The Lord is Risen, Alleluia!

Rejoice, heavenly powers!

Sing choirs of angels!

Exult all creation around God's throne!

Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!

Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shinning splendor,

radiant in the brightness of your King!

Christ has conquered, glory fills you!

Darkness vanishes forever!

Exultet of Easter Vigil Liturgy

It is a profound privilege for our community of contemplative nuns to have had a complete daily horarium of prayer and all of the liturgies of Holy Week in our monastery. We are deeply indebted to the Very Reverend Father Patrick Woods, Provincial of the Baltimore Province of the Redemptorist Congregation of the Holy Redeemer as the principal celebrant at our Triduum liturgies. His homilies speak words from his heart and they enter ours most touchingly, inspiring faith, encouraging perseverance, and always pointing to the incredible redeeming love of Jesus Christ. At this evening's Easter Vigil, Father Woods was joined by Father Dennis Billy, Professor at the Redemptorist Alphonisanum in Rome. Father Dennis is a great friend of our community. Tomorrow he will celebrate Easter morning mass for us and our guests.

Our days of Holy Week Retreat began on Wednesday. Days of limited work (but Holy week is always busy in a monastery as in a local parish), silent meals, ample time to sit with the Word, to ponder its meaning, to open oneself the words God wishes them to speak in our hearts - all of this prepares us for the wonder and mystery of this day of all days. We can truly say, "O Happy fault."

Father Woods' direction to us at the close of the Vigil was that just as we had tried to keep the forty days of Lent well, we should celebrate the fifty days of Easter tide with equal dedication. Alleluia!

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are

perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the

power of God.

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,

and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:18, 20

Listen to me on the Cathedral of the Cross, which I have

placed in your heart so that I may live my life in you as

a pilgrim, crucified in this world. You shall see me in your

Spirit, crucified on the bare cross of poverty, crucified in

your body with the weakness of sickness, crucified in your

spirit in your aridity, dereliction, and melancholy,

your weariness and bereft of any consolation.

And I shall bring this about in such a way that everything

will be for you both a cross and peace

as also for me, a pilgrim.

Jesus speaking to Maria Celeste Crostarosa

Dialogues #9

Servant of the Servants of God

Monastic Holy

Thursday

We have an example

of humility.In God's

name let each of us

humble our heart at

the sight of the high

majesty who washes

the feet of the fishermen.

The most honored among

us is the the most humble.

Italian Lauda - Fourteenth Century

Sr. Paula Schmidt, O.Ss.R, Prioress washing the feet of her sisters.

Contemplative nuns and monks have the option within their monasteries to have the superior be the person who acts as Christ in the Holy Thursday ritual foot washing, one of the most beautiful and evocative jestures of our sacred liturgies. Performed slowly, with great dignity and generosity, the ceremony touches one to the core, to the depths of the heart. Jesus wanted us to wash each others' feet without regard of all the ways we tend to categorize, label, and evaluate each other. None of that matters at all. Love is the only thing that matters and love changes everything. Last Sunday we meditated upon the Gospel pericope of the annointing at Bethany, so important to the early Christians that it appears in each of the four Gospels. The woman pre-figures Jesus' action in her own. She already gets his message of love. And now Jesus models it for all.

Do you know what I have done to you?

You call me Teacher and Lord

and you are right, for that is what I am.

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet,

you also ought to wash one another's feet.

For I have given you an example,

that you also should do as I have done to you."

John 13:12-15

Infinite, intimate God; this night you kneel before your friends and wash our feet.

Bound together in your love, trembling, we drink your cup and watch.

New Zealand Prayer Book

Sun-kissed

Surrendering pride of place,
once omnipotent snow
now sun-kissed crystalline blue,
retreats from winter redoubt
powerless before silent encroachment;
spring's relentless heated embrace.

Resisting vulnerability,
icy shield gives way unevenly.
Soft edges rounded,
certain revelation of true terrain beneath,
bringing to day's light
every jagged rock and gnarled old-growth clump;
each faint memory of bloom long passed.

So too in silent seasons of the heart
a passionate kiss of the Sun
melts icy shield,
winter redoubt of delicate Self,
exposing features of fleshy terrain
wounded and scarred, defeated or crowned.

The Sun, finding all irresistible,
presses the human heart to eager lips.
The kiss of His mouth,
radiant, healing heat;
springtime of the Lover's ardor
for every war-torn soul.

"Blessed is the king

who comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven

and glory in the highest."

Luke 19: 38