Solemnities and Feast Days

At Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, everyone looks forward to the times in the Church calendar when we celebrate the Solemnities and the special Feast Days of the year. Today, for example, is The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. On this day we celebrate the entire mystery of Christ and especially His great love for us.

Perhaps part of the excitement in the air here is due to the way these days are marked. We began our celebration of The Sacred Heart last night by having the Office of Vigils. Because we did our early morning prayer last night, we were given an extra hour to sleep in this morning, a welcomed break from our usual morning bell at 6:00AM. Then we went to breakfast and enjoyed conversation with each other... silence is lifted from all the meals today. Next we gathered to celebrate a special high mass with incense, six candles, scripture readings about God's great love for us (Deut 7:6-11, Psalm 103, 1John 4:7-16, and Matt 11:25-30), a homily about the revelation of God's merciful love for us through the mystic Sr. Mary Margaret in France, a celebration of the Eucharist, and a closing song sung by all as the celebrants and nuns and monks processed out of the assembly.

After today's activities of work, study, reflection, and prayer, we'll come together as a community to conclude the day with Vespers, followed by dinner where beer and wine will be served as a special treat. On ordinary evenings we have Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament followed by night prayers where we sing psalms, pray to Our Lady, and are sent off to bed with a sprinkling of holy water and a nighttime blessing. Really, who couldn't sleep well after that?!


It strikes me that these luxuries that we're experiencing in the monastery today are things most of us in the outside world can enjoy everyday. If you've ever experienced a time of hardship either voluntarily (maybe because of travel or camping or something else that takes you out of your usual habitat) or otherwise, then you know how good even the simple things seem to be when you've gone without them for a while.

In thinking about the love of Jesus as reflected in the image of his Sacred Heart, I am reminded of the only year I went to Catholic School. It was at Sacred Heart in Troy, Michigan. I was in the first grade with 39 other children at a school that was struggling financially and closed two years later. We were taught by a young, bright-faced nun named Sister Sandra. She sang songs to us like "Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod" at nap time and drew pictures on the chalkboard of whatever we asked when we were good. If we had a younger sister or brother visiting us in school that day (as my sister Gail did once) then they got to sit up front in the "special person for the day chair." It is memories like these that remind me of how so very loved I felt as a child. And that same love is what Jesus is communicating to each one of us today.




- Posted from my iPad