In the Shadow of His Wings

Sponsa Christi January 23rd, 2009

   Thought you might like to read our latest newsletter – Enjoy! 

    Would you like to receive a copy in your mailbox? Just send me your address and I’ll add it to our newsletter database. (Apologies to our many overseas friends – due to bulk mailing rates this offer applies only to U.S. addresses)

Mary, Queen of the Passionist Congregation, ora pro nobis!

This lovely icon was sent to us recently by our nuns in Korea.

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• Blessed Mother , Passionist Life
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Sponsa Christi January 15th, 2009

Here is a better view of our vocation brochure

Here is the front cover

This is what you see when the front cover is opened

Here is the full view when the brochure is completely opened

Here is the back side of the brochure.

 And here it is in PDF format!

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• Passionist Life , Vocation Discernment
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Sponsa Christi January 14th, 2009

   Would you like to promote vocations to Passionist contemplative life?

   I have just the thing for you – our vocation brochure!  We would love to get these in the hands of as many healthy, young, single Catholic women as possible. 

This shows the outside cover front and back

    If you would like to be one of our “holy distributors” please leave a comment below including your name and address. Also, please let me know how many brochures you would like me to send you. If you are going to place these in a public place, such as a parish, college, high school, etc. please get the proper permission to do so or they might just be trashed. The brochures are free but an offering to help pay the postage would be most appreciated.

This is the inside of the brochure once it is completely opened

    I’m sorry I can’t show you the brochure up close – I am not quite adept at making 8 1/2 x 14 documents into PDF files. When I try to do so it breaks it down to an 8 1/2 x 11 cutting off the sides. Hence, you will have to view it from these pictures. It is quite lovely and in color!

   I look forward to hearing from you!

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Sponsa Christi January 8th, 2009

    Thought you might enjoy hearing a bit of what has been happening around here. We are still battling a bad virus that comes and goes and comes back again -  not fun :{  but good and powerful to unite with the redeeming Passion of Christ! As Caryll Houselander would say…”Jesus wants to suffer this in me.”

  I don’t know if I have shared with you yet that when it rains here and if the wind is at just the right angle it pours in our chapel – yes, that’s right. Well, the inevitable happened on the evening of December 23rd as torrents of rain continued to fall outside. The well soaked chapel roof could no longer keep the water from seeping through into the chapel nave. All along the overhead beams of the central skylight, steady torrents fell inside the chapel which was already decorated for our celebration of Christmas!

We considered getting out the umbrellas…

    Altar, chairs, Christmas crib, etc. were covered with plastic protection, while from the sanctuary to the back of chapel, we had an array of every size and shape of containers and buckets laid atop all-weather rugs. As the rain dropped into the containers, the reverb of the chapel amplified the drips to a noisy pitch. That noise plus the roaring winds outside, made a loud den, so one of the Sisters stuffed what looked like a hundred bright green towels into the containers in order to muffle the loud noise from the constant dripping.

    Another Sister started bargaining with the Poor Souls in Purgatory to please ask Our Lord to stop the rain, while yet another Sister said that if the rain kept up, we should put red bows on the green towels and just proceed on….Alas, I did not get a picture of this fun…but maybe next time! Whoever said convent life is dull does not know what they are talking about.

    Our Lord had mercy, and the rain stopped so that we could have Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, and by Christmas morning, the sun came out gloriously, reminding us of one of the Great O Antiphons of the Church before Christmas: “O Radiant Dawn….” Even the weather this year helped us see the power in that prayer of the Church. The rest of the day was very peaceful, as we had our Morning Mass, followed by a wonderful Christmas meal prepared by “Sr. Mary Delicious” and her many helpers, and then gathered in community recreation to share our joy with one another.

    At recreation on Christmas evening, our postulants led us in an inspiring game. This year we had a number of our plaster of Paris “Infants on the Cross” that were somewhat defective and could not be sold. The formation Sisters hid the little Infants and gave us clues as to where each Infant could be found. We were all sent forth throughout the monastery, to look for our Infant—following of course the excellent clues given us. There was a prayer intention for children wrapped around each Infant.

    The purpose of the game was to increase our awareness of the crying need to pray for infants and children who are suffering. And also, to help us realize that Christ can be found in the most surprising places. Mother Catherine Marie found hers among the clean rags in the laundry. The prayer intention on her Infant was for children on whom a curse or spell had been cast—a horrifying thought but as we know today, very real. All of us found this “Passionist Game” inspired us to deeper prayer for the children of the world.

    I hope you enjoyed another little peek at our Passionist Christmas. As we begin a new year, God is offering His People the grace of deeper faith, trust and hope in His all-powerful care. #314 of the Catholic Catechism offers us consoling guidance: “We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the way of His providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God face to face, will we fully know the ways by which even through the dramas of evil and sin, God has guided His creation to that definitive ’Sabbath rest’ for which He created heaven and earth.”  May we too look beyond the suffering and hardships of life to the eternal joy in God that is awaiting us. Peace be yours now and always.  And remember, in all your trials, “Jesus wants to suffer this in me.”  Meaning, you are not alone in your suffering, you are to be another Christ, you are another Christ if you are in the state of grace.

    Also, thanks to all who ordered from our Gift Shop, especially the “Infants resting on the Cross”. We sold several hundred in November and December!

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• Passionist Life
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Sponsa Christi January 1st, 2009

    Merry Christmas!

    We hope you are having a very grace-filled Christmas Season. Here is a picture of our crib in chapel. It is made of paper mache. It has pieces of rock from Monte Argentario in it. (This is in Italy where our Founder built the first monastery for the men.)

    Blessed New Year greetings!

    And happy solemnity of Mary, Mother of God!

    Well, I had certainly thought I would be able to write to you before now. But once one gets a virus, flu, or whatever you call it - one has to do that germs bidding!  I do hope all of you had a very warm and joyful Christmas and Octave. The Liturgies here have been fantastic…well, literally, heavenly. And Sharon and Shannon did their organ and violin duet again before this morning’s Mass. Shannon’s family arriving just in time from Houston to be able to record from the guest side of Chapel.

     Gone are the days when doctors made “house calls” to cloistered monasteries. (And I’m kind of glad! I saw that old antique dentist’s chair back in the old monastery…) Therefore, we too find ourselves sitting in doctor’s offices waiting for our appointments. Recently, I had this experience of waiting…waiting…waiting. I was thankful I had brought along a good book to read - Caryll Houselander’s autobiography entitled A Rocking Horse Catholic. I found her mystical experiences of seeing Christ Crucified in those around her very moving and sensed a small glimmer of that same experience as I was elbow to elbow with other patients in this crowded office. I was not to be disappointed with the ending of this book – a very meaningful poem. It is so appropriate for this Season I wanted to share it with you. The last line is a bit stark for this time of the year but perhaps after all our feasting we need a little “sobering up”!  God love you! We do!

    (Due to the length of this poem I have taken the liberty of making stanzas into paragraphs. If you want to see the original format you’ll have to get yourself a copy of A Rocking-Horse Catholic.)

“The Birth”
by Caryll Houselander 1953

    There was always the Crowd. Even when he lay folded in the darkness of Mary’s womb, she carried him into the crowded city of Bethlehem to be born.

    There was a loud voice in the streets surrounding the stable. The clinking of glasses, the shouts, the greeting of friends, the tramping of feet and clatter of hoofs, laughter and snatches of song.

    Only his Mother possessed silence. And in her silence under the noise of the crowd, she heard the sound of a stream flowing underground, and breaking through darkness to water the earth. And she heard the little snap of a bursting seed, and the sound of a bud breaking. She heard the sound of the waters of birth.

    Then the sound of water and opening buds and seed pushing into the light became the thin cry of the newly born, and the thin cry was the Word.

    She, his Mother, always sought for him in the crowd. It was in the crowd coming home from Jerusalem that she lost, and sought her son for the first time. And it was as one of the crowd, seeking him again in the city she heard him say – “They who do the will of my Father in Heaven are my brother and sister and mother!”

    There was always the crowd, thronging the mountain side and the sea shore and the wilderness, to hear the word. And she was always there as one of the crowd, she, who had heard the first cry, and taught the Word his first word, and stored all his words in her heart. Now the Lord spoke of living streams in which those who are dead should be born again, and the single seed cast into the earth that should fill the fields for the harvesting with wheat for living bread.

    Some of them questioned him: “How can these things be?” “This is a hard saying and how shall we return to our mother’s womb and be born again?” And she remembered that she too had said “How can this thing be?”

    And then that crowded night in the city of Bethlehem. Would all men spark from the seed of light that had flowered from her?

    There was the crowd who threw their garments under his feet, children thronging his way with palms in their hands, to greet his entry into Jerusalem when he came to die, and then, the crowd outside the judgment hall, crying aloud for his blood – “Crucify! Crucify!” and those who hustled each other, and pushed their way in the narrow street when they led him by on the way to Golgotha. And always Mary his Mother, following, seeking her lost child in the crowd.

    When he died on the Cross the crowds were there, climbing the hill, as they did when first he came from Nazareth, to utter the word of his Father’s love in the broad speech of a Nazarene. But now they came to deride, to mock at him and to curse, they came to silence the Word!

    Mary, his Mother, stood at the foot of the Cross. She heard the seed that had shone in her womb falling into the ground, and the sound of a great wind sweeping the red harvests from end to end of the world.

    And she heard the sound of his blood, that was hers, like the sound of a great sea flowing in waves of light over the world’s darkness, flowing down the hillside, through the holy city, and all the cities, all over the world till the end of time, flooding the souls of men with the waters of life. Mary, the Mother of God, looked from the night to a million million dawns, whose rising suns were a million million Hosts.

    And she saw the crowds, coming again to the mountain side from the ends of the earth, and the end of time.

    She saw the cities of all the world, and the glory of them from the mountain where he had died.

    And she sought for her son who was lost, and found him there in the crowd. He was there because exiles were there, those who fled from murder and had nowhere to lay their heads. He was there, because kings were there, whose crowns were crowns of thorn. He was there, because priests were there, who were there to be sacrificed. He was there, because those who were poor were there, and they were clothed in the iridescence of flowers in dew reflecting the rising sun. He was there because children were there, who looked at her with her child’s shadowless eyes.

    She heard the breaking of the waters of birth.

    And then the Word was silent. The sound of the great wind and the sea became the silence of the Word. She heard only the sound of the little stream that broke from his side.

    But mankind born again was laid in her arms, in the body of her dead child.

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• Blessed Mother , Christmas , Passionist Life
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