All posts by Anne Tschanz

News, Women's Communities

Embraced by Our Mother, the Church

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This evening, Friday, November 6, 2012, six Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church, will pronounce perpetual vows at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes in Spokane, Washington. The congregation will also witness the temporary profession of three sisters.

This was no ordinary journey for the sisters.

In 2007, 15 nuns from a schismatic convent in Washington State rejoined the Catholic Church by formally renouncing their state of schism and making a profession of the Catholic faith. Their former order holds to the position that popes elected since John XXIII are invalid and that Vatican II was a heretical council.

The new order’s title reflects its pilgrimage to full communion with Rome. “Mary is our guide. With a title so ancient and yet so popular today, ‘Mother of the Church’ she understands the need for unity in the Church,” explains Sister Mary Eucharista.

It all began in 2002 when a parish priest and his parishioners began a prayer campaign to bring the sisters back into the fold. They enlisted the help of the Missionaries of Charity who came to Spokane in 2006 in part to address the spiritual poverty of the sisters on “the Mount” (a former Jesuit scholasticate).

To a sister, they credit the witness of the Missionaries of Charity as their strongest motivation to return to Rome. They saw in the MC sisters “so much charity, so much love, so much goodness;” says Sister Kathryn Joseph. “They won us over with their prayer and charity.”

News

Our Source of Hope

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Fr. George Rutler in a recent homily quoted the late Edward Gibbon who wrote about the decline of once-great civilizations.

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

Fr. Rutler notes that the only people who have the selfless energy that builds noble societies are those like the saints in the picture (right). “The real leaders are not those who hypnotize naïve people into thinking that they are the source of hope. Those who can rescue nations from servility to selfishness are not on slick campaign posters, but in stark black and white photographs like that taken on Molokai in 1889.”

The picture (Father thinks it is the first ever taken of two saints together) is of St. Damien of Molokai and St. Marianne Cope.

Let us pray for holy vocations to the priesthood and religious life on this election day!

Cloistered life, Liturgical Year

Pro Orantibus Day

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On November 21, 2012, the Church will celebrate Pro Orantibus Day (“For Those Who Pray”). Catholics around the world are encouraged to honor the cloistered men and women religious who have devoted their whole lives, hidden in the world, to God. Blessed John Paul II established this worldwide day in 1997.

The faithful can honor these faithful servants by attending Mass and offering up special prayers for cloistered religious, by making visits to monasteries and cloistered convents, or by sending cards or letters to contemplative communities.

The IRL has free resources that can be used to prepare and celebrate this day including:

  • Press Release
  • Liturgy Planning Guide
  • Homily Notes
  • Prayer Cards
  • Intercessions
  • A Novena for the Feast of the Presentation of Mary
  • Clip Art
  • Photos
  • Bulletin Announcements

Pope Benedict XVI referred to cloistered, contemplative life as “the heart” which provides blood to the rest of the Body of Christ.  When the heart weakens, we all weaken!

We pray for all the consecrated men and women in convents and cloisters, monasteries and hermitages, that their silent prayer and hidden sacrifices might supply the grace needed to transform our world.

Saints, Women's Communities

May They Be Safe

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Please pray for the Little Sisters of the Poor who have homes for the elderly in Totowa NJ, the Bronx, Queens, and Enfield CT. They also have a novitiate in Queens Village. One of the Little Sisters contacted us and asked for prayers. Medications, food, electricity, and fuel are all very real concerns since nursing homes are not considered ‘priority’ emergency sites as are hospitals.

Mother Maria Christine said, “Having been an eyewitness myself to the Hurricane Katrina, I also know that goodness, love and generosity abound in times of crises such as this, so with prayer let us be persons who dispense hope to those around us.  Our God is so much greater than this superstorm.”

May God protect them.

On the Sister’s website they note that their foundress, St. Jeanne Jugan, has been ‘appearing’ in the most unlikely places! In August, a statue of Jeanne was dedicated at Creighton University. The miraculous cure of Creighton alumnus Dr. Edward Gatz of Omaha led to Blessed Jeanne Jugan being declared a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. And in October, the Montfort Fathers placed a statue of Jeanne at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Island in Manorville (Long Island), NY. The shrine has an Avenue of the Saints and Jeanne now resides near the statues of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Liturgical Year

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them O Lord

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Go forth, Christian soul, from this world
in the name of God the almighty Father,
who created you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God,
who suffered for you,
in the name of the Holy Spirit,
who was poured out upon you.
Go forth, faithful Christian!

May you live in peace this day,
may your home be with God in Zion,
with Mary, the virgin Mother of God,
with Joseph, and all the angels and saints. . . .

May you return to your Creator
who formed you from the dust of the earth.
May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints
come to meet you as you go forth from this life. . . .
May you see your Redeemer face to face.

News, Saints

Mother Cabrini Shrine Reopens

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On September 30, 2012, the chapel that was once part of Columbus Hospital in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood was rededicated by Cardinal Francis George as the Mother Cabrini Shrine. Closed for 10 years, the shrine was once the chapel for the hospital which was torn down to make way for a luxury condominium tower. The shrine is located on the site where St. Frances Xavier Cabrini died in 1917.

Mother was the first American citizen to be declared a saint and the foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As an immigrant from Italy, she knew what it was like to arrive in a foreign country and be unwelcome.  But she carried out the Holy Father’s wishes and built hospitals, orphanages and schools in the New World – 67 foundations in her lifetime! Her motto came from Philippians 3:14: I can do all things in Him who strengthens me!”

Pope John Paul II said, “Her extraordinary activity drew its strength from prayer, especially from long periods before the tabernacle. Christ was everything to her.” In keeping with her spirit of prayer, the shrine is open for Eucharistic Adoration every Friday. If there are enough adorers, the hours will increase. When I was there, I was impressed by the steady stream of people who came and prayed.

The shrine itself is incredibly beautiful, a dazzling array of gold mosaics, carrera marble, frescoes and Florentine stained glass. In addition to the chapel, there is a small museum where you can see the bed where Mother died and other mementos of her life. There are also rooms available for meetings which the shrine staff will be using to introduce children along with their parents to the power of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

The shrine is nestled among high rise condos, vintage brownstones, brick apartments and busy Lincoln Park on Lake Michigan. As more people discover this oasis in the desert, perhaps it will become a center for spiritual renewal in the heart of the big city. As we pray for religious freedom in our country, Mother reminds us that “we make a serious mistake …if the foundation stone of our moral edifice be other than Christ and His Church.”

Cloistered life, Women's Communities

Cistercian Nuns Plan New Monastery

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The Cistercian nuns of the Valley of  Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, are making plans for a new monastery.

According to a member of the architecutural firm of Cram and Ferguson Architects, it is “the first new traditional ecclesiastical project to draw on the simplicity and balance of Cistercian monastic architecture, and the first ever undertaken in the United States.” The principal of the firm traveled to Le Thoronet, Sénanque, and Silvacane in France to absorb and understand the ancient Cistercian traditions and architecture, and how to make it practical for today.

The sisters have the fortunate problem of outgrowing the space of their present monastery. Plus the noise of the world has grown around them and they are seeking a more contemplative site suitable to their way of life. The site for the proposed monastery is 229 acres in rural Iowa County southwest of Madison, Wisconsin. The new monastery will be able to house 35 sisters, in order to handle the anticipated future growth of the community. They currently number 17.

The Valley of Our Lady Monastery is an IRL Affiliate community. They were  founded in 1957 by the nuns of Frauenthal Abbey in Switzerland whose own foundation dates to the 13th century. They are the Cistercian Order’s first and only community of nuns in the English-speaking world. They receive their inspiration from the Sacred Scriptures, desert monastic tradition, the Rule of St. Benedict and the documents of the Church’s magisterium. And of course the Cistercian Fathers of the 12th century, most notably, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. They pray the Divine Office in Latin with Gregorian Chant. 

If you would like to donate to the building project, please visit their website.

The nuns also invite us to join them in praying the Sub Tuum, the oldest known prayer to the Mother of God which daily ends their office of Lauds.

We fly to thy patronage,
O holy Mother of God;

despise not our petitions
in our necessities,

but deliver us always
from all dangers,

O glorious and blessed Virgin.

 

 

Men's communities, News

Plus bibo, plus sitio

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The more I drink, the more I thirst.

These are the words of Peter in the Dialogues as he thirsts for more miracle stories about St. Benedict. They are pertinent today too for the Benedictine Monks of Norcia who inaugurated a brewery this summer to help sustain the monastery, located on at the birthplace of St. Benedict of Nursia. The beer is called appropriately enough Birrra Nursia and has the motto: Ut Laetifect Cor (from Psalm 104 – how wine is a gift from God to gladden men’s hearts).

The Archbishop reminded those in attendance of the miracle of Cana where Christ performed a miracle which brought joy to the hearts of the wedding party.

Fr. Cassian Folsom, O.S.B., the founder of the monastery, has been undergoing treatment for cancer which, thanks be to God, is now in remission. He joyfully celebrated with Bro. Evagrius as Brother professed solemn vows on August 11th. In July, four young men participated in a discernment program. May God bless them with holy vocations.

If you are interested in becoming a Benedictine oblate associated with the monastery at Norcia, contact Brother Anthony, the Oblate Director. It is necessary to come to Italy for an initial retreat and then begin the Oblate Novitiate which lasts one year.

Oblates are people who are attracted to Benedictine spirituality but those whose state in life obliges them to live in the world. The monks remember all of the oblates in prayer at the closing of the Divine Office: May the Divine assistance remain always with us, and with our absent brethren.

News, Saints

The Martyrs of North America

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Yesterday in Rome, St. Kateri Tekakwitha was canonized a saint of the Catholic Church. The faith was brought to her by men who left their countries for certain martyrdom in the New World. At her birthplace of Ossernenon (New York), three Jesuit missionaries lost their lives as they strove to bring the Good News to the natives of the land. Kateri herself was baptized and instructed by a Jesuit missionary and then fled to Canada due to religious persecution.

Pope Benedict XVI said of her:

“May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are. St. Kateri, protectress of Canada and the first American Indian saint, we entrust you to the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America.”

I did not realize that Kateri’s grave site is revered and known. In an article in the National Catholic Register (10/21/12),  it says that she was placed in a coffin made by sympathetic Frenchman and buried on Holy Thursday, 1680. Her remains were later placed in a marble tomb at St. Francis Xavier Mission in the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake, near Montreal, Quebec. (See photo right)

The National Shrine to St. Kateri is located near Fonda, New York, and has been under the guardianship of the Conventual Franciscans since 1938. The Founder, Fr. Thomas Grassman, OFM Conv., discovered the original Iroquois village in 1950, today the only fully excavated Iroquois Indian village in the country. Nearby is the spring whose water was used to baptize Kateri. The clear water drawn by pilgrims is credited yet today with many miraculous cures.

You can also visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs not far away in Auriesville, NY, commemorating the lives of the martyrs St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil and St. John Lalande. It is also the birthplace of St. Kateri who was born there ten years after the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues.