Christmas and the Christmas Season were, as always, rich in tradition and celebration. For Catherine Doherty, who grew up in a culture in which faith was incarnated into the fiber of life, passed on to us the customs of many lands and taught us how to celebrate.

You can get a sense of how the major feasts were celebrated in the Russia of her childhood in “Feast of Feasts,” and that article will also give you a sense of how we celebrate the major feasts here. For, in Madonna House, Catherine, combining the best from her own culture and the best from ours, created in Madonna House a small pocket of Catholic culture.

But, for us at Madonna House, living as a Catholic culture, trying to live the Gospel in everyday life, is not just for feasts. It is something we live all year round, no matter what we are doing and what is going on.

This year, for example—and this is not unusual for January—there is a flu going around. It’s not a major one, either in terms of severity or in the numbers of persons going down, but it does affect our lives and challenge us to live the Gospel in still other ways.

If you get the flu, you are challenged to accept it as God’s will, and God often uses our weakened state and time with little or nothing to do to work inside of us.

If you don’t get the flu, you may be challenged to take on a new job temporarily. If the farm cook, for example, succumbs (as she did), someone has to cook for the farmers until she gets better.

And all are challenged to be more generous: to bring sick trays to dormitories, to fill in here and there as needed, and to do more than usual of the routine and very necessary jobs such as cleaning and dishes and preparing vegetables.

Retreats

January is a time for some of the work departments to catch up on projects they couldn’t get to before. And, this month, too, several people have made a retreat of one kind or another.

And every month, every day actually, in the graced sameness of our scheduled lives, we are challenged to live the Gospel minute by minute.

I thought this would be a good month to tell you something about our daily schedule—our life of prayer and work and recreation.

We begin the day with morning prayer—lauds, from the Divine Office.

Meals

Then we go to breakfast. Meals—six at a table—are a time to be together and in serving the table, in passing the food, and in conversation, a time to love one another.

After breakfast there is work, usually with a break and a short spiritual reading and discussion some time during the morning, until our main meal at noon.

Then, after lunch, we have spiritual reading and discussion for a half hour or so.
After that (after dishes for the women) it’s back to work—which includes an afternoon tea break. Mass is at 5:15.

Supper. Then dishes for the women and the preparation of vegetables for the next day’s meals for the men.

Evenings vary. Gatherings of one kind or another, free evenings, sometimes a talk. Evening teatime, which includes chatting, more serious sharing, card-playing, board games, crafts, etc., etc., etc. On days off or Sunday, depending on the time of year, people hike, read, canoe, take walks, write letters, pray. ice skate, bike, play volley ball, etc., etc., etc.

On the deeper level, it is all one. When we are doing God’s will and trying to love, everything we do is a prayer. (And “we,” of course, includes every baptized person.)

And even in quiet times, there are some news. Archbishop Raya has been in the hospital for a while now. He never really got back his strength after he fractured his hip, and he is slowly failing. As we did with Catherine Doherty in her last illness, we take turns being with him, and someone is always with him.

There is one rather extraordinary piece of news about Archbishop Raya. For his work for peace throughout his life—in Alabama in the United States between black and white, and especially in Israel between Arab and Jew, he has recently been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is a training center, and all of us are taking one class or another. The guests are studying the the Catechism of the Catholic Church with Fr. Paul Burchat. The first year applicants are reading the history of our apostolate.

The men in the spiritual formation program (those discerning priesthood) are studying the pope’s exhortation on the formation of priests with Fr. Tom Zoeller. And soon we, the staff, will begin our winter study program, which we’ll tell you about next month.

David Shulist, a neighbor of ours, gave a talk about the Kashubs, the people from the section of Poland called “Kashuby,” who first settled nearby Wilno in 1875. (This was the first Polish settlement in Canada.)

MH Publications has published a new book: Beginning Again: Recovering Your Innocence and Joy Through Confession. It replaces Kiss of Christ and though it includes content from it, is an entirely new book, with more from Catherine as well as significant input from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

And as we live our simple lives, we very much carry in our hearts the suffering of the world: the victims of the tsunami and the war in Iraq and those suffering in Sudan and in all the trouble spots throughout the world.

We pray and write letters as the forces of the Gospel of life struggle against the forces of the culture of death to maintain in Canada the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

This is a time when, as never before, prayer and the offering of all our lives are needed.