This
week in Madonna House was far from ordinary. Of course the week revolved
largely around the events on Sunday—June 8, the feast of Pentecost coinciding
this year with the anniversary of the blessing of the statue of Our Lady of
Combermere (unofficially and strictly non-liturgically known here as the
‘feast’ of OLC), on which day the members of MH make, renew temporarily, or
make forever their promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
‘For the glory of
God, and because I desire with my whole heart to respond to the call of Jesus
Christ to preach the Gospel with my life, I, N., promise with the help of Our
Lady to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience for…’ The words rang out
eleven times in our chapel, as three made their first promises and received the
MH cross, six made two year renewals, and two made final promises to live this
life ‘forever’.
It is my policy on
the blog to not mention names of MH
people, so I won’t go into who they all were. But friends and family of the
promisers came to join us from all over the place—Italy, Washington, Arizona,
and points nearer. The chapel was packed with a most diverse group of ‘friends
we hadn’t met yet’, who stayed for a reception afterwards.
Those are the bare
facts of the event; it is truly hard to convey the emotions and the inner
spirit of the day. We journey very closely with one another in this community,
and watching a beloved brother or sister standing up to commit to this life, be
it the first plunge into those waters, a renewal, or for life, is deeply
touching. To see anyone commit to anything in the world today is deeply
touching. And MH, even though I consider it to be the most beautiful and
wonderful vocation in the world (natch!), is truly a very small, hidden,
mysterious place, few in number and very ordinary and humble in its approach to
evangelical life. It is awesome to see people who have great personal gifts and
could, truly, do other things with their lives throw their lot in with the rest
of us in the way of Nazareth love and service.
So that was Sunday.
It was also Pentecost, and so we had at supper that night the traditional
distribution of Pentecost gifts and fruits. This is a custom we started I don’t
know when—ages ago—of making up little ‘gifts’ cut out in the form of a flame
or a dove or some such thing, with one of the seven gifts of the spirit written
on one side, and one of the fruits on the other. We draw a gift from the
basket, and consider it to be a word from the Holy Spirit for the year. This
year, for example, I got ‘knowledge and peace’.
Beyond that major
event, I guess the other big event was the annual work bee to set up our Cana
Colony, the camp we run for families each summer. This is the one MH work we do
that actually has a papal mandate. When Catherine was in Rome back in 1951, she
had a private audience with Pope Pius XII, an event that she did not anticipate
and that left her rather in a daze. He blessed her work, and her, suggested to
her that the nascent MH community make the very promises we now have, and before
she left implored her to do something for families.
That ‘something’
has evolved over time into a six-week summer camp where up to nine families can
come each week for a time of combined vacation and retreat. There is Mass each
day, a conference, an MH priest on hand for reconciliation or counsel, and
otherwise lots of time just to be together with other families and recreate
together as a family. The setting is rustic, but not primitive, and very
beautiful. It is a popular apostolate, and the waiting list each year is long.
In fact, this year
we decided to build an extra cabin to accommodate the growing numbers of
families applying. We had always had two spaces for tenters, but we find that
fewer and fewer people are up for the challenge of camping as a family for a
week, and as a result it was rare to fill up both those spaces. Building an
eighth cabin and still leaving a single space for camping will allow us to
operate the camp at its maximum capacity.
So on Tuesday
almost the entire community went out to Cana to scrub, scrub, scrub every inch
of it and all the equipment, to repair and paint and generally get the place in
sparkling order, in preparation for the camp’s opening in two weeks. Cana is a
great joy and delight for us, and I personally am sure that the papal blessing
upon it (unique among all the works of MH) is responsible for what a fruitful
and beautiful apostolate it has been over the decades.
The other event
that brought us great joy this week is that the renovations we have been doing
in the upstairs chapel, the original chapel of MH, which necessitated the
removal of the Blessed Sacrament from it, are largely completed, and we now
have Jesus back with us in the tabernacle. The chapel has been considerably
beautified, with the tabernacle moved to the center, a new altar, a new
reredos, and lovely statues of Mary and Joseph. It is so good to have our
chapel back – we all missed it, which I guess is a good thing!
Beyond that, MH is
a hopping place—the farm is in full swing with the gardens especially, the men
are doing a wide range of outdoor maintenance projects, the food processing has
begun with the first harvest of the rhubarb, and everywhere you look there are
people, work, energy, and action. We are an apostolate in motion, never more so
than in the short Canadian summer months. Good thing the Holy Spirit showed up
when He did – not a moment too soon.
And that’s what
happened this week in MH.