On the farm, the harvesting and food processing are coming to an end. The apples have been juiced, sauerkraut made, and the slaughtering and butchering finished. It has been a good harvest; as always, God provides for our needs.

Closer to the main house, the museum and bookshop are closed, and the gift shop has gone to its shorter winter hours.

This past month has beean very eventful.

The first event, which I mentioned last month, was the ordination of the new bishop of our diocese of Pembroke, Bishop Michael Mulhall. Our directors general, our local directors, St. Joseph’s House, ten of our priests, and a number of other staff attended.

In fact it was some of our men staff, along with two other men, who provided the basses and tenors for the choir. (They had made several trips to Pembroke, approximately 60 miles away, to rehearse with the cathedral choir.)

Our nuncio Archbishop Luigi Ventura was the main celebrant and consecrator, and our Metropolitan Archbishop Terry Prendergast from Ottawa, and Archbishop Nicola de Angelis from the neighboring diocese of Peterborough were the co-consecrators. There were 22 other bishops present and many priests from other dioceses in Canada and the United States as well as, of course, our own diocesan clergy.

The liturgy was beautiful and the ordination very moving. The cathedral was packed, and those who couldn’t fit in watched on closed circuit TV in the basement.

Our next event was the meetings of our associate priests. This year the theme was "The Eucharist: Source and Summit," and 32 attended—twenty associate priests, five associate deacons, four deacon wives, and three priest guests plus our member priests.

This is always a special time, more retreat than meetings, a time when the associate priests drink in Madonna House spirituality and share together and support one another. It is a gift for us, too, to have this time of being with them.

This year, four of the associates made promises: Fr. Tim Hanley made firsts, Fr. Tom Fleming renewed, and Fr. Jack Overmyer and Deacon Pat McNulty made finals.

Someone came across a wonderful quote from Catherine Doherty about our associate priests:

"It seems to me such an extraordinary and beautiful thing that the Lord sent us associate priests… Archbishop Raya started it, but it must have begun in the heart of God. Before you knew it, priest after priest wanted to be associated with us…

"I wish I could read you the letters those priest have written to us—that without Madonna House they would have lost their priesthood… that the spirit of MH drew them like a magnet… It seems as if something is going on in MH that is beyond our understanding…. Associate priests carry our message, our spirit far and wide… all over the world" (from a letter to the staff, October 21, 1974).

All over the world? I just counted our associates. There are over 120 of them, including priests, deacons, and bishops.

Twenty-seven of them are in countries other than the U.S. and Canada. Eight are from Ghana alone.

The third big event was our open house for the 60th anniversary of MH Combermere. The real date of the anniversary was May 17th, and we had a picnic and special Mass back then, but, as I mentioned before, it was decided to have the open house for the people of the area, especially so that those who don’t know us could "come and see."

Staff were stationed around the property to give explanations of the various sites—such as Our Lady of Combermere, the island chapel, the gift shop, Catherine’s cabin, and, of course, the main house.

At the same time, another event was taking place—what’s called "The Rural Ramble." This is something set up by the tourist bureau—different sites scattered throughout the area, sites such as museums, farms, an apple orchard, a sugar bush, etc., where people can go to see and experience what is happening around here. Most sites had interactive displays.

This was the first time our shops and museum took part. So we "killed two birds with one stone," and offered activities and demonstrations for both people on the Rural Ramble and those coming to our open house.

In the gift shop-museum-handicraft area, we had a display about how honey is made, a demonstration of ice cream making (with people taking turns cranking and everyone getting to taste it), and demonstrations of some of the crafts done at Madonna House: carding wool, spinning, weaving, candle-making, pottery, rosemaling, etc.

Many of our local friends took the opportunity to come by and wish us a happy anniversary. The atmosphere was lovely, and all of us, staff and visitors alike, seemed to thoroughly enjoy visiting with one another.

Soon after that, this year’s spiritual formation program began. This is the program that we instituted a number of years ago through the inspiration of Catherine, a program which was blessed by the apostolic nuncio and Bishop Windle, who was then bishop of our diocese.

It offers to men who are considering priesthood a pre-seminary formation. They are given a few separate classes, but we have discovered over the years that it is mostly living our life that forms them. So for the most part, that is what they, along with our other working guests, do.

This year six men are in the program: Chris Baillargeon, Nick Blicharski, Mathieu Couture, Andrew Da Silva, Cody Gabrielson, and Paul Norman.

Last week, our winter lecture series for the people of the area began with a talk and slide presentation on icons, given by Vladislav Andrejev, an iconographer and the founder of a school of iconology (the study of icons) in New York City. He also gave two workshops to our artists and others with special interest the following day.

He deepened our understanding of icons and taught us more about their symbolism.

Fr. Wild, postulator of Catherine Doherty’s cause for canonization, visited the Venerable Solanus Casey Center in Detroit, where he met with Fr. Casey’s postulator and learned more about what needs to be done in the process of canonization.

Donna Surprenant currently has an exhibit of fifteen of her still life paintings at a gallery in Oakville, Ontario.

For our foundation day, that is the anniversary of the founding of Catherine Doherty’s first house in Toronto, we invited a few of the local people who remember Catherine when she first came, to share with us some of their early memories of her. It was wonderful for us to get a glimpse of our foundress through their eyes, and they seemed to enjoy the evening as much as we did.

That’s the news for this month. May God bless each of you and give you a grace-filled and joyous Advent and Christmas Season.