Vroooooooarrrm! What was that? An airplane taking off in the courtyard?

No, guess again.

It was our shiny new grain mill grinding hard white wheat for homemade cinnamon buns!

Thanks to some very generous retreatants who are home-milling enthusiasts, our kitchen has welcomed an electric countertop grain mill, a new bread machine, and all the items we need to bake bread from freshly ground flour. The only way we could get more “from scratch” is to grow our own ingredients, but I suspect an opportunity for wheat farming is many years and a dozen Postulants into the future.

So far, we have just enjoyed the resulting simple loaves of bread for breakfast.

But one recent morning found Sr. Cecilia Maria hard at work rolling out some beautiful cinnamon buns for the upcoming Easter festivities.

Watching Sister making bread reminded me (Sister Blogger) of the ancient Eucharistic prayer recorded in the Didache:

“As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and then, when gathered, became one mass, so may Thy Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom.”

(Didache 9:4, trans. by James A. Kleist, S.J., Ph.D. in v. 6 of Ancient Christian Writers.)

Thanks be to God for the gift of home-baked bread, nourishing the body and made with love by the hands of our Sisters! And yet, how much greater must our gratitude be for the gift of the Church He has gathered and fed with the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.