal and self-sacrificing soul departs from us to God—someone to whom countless people under the care and protection of the Social Foundation Communio in Christo owe a great deal,” declared Superior General Jaison Thazhathil on the death of the revered sister.
In 2007 she wrote in a testimony: “Two weeks before the first foundation on 1 September 1977 I got the chance to get to know Mother Marie Therese personally and was allowed to attend the first foundation. The Holy Mass in the Holzheim church was filled with heavenly bliss, what I will always remember.
I felt it as a blessing that I could encounter such wisdom and truth that to my mind could come but from God. I joined the Unio and on 1 September 1979 I took the vow of charity.”
Over the years, Sister Dorothea felt that, in her own words, "the blessing became ever clearer and deeper for me personally as well.
The omnipotence, the justice and the mercy of God became a real experience to me under the guidance of Mother Marie Therese. Everything she told us came from another source, from God.
“Husband loved with respect”
On 18 March 1984 she joined Mother Marie Therese’s community of sisters and on 8 December 1984 Sister Dorothea took the vows of humility, obedience, chastity and charity for the Communio in Christo.
On 28 December 2019, Sister Dorothea’s 90th birthday, Father Karl-Heinz Haus, the first Superior General pointed out her central role for the founding history of the Ordo Communionis in Christo. “Everything in your life is grace coming from God!” In doing so, the Superior also expressly recalled the life of Sr. Dorothea before she entered the monastic community.
In Schophoven (Inden municipality) near Düren, Sister Dorothea spent her life as a farmer’s wife and spouse of the Müllenark estate. “You have loved your husband with great respect, which is also a blessing, ” emphasized the Superior General Karl-Heinz Haus at the time when he was the regional pastor of the Aachen diocesan region Düren, dean and pastor of Schophoven: “I could see from the Rectory, how often you went to the cemetery entirely in black after your husband’s death to visit his grave.”
It must have been a great pain to lose one’s husband through a sudden death.
„Pain turned into grace“
He had talked also to Josephina Theresia Linssen, the later foundress of the Communio known as Mother Marie Therese, who had been living with her brother, Fr. Wim Robben in the district of Düren. Fr. Haus said at Sr. Dorothea’s 90th birthday: „I never forget Mother Marie Therese’s comment: ‚Her pain will turn into grace.’”
The first Superior General, then still the parish priest of Schophoven, used Mother Marie Therese’s ‘Prayers of a sick’ for the meditations following the Communion in his daily mass services. He said: “There were practically no reactions to this except for those from Dorothea Rolfes…”
In her written testimony from 2007 Sister Dorothea recalls: “In spring 1975, during Holy Mass after Communion, I heard the prayers of a sick for the first time. I was touched and felt inspired by the texts.”
She was impressed: „I had the desire to hear more. The Superior General Haus, at the time the priest in our parish, recited them. The spirit expressed in those prayers touched my soul. Later, in 1976 I was given the first book of Mother Marie Therese: ‘Der Weg nach Golgota’ (The way to Golgotha). Since then, it was a prayer book to me.”
The later Sister Dorothea commented Mother Marie Therese’s reflections read by Karl-Heinz Haus: “These prayers are the truth.”
“Today we can say that it was God who laid these words into Sister Dorothea’s mouth,” said the Superior General Jaison Thazhathil on the death of the elderly religious sister who was one of Mother Marie Therese’s closest confidants already when the Communio in Christo was founded on 8 December 1984.
“It was grace that was henceforth to shape her life. It changed her life at its very core. She was able to entrust herself to a God who liberates from fear, punishment, and coercion,” said the Superior of the Ordo Communionis in Christo. Even at Mother Marie Therese’s first foundation on 1 September 1977 in the parish church of Mechernich-Holzheim, the “Unio of Atoning Love,” Dorothea had already realized: “Something great is happening here.”
Committed to people in a unique way
She followed God’s call to totally dedicate herself to following Jesus and the foundress Mother Marie Therese whose motto was: “Love of neighbor is living in God.” The widow Dorothea Rolfes became the religious sister Dorothea.
Following Mother Marie Therese’s founding promise Sister Dorothea was one of the first out of ten, priests and lay-faithful, who had expressed their solidarity for Mother Marie Therese and her Communio in Christo.
The Superior General Jaison Thazhathil thanked Sr. Dorothea for her loyalty, solidarity and consistence that helped expanding the radius of action of the foundations including unique care facilities and a hospice.
Sr. Dorothea had not just supported all the activities spiritually but to a considerable extent also financially. Sr. Dorothea wrote on her relationship to Mother Marie Therese and her personal role: “She was clearly graced and endowed with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In addition, she possessed the incorruptible gift of insight into souls. What was fascinating for me personally was her vision into the very nature of God: the triune God, who is always close to us as the merciful, just, and loving God.”
The mortal remains of Sister Dorothea will be laid to rest on Thursday, 22 January. Following the funeral rites at 11:00 a.m. in the house chapel of the Communio in Christo in Mechernich, she will be buried at around 1:00 p.m. in the cemetery in Schophoven, in the family grave next to her husband Joseph Prior to this, Sister Dorothea had been laid out in an open coffin in the house chapel.
pp/Agentur ProfiPress
