Our Story

Monastery of the Incarnation
Beacon, New York
Carmelite Nuns
Redemptoristine Nuns

Redemptoristines of New York Rejoice in New Home

It has been a long and difficult journey. But now our community (formerly of Esopus) has finally found its way to a proper monastic home in the city of Beacon, New York. We are sharing sacramental and liturgical life, beauty, silence, and spaciousness in the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation.  We are making history in this arrangement; two different canonical religious groups living under the same roof. We have received the blessing of our Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the diocesan Vicar for Religious who view this development as a healthy response to the signs of the times. We would like to share with you how we came to this decision for our community.

In January of 2011, we were informed by the Baltimore Province of the Redemptorists that they would be leasing the property of Mount St. Alphonsus and that we would have to find a new home within 2 to 3 years. Four months later we learned that we would have only one year to relocate. The decision made by the Redemptorists was a wise and prudent one, but not without difficulties all around. In the end the property was sold. A bit of gold in this story is that the buyers invested a great deal of money in restoring the building and are lovingly caring for the property. The seminary building is now a private Christian high school.

We searched long and hard for a new home; a suitable monastery. We visited over 40 sites in five states and researched many others via the Internet. By the spring of 2012 we were ready to purchase a Franciscan friary in an urban New Jersey parish. At the last minute we had to give up that plan due to environmental contamination problems with the property. Having only 5 weeks to find a place to live we were fortunate to arrange rental of space in a building owned by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart only 5 miles south of Mount St. Alphonsus. We moved on June 25, 2012. All of our furniture was stored in a gymnasium in the same building. It was a crowded and very awkward space for our life but it did offer spectacular views of the Hudson River.

In January of this year the Missionary Sisters informed us that we would have to leave the property by the end of June. We had already hired professional consultants who work with religious communities to create relocation plans. Everyone went full speed ahead to find the right place for us in a very short period of time. Through the months of searching we learned that private homes require too much remodeling for monastic use and local laws can sometimes interfere in that process. We also learned that former convents, novitiates, etc., required a great deal of repair and adaptation to accommodate the elderly and handicapped. We also knew that it would be very difficult to have daily Mass wherever we went. As the process went on we saw our personal resources diminish as sisters aged and required more care. We had to ask ourselves, “Is it realistic for us to buy a property and take care of it into the future?” Our consultants found situations for us in a few continuing care retirement communities which offer independent or assisted living as well as nursing home care at the same location. These facilities offered great care for our sisters needing assistance. However, the rest of us would have been separated into various buildings. In such an arrangement our communal contemplative monastic life would have been destroyed. By April of this year, we were disheartened and very discouraged. We had two months to find a new home and move.

From September of 2012 through 2013 the Carmelite community of Beacon was prudently examining their own future and their ability to remain on their lovely property. Our two communities have enjoyed close friendship since the 1960’s as members of the Metropolitan Association of Contemplative Communities (MACC). In 1985, the Carmel of New York City moved to a former Ursuline Novitiate in Beacon. During the 1990’s they merged with two other Carmels, added a new wing to their building to accommodate a total of 30 nuns and redesigned the chapel. By September of last year there were only 15 sisters living in the monastery. They wondered how long they would be able to stay in a half empty building. Their options were to rent space in the building or move to a smaller place. Neither option was an attractive one. During this time they followed with heavy hearts our story of disappointment and displacement. At an April community meeting with their professional facilitator present they spontaneously put the planned agenda aside and began talking about what it would be like if they invited us to come and share the house with them. By the end of the meeting they voted unanimously to issue an invitation. Within two weeks the councils of the communities met and the generous invitation was accepted. We had exactly seven weeks to plan the move and make all arrangements.

Two other big decisions were made. Three of our sisters (Sisters Mary McCaffrey, Mary Anne Reed, and Lydia Lojo) would move to Meadowview, an assisted living facility in Mt. Vernon, New York.  At Meadowview they receive all the care they need and join many Franciscan and Dominican sisters in residence there. The second decision was to retire from our work producing ceremonial capes for the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre. We have done this work since 1985. It was a good monastic work, well organized by Sr. Maria Paz and then passed on to others. But we had to recognize that we no longer had the number of sisters required to produce 200 capes a year.

On June 11 three sisters moved into Meadowview Assisted Living. On June 23-24 six sisters moved to Beacon and received a most loving welcome from Carmelite community. We have lovely bedrooms in their new wing, a community room now called Celeste Hall, and offices for prioress, treasurer and secretary. We are blessed here to have Mass every day provided by a delightful rotation of priest. Only two days after moving in we had a wonderful celebration for the Feast of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in a Mass concelebrated by the Redemptorist Provincial, Rev. Kevin Moley, and his Council.

In our decision to accept the Carmelite invitation we were acknowledging the signs of the times; fewer vocations, fewer priests, aging sisters. We were also acknowledging our deep desire to preserve our contemplative vocation. We saw that we could do that by joining forces with another contemplative community and sharing the sacramental, liturgical life already established in their horarium.

This is not the ideal that we had in mind when we set out on our journey in search of a new home. But we came to see that given our circumstances, resources and the limited choices before us this arrangement was the most life-giving for us all. We believe the Holy Spirit worked mightily in the hearts and minds of each sister in both communities. We have had to accept losses but we have also embraced new life and welcomed with grateful hearts the opportunity to live out our Redemptoristine vocation. Jesus Christ is the center of everything in this Monastery of the Incarnation. Could we ask for more?

“It is our desire to create together an environment that fosters the growth and well-being

of each Sister’s contemplative life as lived in the Carmelite and Redemptoristine traditions

and that has the potential for creating together opportunities for effective outreach

to the larger community and Church.”

 Redemptoristine Nuns

89 Hiddenbrooke Drive

Beacon, New York 12508

845-831-3132

Fax 845-831-5579

Rednuns.Esopus@gmail.com

www.RedNuns.org

www.Facebook.com/RedNunsEsopus

 

 

 

Contemplative Prioress Filled with Spirit

Sr. Moira Quinn, OSsR
Prioress

On September 25 we had our monthly celebration of "Little Christmas" remembering in a special way the Incaration of Jesus our Redeemer. As is the custom we renewed our vows at Midday Prayer after our prioress had shared with the community some inspiring words.

Remember the Call

Music: Do You Remember the Call

 

It has been quite a year.  I don’t remember the last time I gave the prioress’ ferverino on the 25^th!   Nevertheless, here we are in the early days of autumn renting space in Cabrini on the Hudson.  Soon the leaves will begin to change color and then leaves will float gently to the ground and decompose back into the earth to replenish the soil for new life to take root.

In remembering the Incarnation and remembering our call we harken back to

the ‘Gospel seeds’ that were planted in our hearts: seeds that took root and grew into tender green shoots that eventually became tall and strong over the years in the light of Christ.  And now, basking in the Son’s rays, we trust in the journey thus far and gather our collective wisdom and insight and mulch them into ground of our beings and water them with hope in preparation for whatever future God has in store for us.

We live our Redemptoristine life in hope that we will still flourish because ‘Hope is the power of Jesus Risen in us.’  (Constitution and Statutes  135)  What that will look like we don’t know.  New life is hiding.  Perhaps what we do, how we live our contemplative life now, will plant new gospel seeds somewhere else that will take root and grow. In order to flourish and generate new life for the Order new planting may be called for: new planting in the salvation history of the people of God, new planting in the culture and the times in which we live, new planting of the contemplative monastic structures by on-going formation, dialogue, conversion and adaption for the sake of a deeper renewal of the charism of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. 

Through the inspiration of our Incarnate Lord, generations of Redemptoristines before us have planted seeds in the world to ‘be a visible witness and a living memorial of the Paschal Mystery of Redemption in which the Father has accomplished His plan of love through Christ and in the spirit.’ (Constitution and Statutes #1)

In all our joys and sorrows, challenges and achievements, sisters young and sisters aged with wisdom have courageously lived in their lives the Paschal Mystery just like our foundress Ven. Maria Celeste.   

Jesus promised Celeste, therefore us, that when we ‘leave everything in his hands all things will fall into place for the best purpose!  (So) with faith, believe in him; with hope, keep your every good secure; and love only him, as the Lord of your heart and as the Life in which you live!’ (Florilegium 101)

We have offered to the Incarnate Lord, our Holy Redeemer, our life of praise and intercession by faith in the living Christ in response to the love God has bestowed on us through the Son.  May the ‘Consoling Spirit who gathers us together help us live in unity’ (Constitution and Statutes #3) and continue to grow into the fullness of Redemptoristine life in our changing times. 

Remembering our call and the seeds of Love planted within our hearts let us renew our vows.

Profession of Vows

 

 

Loving Lord and Father, you have called me to relive

in myself the Mystery of Jesus, your well-beloved Son
and to be a living memorial of it, and, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit to pour out on the world

the light of your love, shining on the face of your Christ,
the Savior of the world.

 

 

To perfect in myself the union with the mystery of the
death and resurrection of Christ, begun in Baptism, to
glorify your name and for the redemption of humanity,
I wish to confirm my first consecration by a new covenant.

 

 

For this reason, in communion with the whole Church, I
profess vows of poverty, chastity and obedience according
to the Constitutions and Statutes of the order of the Most
Holy Redeemer.

 

 

I trust in your mercy, O my god, with the maternal help of
Mary, Mother of Christ and our Mother, to remain faithful

to my covenant.

 

 

 

Contemplative Nuns Called to Community

Living the Life: 
Romanticism vs.
On-going Conversion 

Recently there was some interesting discussion on one of my favorite websites, A Nun’s Life. Two IHMs (Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, MI), Sisters Julie and Maxine are hosts for regular podcasts, fielding all sorts of questions posed by those considering a vocation in religious life. They respond with a unique combination of humor, wisdom and experience. During a podcast (7pm daily EST) a question was asked which I will reword from memory. “I see a lot of vocation websites put up by communities and other kinds of publicity for congregations and all the faces are smiling and the message is given that religious life is a lot of fun. Is it really always fun? And I hear lots of talk about the aura of holiness. Is all of this realistic? Isn’t there any downside?” Sr. Julie responded by discussing what she called a romanticism about religious life and nuns in particular. There is a good bit of misinformation or misimpression out there. Reality checks are sorely needed.

I hear a great deal of a kind of romanticism about cloistered contemplative life from those who make inquiry with our community regarding vocation discernment. I hear it from young and old. Most, unfortunately, have not explored their call with a good spiritual director and most have never visited a monastery! In other words, they have no way of making a reality check. Often they seem to have two huge misconceptions. First is the idea that they can come to a monastery and pray all day. Yes, we do pray a great deal both together and in private but we must also engage in all the necessary household tasks as well as contribute effort to the remunerative work that supports the community. These activities require a degree of community interaction.

The second misconception is that the personal sacrifice will chiefly consist in withdrawal from secular society and the development self-discipline necessary for all the devotional practices in which they will be free to engage (Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, Adoration, Rosary, etc., etc.). However, in all likelihood, the greatest sacrifice to be asked of them will be a necessary surrender of the ego in order to be transformed in Christ. Surrender of the ego; that is our penchant for control, our need to plan, the selfish desires and satisfactions to which we have become so accustomed, is required by a life in which personal autonomy is narrowed and needs, desires, preferences, and ways of doing things must always take others into consideration. Community life, interaction with individuals, is where the ‘rubber hits the road’. The choice to enter religious life is not only a choice for deeper spirituality and dedicated mission. It is, perhaps above all, a choice in favor of community, the choice to live in a group of people one might never have considered as possible friends. And in contemplative life, that group is together 24/7.

Discerners seem to understand the components of prayer and mission but rarely have any idea of what is implied by the choice for the third leg of the stool of religious life, the choice in favor of community. Because the legs of prayer and mission still allow for a good bit of personal control they do not test the ego as much as the leg that is community life. In his workshop “Intentional Community”, Marist Brother Donald Bisson, FMS (spirituality and Jungian psychology) declared, “The main task of adjustment to living in community will be shadow work.” By shadow is meant the aspects of our psyches and personalities that we hide away consciously or unconsciously because we would not want others to see them. Held in our shadow are the psychic wounds which often determine our behavior and the ego needs we cover up in polite society – control, perfectionism, insecurity, fear, etc., etc.

It is said that the choice for religious life is an expression of the desire for God, the desire to be a God seeker. The closer we come to God the more we are asked to become like God. To seek God is to consent to be transformed into God, to submit, to surrender to the process of interior conversion. And there is no better laboratory for the conversion of our egoic selves than that of community living. Spiritual devotion prepares the way. Mission gives expression to our commitment to service in the name of Jesus. However, only living in community will challenge and stretch what is hidden in the shadows, rub the wounds, and jostle the baggage we carry. 

I have met a few of those young happy faces in cloistered and apostolic communities. In many their joy is transparent and the rightness of their choice confirmed. In others I read pressure, nervousness, and stress. In any close human community interpersonal life is intense and demanding. This is not to say that the process is not good or not transformative or not a necessary part of our personal conversion process. All of that is real and true but most do not seem to see it that way at the beginning.

One of the Psalms declares that wherever people live as one it is like the blessing of “oil flowing down Aaron’s beard”. Community life is blessing. In community we experience “union of hearts and mutual charity”. We experience support, mentoring, friendship and the pleasure of sharing. We rejoice, celebrate, worship, suffer and grieve together. Truly, ‘many hands make light work’. Above, all we bond in our love for God and the endless journey of seekers. But we must also make decisions together; take into account our cultural and ethnic variety; and transcend our differences. The old must adapt to the young and the young must be compassionate toward the old because the new comers always ask, “Why do you do it this way?” and the old always respond, “We have always done it this way.”

Community life is the arena of transformation in which the God seeker can live in ever deepening participation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Paschal Mystery of our salvation and grow in likeness to the one whom we call our Beloved.

Resource: “Intentional Community” Brother Donald Bisson, FMS (2 CDs) Workshop Sries #49 – YesNowMusic.com or YesNowMusic@aol.com or google Don Bisson.

Technology and Contemplative Nuns

Nuns Using the Internet

for Contemplative Outreach

Here's a link to a great article in the Irish Times of Dublin about how contemplatives there are using the Internet as a means of reaching out to the world and attracting vocations.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/1029/1224306468864.html

Among the communities featured in the very well done and informative piece are our own sisters in the Monastery of St. Alphonsus in the Drumcondra section of Dublin. This is the community with which I spent three weeks last May. It was such a joy to be with them. Check out the article and get to know more about them.

Note: More to come on the New Roman Missal.

Sisters in Good Company

I awoke to clutter everywhere

Calling me to weave

My life into

Fabrics of soft, rich color or

Bold, dramatic design or

Lacey, light musical tones and texture

To drape on the soul

In her wild dance

Of Transformation.

            Weaving a Life by Sister Bette

…Yet will Love remain constant and pure.

I shall dwell with Love in gratitude and joy;

I shall sing praises to the Beloved,

Heart of my heart.

            Psalm 7 (last verses)

            Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill

An original poem and the ancient wisdom of poetic psalms speak of truth and constancy, two great lessons from blessed time spent with Sister Bette, hermit of Stockton Springs, Maine, living in the utter sufficiency of a circular wooden yurt on Lighthouse Road. Another structure, a canvas roofed yurt, her first home in the woods, now serves as her studio; the loom room in which she creates hand woven garments, shawls, mats and runners earning her reputation as weaver of note. This is paradise to the solitary weaver of her own handspun yarns.

First called to apostolic religious life in a Wisconsin community, Sister Bette eventually felt drawn to live an even further remove from the hustle and bustle of the ordinary market place. She began a long search for the right place to establish a hermitage.

“I…am waiting for winter, its silence and solitude speaking of Intimate love in the darkness – Let’s listen!”

Bette and I have written to each other once or twice a year since our first meeting at the 2004. I was drawn to her as a source of wisdom; an experienced practitioner of the contemplative way, following a solitary path. She was a courageous hermit persevering in steadfast presence before the God of Love and Mystery. Could she teach my extroverted self something about living as a contemplative in community? Could she offer some wisdom for my own journey, my experience of the contemplative way of living together as hermits sharing the common life?

“The unfolding mystery in us; is us.”

I have saved every wise and compassionate letter received from Bette. Our friendship is a strange, inexplicable mutual gift. We both admit to fumbling on our way to God – mysterious and remote while at the same time intimately present in ways beyond our comprehension. For us, sharing our struggles is a means of restoring the bulwark supporting the singular and often lonely contemplative path.

Sometimes longed for meetings with friends rarely seen in person can fall so short of eager expectation. However, my visit with Bette in the early days of August was all and more than I had hoped it would be. Merely being blessed with the opportunity for this contemplative nun and the reclusive hermit to meet was miracle. Bette was typically open and generous; happy as a child to know that I was coming; enjoying all of her planning and preparations for a quintessential Maine lobster lunch presented in her home. “Why eat out when we can talk so freely here?” Bette further explained how our festive meal was provided by the postponed use of a birthday gift from a generous friend. She rejoiced that the gift was magnified in being twice shared.

A tour of her weaving studio and then her wooden yurt replete with solar energy, wood stove, well water, and compost toilet gave a sense of the simplicity with which this hermits lives her days. After driving into the village to pick up steaming lobsters just out of the pot we drove passed the homes of her neighbors.  Many of these friends are very supportive and attentive in their care and attention to Bette’s needs as an older woman living alone in natural terrain and sometimes hostile climate.

Bette put last minutes touches to a meal set out with great love, blessed by her prayers and crowned as sacrament in the wine we shared. Cracking open our lobsters, we enthusiastically sucked out every bit of juicy meat they offered. But greater than this feast of tasty food and enervating wine was our presence to each other.  We rejoiced in the beneficence of God who makes all things possible, even a yurt and a visit to Stockton Springs on Maine’s rocky and lighthouse dotted coast.

“What really matters is Divine Love – and becoming an icon of Christ’s love in the world.”

We shared the challenges of our lives; making sense of vocations which seem to have little or no significance in our world and even our Church; coping with aging, mortality and loss of those we know and love; our own diminishing strength and number of days; the need for a tenacious hold on the Presence in us and among us; and persevering in our availability to the energetic Center of all creation.

Bette spoke so enthusiastically of the inspiration recently received at a Franciscan conference. The invitation issued there radiated from the lives of Saints Francis and Clare and the Gospel of John reminding of the call; the call to be in our own lives a constant presence, an ever-burning flame. If we do no more, we cannot fail if we but maintain ourselves as a burning flame in the Presence of God.

Woven in and out through our conversation like the hand spun yarn in Bette’s weaving shuttle was the theme of knowledge of self and truth to ones own reality. In remaining available to the Divine, in faithfulness to our spiritual discipline, in our generous contemplation, we learn who we are and find, in companionship with our loving God, the strength to live as who and what we were created to be. And so we ate with each other and fed each other all the while knowing and feeling the most Sacred of Energies flowing in, through and between, informing, enlivening, enriching and blessing it all.

The Household of God

The Household of God: Monastic Architecture

Holy souls setting out on solitary journeys into the deserts of Egypt in the 3^rd century of the Christian era provided the first expression of a movement from which monastic religious life would ultimately emerge. The landscape of the desert, the landscape of desolation, was sought as the proper setting for life with God alone. The call to set out, to withdraw from worldly cities, became more and more pronounced in the aftermath of the Edict of Milan issued in AD 313. Signed by emperors Constantine I and Licinius, the edict proclaimed religious toleration in the Roman Empire at the conclusion of the Diocletian Persecution. This declaration legitimized the followers of Jesus Christ as well as their Church thus eliminating the possibility of martyrdom for illegal activity as the penultimate sacrifice in true devotion. Absent bloody martyrdom, men and woman began to satisfy their desire for total self-donation by seeking the ‘white martyrdom’ of withdrawal to solitude and silence in deserted territories. The most outstanding of these early hermits came to be known as the Desert Mothers and Fathers, the holy Ammas and Abbas. Magnetic in holiness, they drew those who wished to live for God, to pursue a life of constant prayer.  This way of being would be attained by attachment to these experienced mentors, stern, demanding, and wise, who taught more by example than words. From clusters of followers gathered around a hermit practitioner with a reputation for holiness gradually rose monasteries, organized communities under the tutelage and authority of a spiritual superior. Slowly clusters of solitary hermits became organized cenobites, women or men living in religious community together. Eventually rules of life would be formulated, the most well known written by St. Benedict in the 6^th century.

An introduction to development of monasteries from the historical perspective sets the stage for explanation of the nature of monastic life and community. Lack of familiarity, even among Catholics, of the purpose and features of the monastic household has become apparent as we seek a new location for our contemplative monastery. There is little, if any, sense of the organic daily reality of the monastic enterprise. Questions and suggestions received from family and friends; from apostolic religious whose life is dedicated to active service; and most profoundly from conversation with laity, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, indicate that the purpose and nature of contemplative monastic life remain to them almost a complete mystery. In addition, the fact of a relationship of architecture, the structural design of a monastery, with the intended use of this specific type of dwelling is lost. It has become necessary, over and over again, to explain how a monastic structure truly illustrates the principle which states ‘use determines form’.

Generally, the image conjured by the word ‘house’ is a dwelling in which one family whose members are related by blood makes its home. The image is limited to an experience of home as either an ordinary family dwelling or, in the case of vowed apostolic religious, as the typical residence for an active community. The visualization is limited to an abode which is a place of safety, nourishment and restoration for those who will be sent out into the world to be educated, to earn a living, to contribute to the well-being of others, to relate to the body politic and to be integrated into all facets of society and culture.

The monastic house, any monastery, is not intended to be such a launch site. It is not a place designed to send members forth prepared to act on the world stage. While a call to action is the most common vocational call, the monastic, the monk or nun of our time, no less than the hermit St. Anthony or the great Pachomius, father of monasticism, is called to go apart; to migrate to a place at the margins of social intercourse; to cultivate in silence and solitude an intimate relationship with the Divine. Recognizing their weakness and as an expression of humility, monastics seek the support and challenge of organized community as well as the authoritative guidance of experienced practitioners as they travel the path of interior transformation into the likeness of Christ within community.

From the very beginning these purposes motivated the creation of highly self-sufficient and self-contained enterprises. However varied in nuance of expression by virtue of spiritual charism and chosen modes of life, the members of all monastic orders pray, work, nourish themselves and recreate together. Prayer, both communal and private, is the central core, the rotating energizing hub from which all other functions radiate. Monastic institutions support themselves by work done within the monastery walls even while income is augmented by the philanthropy of benefactors. In earlier centuries the work was mostly agricultural, even for monasteries of women. In time income would also be generated through handicrafts and the arts: carpentry, calligraphy, manuscript copying and illumination, bookbinding, embroidery, lace making, weaving, woodworking, pottery and production of wine and foodstuffs, etc. These enterprises required space for organized production especially in communities where membership could soar to over one hundred. Today a common source of income for monasteries of women is the manufacture of altar breads (hosts) for Eucharist. It is a difficult and highly mechanized work requiring a great deal of space. Our own monastery business requires a space resembling a garment factory; rows of industrial sewing machines flanked by large cutting and ironing tables, surrounded by racks of neatly sewn ceremonial capes for the Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre ready to be packed and shipped.

Until thirty to forty years ago a few monastic architectural terms remained in the general Catholic memory. A Catholic vocabulary included the word cloister. However, the mental image of that term was often limited to an experience of some dark monastery vestibule dominated by a turn set into a wall. A delivery could be placed in the cylindrical device which would be rotated by an unseen hand while a disembodied voice uttered a word of appreciation and blessing. A second but none the less limited mental image associated with the word cloister was that of the monastic parlor where a privileged visitor could get a glimpse of a heavily veiled nun separated from her guest by metal grille work sometimes appointed with spikes to remind that the encounter would not include a touch or kiss.

These dark images spoke of separation and carried the notion of possible contamination by the world. They do not give testimony to the real purpose of the cloister or the traditional monastic enclosure from its beginnings to our time. While in the distant past some real protection from outside forces may have been required, the true purpose of monastic enclosure is to preserve and enhance the apostolic work of contemplative nuns which is prayer. The typical cloister, indeed any architecture of enclosure, protects by design the life to which the nuns within have dedicated themselves. The cloister or enclosure is constructed in such a way as to ensure that degree of silence and solitude in which the life of prayer can be born. Today few monasteries retain the vestibule turn or the metal grille in the parlor. Noting the absence of these features many conclude that the nuns must no longer require any form of enclosure. The direct opposite is true. Monastic cloister or enclosure is a living space for the community set apart from space open to the public (chapel, library, parlor, meeting room, etc.). In the public places nuns may mingle freely with those who come to worship, to unburden their hearts, to seek spiritual direction or to experience the monastery as a school of prayer. Today, our contemplative monastic community does not wish to be defined only by the descriptor which declares us ‘cloistered’, as  women who live separate of from the world and from those who live in it as if warding off contagion or, even worse, announcing ourselves as special in the eyes of God. Rather, we present ourselves as a dedicated praying presence in the world, a burning flame of praise and petition before God. Contemplatives do whatever they find suitable in order to follow the often repeated directive of our Church to be ‘a school of prayer’ and offer comfortable spiritually enriching public spaces in their monasteries. At the same time, the heart of our vocation to constant prayer in the midst of the Church requires some more protected space provided by the architecture of enclosure. The enclosure is that more private space in which the contemplative way is lived by a community praying, working, eating and recreating together while managing a large household. Above all it is a space that allows for those activities as they cluster around the true center of the life; prayer and praise expressed at the Eucharistic table in the Mass and in the daily round of Liturgy of the Hours. The enclosure thus supports the public prayer life of the community and also guarantees an environment conducive to a quiet and recollected way of being personally available to God.

The monastic pilgrim travels two inseparable parallel paths in a journey of self-abandonment and interior transformation into Christ; the way of prayer and the avenue that is life in community. Within the enclosure created to support and protect a life of intensive intimacy with God and intensity of relationship with a stable group, all of the functions of the monastic household are carried out twenty four hours a day, seven days a week within a fixed group of members. Unlike the nuclear family or the small group of apostolic religious living together, the contemplative monastic residence must have room for everyone to do everything together most of the time. No members will be off to a ball game or have a late night at the office. No one will go out to work. No one can arrive home after a long hard day and announce their departure to take in dinner and movie with a friend. These realities determine architectural form. The dining room and community room (living room) have to be larger than one might expect. Anyone whose work for the community requires a private office space has to have one within the confines of the monastery. The income generating work of the community, whatever it may be, will call for considerable space, the equivalent of a small manufacturing enterprise including materials storage, assembly, shipping, ordering, etc. All of the members of the community will share the work of maintaining the household. Cooking, cleaning, communication, greeting and housing guests, and scheduling, to name a few typical household tasks, also affect the need for space within the enclosure. In addition, just as the nuclear family has a role in educating its young members so does the monastic family. Like any good parent, the monastic community seeks to provide sufficient resources as well space for instruction and study to equip and inspire new members for the life they have chosen. Monastic structures are designed to provide for both this intensive life in community and the solitary search for God which is the vocation of each member.

In early efforts to find a new home for our community we visited a number of large, attractive, newly constructed homes. It was our hope that one might be suitable as a monastery. We also visited older structures originally built for active congregations of religious. Invariably we realized that each structure conformed to the rule which declares ‘use dictates form’. Private family homes, no matter how large, were built to be just what they were. Buildings designed for apostolic religious supported the kind of life they lead, a life with work outside the residence, a life in which not all members of the community would be present at any time. So fit were these buildings for their specific function that no effort at remodeling would successfully transform them into a suitable monastic structure. Arriving at this conclusion brought us to in-depth consideration of our monastic enterprise. It required us to ponder the question, “What is it we wish to protect; what is it we wish to nourish and pursue in the structure we envision?” Use determines form, not the other way around. In the end we also recognized that no mere structure will guarantee dedicated contemplative life. Thoughtful design provides suitable space, an environment conducive to prayer, a place apart. The rest is the work of God’s grace in the desiring soul.

"Of Gods and Men"

Cinema as Lenten
Meditation

Rarely have big screen film images so persistantly returned to mind, not to mention heart, as those seen in the film "Of Gods and Men", directed by Xavier Beauvois. For months we have been reading uniformly fine reviews of in publications like the New York Times, America Magazine and The New Yorker.

The film tells the true story of eight Trappist monks caught in the middle of a brutal and protracted civil war between government forces and an Islamist insurgency in Algeria during the 1990s. The French monks who had come to enjoy an integral and highly respected relationship with the Moslems surrounding them, were ultimately drawn into the violence. In 1996 they were kidnapped and beheaded. The insurgency claimed responsibility at the time but more recent revelations in previously secret documents indicate some governmental involvement.

This film is appropriate material for Lenten meditation.  Witnessing the rising level of brutal violence around them and feeling pressure from both Islamist extremists who suspect all foreigners and local military presence resentful of care given to members of the insurgency in the monastery clinic, the monks must decide whether to heed official warnings and leave the country or to remain and continue to give witness to the Christian message of God's love. Particularly affecting is depiction of the interior process of each man reconsidering the meaning of his call and that of the web of relationship and commitment which creates and sustains the monatsic community. Each monk has to come to grips with the decision to remain in place, living in the charity taught by Jesus Christ or leaving in order to escape almost certain death. The passage through faith of each man is imaged on the screen as he moves even deeper into the Passion of Jesus.

Beneath the surface features of a life played out among 'the other' (Algerian Muslim culture) and later in the presence of unpredictable and horrible violence, there excisted the unchageable, the essential, the law of love embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. This was love for the self, their small monastic community and the people among whom they lived. The monks are seen discussing matters of faith and ethics with local Muslim teachers; healing children and treating the elderly in their clinic; and celebrating cultural rites of passage with their Moslem neighbors. Neither hardship nor harsh reality could sway them because they are able in prayer and in discussion with each other to move once again to the deeper place within; the place where ultimate truth, ultimate love reside.

One last observation from one who lives in monastic community. The film is particularly effective in communicating subtle interactions between community members, those non-verbal looks, gestures and actions which express fraternal love and respect, the quality of inter-relationship that should typify the monastic community. Watch for these expressions of love among men who have lived together for a long time in the day to day of contemplative life.

For "Little Christmas" Celebrating the Incarnation the 25th of Each Month

In the past attention has been given here to our Redemptoristine custom of focusing on the mystery of the Incarnation every 25th of the month. At Midday Prayer the Prioress offers the scripture reading followed by a reflection for the edification of the community, what we call a "ferverino", something designed to fan the flame in our hearts. Afterward we renew our vows together. Here is this month's reflection.

Poverty
and the Mystery of the Incarnation

by Sister Paula Schmidt, OSsR, Prioress

Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you."

Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you,

there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters

or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel

who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:

houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands,

with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.

But many that are first will be last, and (the) last will be first."

 (Mark 10:28-31) 

The Gospel for today’s Mass, from the Gospel of Mark, follows shortly after the story from yesterday (Mark 10:17-22), in which the wealthy young man asked Jesus how he could become really holy. This guy was doing everything the law required but he wanted to be sure—was there anything more he could do for God? He was sincere, but he wasn’t prepared for Jesus’ answer. Seeing a basically generous heart in him, Jesus was moved to ask for everything.

When the fellow hears the advice of Jesus he just can’t do it. He goes away sad, because ‘he had many possessions’. Or maybe it would be better to say: the many possessions had him. I am sure that Jesus was sad too. St. Mark says that Jesus had looked at the young man and loved him.

Today the scene carries on with Peter saying to Jesus, “We are here, we have given everything”. I wonder if Peter was trying to make Jesus feel better, as if to say, “Look, we are with you. We have given up everything for your sake”.

But then Peter goes on in a way that asks, “What is in it for us now?” Maybe Peter had basically good intentions, gently suggesting that Jesus should also give some motives of encouragement to the next possible recruit that might come along. I suppose that is possible. But as the Synoptic Gospels portray Peter, it is more likely another case where he puts his foot in his mouth. However, the answer Jesus gives is very important for us. We can be grateful to Peter for his question. Jesus’ answer gives us a peek into his heart, into the very heart of God.

Today, as we do every month, we ponder and celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation. I always like to look back on the old custom of keeping the ‘virtue of the month’. In that ancient scheme, the virtue for this month is poverty, the second of the nine virtues given to Celeste [Maria Celeste Crostarosa, our foundress - 1696-1555] in the primitive Rule. Celeste draws her images of this mystery from the writings of St. Paul and St. John. Everything starts in the Trinity, in eternity.

The Incarnation is the movement of God the Word from the riches of the Godhead to the utter poverty of human nature. God goes to an extreme we can never remotely fathom, out of his love and concern for us. Is it fanciful to think that when he describes to Peter and the disciples what we will receive in return for our own total dedication as “a hundred times more” that is exactly the way Jesus sees the worth of what he is doing? We mean something to God, and I believe that in the radical poverty that Jesus asks of us, he want us to rejoice in acknowledging that our brothers and sisters in the human family are as important to us as they are to him; that they are worth all the pain. The community of Jesus is to be our riches.

I guess the question for each of us today is, “Where are my riches?” Are they the things that Jesus truly values? Or does my heart get stuck somehow on my own stuff ? Not material things but opinions, preferences, plans, expectations of others, our ‘druthers’, as Lil Abner would say. Let’s ask our loving Jesus, our brother, lover, and friend, to draw us freely after him, day by day into his mission for his and our world. With all our hearts let us renew our vows trusting in the strength of the Holy Spirit to be the wind under our wings…all the way to the end.

World Day for Consecrated LIfe

Redemptoristine Nuns - Mother of Perpetual Help Monastery

Esopus, New York

Celebrating Consecrated Life

We join today in celebrating the gift of consecrated life to the Church and the world.  It is wonderful to give attention to this particular vocation to which the Lord is still inviting many. It is just that there is so much competition for our attention, our time, our devotion. So we must continue to point to the reality of the invitation. In addition to praying for religious vocations, we must pray for growing faithfulness to our commitment to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience in service to God, all people and all of creation.

A number of efforts point to the history and viability of consecrated life. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) has sponsored the creation of an outstanding exhibit spotlighting religious life. Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America can currently be seen at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Later in the spring it will be in Cleveland and on September 24 arrive at Ellis Island Museum of Immigration in New York City.

Another educational tool created in service to American women religious is a CD set of lectures by a scholar from Syracuse University, Prof. Margaret Susan Thompson, Ph.D. History of Women Religious in the United States is availble from http://www.nowyouknowmedia.com/ 1-800-955-3904. We have been listening to this series at our noon meal.

Today at our Mass we and our visitors will offer the following prayer for vocations provide by the National Religious Vocation Conference. Join us is saying it as frequently as you can.

Prayer for Vocations

Generous God,

You show us the way that leads to everlasting life.

Through baptism you have called us

to proclaim the Good News.

Bless and strengthen those

who have made a commitment

of service in the Church.

Guide and give wisdom to those discerning their vocation.

Enrich our Church with dedicated

married and single people,

with deacons, priests,

and with people in consecrated life.

Filled with your Holy Spirit we ask this blessing that we,

your people, may follow Jesus, our Good Shepherd,

now and always, Amen.

National Vocation Awareness Week - January 10-16

As We Enter
the New Year

The holiday whirlwind has subsided. The last of the cookies are being consumed. Decorations will slowly start to make their way back to storage on Monday. But the liturgical season of Christmastide will not end in our monastery until Night Prayer (Compline) tomorrow evening, the official end of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Since Christmas, the Church has led us through a series of 'epiphanies', manifestations of the incarnate divinity of Jesus. The revelation of Messiah to the shepherds and the Magi, his baptism in the Jordan by John, and the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana come into play during these in-between days, links between Christmas and the return to Ordinary Time. Each of these epiphanies is experienced as on-going in our time to underscore the wondrous mystery of the Incarnation. In case we did not get it, the Church provides liturgies that place these manifestations front and center. From this we move ahead to Ordinary Time and the accounts of Jesus' ministry. None of that will matter unless we know who He was and who He is in our time.

Other News

* As a community of Redemptoristine contemplative nuns, we have made a new effort to let people know who we are. Pictured above is a newly designed small flyer featuring a photo of Sr. Maria Linda Magbiro in front of a chapel window depicting our foundress Maria Celeste Crostarosa. This flyer provides the background for a Lucite stand holding our vocation brochures in a pocket on the right. These stands have been sent to a number of large Redemptorist parishes and retreat houses of the northeast. We are grateful for the support of  our Redemptorist brothers in this effort. All of this just in time for National Vocation Awareness Week, Jan. 10-16. We also delivered a packet containing copies of VISION Vocation Magazine, vocation posters and our brochures to two local Catholic high schools.

* The Redemptorist Congregation is absorbing and adjusting to changes in leadership brought about at the General Chapter in Rome last fall. The newly elected Father General is Michael Brehl, a Canadian well-known to us. Among his elected board of consultors is Brother Jeffrey Rolle. Brother Jeffrey is from the Caribbean islands and is a member of the Baltimore Province of the Redemptorists, the province which supports us in so many ways. We congratulate and pray for our two friends as they assume great responsiblity in challenging times. We also pray for the new effort that came out of the Chapter to respond to the need for greater partnership and coordination among Redemptorists across the globe via 'conference' organizations that will cross national and provincial borders.

* Our own Order is beginning to make plans in anticipation of a General Assembly of our autonomous monasteries in the year 2011. As an order we do not have a general government with a leadership structure holding the whole body together. This factor can make our effort to respond to the same challenges effecting the Redemptorists a bit more difficult. But we hope to surmount those difficulties by our union of prayer and mutual commitment to the Redemptoristine charism.

* These days a few of us also are kept busy translating Christmas letters received from our monasteries around the world. At least we can translate those that come in French, Spanish or Italian. We depend on others for the German. These letters are read at our noon meals and are the chief means by which we keep in touch with monasteries as far flung as Haiti, Japan, Italy, and Quebec, just to name a few.

And Finally...

Our very best wishes to you for a happy, healthy and blessed New Year in 2010.

Advent Time

On this day of the liturgical year, every first Friday of Advent, the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours offers a selection from St. Anselm's Proslogion. This is a favorite of mine. It begins:

Insignificant mortal, escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in him.

The passage ends:

Teach me to seek you, and when I seek you show yourself to me, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

Today, however, the sister giving the second reading at the Office chose, as is an option, another reading. Her choice was taken from a very fine book written by a friend of ours Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette. Cooks may recognize Twleve Months of Monastery Soups as one of his recipe books. Todays reading was taken from his Blessings of the Daily - A Monastic Book of Days. It is a wonderful collection of daily readings. Todays' was titled "Fostering the Spirit of Advent" which offered some hint for keeping the season. Here is a summary.

1. Cultivate an attitude of stillness, silence and peace within you that will, in turn, foster prayer and recollection.

2. Place an icon of the Annunciation in a relevant spot at home to remind of Mary's presence.

3. Make time for Bible reading (Lectio Divina).

4. Listen to inspired music - Bach Advent Cantatas, Handel's Messiah.

5. Participate in the Liturgies of the Church.

6. Don't rush the season with a tree. Use and Advent wreath and pray with it. lighting candles at meal time.

7. Place a small creche in your dining area. Leave the crib empty and light a candle beside it when you eat your meals.

8. Be faithful to the daily Angelus - the great prayer of the mystery of the Incarnation.

Thank you, Brother Victor

**********************************

Angelus

Leader: The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary:

Response: And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Leader: Behold the handmaid of the Lord:

Response: Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

Hail Mary

Leader: And the Word was made Flesh:

Response: And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary

Leader: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,

Response: that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray:

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.