Here at Madonna House, we very much live the liturgical life of the Church. So in the timeframe I am writing about, we didn’t just celebrate Christmas. We lived Advent and as part of that, we celebrated the feasts that occurred within it.

In the heart of Advent, these feasts come quickly, one after the other, beginning with St. Nicholas Day on December 6th. Then two days later we celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception like a Sunday, beginning with a Byzantine liturgy and ending with a festive supper. On that day, three staff workers—Alma Coffman, Dawn Kobewka, and Cheryl Ann Smith—also celebrated the 25th anniversary of first promises.

Then on December 12th, came the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a celebration entwined within a workday. It began early in the morning with a procession to the island chapel where a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe, surrounded by vigil lights, had been set up in front of the altar.

In a half-hour of spontaneous prayer time, various people sang songs to Our Lady—this year in six languages: Spanish, Polish, French, Korean, Hungarian, and English.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was also prominently displayed in the dining room, and there we each lit a candle and received a "word" from Our Lady, one of the lines from her message to St. Juan Diego.

We had a Mexican supper. (There was a tortilla-making bee the night before.) Then in the evening, there were two skits: one telling the story of the apparition, and the other, put on by the farmers, a humorous one about the Piñata.

Then Diana Breeze gave an explanation of the Aztec symbolism in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We finished the evening with music and more singing to Our Lady.

The feastdays continued. The next day, December 13th, was the feast of St. Lucy. On that day, we, like people of Sweden, had light brought by a young woman wearing a crown of lit candles. Then, in the evening, like the people of Hungary, we planted St. Lucy’s wheat.

The next day was a Madonna House feast—the anniversary of the death of our foundress Catherine Doherty. That day was a day of recollection, and together with December 8th, was a scheduled day of rest in the midst of a very busy season. We ended it, as always, with a special meal, at least part of which is Russian. This year we had beef stroganoff.

Advent, of course, is a very busy time, and the most obvious busyness is in the kitchen. This year, as I mentioned before, we have revived, with some differences, a custom from the early days—that of baking Christmas foods from different countries.

It was Catherine who introduced this custom; she always wanted to broaden us and expose us to as much as possible to the richness of life.

In those days, it was the kitchen crew who made all those baked goods, and they only made a little bit of each kind so that everyone got just a taste.

This time, we are featuring a different nation for each of the twelve days of Christmas and thus are making enough of each food for the whole house. And this time, the work is being done, not by the kitchen crew but by others who voluntarily do so in the evenings.

So every evening, the kitchen has been filled with people making all sorts of things. You didn’t even have to know how to bake; there were enough people who did, and they needed helpers.

It was wonderful seeing the guests along with the staff, men and women both, spending hours mixing, shaping, decorating, etc., etc., etc. and seeming to thoroughly enjoy it. The atmosphere in the kitchen was wonderful, and even if you weren’t directly involved that night, you were very likely to go in and watch a bit.

Here are some of the national foods that were made: St. Basil’s Bread (Greece), mam’oul and baklava (Middle East), bisco chito (Mexico), and butter tarts (French Canada).

Why do we do all this celebrating? This living the liturgical life of the Church is part of incarnating the Gospel into everyday life, of connecting all of life—of creativity, of work, of recreation, etc., etc. with God.

But life here is not all festivity. As Catherine used to tell us, the Christian life is one of joy and pain. This has been very evident lately.

Over the past couple of months, five of the women staff have been diagnosed with cancer.

One evening, all the women staff gathered together to share about this reality, and of course, the sharing reached beyond just cancer as there are other serious medical concerns among us. Individuals were able to express their thoughts and feelings, their joys and fears. ("I might die!").

There were beautiful testimonies of graces: of experiences of deep peace and of God’s tender love, of identification with Christ in his sufferings and with the suffering of the whole world, of a readiness to go home to God, of great gratitude to our Madonna House family, and of moving to a new level of love and compassion for one another.

From their witnessing, it seemed clear that God is compassionate with all those he is asking to carry a heavy burden of illness.

The meeting ended with a quote from Catherine: "If you continue to love through your suffering, nothing is impossible."

There have also been connections recently with a suffering part of the world and one which is in our ongoing prayers, the Middle East.

There was, of course, the pope’s trip to Turkey. Someone taped some of it from EWTN, the American Catholic televison station, and set up the TV in the dining room so that we were able to follow him to Istanbul and Ephesus and hear his message of hope for cooperation in efforts toward peace, justice, and protection of life, and his stress on our common origin and destiny.

We saw him meet with the President of Religious Affairs of Turkey and then with the Patriarch of Constantinople. We watched him enter Hagia Sofia and later pray silently in the Blue Mosque.

Several of us went to Ottawa to attend a lecture by Patriarch Gregory of the Melkite Church entitled "Is there a future for Christians in the Middle East?" To that question, the patriarch responded, "There must be. The Gospels tell us to be a light to our neighbor. Christians and Muslims, Christians and Jews, must live together."

In a related event, Fr. John Sianchuk, a Ukrainian Redemptorist who first visited here in the 1970s, came this time specifically to bring us the story of Blessed Vasyl Velychkovsky, C.SS.R, on whose cause for canonization he is working.

Blessed Vasyl’s story is an extraordinary one, and gives a concrete picture of the heroic struggles bishops and priests made to keep the faith alive under Communism.

Here is some more news:

On Gaudete Sunday, one of our visitors, Sharon Coward, was received into the Catholic Church. Originally United Church, she had been searching within the Protestant tradition. Then here at Madonna House, she discovered the presence of Christ in the sacraments.

Marysia Kowalchyk received word that the icon of Our Lady of Walsingham that she painted is now hanging in the newly rebuilt parish church (not the shrine) in Walsingham, England.

Last month we told you that a portrait painted by Donna Surprenant had placed among the finalists in the portrait competition sponsored by the Canadian Guild of Portrait Artists. Well, she and all of us were thrilled to hear that she was awarded third prize.

I will end by saying just one thing about our Christmas celebration—the thing that a journalist doing an article for a local newspaper about our celebration was so struck by: it is so centered on the birth of Christ. It is this, I think, far more than what we do to celebrate—and we do a lot—that makes the Christmas season in Madonna House such a joyous one.

May Our Lady of Combermere bless each of you abundantly. May she fill you with her peace. And may she grant you a blessed, grace-filled Lenten Season.