As Passionist Nuns, our spiritual home is the “cloister” of Calvary, where we dwell in the shadow of His wings – the outstretched arms of Jesus Christ upon the Cross.
There, in union with Our Sorrowful Mother, we keep Him company in His Passion, we offer our lives with His in a loving sacrifice to the Eternal Father, and we strive to become channels of His grace, life, and love into our world.
“I rejoice in the Lord that you often find yourself plunged and immersed in the Sacred Passion of Jesus and in the great furnace of His Eucharistic Presence....”
“The memory of the Passion of Jesus: make a corsage of all his pains and place it in the bosom of your soul, and let your soul be filled with holy love and sorrow.“
It’s almost Lent, and perhaps some of you are planning to give up or at least curtail your Internet usage for this season of fasting and prayer. If so - or even if not - we hope you’ll take the chance today or tomorrow to enjoy some Monastery Cat photos from the past year!
For the past 10+ years, the USCCB has been promising an updated English Breviary, so that priests, seminarians, religious men and women, and laypeople throughout the USA can begin praying their daily Divine Office in words that are more faithful to the original Latin text.
We live far enough to the south that it’s rare for snow to stick around for more than a few days. So the recent winter storm was an unusual opportunity for us to have a more “northern-type” winter experience!
8 years ago, our friend Mary Shaffer spent some time on retreat at our monastery, praying, writing, and helping us to redesign our website. Recently, we were blessed to welcome her back to St. Joseph’s for one of our ongoing formation classes!
Last year we asked you to storm Heaven for Paul Schuhmann, the brother of our Sr. Catherine Marie, who was diagnosed with advanced cancer.
I prayed for a happy feast for you from the gentle Jesus during the novena and on the Holy Night from the holy altar. I did the same this morning for a Blessed New Year, in which I want you to be reborn every day in the Divine Word-Made-Man to a new life …
To round off our series of blog posts on Sr. Isabel Maria’s First Profession, we’re sharing the reflection that Sister wrote for her Profession Mass booklet. It’s a lovely meditation on the meaning of her Baptismal name, Holly, and we hope you find it as meaningful as we did!
“Make yourself a good retreat in the interior of your soul, and in that desert treat with the Highest Good one-on-one, adoring him in spirit and truth.”
“The Passionist Nuns... are to strive for perfection in God’s love by living in His Divine Presence and by preserving indelibly written in their hearts the most holy Life, Passion, and Death of the loving Jesus who was sacrificed on Calvary for the world’s redemption.”
Our Retreat House and Chapel, located on a peaceful 170-acre site of beautiful woodlands, gives women and men of Catholic and other Christian denominations the opportunity to enter into a deeper relationship with God by sharing in our Passionist liturgical celebrations, while renewing and strengthening themselves spiritually and physically in a place of deep silence, solitude and prayer.
“From the Foot of the Cross”
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At 11:40 this morning, while the community was gathered around her in prayer, our dear Sr. Mary Magdalen was quietly gathered into the arms of the Good Shepherd to Whom she was espoused nearly 60 years ago.