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Ah-h-h-h summer! After our l-o-n-g, cold winter and spring, it’s great to enjoy the warmth, brightness, and beauty of summer. Plus summer activities and work.

Summer in Madonna House is full of life. Everywhere you look, things are growing—trees, grass, plants wild and tame, flowers, fruit and vegetables.

Especially wonderful is the freshness and life brought by our working guests, some of whom have come for our summer program and some who would have come anyhow.

I don’t know how many young adults are like “ours,” but well, it brings us hope to see young people who are searching for God and trying to find the path he wants them to walk in this crazy world.

The five-week summer program, organized this year by Sara Matthews and Alec Bonacci, consists of what the working guests always experience—living our life with us (prayer, work, and recreation)—with added activities and talks. (Trina Stitak is the activities coordinator.)

This year the overall theme is “I Will be Love!” Each week there are talks by MH priests and staff on a weekly theme within that. This year these are: Receive from the Father, Prayer Transforms, Forgiveness that Heals, Today—Here and Now, and Behold Your Mother. Plus, Fr. Denis Lemieux is giving a weekly talk on current topics. This week it was about the environment.

And activities? So far, we’ve had an evening farm work bee, a hike to the cross on top of a hill ending with a time of worship and praise, a film about Catherine Doherty, and a picnic.

At the picnic, just before evening prayer, Fr. David Linder blessed our new painting of three of the Korean martyrs—Cecilia Yu and her two children, Paul and Elizabeth Jung—painted by Patrick Stewart.

We were told about these martyrs—just three representing for us thousands of them—and the story of the introduction of Christianity to Korea. Then the painting was installed in St. Mary’s chapel.

(During the nineteenth century, 8,000 to 10,000 Koreans were martyred, 103 of whom were canonized in 1984.)

And all this took place during the first week of the program!

One weekly highlight is the Saturday Evening Seminar, at which our guests have the opportunity to ask our directors general questions.

This first time, these included: What does Madonna House have to offer the world? How did Catherine Doherty challenge you? How did the sex abuse scandal affect you personally? Please talk about the hiddenness of Madonna House.

Meanwhile, lots more is going on—all of which our guests are involved in in some way.

All summer, families come for a week of Cana Colony—a combination retreat/vacation. This is so popular that, except for the host families, we don’t allow families to come two years in a row, and Cana is always all booked months ahead.

Of course, Cana doesn’t happen without a lot of hidden work. Martha Reilander is the registrar and Ana Sofia Corona Gaxiola organized the setting up of the camp and its weekly cleaning, cleaning which staff and guests do together. And each week, one woman staff, one layman staff, one MH priest and a host family are present to the families.

The gift shop, book shop, and museum, too, are busy places in summer, for people vacation in this area, a beautiful hilly woodland with a river and many lakes.

Then, of course, there are the farm and gardens. I don’t think there are many guests who don’t enjoy this outdoor work. Moreover, they know that by doing it they are helping feed our community, including the guests who will come after them.

This year, our St. Mary’s has a new worker: a wolf! Well, not a real one. Here is the story.

Last year, we lost about a third of our blueberry crop to a flock of Canada geese. We tried all kinds of things, but they knew a good thing when they found it, and they kept returning for a feast.

Daniel Rabideau, who is one of our artists, saw pictures of a park in Ottawa which has statues of wolves to keep away the geese. He decided to try it.

Taking an old moth-eaten curtain of coyote fur that had come in donation and some Styrofoam, he made a life-size wolf, which he put on a cart.

When the geese came, he wheeled the wolf over to them and stopped. They looked at it warily. He pulled the cart closer, and off they flew. Will they stay away? We’ll know when the berries ripen.

Catherine would have called this “the ingenuity of love.” and hopefully, this year, we, instead of the geese, will enjoy the blueberries which Ruth Siebenaler, Mary Davis, Mary Ellen Kocunik, and others put so much work into growing.

What else has been happening? Well, we had Joe Hogan’s funeral. Joe lived a long faithful life, and the word that came to me about the atmosphere at the funeral was “quiet joy.” We plan to tell you about him next month.

On Corpus Christi, we combined with our parish in a procession, which ended with benediction at our island chapel. As always, it was great to be with the families and to visit with them afterwards. Some of these families, serious about living their faith, moved to the area because Madonna House is here.

Fr. Kevin Belgrave came and gave us a talk, “The Human Person, Love and Sexuality—Same Sex Attraction and Gender Identity.”

A professor of moral theology at St. Augustine’s Seminary and a counselor with *Courage, he talked about holding in our hands simultaneously, two strings that are very difficult to hold together: (1) not compromising the Church teaching, and (2) meeting the person where he or she is, really listening, and becoming a safe place where he or she can open his heart.

He also said that it is vital that we understand and are able to give, not just what is forbidden, but the beautiful vision of the Church on sexuality and the family.

Whereas that talk helped equip us for the struggles of this time in history, another presentation brought out the spiritual side of Canadian culture.

Christine Schintgen, who spent about eight months here as a working guest in 2002, is now a professor at our local college, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. She came and read to us from her recent book, Canadian Sonnets (Justin Press). Each sonnet is about a person who contributed spiritually to Canada, including Catherine Doherty, and each is accompanied by a short biography and a painting of the person.

With Christine was Joseph Ferrant, an alumnus of the college, who painted the portraits. Each sonnet, written in the first person, gives a personal glimpse of that person.

Blessings on all of you who are returning to school as teachers or students. And blessings on the rest of you, too. May we all continue to learn and grow.

*Courage is an approved apostolate of the Catholic Church that helps men and women with same-sex attractions to live chaste lives in fellowship, truth, and love. For more information, see couragerc.org

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