Fittingly, this celebration fell towards the end of our six-week summer program, which was about living the Gospel. The theme of the final week was "Models of Gospel Life," and there could have been no better witness to what these weeks had been about than these anniversaries.

Our 15 jubiliarians represent a total of 650 years of consecrated life in the Madonna House vocation. It was a day of great joy and thanksgiving to God and to Our Lady of Combermere.

At a celebration gathering, each of the golden jubilarians was asked to respond to three questions. Here they are with some of the responses.

What is the most precious thing MH gives the world?

"Making the invisible visible." "Showing people the love of God." "Incarnating the Gospel in everyday life." "The duty of the moment." "Being priests, laymen, and women together speaks volumes."

Is MH the same as when you came?

"There were about 30 staff then and now we are about 200, and the physical size of MH has grown greatly. We’ve also become worldwide." "It has the same spirit, but with more depth as each generation has earned graces for the next."

"In the early days everyone was young. Now with a mixture of ages, there is more spiritual maturity and stability." "Catherine and Dorothy Day were pioneers of the lay movements in North America. Without them, I wonder how many lay movements there would be today."

Do you have a special memory, word of Catherine Doherty; or a reason why you think she should be canonized?

"She taught us to love." "She trusted me, and didn’t give up on me." "She had an incredible depth of mercy, compassion and understanding which helped us to grow."

"Through loneliness and rejection and her own whatever, she was faithful and remained here, persevering through much heartache but also many joys." "If Catherine wasn’t a woman of heroic virtue, I wouldn’t know who is."

Often our young guests, too, share with us something of what MH has given them. For example, one young woman recently said, "The Scriptures say that the truth will set you free. Here in Madonna House, that happened to me!"

What a gift it is for us who are members to get a glimpse of God at work in these ways!

During the last month of the summer program, we also focused on "Global Awareness: The Social Teachings of the Church" and "Vocation and Discernment."

I am sure Catherine was rejoicing in heaven to hear some of the social encyclicals so clearly presented by Fr. David Linder and Lisa Diniz. Catherine herself had taught them so often in the early days both here and in Friendship House.

The talks were not simply theory. Most of them also gave excellent examples of how we can incarnate the teachings in our own lives—how we can live in solidarity with our sisters and brothers throughout the world and work to build a civilization of love.

Helping us to think with the Church and read the signs of the times, Fr. David May gave a presentation on critical thinking. And since this year is the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Fr. Kieran Kilcommons also gave a talk on that encyclical.

On a lighter note, Irene Sullivan, during a witness talk about her vocation, had just said that she first heard about MH from Sally Fisher, whom she had not seen in 20 years.

At that precise moment, a woman walked into the dining room. "You might not recognize me," she said, "but I’m Sally Fisher!" The whole place erupted. Sally was bringing her son Nicholas to spend a couple of weeks with us.

The summer program also included some very creative activities. One was an outdoor treasure hunt, which sent small groups of us all over the main property. And those not "fleet of foot" could choose an indoor "virtual reality" version.

On another day, the more energetic also had an opportunity to walk three hours of the distance to Cormac for the 70th annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Anne.

We also had a wonderful night of celebrating our cultural heritages. Twenty-seven countries were represented, and each had a table in our dining room/library, for a display. A number of people wore their national dress and had made some of their foods for us to sample.

These included sushi (Japanese), biscotti (Italian), Belgian waffles, liverwurst (German), fruit salad (Filipino), avocado drink (Brazilian), and blini (Russian).

The blini were made by our Russian friend Alvina Voropayeva, who during her stay, did translations for MH Publications in preparation for a Madonna House website in Russian.

Fr. Paul Burchat, accompanying some of the youth of the Pembroke Diocese, traveled to Australia for World Youth Day. Upon his return, he gave us a presentation including a DVD photo presentation.

Among other things, he spoke of his joy in meeting Catholics from all over the world, even from countries he had never heard of. Some Koreans he met were surprised that he spoke a bit of their language.

As happened last year, we were involved in the training week for the student resident assistants of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry’s Bay. They had a "Madonna House experience," that is, a day with us, which included presentations by Victoria Fausto, Marie Therese McLaughlin, Mike Weitl, Larry Klein.

Fr. Paul Burchat also gave them a weekend retreat, and Mary McGoff, a day on communication skills.

Twenty Ukrainian Catholics along with their priest spent a weekend with us. Although we couldn’t accommodate them in the dorms, they joined in our life as much as possible and celebrated vespers and the Divine Liturgy in our chapel in their own rite.

It is now late August, and we are only now enjoying our first real summer weather. This summer has been unusually cool, and days without some rain have been rare.

This has resulted in difficulty in getting our hay in. Also though some crops like cool, wet conditions, others don’t. This, combined with more "slugs ‘n’ bugs" and deer (for the first time) eating some of our vegetables, has been a challenge for our farmers and gardeners.

So, like others throughout the world, we have been praying for the right conditions for a good harvest.

(The wet weather, on the other hand, has made for lots of visitors to our shops and museum.)

Bishop Gary Gordon from the Yukon, where we have a house, paid us a short visit. He’s praying for another type of harvest—vocations—an explosion of Madonna House ones so we can share them with his diocese!

We pray that his prayers will be answered, and that Madonna House will be celebrating lots of jubilarians fifty and more years from now.