This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
In our part of the world, spring doesn’t burst forth in glory as she does some places. She creeps in slowly, then backs off, as if she doubts her own power and ultimate victory. And this year was an especially long, cold, and snowy winter. By April we were wondering if spring, real spring, would ever really come.
But a late, slow spring, too, is a symbol of the Resurrection. Who on the first Good Friday could have imagined the Resurrection of Christ?
Easter is the feast of feasts, the pinnacle of the year, and Catherine Doherty, our foundress, taught us how to celebrate it as such.
The essence of the celebrations are, of course, the Easter liturgies, and their glory was enhanced with song and flowers and decorations and the flaming Paschal candle.
In his homily at the Easter Vigil, Fr. Denis Lemieux shared with us a word he received in poustinia: “Enter the Land of Easter.”
On Easter Monday, Fr. David May told us he had been thinking about the Land of Easter and asking himself what it is.
In the Land of Easter in the Gospels, he said, Christ shows up at any time in any place—even without an invitation. Then as suddenly as he comes, he leaves. In the Land of Easter, he can come to us, too, any time, any place.
Secondly, the paths of the Land of Easter are twisted and its ways strange to us. Only Jesus can show us how to live there.
At the liturgy of Easter Day, Fr. Blair Bernard connected that first Easter with this one, bringing to our minds and hearts, hope for today. He talked about the many, many people across the world who were being received into the Church that very day—including two of our former working guests.
In our Easter celebrations, the religious and our ordinary human ways of celebrating were fused into one.
We had special meals and special Russian Easter foods (koolitch and paska); we made our own breakfasts and visited with one another. There were several hikes, including one at dawn on Easter day. (There was still snow—sometimes knee-high—and ice on forest trails, but people gamely trudged through them.)
There were board games and sports games and bike rides and jam sessions.
And over and over throughout the Easter Season, we are saying and singing, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!”
Now let us backtrack to before Easter. One major event during Lent was the death and funeral of Marité Langlois. Marité died gradually and peacefully at home, surrounded by several of her MH sisters. And that, of course, is only one part of our accompanying our brothers and sisters when they are dying.
One PSW (personal support worker) was moved to tears by seeing how we do this.
Marité was 92, just two months short of her 93rd birthday, and her death was historic for us. She was one of our original pioneers and the last of the first class to make promises, to make a commitment, in Madonna House—in 1952.
The word that came to me, the feel of this funeral, was “quiet joy.” Next month, we’ll tell you more about Marité.
Another beautiful event, and much of the Spirit, was a first—a one-day gathering of all the women staff in Combermere.
Elizabeth Bassarear, the director general of women, said that the thought had stayed with her for us to spend a day together praying and listening to each other and to the Holy Spirit. She posed the questions: “What is God offering us? What is he asking of us?”
Much of the day was spent sharing with an open microphone. It was graced time, with what we said coming from our thoughts and prayer and lives.
At the end of the day, we renewed our promises together at Mass.
Another expression of our life together was short presentations by our study groups which had been studying and sharing various sources and expressions of the spirituality of our foundress, Catherine Doherty.
Among the sources used by the various groups were selections from Catherine’s poetry, diaries, talks, books; and her writings on the Church, farming, and our constitution and statutes. In a more general focus, one group studied Russian spirituality and another Russian history.
We also saw another dimension of beauty, the beauty of embroidery. One of our elders, Mary McNamara (whom we call “Mary Mac”) has, for over thirty years, been stitching complex cross-stitch pieces.
Recently they were framed and put up for display, first in our house and then in the gallery in the gift shop where they are being offered for sale in a display called, “A Heritage of Threads.”
Included in this display are selections from many years of donations of vintage and handmade lace.
Our biggest women’s dorm, St. Goupil’s, has done a couple of interesting things recently. (Did you know that Madonna House staff live in dormitories?)
First, a little background. In that dorm we celebrate birthdays (or baptismal days or feast days, whichever one day a year the person chooses to celebrate), with a party for everyone celebrating their day that month. And the person or persons can choose the form of the party.
For her party, Eliana Ribeiro das Chagas asked us to illustrate a favorite New Testament story, mainly using plasticine. The results were quite original and amazingly varied. We MH staff are so, so different from one another.
The other St. Goupil’s event was a culling night. Elizabeth Bassarear, our director general of women, has asked all the women to cull our possessions, and in St. Goupil’s we had an evening of doing it together—that is each culling our own stuff at the same time. No, despite the joking about it, we did not cull each other’s things!
Finally, here are some news in brief: Marcia Dillabough, a dental hygienist who has a local tooth-cleaning clinic, came to give us a few tips and techniques on how to improve this daily task.
Scott Eagan, Bryan O’Brien, and Doug Guss, attended a farm trade show in Ottawa. Some of the men guests built a snow fort and slept in it for a night. Art students from our local college came for a talk on iconography by Marysia Kowalchyk.
We had a prayer evening of sacred Lenten music, some of it composed by staff worker Maryana Erzinger. During Lent, several of our priests went out to give retreats, and several of us made private ones.
Well, that’s it for this month. May your hearts be fed with the joy of the Easter Season and with the beauty of nature during this time of year.
