We continue with S. Elisa Ackermans’ profiles of the first companions of Mother Magdalen. Although little was known about S. Clara, there are more sources and stories for the others.
S. Antonia, Maria Gertrudis Kirkels the second companion also joined Catherine in 1827 at the age of 37. Thanks to our S. Jacinte Kirkels, a relation of S. Antonia, we also have some dates from before her entrance. She was born in Kelpen (not Wessem as has been recorded in some of our books). Probably the neighbors who announced her death at the town hall in Heythuysen made this mistake, for on her birth certificate—which was in French—Kelpen is mentioned.
Maria Gertrudis Kirkels, born the fourth of March 1790, married Theodore Vossen on October 27, 1816, when she was already four months with child. The time that they formed a small family was very short. Five weeks after the birth of their daughter, Theodore died and exactly one month after her husband’s death, the child also died.
Gertrudis went back to her mother who had been a widow for 15 years and she earned the living for both of them by taking care of the cattle for neighboring farmers. When her mother died in 1827, the road was free for Gertrudis to join Catherine. This she did against the advice of Pastor van der Zandt. What she could offer Catherine and Anna Maria, in addition to her desire to do what they did, was her physical strength. She, like Anna Maria, could neither read nor write, which she told the notary public in 1842. On her marriage certificate she put a cross in the place where her signature should have been, and next to that can be seen the words “nescientis scribere” (cannot write).
We can imagine how she used her physical strength; the new house in the village street was for the most part built by her hands, together with Catherine Deckers who joined as the fourth member of the little community. Then, in 1835, when the small group moved to the Kreppel it was Gertrudis’ primary task to care for the garden.
We can read from what is known of the group that she and Catherine Deckers also laid out the garden. It was primarily a kitchen garden, but they also gave it a personal color. S. Cecile Schmitz, who went in 1870 to the mission in Indonesia) tells us that these two made a round bed at the southwest side of the house. It was heightened until it was about five or six meters high with “a path on the outside, surrounded by a good hedgerow that meandered two or three times around it until one came above, where there was a seat.” Around 1859 the sisters called it the “montagne” (French for mountain). Afterwards, after it had been built up still more, a statue of Mary was placed on the front side. We know now the “montagne” as the grotto of Mary and that is still in the same place as S. Antonia made it. Both these sisters also excavated the big ditch that is still there, be it in a different form. “In my young days the ditch was called with a great name “rivière” (French for river) writes S. Cecile. That it was easier for S. Antonia to dig a whole field than to write a page we can believe now.