The Anchoress
Nun News Network International
Logo by reader Brian J
Really, I don’t mean to keep writing so much about sisters, but they all seem to have a lot going on.
And I don’t mean just making snownuns (h/t reader DeLynn):
Sadly, Sr. Mary Snowden was “knocked down by a loud & drunken bunch of young men at 10.30pm
Our friend Deacon Greg has a picture of a Snow Franciscan Friar that’s pretty cool, too.
Meanwhile our friends the Dominican Nuns of Summit, NJ have announced the passing of Sr. Mary Rose Dominic of Jesus, who was sixty years in religious life. She was the author of The Mystery and Destiny of the Church, which I wrote about here, calling the book a “unique and original exposition of the plan to be “carried out in the fullness of time” and initiated on the very first “day” of creation.”
The book was a big part of a very fruitful retreat, but it has made a bigger impression on me than I realized. Thumbing through it just now, I realized that I keep returning to the notion, over and over again, in my personal diary and my prayer, that the Annunciation, Mary’s fiat and the Incarnation of the Word are a true “mirror working backward” toward the very first error, in Eden; the great reweaving of an imperfect moment that has borne much harmful, deadly fruit, by the Perfect One. It has made plain the illusion of time, within the mystery of what is Eternal. The book was also a pretty excellent companion for this one, Bill Cloud’s Enmity Between the Seeds. Although the two writers could not be more different, they are united in purpose. And of course, to further explore all of this mystery, I am almost giddy in anticipation of reading In the Beginning…: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall by our good Pope.
In writing about Sister Rose Dominic’s passing, I wondered how the newer and younger sisters would experience their first death and funeral in the monastery and my Summit penpal writes: Deo Gratias! There is always a feeling of joy when one of the Sisters dies. After all, we’ve been preparing for this moment since our profession!
Speaking of professions, one of the Summit novices will be making her first profession soon, and my penpal tells me that there are now ten young women in various stages of serious discernment with this community. Adding to their numbers is a very good thing, as a fuller house allows more sisters to “keep watch” before the Blessed Sacrament, engaging in perpetual, non-stop prayer and adoration, on behalf of the rest of us! As the Benedictine Abbess of St. Walburga Abbey, Mother Maria-Michael Newe, has said, “this is the contemplative duty to the world”.
And by happy co-incidence, I quote the abbess on this feastday of St. Scholastica, the very first Benedictine nun!
Meanwhile, here on Long Island, we’re making snowmen of our own!
All the men in this family grow whiskers in winter; they all smirk, too!
An Anchoress PSA: I don’t want to lose any readers to snow, so make sure you follow these rules for shoveling! (H/T Insty, natch.)
Related:
Deacon Greg has a great timelaspe video of Snowmaggedon
Fr. Dwight: has the Archbishop of Canterbury saying the Anglican church may split and notes “The divide, as Mgr. Leonard so succinctly put it, is between those who believe the old time religion and those who do not.”
I’ve always said that the job of the Church is to teach the faith throughout the times, not to teach the times throughout the faith. Chesterton said it better: a catholic Church “is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”
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