The Church encourages us to live the whole Easter Season, and in MH we certainly do this. And during Lent the preparations for Easter did more than hint at the coming Resurrection.

All during Lent, we follow the Russian custom of making pysanky, beautiful, elaborate Easter eggs. There is a Russian saying that "If people no longer make pysanky, evil will overcome the world." Well, we did our part. Would that all the other ways of "saving the world" were so pleasant!

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the cooks and the women applicants made lots of koolitch and pascha, traditional Russian Easter foods, enough to last our big community all of Easter week.

During Holy Week and Easter, we like Catholics throughout the world, entered into the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. What a gift the Church has given us in these liturgies!

At our local parish, Holy Canadian Martyrs, the Triduum was extra-special this year. They have been doing a major renovation of the church, and though there is still work to be done, they were able to have the entire Triduum in the renovated church. It was a great change from Mass in the school hall, and for many of the parishioners, it was their first look inside their transformed church.

This year the combination of an early Easter (just one day short of the earliest it can be) and a late winter gave us a white Easter. Very white! Two weeks before Easter we had not one but three snowfalls, one day after the other. The biggest one, a blizzard, alone gave us 30-40 cm. Actually this winter was a big one for snow—the second highest winter’s accumulation on record.

The other difference in our Easter celebration this year was this. We had our usual joyous Easter celebration including three days off—and then on Wednesday, our first day back at work, many of us went down with the flu.

Within the week almost the whole community got it—making it our biggest flu epidemic in years.

Most of the Easter guests had gone, and as always happens after a major feast, the number of longterm guests went way down as well. Most of the rest of us were in bed.

The community geared down to minimal functioning. People filled in on the essential jobs—such as cooking, bringing food to the sick, dishes, laundry, etc., etc. A few work departments shut down altogether.

The following Saturday morning Fr. David May, who was to have celebrated a Byzantine Sunday liturgy made a request to his assistant, Fr. Paul Burchat, "I’ve got the flu. The liturgy will be western rite. The celebrant will be whichever priest is left standing."

As of this writing on April 8th, almost all of us are up though still "drooping." It was a bad bug and it’s taking time to get back our normal energy.

Meanwhile, early spring has arrived. The temperatures are warming, the snow, thanks be to God, is melting gradually rather than flooding, and Fr. Louis and the bush crew have begun tapping the maple trees. At the farm, the lambing is well under way. 23 have been born so far, and more are expected.

We have been privileged to have visits from two bishops. Bishop Michael Mulhall, the new bishop of our diocese, made his first visit to us. The second one was Bishop Pierre-André Fournier, an associate bishop of MH and auxiliary bishop of Quebec City.

He was on his way to the Canadian Martyrs Shrine in Midland, Ontario, where a group of young people were to begin a walking pilgrimage to bring the Ark of the New Covenant to Quebec City for the Eucharistic Congress.

We also touched the Eucharistic Congress and the 400th anniversary of the bringing of the Faith to Canada in a talk by Anne Fragineau on the saints of Canada. Originally from France and now living in Canada, she was thrilled to discover the Canadian saints, and she spoke about them with much life and enthusiasm.

Another presentation, like Anne Fragineau’s talk a part of the winter lecture series, was a piano and flute concert by Steve and René Holt, sons of our neighbors from the bottom of Sand Hill. They gave us a quick tour of the main eras in the history of music and for the finale were joined by the rest of their large family.

Catherine Doherty greatly encouraged theatre and music as a way of living and spreading the Gospel, and from time to time, Madonna House puts on dramatic presentations. One Sunday evening not long ago, we watched an original Biblical play, "Saul and David,"which was written and directed by Helen Porthouse with music by Maryana Erzinger.

This work had a long genesis. Helen and Maryana began working on it many years ago when they were new staff workers, and recently they discovered that they each had copies of what they had done. They worked on it some more and put on the play during Lent. Fr. Kieran Kilcommons was Saul, applicant Fr. Murray Kuemper was David, and Mark Schlingerman, Samuel.

A few of our priests, as often happens, traveled to give retreats, and Cheryl Ann Smith and Patrick Stewart (from Marian Centre Edmonton) went all the way to Vancouver to give talks to three different parishes, Cheryl Ann to the women and Patrick to the men.

Back home, the applicants had a three-day silent Ignatian retreat directed by staff worker Helen Hodson.

Our staff study Friday afternoons ended before Holy Week. Most of us studied in groups, but one person, Patrick McConville, wanted to learn how to cook. When nobody else signed up for that group, he asked if he could spend one morning a week in the kitchen and learn from the cooks—at least enough to feed himself when necessary.

He did this, and at the end of the study time, he made a "graduation meal" for one table, that is, six people, during our regular dinnertime. Who ate it? Well, besides his teachers, Renée Sylvain and Jocko d’Ursel, names were pulled from a hat. Patrick also served the table, and the meal was pronounced "delicious."

Our last news item did not occur in Combermere, but it is Madonna House news. Yuki Nakagawa, a fairly recent longterm guest from Japan, was baptized Catholic in Vancouver where he is a student.

May God bless all of us, we here at Madonna House and you in all your varied lives, and may each of our lives, no matter what the circumstances, be pilgrimages to God.