Dear friends,

As we approach the celebration of Easter, we hope that you are all safe! Many people have contacted us to inquire as to how we are doing. Thank-you for reaching out, and for your friendship and support. We are all healthy, and haven taken measures to stay that way. To protect ourselves and others, we’ve had to close our chapel—we’re simply not able to clean well enough after each visitor to make sure you’d stay safe.

Meanwhile, life in the monastery goes on. Our schedule, with its ebb and flow of prayer, study, work and community life continues as usual and helps us to focus on the essential. We are very aware of how fortunate we are to have a priest with us until after Easter. We will live this Holy Week in intense communion with and for you. We are holding all the needs of the world as we hold you and your loved ones in our hearts and prayer. Even though we are all celebrating the Paschal Mystery in a different way this year visibly, we are always invisibly united in the Body of Christ. When one member suffers, we all suffer; and when one member rejoices, we get to share that joy. As we celebrate together Jesus’s victory over death, let us pray in a particular way for those who have suffered death or loss as a result of this pandemic.

We will try to share with you what we can of our liturgy during this week. We don’t have the capacity to livestream, but what we are able to record, we will try to share with you!

Beginning with Palm Sunday…

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A little bit of hope and encouragement for us all, with a newly recorded fr. André Gouzes song based on yesterday's Gospel of the Samaritan woman (John 4:1 - 42). As Lent continues, and global concern about the coronavirus rises, let us remain united in prayer!

As the Master of our Order, fr. Gerard Timoner, shared at the beginning of his letter on the pandemic:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?
The Lord is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid?
For God will hide me in his shelter in time of trouble,
He will conceal me in the cover of his tent.”

— Psalm 27:1,5

Every year, we are asked, “What do you do for Lent in the monastery?” We shared in-depth about this last year, but think that this Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 5:43 - 48) puts an extra perspective on it. Last week, Jesus was being led out into the wilderness by the Spirit to fast, pray and be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1 - 11). This week, He leads three of His disciples on a hike up a mountain, and reveals His glory to them, as the Father says “This is my beloved Son…listen to Him.” Why, after being encouraged to pray, fast and struggle, are we so quickly shown Christ’s radiant beauty, and reminded so strongly of the love of our Father? Isn’t that a bit strange?

Icon written by a Dominican nun from Drogheda, Ireland.

Well, yes and no. Lent is a season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for the Paschal Triduum, which celebrates Jesus’s victory over sin and death. As a monastic community, Lent is a time to live even more simply, and return to the fundamentals of our life—love, prayer, silence, common life, study, manual work. However, as Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov said, “The true aim of our Christian life consists of the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ's sake, they are the only means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God."  As nuns, we don’t have Twitter or TV shows to give up; but it is possible to get numbed to holy things. It is possible that the horarium and words of prayer become the wallpaper of routine. It is possible, even surrounded by the beauty of God expressed in nature, liturgy, community, to forget that we are called to a peace that this world cannot give (Jn 14:27).

So, Lent is a time to return to the love of our God, and ask Him to help us remove whatever has dimmed the bright light and joy of our salvation that He so wants to share with us. Now that we’ve been “led into the wilderness,” so to speak, the Gospel of the Transfiguration reminds us why we are here—so that “we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).

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To put that another way: before the ground froze last fall, one of our younger sisters planted 105 tulip bulbs in the garden and covered them with straw. On Ash Wednesday, she scraped back the covering on a row only to find the first buds poking up. It is still partially winter outside; in fact, today it is snowing. But even underneath the snow and straw, the flowers grew towards the light. If they’re well tended, and the deer don’t interfere, we should have tulips for the Easter Vigil. In much the same way, in Lent God helps us scrape back the covering on His life in our soul, so that we too may grow towards His light. It may not look like much at first; but give it forty days, and the right amount of sun, and who knows what beauty may be revealed?

May God bless your Lent in every way, that we might gaze on His glory together at Easter. Let us remain united in prayer!