Blessings for Holy Week and Easter!
Spring, 2014
“Give
thanks to the Lord for He is good;
for his love endures forever.”
Our dear Friends,
Yes, here
is the great Good News! It is the joy of
the Gospel: God’s love endures forever!
It is the joy proclaimed throughout the world by Holy Church at the
Easter Vigil as she invites all the powers and hosts of heaven to rejoice and
exult because Christ is risen and nothing and nobody can separate us from His
love – all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding! But that joy cannot be contained just in one
night or even one day. We sing it over
and over again for a whole week: Give thanks to the Lord! He is good.
He is good. And His love lasts
forever!
We have had
so much to give thanks for these past months, beginning with the publication of
our Holy Father’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium at the end of the Year of Faith.
Mother Abbess gifted each of us with a copy so we could study it in
depth together, which we have been doing at recreation on Sunday evenings. We hope all of you have been able to delve
into this marvelous document as we have.
Of course, the big news of December—and our primary reason for giving
thanks – is always the arrival of our Infant Savior and all that He has brought
to us from His Heavenly Father. This
year, we were led into and guided through the season by our Father Francis
Simeone, who had a surprise for us. You
may recall that he was scheduled a couple of years ago to take our Christmas
Masses, but suffered a heart attack and underwent by-pass surgery at the
beginning of the novena. Well, he had
already been working on his homilies for those days and had just completed one
of them when he decided he really needed to drive over to emergency to find out
the cause of the chest pains he was having.
And the rest is history. Except
he never deleted that homily. So, after the gospel on the appropriate day this
year, he opened his remarks by holding up his notes and telling us that this
was that homily. God is so good!
Mid-January
brought us yet another special gift in the person of Bishop Bosco Puthur, from Kerala , India United States visiting family before traveling
to Australia to become the
first bishop of the eparchy of St.
Thomas the Apostle of the Syro-Malabar rite. So he dropped down for a couple of days to be
with our sisters from India . He asked our prayers for the daunting task
that lies before him in setting up this new eparchy among the some 40,000
Syro-Malabar faithful who up to now have had only two priests of that rite to
serve them and no official organization.
Like the first bishop in our country whose diocese covered the whole of
the thirteen colonies, Bishop Bosco’s territory will be the whole of Australia and New Zealand ! We ask you to join us in supporting this
valiant son of the Church as he carries the Good News of the Gospel to, quite
literally, the ends of the earth.
Meanwhile,
we were preparing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our move up here to
Mount St. Francis. How many memories we had
to share with our sisters who had not been with us during that momentous
time! Family books with photos of the
way it was back then filled in things words could not supply. And how we gave thanks for all of you who
helped with that great saga – and saga it was – one of those once-in-a-lifetime
adventures that brought so many of us together for the glory of God. We remembered also those who took such great
part in that day, but who are no longer with us here. We are sure they are now receiving that reward
for which we pray daily: that God may bestow eternal life on all those who do
good to us for His sake .
Part of the
joy of that anniversary was our anticipation of welcoming yet another member
into our midst. Postulant Phoenix joined us on
February 7th, the feast of our Holy Mother St. Colette, she who,
through the centuries has led so many along the way of St. Francis and St.
Clare. A little farther down the road,
in the month of March, we celebrated another Tenth – this time of the formal
dedication of our monastery and monastic church with the several days of Open
House that preceded it. So many more
came than we were expecting! All for the
glory of God, because those who gave thanks were so many – some even coming
from out-of-town and out-of state! To
help us with our celebrations this year, the parishioners of Our Lady of Mt.
Carmel in Newport News threw a pantry shower for us
that was just overwhelming in its generosity!
We cannot even begin to repay all those who contributed, and so we pray
the Lord, who is never outdone in generosity, to reward each and every one with
that measure of His own, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, just
as He promised.
Of course, we are on the verge of
celebrating the greatest good news imaginable: the Resurrection of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the heart
of the new evangelization, our Holy Father told us, the primary Kerygma: “Jesus Christ loves you; He gave His life to
save you, and now He is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen
and free you.” But for such wondrous
proclamation there must be preparation.
And so, the Spirit led us forth into the desert in late March and early
April in our annual retreat, conducted this year by taped conferences on the
Gospel of St. John given to the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George by
Most Rev. Jan Liesing, S.S.D., bishop of the diocese of Breda
in the Netherlands . Leading us through the great mysteries of
Holy Week will be Father Anil Gonsalves, O.F.M. Cap., a friar from India who is presently studying at Catholic University
in Washington , D.C.
Which
brings us – almost – to the month of Our Lady, when our Sister Angelique will
be making profession of her First Vows.
We invite you to join us at 9:00 a.m. on that great day, May 24, feast
of the Dedication of the Basilica of our Holy Father St Francis in Assisi , as Sister vows to
“observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience, in
poverty, and in chastity,” and also to observe enclosure. Thus we proclaim the joy that comes from personally
encountering the Lord Jesus. Stay tuned
for accounts of this event and more in our August newsletter.
Oh! Listen!
Do you hear it? All the flowers
on Mt. St. Francis have, and are bursting
into bloom for joy! Just over the
horizon: the Hosannas of Palm Sunday,
the Christus Factus of Good Friday, the returning Alleluia, and then, then the
great reassuring tones of Easter morning, bright with the light of His
rising: “Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum
sum.”
“I arose and am still with you. Alleluia.”
Our Holy Week
Liturgies in this year of the Lord 2014
April 17 Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper
5:00 p.m.
April 18 Good Friday Celebration of the Lord’s
Passion
3:00 p.m.
April 19 Easter
Vigil
11:00 p.m.
April 20 Easter Sunday Mass of the Lord’s Resurrection 9:00
a.m.
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