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As I write this column, it is late August and summer is coming to an end—a summer that has been hot and dry. We’ve been luxuriating in the abundance of sun, but the lack of rain has been difficult for the farm and gardens. Without irrigation, we would not have a crop.

As always with a mixed farm like ours, some crops do well and others not so well in any given year. This year, for example, we have had a bumper crop of lettuce and lots of green beans, but the carrots have done poorly.

And how have our berries fared in our war with the Canada geese, the raspberries and blueberries our “wolf” Gubbio, who we told you about last month, has been guarding?

Much better than last year. The “wolf” helped, and so did a mesh fence along the beach where the geese enter from the river, and our dog, Bailey, who accompanies the gardeners and loves to chase geese.

We don’t usually talk about our flower gardens, but besides the “official” gardens, we have a number of small ones scattered here and there, tended by various people who grow them for pleasure in their spare time. One person has four.

Our summer program for young adults has ended, as has Cana for families.

Lots of guests took part in the summer program. It’s great to see that in this technologically advanced, secular world, these young people at least, love the simplicity of our life.

The activities of the program were simpler and more religious than in other years. We did have two picnics, but we also had a day of recollection, a penance service, and two pilgrimages.

One of the pilgrimages was a diocesan one. The other was a really local one: from the cross on the hill at the farm to Our Lady of Combermere—a distance of about 8 kms. (5 miles).

There was another beautiful addition to the program this year—a bringing together of the generations—our elders and young visitors.

Our visitors are part of the main house community and, though not everyone at St. Mary’s is of the older generations, most of our elders live there. So, once a week, the guests spent the evening at St. Mary’s. Besides time to visit with one another, they had a couple of sing-alongs of old Madonna House songs, led by Nicholas Parrot with the help of Mary Beth Mitchell and Toni Austin.

On the last evening, the elders were on a panel and the guests asked them questions. One question was, “What was the hardest thing you ever had to do in Madonna House, and how did you deal with it?”

The guests loved these evenings, and so did the elderly. They have so much to give each other.

One elder was brought to the families at Cana, too. Every week, Theresa Marsey talked with the teenagers. One person who saw them together said the teens were “rapt in attention.”

It seems quieter now that the summer programs are ended, for there are fewer activities and fewer guests. But it is hardly a quiet time, for we are now harvesting and preserving the produce for the winter.

Every day staff and guests go to the farm to pick and chop and can and freeze what we’ve grown..

For the past few days, the men have been digging large trenches for electrical pipes around the main house and across the road. They will be burying these and adding new transformers in order to increase our capacity for electricity for an upcoming major (for us) project—the building of an addition to the main house.

The architectural drawings are finished, and we are now awaiting the permit. If all goes according to plan, by the time you receive this newspaper, we will have begun the actual building. This is a milestone; much work by many people has gone into the planning.

The highlight of the summer happens towards the end of the season, and that is August 15th, the feast of the Assumption. The celebrations started on the vigil with the beautiful Eastern Rite sung service called “The Acathist Hymn in Honor of the Mother of God.”

The Assumption is a feast for which we decorate with an abundance of flowers—a chain of them surrounding Our Lady’s icon, big bouquets under the altars, and baskets of them throughout the dining room.

We had a beautiful Mass, at which Maryana Erzinger and three others sang two Marian hymns she had composed. And of course, we had festive meals. The staff at St. Mary’s renewed their consecration to Our Lady.

The Assumption is a day on which we combine the celebration of many things: Our Lady, womanhood, Catherine Doherty’s birthday, and the anniversaries of promises and some ordinations.

More specifically, it is the day we celebrate the 50th and 25th anniversaries of promises.

We do this very simply, but what a witness to perseverance these people are, especially in this present age!

It’s the 50th anniversary people who are the most celebrated. We put up a display of their photos, pray for them at the intentions at Mass, and they eat brunch and supper at a special table.

Then in the evening, in an interview format, they shared with all of us about their lives and vocations. They were given questions ahead of time, and Patricia Lawton was the interviewer.

The answers to the questions were both thoughtful and humorous and the stories they told gave, especially to the young staff and guests, a picture of Madonna House life both here and in our missions.

The icon towels which hung around two of the icons in our island chapel were wearing out, and Teresa Reilander has finished embroidering new ones. They were two-years in the making.

The Eastern tradition is that you embroider intentions on them and on this one are little men, women, and priests—our standing petition for vocations.

Peter Gravelle, who did silver smithing before joining Madonna House, made a silver cover for the gospel book we use at Mass. He did it by a method called “chase and repousse.”

Marysia Kowalchyk wrote (painted) an icon of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman which was commissioned for the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto. It will be there when he is canonized on October 13th.

Fr. Denis Lemieux, Alec Bonacci, and Veronica Ferri had a booth at a vocations fair in Peterborough.

Fr. Michael Bombak made his final promises as an associate priest—an associate priest with a difference. His wife and five children were in attendance. Fr. Bombak is Ukrainian Rite, and their priests are allowed to marry.

May God bless each of you and keep your hearts in his peace.

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