EVERYONE at Ella Gibson’s first birthday was captivated in a special moment when her Belgian-born great-great-grandmother Jacqueline Axon (nee Gale) began to sing to her in her native French tongue.
Ella’s great-grandmother Michele Willmer said it was “just beautiful” to see Ella listening so intently and then for her 93-year-old mother to burst into a fit of giggles at the birthday girl’s delight.
She said looking at her mother and down the female lineage gathered at Ella’s birthday – her daughter Chantale Wilson, granddaughter Imogen Gibson and now great-granddaughter Ella – she saw God’s hand “on our family in a special way”.
“I’m very proud, very proud of my family,” Michele said.
Over the 93 years, from Brussels to Brisbane, these five generations of women have each carried on the faith in their own way, sharing different experiences of Church and fruits of Christian life.
Wartime occupation and adventure abroad
Great-great-grandmother Jacqueline grew up in Brussels, baptised at three days old as was custom.
She was 10 years old when the armed forces of Nazi Germany occupied her country.
Her memories of the war were of rations and restrictions on movement.
She was still able to attend school, but even that was closely watched by the occupiers.
“One of my teachers ended up in Buchenwald and died in a concentration camp there,” she said.
“It was terrible, but as a child you survive.”
Growing up, everyone was Catholic because that was the religion of the country, she said.
She had memories of the nuns who ran her school, who wore colour-coded habits for the social class of the students under their care.
“Black (was) for the orphans, brown for the non-paying students, and blue-and-white for the paying students,” she said.
Jacqueline joined an exchange school program in 1949, and that was how she met her husband Robert Percy Axon in England.
They met at a ball, introduced through her brother-in-law.
Robert was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, working that night as bar officer, and “there was one bottle of champagne left in the bar and I got it – I thought he had possibilities”, she said with a laugh.
Robert, an Anglican, had served in the RAF during the war in bomber command, a position which carried a high fatality rate, and he had survived the war even despite being shot down once or twice.
The pair were wed in England.
It was taboo at the time for Catholics and Anglicans to marry, Michele said of her parents.
The family spent a few years in Africa where Robert worked as a police signals officer and their kids grew up.
A priest there discovered the couple had not been wed in the Catholic Church and wanted to change that, but it had caused family tensions over religion, and that led to a falling out with the Church for Jacqueline.
Even so, Michele carried many fond memories of the time, especially when her dad would get home-leave for three months and the family would “hop off in Marseille or somewhere like that, bring our car with us and drive through Europe”.
Reconnecting with faith Down Under
The family migrated to Australia as 10 Pound Poms and settled in Brisbane.
When Michele was 14, she met her future husband Nev Willmer, who she dated for four years before they were married.
Michele had always felt like she was missing something. She had been baptised Anglican but “always felt a strong pull” towards the Catholic faith.
While married and in her 20s, she converted.
“I was drawn into the Charismatic Renewal after that,” she said.
Their daughter Chantale came two years after Michele was married and, when she was about six, the family joined the Emmanuel Community.
The couple became heavily involved in Church and community-building as well as filling out the seats around the dinner table by welcoming foster children into their home.
“I’ve often wondered if we did the right thing fostering kids with them (her daughter Chantale and her son Alex) having to share us so much,” Michele said.
She said the children they fostered had disabilities and trauma, which occupied a lot of their time as parents.
“When I talk to them both, (Chantale) and Alex, their response is, ‘Maybe we wouldn’t know or be who we are if we hadn’t experienced that in our lives’,” she said.
“That brings comfort to me.”
Chantale’s childhood memories of the time were of spontaneous, joyful family prayers – especially her dad on the guitar – and a deep integrity of faith from her parents, saying “their walk matched their talk”.
It was at Chantale’s wedding to Arthur Wilson that the rift in Jacqueline’s experience of Church began to mend.
Wedding celebrant Fr Bill Murphy spoke to Michele about her mother’s experience with the Church and her falling out.
He had said he wanted her to come and receive Communion and to welcome her back into the life of the Church.
Michele said it was a magnificent wedding and she was especially happy to see her mother reconnect with her Catholic faith again.
Building faith community in a changing world
Chantale and Arthur had four children, including Ella’s mum Imogen.
Community was central in Chantale’s desire to pass on the faith to her children.
“It is very important to find a community of faith where there’s other families that are seeking to live a Christian life as well,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be a big community, just one or two families, so the kids can play while you have a cup of tea after Mass, people you connect with and support in faith.
“We’re not meant to do it on our own.”
For Chantale’s children, she said she saw each of them take their own journeys in faith and, for her daughter Imogen, she was overjoyed to see her get married in the Church and have Ella baptised.
Imogen said her parents had raised her in a Christ-like home with community around them; “they knew when to say ‘no’ and knew when to say ‘wait’”, and “we knew Mum and Dad loved us unconditionally”.
“I definitely want Ella to grow up with that same community, that same understanding of we love her the way we do because Jesus loved us that way first,” she said.
Imogen was raised in Brisbane and met her husband Ryan Gibson in a chance meeting on the highway.
“Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way home from a long weekend; I’d been to a young adults beach house weekend; he’d been camping up at Double Island Point,” she said.
“We managed to cross paths and meet each other.”
She said she was determined that nothing was going to happen, she was happy being single, but he was “persistent as anything” and they were wed in 2020, with their first daughter Ella arriving in 2021.
She said since becoming a parent, her faith had been a lot less about “perceptions” and more about doing the small things with love, offering up the challenges, and bringing her husband and daughter to Jesus.
“I think for the first six months after having Ella my daily prayer was ‘grace enough for today’. That was what my faith looked like, ‘grace enough for today’,” she said.
Looking back on the generations of women who came before, Imogen said something that impressed her was their desire to “create home”.
“It’s something that I definitely want to pass on,” she said.
Her mum Chantale said the same thing – from the Axon side of the family at their celebrations there was always room for more at the table.
That same hospitality passed to her mother Michele, who inspired her through her love of fostering children, and to her, whose own home has been referred to as “Grand Central Station” during the kids’ teenage years.
Motherhood and the baptismal call
With the Plenary Council recently taking place, Michele said she often saw women in the Church as the “heavy-lifters” when it came to education and passing on the faith.
She said she was a firm-believer in mums raising the kids and spending as much of the early years with their children as possible.
She recalled the beauty of the Scripture when Mary visited Elizabeth when they were both pregnant.
“(Elizabeth) spent that time with her (Mary) and Mary spent that time with her (Elizabeth), already ministering to their babies, speaking to their babies in utero, telling them they’re loved,” she said.
“You cannot underestimate the power of that and what that brings to a peaceful home and their child’s development.”
Her granddaughter Imogen said since becoming a mother, she had become much more interested in Jesus’ family, especially Mary.
“Being a mum, I love it, I absolutely love it – (but) it’s hard,” she said.
“I can’t even imagine it for Mary with the scandal that Jesus was, she was the virgin Mary, and I definitely want to see women come into the life-bringing power that they have.
“Whether that’s as biological mothers, spiritual mothers – women have this incredible profound power and strength.”
She said she would like to see more done to accommodate families at Mass, saying she had experienced judgment because her husband was non-practising and it was usually her and her daughter at Mass.
She wanted to see parishes “creating a space where families are welcome in whatever capacity that looks like, whether that’s mum and dad and kids, mum and kids, dad and kids”.
“(It’s about) ensuring that whatever variation arrives has the support so that the parents and children can engage in the Mass in a way that is beneficial to them,” she said.
Her mum Chantale said when “it’s questions of women or roles in the Church, the bottom line is that all of us, because of our baptism, are called to be missionary disciples”.
“Just like the Church had changed since I was a girl, it looks very different now,” she said.
“We don’t know what the future will hold in terms of what the Church will look like tomorrow or 93 years from now.
“But the call is still the same – to respond to our baptism and be missionary disciples.
“Whatever that looks like today, that’s the call that I respond to where I am with what I have and the gifts that God’s given me.”
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