In the men’s department, the maintenance of our buildings is, of course, ongoing, and renovations, too, are sometimes needed.

When the furnace “died” recently in St. Germaine’s, the dormitory for the women guests, it seemed a good time to look at the bigger picture of that building. That simple dormitory which has housed our women guests for many years now needs some major work. Among other things, the bathroom will be extended, and the ceiling will be re-done with drywalling.

And always in the midst of our simple, Nazareth-like days filled with prayer and work, there are things that enrich our lives and broaden our vision.

One enrichment in recent years has been the fact that more and more of our guests and members are from across the world.

At St. Mary’s (a separate house within the Madonna House community), for example, Catherine Ching, a Singaporean of Chinese culture and descent, gave us an experience of the most important festival of the year for Chinese people—Lunar New Year. (It occurs in February.) Many joined her in preparing the celebration.

Red is the color for the New Year, and St. Mary’s dining room was beautifully and traditionally decorated. Catherine and Sue Perreca, who studied Chinese culture before coming to Madonna House, made traditional red paper cutouts for the windows, and Toni Austin and Karen Maskiew sewed traditional red and gold wall hangings.

New Year’s Day itself was filled with traditions of the day, which Catherine explained. But a surprise for her was the arrival of a huge red dragon—made and operated by Janet Bourdet and Hugo Isaza—who joined in a dance led by Sue in flaming red costume.

Among Chinese people, New Year’s Eve dinner is the most important meal of the year, and Catherine, with the help of many others, made a meal with some of the traditional dishes.

Koreans also celebrate Lunar New Year, and the Koreans here went to Peterborough, a small city approximately 150 km away, to celebrate it with three Korean families, who had invited them for the festival.

As our American readers know, February is Black History Month in the United States, and for us in Madonna House February also includes the anniversary of the foundation of Friendship House Harlem, an apostolate founded by Catherine Doherty before she founded Madonna House. (Harlem is the largest African-American section of New York City.)

We always celebrate both of these, and it is a wonderful opportunity to teach our young guests and members who were born after the sixties and those from overseas, about racism, African-American culture and history, and the Civil Rights Movement.

We do it differently every year. This year applicant Joanne Kunz drew a large poster of a street scene in Harlem, and the library put up a display of African-American books and did a presentation which included the reading of two of Catherine Doherty’s stories from her time in Harlem.

The presentation ended with David Guzman leading us in, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” an African-American spiritual.

Also, at the request of Andorra Howard, an African-American staff worker, we had a Mass for reconciliation between races and the healing of racism.

For February’s “winter lecture,” we had an evening of traditional story telling by Martha Shepherd, a staff worker at MH Ottawa, who did story telling before she came to Madonna House.

She began the evening by giving us a bit of the spiritual and cultural context of story-telling as a way of “truth-speaking,” and then told us three stories gleaned from her years in Ottawa. We were spell-bound. Television is certainly a very poor substitute for the story-telling and music-making of our ancestors.

We’ve already told you about the classes of the guests, applicants and men of the spiritual formation program (for those discerning priesthood). These among us are more specifically in a time of formation—though the formation of the staff is life-long.

The annual staff study program, which takes place for a few weeks for part of Friday afternoons at this time of year, has just begun. This year, our small groups are reading about and discussing various aspects of Madonna House spirituality.

Our ongoing formation also includes what is available in other places. Six staff—two farmers, three gardeners, and a cook—attended a conference on sustainable agriculture. They said it was very practical, and it gave them hope to learn what both individuals and communities are doing to restore agriculture.

Two staff also attended a Share Lent Conference put on by Development and Peace.

We, of course, attend funerals of local friends, and last week a number of us attended that of Phil Larkin, who holds a very special place in Madonna House history. He was one of the original staff at the time before this was a lifetime vocation.

While with Madonna House, he helped found a credit union in the area. Then after he left, he married and farmed nearby, and continued throughout the years to be very active in the credit union movement.

The EWTN Catholic television network showed our video about Madonna House: The People of the Towel and Water, resulting in phone calls immediately after the program, and an increase in e-mails, hits on our website, and sales of MH books.

And so ends our news of this month. May the Risen Christ give you a graced-filled and joyous Easter Season.