News: Blog
August 5, 2010
Our Sr. Mary Ann Sullivan celebrated her Golden Jubilee on July 31st. We celebrated a Mass of Consecration at 10:30 AM followed by a festive dinner in our refectory. Sr. Mary Ann's sister Rita attended from California along with her brother John from Chicago. Many nieces and nephews, grandnieces and nephews, cousins and dear friends were also there. Dom Brendan presided at the Mass and several monks came from New Melleray for the celebration. It was a lovely day. We particularly marveled at how much the grandnieces and nephews had grown. Mary Ann's grandnephews Thomas and Noah read the Mass readings and grandnieces Brianna and Nikki played a duet for the post Communion. It really was a marvolous day and a lot of fun visiting with her family and friends.
M. Nettie & Sr. Mary Ann
Sr. Mary Ann renewing her vows.
June 28, 2010
This past weekend the five women who were with us for forty days and are in our DVD accepted our invitation to come back for a visit with us. They were very excited about coming and all was planned. Thursday we received an email from Sheila's daughter saying that her mother had suffered a broken leg while caring for their horses. So that was a great disappointment. She is doing okay but of course could not travel.
So only three women finally arrived Friday night. But the rest of the weekend was one marvelous reunion Laura, Liz and Sarah shared with us their life journey since their time with us.
The following are some points they mentioned as they spoke with us together and individually.
Laura, a Spanish and French teacher has taken multiple physical education courses for that she can also teach physical education. She loves her long reflective hikes in the Arizona desert.
It was wonderful seeing them. We hope to see them again!
We would like to share with you the Chapter talk given for the feast by our M. Gail Fitzpatrick.
Feast of the Sacred Heart - June 11, 2010
One of the most beautiful images of the Sacred Heart, and one that expresses the significance of this feast for me, is Saint Bernard’s image in Sermon 61 on the Song of Songs. He likens the pierced heart of Christ and the wounds in his hand and feet to the clefts in a rock. “The secrets of his heart are laid open through his wounds.” (61:4)
The clefts in the rock. First of all they are an opening. You can look into these openings. They reveal the inner being/ life of the Rock – Christ.
The clefts – the wounds of Christ, especially the wound in his heart, are like a cave or cavern – an opening that may be mysterious and dark, but that invites us to explore the depths within. What meets us as we slowly move through this opening is a vista of incredible beauty. God is beautiful. We may not think about his beauty a lot, but any ray of beauty in our world is a simple reflection of that absolute beauty that is God. When we catch a glimpse of real love in another person we are touched by the beauty.
The beauty of God is love - the total gift of love of the Son for the Father and of the Father and the Son for each one of us – and for all people of all times.
Thru this sacred gap, you might call it, God’s radiant beauty streams through – like sunlight thru a chasm.
The wound in the heart of Christ opens up for us the vision of love beyond anything we can imagine – but it is real. It is there in the humanity of Jesus. Nothing could reveal God more fully than Christ’s open heart.
Recently I have been reading a book on Judaism and the author translates a verse of Psalm 23 like this: Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
God is beautiful and we can see that beauty, and what’s more wonderful, we can actually bear that beauty in our own heart.
A second aspect of our contemplating the wounds of Christ in the clefts of the rock is that these openings can be understood as a breaking open of the very flesh of God. Hearts can be broken open in many ways. Once Jesus said to one of his friends:If you knew how much I love you it would break your heart. So there’s a breaking of a heart in sheer joy, and there’s a breaking …in sheer sorrow. But the breaking open of the heart isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning of an expansion in love, in compassion.
I’d like to share with you a poem of Mary Oliver in which she describes this very reality.
by Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems Vol. 2.
Here is a story
To break your heart,
Are you willing?
This winter
The loons came to our harbor
And died, one by one,
Of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
Of one on the shore
That lifted its head and opened
The elegant beak and cried out
In the long, sweet savoring of its life
Which, if you have not heard it,
You had better hurry to where
They still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
Just where that is.
The next morning
This loon, speckled
And iridescent and with a plan
To fly home
To some hidden lake,
Was dead on the shore.
I tell you this to break your heart,
By which I mean only
That it break open and never close again
To the rest of the world.
Mary Oliver is describing a tragic event that is all too timely today…we see it happening in our Gulf Coast. But to return to our topic…
Christ’s heart was pierced on the cross, but that wasn’t the first time it had been broken open.
We can remember the moment on the Mt of Olives when he looked toward Jerusalem and wept. I think those tears were real. Or when he looked with sadness on the young man who was too rich to let go…to follow Christ. Mark tells us so many times that Jesus was saddened and amazed at their unbelief. Many left him. ((There he was – offering himself to them, offering the Word of life, the water that would quench their thirst, the bread of life that would ultimately become his own flesh, they would not believe).
So by Calvary, Jesus’ Heart had been broken open many times.
You and I know something, even if only an inkling, of that sort of wound in our own hearts…both the surprise of joy that can feel like our hearts are breaking, and the sorrow of some loss or misunderstanding or disappointment. This breaking open of our hearts really unites us very deeply with Christ. Everything Christ lived and suffered is ours – we are his wounded body as Father James reminded us. Our suffering, too, is meant to open, expand our hearts to embrace all. This can happen because it is Christ’s love moving through us.
Bernard speaks of the eloquently. Why should I not gaze through the clefts in the rock?The secret of his heart is laid open thru the clefts of his body; the mighty mystery of loving is laid open, laid open too, the tender mysteries of our God, in which the morning sun from on high has risen upon us.
Surely his heart is laid open through his wounds. 61:4
6/7/10
Our community retreat was preached this year by Fr. James Palmigiano a monk of our monastery of St. Joseph in Spencer, MA. The conferences were uplifting and life-giving; some of the best we ever had.
On May 29th we celebrated the silver jubillee of our Sr. Ciaran and Sr. Emily Ann from All Saints Convent outside of Baltimore where Sr. Ciaran began her religious life and made vows 25 years ago with Sr. Emily Ann. They got the nickname "twins". Sr. Ciaran left All Saints to become a Catholic and subsequently entered Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey. All Saints was an Anglican community but last year entered the Catholic Church. Many New Melleray monks came over to help us celebrate. It was a beautiful day for all.
4/15/10
This past Sunday we had our annual Volunteer/Employee Eucharist and party to express our appreciation to our wonderful employees and volunteers. In the past we held the party on the Sunday after New Year's and almost always we had bad weather and few people attended because of it. So that more people could attend we moved it to April. It worked and we had a full house!
We wish all of our friends a very blessed Easter season!
3/24/10
We had the blessing of our senior wing this past Sunday. Our architect consultant, David Richen and his wife, Mary Sue were here from Oregon. Dave gave words of friendship and reminded us that we had begun the process of planning this building three years ago, almost to the day. Ken Johnson, our architect played the guitar and sang a song he wrote "Welcome home sister". Dom Brendan spoke about how our interior forms our place and our exterior place helps to form our interior. We all then processed around the building stopping to pray and bless with holy water. Our special guest was Archbishop Kucera. After the blessing we gave tours to explain the different rooms and spaces and served refreshments in our refectory. It was a very special day.
3/18/10
Mother Nettie and Sr. Martha attended the Regional meeting at the monastery of the Holy Spirit Abbey in Georgia. Sr. Martha was the delegate from our house. Each community elected a delegate. From those delegates a monk and a nun was elected to represent the region at the General Chapter, where all the Cistercian Abbeys meet from all over the world. Sr. Martha was elected. The meeting will be held in September of 2011 in Assisi, Italy. To say the least she is very excited about it. The main topic of the regional meeting and the general chapter is formation; both initial and ongoing.
Our Sr. Kathleen who is currently at the Generalate in Rome is home for a visit this week. She arrived in time for our St. Patrick's Day party. Being her last name is O'Neill she was happy to be there. This is the first time Sr. Kathleen has seen our new building. She left for Rome last year the day construction began. She will be going back to Rome on Monday and returning to OLM for good in August.
M.Nettie, Sr. Kathleen, Sr. Ciaran
2/20/10
We just finished a wonderful week with Sr. Lyn Osiek a scripture scholar from St. Louis, MO. The topic for study was women in early Christianity. We learned about Jewish and pagan culture during this time. We studied the original texts of many early Christain writers including the Marytrdom of Perpetua and Felicity. Sr. Lyn has traveled and studied extensively in the Middle East and showed us many slides that made our topic really come alive.
2/2/10
Today we celebrated the beautiful feast of the Presentation. We consider it the end of the Christmas season. It is a feast we celebrate with lots of candles, symbolizing Christ our Light entering the Temple. This year we had our procession from the chapter room to the church. We had our new ramp to process down with enough room to walk two by two. Doing this for the first time made it very special.
January 30, 2010
We have had a very busy couple of weeks. Moving into our new spaces was a lot more fun than moving out last April. We are pretty much settled in and using all the new spaces. We are waiting for the new library shelves to arrive. They should be here soon. We can then get the books out of the dorm and out of boxes so we can find the books we want to read. I will post pictures when the rooms are completely ready.
On January 26th, the feast of our founders, 22 monks came to tour our new spaces, pray Midday prayer with us and share a festive Italian dinner.
I know many have heard that our Sr. Sherry was diagnosed with breast cancer a few days after Christmas. She had a lumpectomy and will start radiation treatment soon. She has a very good prognosis as the cancer was very small and not the aggressive type. Please keep her in prayer as she starts her radiation treatments.
