Sr Margaret Burke passed away peacefully on Tuesday, 12th August 2025.
Removal of remains to Convent Chapel, Magheramore, Co Wicklow on Thursday, 14th August 2025 at 5.30pm.
Funeral mass on Friday, 15th August 2025 at 11.30am.
HOMILY
Two roads diverged in a
Wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the
Difference.
Crossroads are a familiar feature of life in rural Ireland. The meeting of roads signify meeting of people as well as choice of direction to take. Margaret Burke was born in November 1941 and reared in Clonberne, County Galway and her family home was adjacent to the famous Clonberne Crossroads.
The young girl, Margaret Burke knew those crossroads well as she chose her path to primary school and later the Mercy Convent Secondary School in Tuam. She was a bright young person and the significance of the crossroads wouldn’t have been lost on her. Especially so, when she came to making her life’s decision as to her calling in life. Would she choose the road to marriage? The road to a career in perhaps the civil service or banking? Those were familiar routes at that time for young women who had completed their Leaving Certs.
And yet, there was another road: the road that involved answering a calling to be a religious Sister. It was as the poet Robert Frost put it, “the road less travelled by”. Margaret (like so many of her Columban Sisters) chose the road of dedicated service to God among the poor of this world. It was, and remains, “the road less travelled by”. For Margaret, her sisters in religion and the people they helped, it was not only “the road less travelled by”, but it was a road, a life of service in the poet’s words, “that has made all the difference”.
To prepare for this Margaret headed to Magheramore – to join Columban Missionaries. First profession: 26 April 1964 Montessori Training in Dublin after Final Profession in 1969 where she took the Motto of Sr. M. Henrietta “Where there is charity and love of one another, God is there with us”.
Margaret was ready for the long journey to Philippines, where she set up a Montessori school in Quezon City and spent five years in the school helping children who were very disadvantaged. A further two years in San Juan before going to Chicago to advance her studies and completed a Master’s in Education in 1980 and on the way took a break to be with her mother.
She went back to the Philippines in 1983 and Lingayen. I had the great privilege of meeting Margaret in Quezon City and seeing first hand her extraordinary work. Roxas Boulevard runs along Manila bay which celebrates a variety of magnificent sunsets and it leads towards a community of 10,000 families of squatters, people who have come into a place reclaimed by the sea, such as construction workers and fishermen.
On her visits home over the years we, her family, became more and more familiar with life in the Philippines and the work she was engaged in there. If anyone can be accused of “bringing their work home with them”, Margaret certainly did. All her life she spoke of the challenges facing the poor. In her own way she became an activist for justice and equality not just for the poor of the Philippines but also for the poor and disenfranchised of the world.
Margaret was relentless and strident too in her advocacy of the poor and oppressed. It was her life’s ceaseless work. Her religious Sisters and family will smile now in remembering how her enthusiasm didn’t seem to knock a feather out of Margaret, even though we might have found it exhausting at times and we mere listeners!
Today, we pray for the happy repose of her soul and her reunion with her loved ones who have gone before her – the deceased of her family and the Columban family. Margaret’s great work of her life-time in education particularly has now ended. However the fruits of her work live on in the thousands of people in the Philippines who benefitted from that work. We will remember Margaret for the presence she maintained in all our individual families. She made that presence felt every time she came to visit us and indeed her presence was felt even when she was far away on the Mission fields.
Today, there will be those who remember her as a child growing up in Clonberne and we join them in thanking God for Margaret and the exemplary life she led as one of God’s chosen ones and working with the people in St. Agnes Parish Crumlin in pastoral ministry bringing 30 years’ experience of her missionary work. Today, the mysterious and hidden imprints of her life will cause the name of Margaret Burke to be whispered and revered in the air around the crossroads of Clonberne. Her memory will be forever with us.
She has chosen to be buried with her beloved parents in Clonberne. It is a homecoming to the crossroads that always featured in her life. Margaret with her great enthusiasm for God’s mission on earth was always at a crossroads as she chose various paths to promote the ethos and spirit of her religious Order. Today, her earthly life is ended and she is going home to Clonberne and to the Eternal Home and a place that is waiting for her there.
This woman from the crossroads of life will never have to choose any other road in life. She has gone home to eternity.
Two roads diverged in a
wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the
Difference.
Sister Margaret Burke, Rest in Peace.
Fr. James Ronayne (Sr. Margaret’s cousin).
Funeral Mass: 15 August 2025