The Joys of Volunteering

I hope you all are enjoying your summer. We've had good weather at the motherhouse, so Sister Isabelle and I have gotten to play tennis a couple times, which is always fun. We now have three really good tennis rackets, because one of the sisters donated hers.

Everyone is full of anticipation and excitement for the upcoming arrival of the new postulants. If you are one of them, know that we pray for you, both as a community and individually, daily. Also, just in case you may feel nervous, it is totally normal to have "cold feet" right before a change from what you're used to. That's why there's a name for it! I literally had to go through the motions last year of walking onto the ferry to cross Lake Michigan, but once the ferry started moving, I thought I might as well stay on for the ride. I'm glad I did. The water was pretty deep.

I mentioned briefly in my last entry that as novices we spend Thursday afternoons volunteering at the Salvatorian Mission Warehouse, directed by Brother Regis, a Salvatorian. "Since 1968 The Salvatorian Mission Warehouse has been shipping tons of critical materials to needy villages around the world" (http://salvatorians.com/missionwh).

It is an awesome experience! We have a lot of fun putting the different items together to send them to different parts of our world, and we get to hear stories and see pictures from those on the receiving end. Sister Dolores has organized groups from our Motherhouse to go there for years.

This time, we organized "cut offs" from Land's End. The machines in the factory only use the fabric they need, and the rest is sent to us. We then ship the cut offs to people who live in third world countries, and they make them into clothes.


These are some finished clothes that people sent back to us to show how the cut-offs are used.







Later on, I was reading part of Pope Benedict's encyclical, God is Love, and he writes that "love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to [the Church] as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel. The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word."

The Pope's message truly echoes Matthew's Gospel when Jesus says,
"Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matthew 25: 34-40, NAB).

So it's cool to have another way to live the Gospel, as Saint Francis intended for Franciscans.

Typical Day at the Convent

From an outside perspective, it can seem that when you join the convent, you are giving up so much, and are going to be cut off from the world. I can't speak for everyone, but I am finding more and more that joining the convent has opened me up to several new experiences. I also know more about what is happening in the world than I ever did before. We watch the local and world news every evening and have access to newspapers and news magazines. I am finding that I enjoy reading Catholic magazines and newspapers, too, because they have a dimension that seems to be lacking in other news sources. I also appreciate that by living in community, others can catch things that you miss. The other night we prayed for the people in Pakistan who had a flood, and until that moment, I was unaware of the flood.

Also, the experiences have been quite interesting. I learned how to dead-head flowers. The whole process of dead-heading flowers is counter-intuitive, but it actually makes gardens healthier. I also got to watch a monarch come out of its chrysalis. It was so cool! It was actually really quick. We have a sister who collects them and then releases them when they are ready to go outside.

Outside of the new experiences, I am enjoying the daily schedule. Since I am a novice, and I have various charges, the schedule varies, but some things remain constant.

Here's an example a first-year novice's day in the convent (varies)

6:45am Morning Prayer
7:05am Mass
7:40am Breakfast
8:10am Breakfast Dishes
9:15am Instructions (about spirituality, history of our community (141 years), or the rule and constitutions of our community)
9:50am Sacristy for the Later Mass
11:40am Dinner (they call lunch "dinner" at the motherhouse, because it's our main meal)
12:10pm Midday Prayer
12:30pm Various things (we had classes in the afternoon, sometimes we work in sacristy, sometimes we have Eucharistic adoration, and we always have an hour of personal prayer each day)
4:45pm Evening Prayer and the Angelus
5:10pm Watch the News
5:40pm Supper
After Supper, a couple nights a week we clean the cafeteria line, then have recreation, but we always have recreation together.
Before bed: Night prayer

Once or twice a week, we work in the kitchen, helping to prepare meals for the community. Somedays, we do sacristy for the morning mass, so we arrive at the chapel earlier in the morning to prepare for mass. On Thursdays, we go to the Salvatorian Mission Warehouse to prepare items to be shipped to people in third world countries. We will be taking an Old Testament course in the fall and a New Testament course in the spring. We have the option of helping in the craft room this month, and we will be taking musical instrument lessons soon. We also can play various sports and go on walks. So we have an active and contemplative way of life.

Here are the Icons we made!

As I wrote in the last few entries, those of us in initial formation took an iconography class. We learned about the history and meaning of icons during the first week and in the second week, we got to "write" icons under the guidance and direction of our professor, Sister Mariella.

Sister Mariella is no stranger to iconography. She prayed and wrote two San Damiano Crucifixes. One is in St. Rita's Chapel. The San Damiano Crucifix is an icon that Franciscans hold dear. St. Francis received his call to rebuild the Church when he was praying before the crucifix in San Damiano. When he heard this call, he thought he had to rebuild the physical structure of the church. He realized later that his call was to rebuild the Catholic Church. For Franciscans, this crucifix is a reminder of our call and commitment to God.

This summer, S. Mariella took on the challenge of teaching us. We learned that icons are sacred images. These images are the Bible of the Illiterate: the Word is for hearing and the Icon is for sight. They are called "Gates to Heaven" or "Windows to the Eternal." Icons are rooted in the incarnation and they represent humanity and divinity. Their simplicity, flatness, unreal colors, and different facial structures can be difficult for some Westerners to appreciate at first, but this "different" artistic language emphasizes that the figures being represented in the icon are beyond the physical world. In other words, they are spiritual.

Icons were controversial for a time. In the eighth century, there was an Iconoclastic movement that was anti-icons. The two major arguments of Iconoclasm were the prohibition against fashioning images, and the presumption that it was idol worship. (Exodus 20:4- " You shall not make for yourself an idol.) However, these misconceptions were overcome as St. John Damascene, St. Athenasius, St. Cyril of Alexandra, Empress Theodora, and others corrected the false notions. In 843, Theodora restored the devotion to the images. They once again became a way for people to pray, as people understood that icons are not being worshiped.

We also learned that we "write" icons. I kept having to correct myself for saying "paint." When we look at an icon, we "read" them. When we write them, the darkest colors usually go first, for a gradual movement to light, to represent the our interior movements from dark to light. The whole process is a prayer. One cannot write an icon without praying.

I am just fascinated that the icons don't smell, because we made the paint with egg yoke! That's how iconographers make the paint.

Here are our icons in front of the San Damiano Cross in St. Rita's Chapel:




I was able to pray with the Good Shepherd icon last weekend, which was very enriching! My icon was of St. Monica (far left), and it helped me to feel more connected with her and her story.

Right now, we are applying the varnish to the icons. It's really helping to bring out the colors!

These are a few of my favorite things...

This weekend has been full of excitement as the sisters returned home from the mission sites for the annual community meeting. It has been awesome to see over three hundred sisters in one room and to listen to everyone pray the Office in unison. I loved that. The Divine Office, or the Liturgy of the Hours, is the prayer of the church, so Catholics everywhere pray it, and when we pray it, we are united with them. Hearing all those sisters praying it gave me a greater experience of the whole church, and made me think that this is what heaven will be like, only it will be billions of people giving glory to God in perfect charity.

Speaking of Charity, today we all received a copy of Benedict XVI's encyclical, Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate). In this encyclical, he "explores the relationship between love and our commitment to social justice. We were also encouraged to reflect on an older encyclical of his called God is Love (Deus Caritas Est). Here's that description: "In today's high-tech, fast paced world, love is often portrayed as being separate from Church teaching. Pope Benedict XVI hopes to overturn that perception and describe the essential place of love in the life of the church." I haven't read it yet, so I have a little catching up to do. It looks like an amazing document though, and Pope Benedict has the gift of being able to discuss profound ideas in a clear way. I truly appreciate that!

The encyclical we were given is an additional material to help with our 2010-2011 study of social justice, including the seven principles of Catholic Social Teaching. I am very excited that we are taking the year to explore together an area of the Church that I was personally involved in during my college years. We had a day of positive and fascinating workshops, including one where we learned that race does not exist, that it was something that humans created in order to feel more advanced than others. In fact, out of a black person in the US and two white people in Ireland, the person in the US can share more of the same genetic makeup with one of the people in Ireland, than the people in Ireland have with each other. John Carr, from the USCCB, also gave a excellent, positive, and humorous keynote address on how we can incorporate Catholic Social Teaching into our daily lives. I just love how connected I feel with the whole Roman Catholic Church here.

After the day of learning and reflection, I was pleasantly surprised that our "evening entertainment" was dancing! I. Love. Dancing. Of course it was awesome! We also were given a fantastic performance by two of our sisters from Africa of some traditional dances.


This morning, a lot of us sisters put on a sacred reader's theatre for the rest of the community on the dialogue between St. Francis and Lady Poverty. It was a lot of fun, and I learned more about the vow of poverty. It was also cool to continue acting, because I was "bitten by the acting bug" in college. Everyone did so well, too.

Many things have also occurred. We finished the sewing class. The temporary professed made their skirts and novices made aprons. I did struggle with the machine a bit, but on the last day of class I did very well on the machine. It was purring like a kitten, instead of getting jammed... I am looking forward to improving upon my new skill and doing other projects! Here are our aprons:


The icons we "wrote" are on display in St. Rita's Chapel for the Sisters to pray with. Pictures to come!!!

Summer at the Convent goes by Fast!

This summer feels like it is just flying by. It is probably not flying by for the incoming postulants. I know that until 2 weeks before my entrance date, the summer felt long. (In the last two weeks, it seemed that the summer came to an abrupt end.) What would I say to an incoming postulant? Pack a little at a time. Try to pack as little as possible, but definitely bring personal things like photographs and things for your favorite activities. Know that we have enough books here to last you a lifetime as well as things for crafts and sports. Spend quality time with loved ones. Have fun, and enjoy the moments. Take comfort in knowing that your hobbies can continue, and so can the relationships you hold dear. Know that hundreds of sisters pray for you daily. Try to increase your time spent in prayer a little bit, perhaps by going to mass more frequently, or by reflecting on the mass readings for the day. Don't worry about anything.

Life in the novitiate has been peaceful and fun. We are busy, but there is a calmness in our life. Sr. Isabelle and I are getting the hang of sacristy and kitchen work, and we have been involved in projects. We got to go to a local farm and pick strawberries. The first time we picked strawberries, it was for jam, and the second time it was for strawberry pie. The pie was delicious, and I had some jam on my toast this morning and loved that too.

We are also working really hard on putting together a patio for all the sisters to enjoy. There had been an empty plot of concrete next to the novitiate. It overlooked Sr. Caritas' garden as well as Silver Lake, so it had a beautiful view, but it wasn't so pretty itself. So, the novices last year with the help of Sr. Elizabeth Ann, put together a proposal to the Council to make it an enjoyable and pretty place, it it was approved! Sr. Elizabeth Ann calls it the Sacred Garden. I've also heard it called St. Therese's Terrace. I like both names. I am learning a lot about gardening and I love it. Here is a picture of Sr. Pamela Catherine and I putting together the trellis. Now we just need to figure out how to hold it in place on the concrete! St. Joseph the Carpenter, pray for us!


We also finished the iconography class. When they are ready for the display in the cafeteria, I will take a picture of them for this blog, and write more about the meaning of the icons. I definitely have a deeper appreciation of them!

Now we are taking a sewing class. It's really fun. Yesterday, we made pin cushions and today we are going to lay out patterns for aprons. The temporary professed sisters are making skirts. I was happy to notice that I retained some knowledge of how to use the sewing machine.

It is amazing how many opportunities you have to learn new things and develop new hobbies as a sister! Lots of old favorite activities continue as well. A gentleman across the lake had a wonderful fireworks display. We had a flag ceremony, played volleyball together, had a water fight, did sparklers and ate burgers from the grill. It is cool that you don't have to give up that stuff when you join the convent. Life is good.

New Beginnings

I have much to write about. So much, that I am conscious that this blog entry could be pages and pages if I don't use some self control. First and foremost on my mind, a friend of mine at the convent, Sr. Sean Marie, is preparing to enter Heaven, after a long battle with cancer. Sr. Natalie, my novice directress, has taken us to see her a couple times. I am convinced that she will go straight to heaven. She is already a living saint.

We currently have four postulants coming in August, which everyone is excited about, but Sr. Sean Marie says that there will be a fifth one, and she is offering up her suffering for that one, whoever she is. What a powerful prayer from a powerful woman. When she first told me about the 5 postulants, she saw right through my lack of faith that I was trying to conceal, and gave me a lecture about that. She said, "Don't pray for it if you don't believe that it can happen."

When she was missing her rosary, she used my plastic white and light blue one. I hadn't thought much of it before that. When Sr. Anne returned it to me, she told me that Sr. Sean Marie told her to tell me that she prayed lots of rosaries on it. Now it's an extra special rosary to me. I even have my double-sided blanket flipped over so that the Packer side is the one showing. (The Lions are on the other side.) Sr. Sean Marie is the Packer's biggest fan, and even got to go on the sidelines during a game because of it! She and I would go back and forth about our friendly rivalry, and she would affectionately call me "Detroit." I am so glad that I joined this community when I did, so that I have the blessing of knowing her.

Now I am on a different stage in formation. I am a novice. I have a white veil, and my name was changed from Kara to Sister Monica at the reception ceremony- here is the link to read more about it and see pictures from it. A lot of people ask me, "Why Monica?" Well, when I came here, I had intended on maintaining my baptismal name, and being either Sister Kara or Sister Kara Michelle. Someone advised me to be open, just like I was open to coming to the convent. A few days later, on August 27th, it was St. Monica's feast day. She stuck out in my mind, but I figured that the same would happen with other saints on their feast days as well. It didn't. My mind kept going back to St. Monica. Whenever someone would mention her or her son, St. Augustine, I would be excited. I just couldn't get it out of my head. I prayed to God to give me other names to choose from. He kept giving me Monica. In the spring, I asked one of the sisters to pray for names for me. I liked the name Monica, but I thought I should have more options. I did not tell her what name God had been revealing to me. A couple weeks later, she told me that she was sorry, that she wanted to give me a few options to choose from, but the only name that came to her was Monica. When I submitted my name choices, I submitted Monica, Thérèse, and Kara, in that order.

Now it doesn't happen this way for every sister. I don't want anyone to think that it does. The fact that it happened to me says nothing about me, and everything about God and His powers. But I know that God doesn't just do something like that to benefit one person. I am sharing it with you because I want to share with you His awesome powers at work in us. Also, some sisters keep their baptismal names, which is very good, because becoming a religious is a deepening of baptism.

Since this blog entry is getting pretty long, and I am trying to practice the self control I mentioned at the beginning of the entry, I will quickly write what else has happened in the past two weeks in the novitiate. Sr. Isabelle, formerly Marie and I joined Sr. Pamela Catherine and Sr. Natalie in the attached building reserved for the novitiate. We spent the first week helping out at Camp Franciscan, which was a blast, and the second week getting trained in sacristy and everything else involved with being a novice. We are also taking an iconography class, and we are looking forward to making our own icons!

Growing in Intimacy with God

Yesterday was a very big day in our community....Sr. Chiara had her first profession of vows! It was so cool! She looked so radiant and so beautiful! I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ceremony was a lot like a wedding ceremony. Her family seemed to enjoy it, too. She is on her home-visit right now, so I am sure her family is thrilled. We were all just so ecstatic for her!

There will be another big day in our community next Sunday. Marie and I will be received into the novitiate! We will receive our white veils and our new names! If you want to see pictures and/or find out what our names will be (we don't know what they'll be either- we gave the administration 3 choices though) you can go on our community's blog, Franciscanized World. They should be up by the night of June 13th or June 14th at the latest. Feel free to add comments to it or look around at the rest of the blog. I always have a link to my community's blog on the upper-right corner of my blog.

As I wrote on my last entry, I spent five days in retreat. I was wondering how I would write about it, because I cannot do it justice. It was about the "Vowed Franciscan Way of Life as a Pathway to Intimate Union with God." Fr. Jeff began the retreat by giving talks on developing an intimate and loving relationship with God, and the last 3 days were spent on how poverty, chastity and obedience help develop this intimacy.

At first, I felt a little strange taking all that time out for just the Lord and me. It seemed a little self-centered. But after talking with Fr. Jeff in a private conference on the first day, I learned that it is quite the opposite, and in fact, necessary for a life of serving others. It strengthens us for our ministry. In fact, after his conversion, St. Paul spent 14 years in solitude before preaching and spreading the Good News. St. Francis spent a lot of time praying in a cave and on a mountain. Even Jesus spent forty days in the desert before He began His ministry, and throughout His ministry He would frequently tell His disciples to "Come away for awhile and rest.

During one of his talks, Fr. Jeff shared the story of Martha and Mary to illustrate our society's need to always be productive and accomplish things. We are depriving ourselves by giving in to this pragmatism.

Here's the passage from scripture:
As they continued their journey He entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary (who) sat beside the Lord at His feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." (Luke 10: 38-42, NAB)

I love that line, "it will not be taken away from her." The Lord delights in us, as we are, without considering anything we have done or haven't done. It reminds me of the feeling of wonder we get while watching a baby....all the baby has to do is yawn, and we think s/he's cute...or, at least I do! So this is how God sees us.

He also shared with us this scripture passage, which beautifully expresses God's love for us:

"Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you,
He has turned away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands grow weak.
The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will renew you in His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival."
(Zephaniah 3: 14-18a, NRSV)

As I wrote earlier, the last three days were spent on how the vows help us with intimacy. On Wednesday, he taught us that poverty is about detaching/dispossessing in order that God can fill our lives, and that humility is a sister to poverty- it's even included in the vow of poverty. On Thursday, he talked about the vow of chastity that enables us to have an undivided love with God and emerses us more completely to Him. Lastly, on Friday, he taught us that through the vow of obedience, every time we unite ourselves with the Father's will, we are in deeper intimacy with Him.

It was a wonderful retreat and made me even more excited for the novitiate!