Sister Marguerite-Marie Lecomte
“The righteous flourish like the palm tree…in old age they still produce fruit;
they are always green and full of sap” (Psalm 92, 13,15).
December 17, 2016, Sister Marguerite-Marie Lecomte,
in religion Marie-Romuald
went home to God.
She was 102 years old and had been professed for 78 years.
Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, she was the 3rd of the 6 children
of Romuald Lecomte and Marie Mercier.
Marguerite-Marie grew up in Sherbrooke. She was ten years old when her mother died. She studied with the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Sherbrooke, at the Waterville Boarding School with the Daughters of Charity of the Sacred Heart and at the Boarding School in Warwick with the Sisters of the Assumption. She learned the piano in Sherbrooke with lay teachers and later, the organ, with the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (SNJM). When she decided, at the age of 21, to enter the SNJM’s, she was an accomplished pianist with 9 years of training, and an 8th grade diploma in organ.
In the postulate, Sister Marguerite-Marie found it difficult to adapt. When she became a novice, she received her father’s name, Marie-Romuald. Regarding any personal information, she did not provide any.
During the first 20 years of her religious life, Sister Marie-Romuald was a piano teacher and lived in many places: in the Eastern Townships during the first years, especially in La Patrie and Sherbrooke, then in the Montérégie, Hochelaga, Saint-Lambert and then four years at the École de Coteau-Station. “Sister Marguerite-Marie put all her talents at the service of educating her young students.”
During the following ten years, Sister Marguerite-Marie worked in the “school store” of the École Supérieure de Musique at the Motherhouse and then at the Vincent-d’Indy School. She then returned to teaching music at the Valleyfield Convent. When she was 70 years old, she spent one year in Verchères as a retiree and then returned to the Valleyfield Convent as an admired organist. She also began accompanying our Sisters to clinics and hospital appointments, to which she devoted herself, with great selfless attention, for nearly 20 years.
Sister Marguerite-Marie arrived at Maison Jésus-Marie in June 2006, and during these last ten years of her life she was most attentive to helping her companions.
And of all her talents, one of the most striking, merits special attention and our admiration. “She possessed, to our delight, an exceptional gift of improvisation on the organ. It stirred up within us wonder at the beauty and harmony of the melodies.”
With what impetus does this 102-year-old woman, who put all her confidence in her God, now play on the celestial organs!