Best of all, we are about to enter Advent. We have had our music practice of Advent songs, and the weekly Advent liturgy classes for the guests have begun. This is the course through which they learn about the season mainly by doing the presentations and decorations for the whole house. This year their classes are led by Fr. Louis Labrecque, Peter Gravelle, and Jeanne Guillemette.

But let us backtrack a little, for the liturgy class also was much involved in some earlier feasts—All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

Our celebration of the feast of All Saints has, for a number of years now, begun with the coming of “the little saints.” Every year on the eve of All Saints Day, when most children in Canada are celebrating Halloween, some of the children around here are celebrating All Saints Day instead.

The parents dress them in saints’ costumes and give them an All Saints Day party. But before their party, they come to Madonna House, parade around our dining room as we sing, “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and then each child in turn tells us about his or her saint. Then we try to guess who they are. This year there were 43 “saints” and one “lion” (St. Jerome’s).

The parents and older children enjoy trying to stump us. How would you have done with Sts. Flavia, Herribert, Grace, Aelipius, and Mary the Silent?

All Saints Day itself is one day that we celebrate differently every year. This year we had a party, and some of us dressed up as saints. Those who didn’t had the name of a saint pinned to their backs, and they had to ask us questions to help them guess who they were.

There were also ten “mystery saints,” whom we had to try and guess. Scott Eagan stole the show as St. Roche with his heavenly hound (Wallace, the farm dog), who licked and healed his wounded leg.

Meanwhile, St. Mary’s had a “Saints and Sinners Poetry Reading,” and a display of pictures of each person’s favorite saint.

On All Souls’ Day, in two different groups we said the rosary at the cemetery of our parish church and at our own cemetery. (Our Madonna House dead are buried in both places.) And the applicants were taken to both cemeteries to “meet” and hear about the Madonna House dead they didn’t know.

And now, as I said in the beginning, we are getting ready for Advent. Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of Christ the king with daylong adoration, And, after breakfast, as the first event of Advent, the guests picked prince’s pine for the Advent wreath that they have been making this week.

What else had been happening—besides our usual everyday work, of course? Well, our three directors general have gone on visitation to three of our houses—Regina, Yukon, and Vancouver.

The Brazil team, except for Andorra Howard, are all back in Combermere. Fr. Tom Talentino, Steve Héroux, Elizabeth Bassarear, and Raandi King are all assigned here, and in January Eliana Ribeiro das Chagas will be going to Marian Centre Edmonton where she will be learning English.

Eliana, who is Brazilian, received her formation in MH Brazil, and only visited MH Combermere for the first time last summer.

One more man, Don Collins, has joined the spiritual formation program, bringing their number up to five. They have just begun a series of classes on sacramental and liturgical spirituality.

Four staff attended the Winter Exposition, an agricultural show, and Donna Surprenant and Cheryl Ann Smith attended the International Art Show. Both exhibitions were held in Toronto. And, here at home, a geriatric consultant from a nursing home in nearby Pembroke, gave a conference to our nurses and caregivers of the elderly.

The monthly Winter Lecture Series, which we offer to the people of the area, has begun with a presentation called “Wired for Worship” by Jim and Lisa Anderson. After leading us in some rousing praise songs, they talked about their music ministry, a way of helping people to praise God.

We are all, they told us, “wired for worship.” I think that’s a modern version of St. Augustine’s, “Our hearts were made for thyself, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.”

The carpentry department oiled the wooden dining room floor. Someone discovered a wonderful alternative to kneeling on your hands and painstakingly rubbing the oil into the wood. For two evenings, dance music was played and the applicants and whoever else wished to join them, tied rags to their feet and rubbed the oil in by dancing around the floor!

On another evening, another work was also made into fun, as whoever wished to, joined in a sugaring down, that is, boiling down some of our maple syrup and then pounding it to make granulated maple sugar.

Carol Timinski, who has been to our Cana Colony, came to give several of us a one-day course in fabric art—how to embroider with a sewing machine.

Our last piece of news is an especially good one. At one of our evening Masses, Deacon Bob Birch received his Madonna House cross and made his first promises as an associate deacon.

And these, dear friends, are our news for this month.

“Sanctity is the fulfillment of will; the conformity to the will of God—out of love!” — Catherine Doherty