Beginning of the New Year Nunstuff

A new Benedictine novice, Sr. Marie-Therese writes about her clothing this week at Colwich Abbey, UK:

I was Clothed at 8.15 am on Friday 25th January in our Chapter room with Mother Abbess presiding, i was at a prayer stool in the middle and the community were around us. Mother said ’sister, what do you ask?’ and i replied – ‘the mercy of God, the grace to share your monastic life and to begin my novitiate in this monastery of Our Lady of Good Hope’. Mother gave an address, then i knelt at her feet to receive the Rule – ‘behold the law under which you wish to serve, if you can observe it, enter, if you cannot, freely depart’ and i replied -’ i do not trust in my own strength, but with the mercy of God, i desire and hope to keep this Rule in its entirety.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Dominicans at Summit, NJ, whose novitiate is growing dramatically, welcomed a new Postulant, Sr. Lauren.

Sr. Lauren comes to us from the “far away” town of Piscataway, NJ! With her entrance we now have 4 “bluebirds” (as Sr. Mary Anthony calls them) in the novitiate! Sr. Martha is especially happy to have Sr. Lauren as she won’t be alone in postulant blues when Sr. Deepa and Sr. Giang receive the habit in March.

Summit Novitiate, Sr. Giang, Sr. Denise-Marie, Sr. Deepa, Sr. Martha

The Summit sisters have one or two more aspirants visiting soon, I think.

God bless these young women and their families. It has to be bittersweet; it always is, when we watch our children move forward with their lives and understand that – whether they leave for marriage, or a career or an enclosed vocation – we never can accompany them into their own futures.