Dear Friends,
The Lord is faithful in all His ways, the Psalmist sings, and yet how inscrutable those ways can often seem to us! Events over these past few months here on Mount Saint Francis have certainly proven so, with planned and unplanned happenings weaving in and out of each other in patterns that only He could have devised. We would like to share a few of those in and through which God’s faithful love shone out as also in your own love and generous help for which we are so very grateful.
We left you last on the brink of our first public novena in honor of our Mother St. Clare. While not a smashing success attendance-wise, mostly because of the high cost of travel at the time, we felt it was a good beginning and we are sure our Holy Mother took each of your intentions very much to heart. Planned Event Number One. It was followed shortly thereafter by one unplanned — at least, not by us. In the early evening of August 14, our doctor advised us to get one of our Sisters to the emergency room at Sentara, to discover the reason for several symptoms that were causing concern. When the friends we asked to drive us arrived, however, they immediately called 911. This was our first experience with these dedicated paramedics and we were very favorably impressed by them and the other medical personnel we met during Sister’s stay in the hospital. For stay she did, but only for a few days. After her return home, she was making such good progress with the help of Home Health Care nurses and therapists, that she was able to come to several special classes we had the following week. These comprised Planned Event Number Two, and were given by our two good friends, Dr. William Commins, from Northern Virginia, and Father Mark Gruber, O.S.B., from the Benedictine Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Each in his own way helped us appreciate more deeply our gifts differing, not only from our various personalities but from our various cultural backgrounds as well.
Its matching Unplanned Event happened a bit over a week later when, in the wee hours of August 30, our Sister suffered a fall that necessitated another call to 911 and another trip to the Emergency Room. It was discovered that Sister had fractured her pelvis. She was eventually transferred to the skilled nursing facility in nearby West Point. Again we were most favorably impressed by the care Sister received from nurses and therapists thanks to which she was able to come home for a few hours on September 20 to participate in our triennial community elections. Sister came home permanently the following week and, again, with the help of our good Home Health Care personnel was able to be present for several of the conferences given by Father Basil Cole, O.P., during our community retreat in mid-October.
Right around the time Sister was recovering in the nursing facility, our Holy Father made his pastoral visit to Lourdes, France, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady there. In one of his homilies, he chose to dwell on Our Lady’s smile, pointing out, among other things, how “the smile of Our Lady is for all, but it is directed quite particularly to those who suffer, so that they can find comfort and solace therein.. .This smile, a true reflection of God’s tenderness, is the source of an invincible hope.. . In the very simple manifestation of tenderness that we call a smile, we grasp that our sole wealth is the love God bears us, which passes through the heart of her who became our Mother.” Speaking to those who care for the sick, our Holy Father said that “Mary entrusts her smile to you, so that you yourselves may become springs of living water to those you serve.. .May you carry her smile to everyone!” That the medical personnel we have met in these recent months have learned to do that (even though perhaps not fully aware of it) has been very apparent to us little Poor Ones. And for this, we are most grateful.
Another thing that has become more and more apparent during this time has been our need to upgrade the infirmary area in our new home. And so, when our architect was visiting in early October, we consulted him about rearranging the rooms, and he graciously went over our plans. Thanks to good contractor friends in the area and several groups of young volunteers, Phase 1 of said rearranging has already begun. Stay tuned for more progress reports in coming issues of this newsletter!
The last days of October and the early days of November found us praying for a favorable outcome of our National Elections. We capped our efforts by having adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 4:30 a.m. on November 4 to 2:30 a.m. November 5, that is, from the time the polls opened here on the East Coast until they closed in far-off Hawaii, asking that the results be according to God’s ideas rather than our own. After all, He knows the plans He has for us, as the prophet remarks, and what we know is that these plans are for our welfare and not for woe, even if they don’t look like it from our point of view. A modern author once wrote that “Some prayers are answered in simple, uncomplicated ways. But others are far more complex than we can ever dream... Certain miracles are clear as crystal, so obvious we cannot possibly miss them. But some are hidden and hard to find.”
And so once more we look forward in hope to the coming of that Little One whose birth in a stable must have seemed a strange answer to the prayers and aspirations of the centuries and whose death on a Cross even stranger to those who were there. Some years ago, our Holy Father, then Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke of this very thing in one of his Christmas homilies:
“We have at last discovered true darkness.. .We are afraid that what is good in the world may become utterly impotent; that the effort to live in truth, purity, justice, and love is gradually becoming completely meaningless.. .We have the feeling that dark forces are on the increase and that goodness is impotent. That is exactly the feeling people must have had long ago when they looked out and saw the sun apparently in its death throes as fall drew on into winter. Will the sun survive? Will goodness continue to have any meaning, any power in our world?
“In the stable at Bethlehem a sign has been given to us that answers with a
joyous “Yes!” This child, God’s only begotten Son, is set before us as a sign
and pledge that God has the final say about world history; and God is truth and
love. This is the real meaning of Christmas: It is the ‘birthday of the
unconquered light’; it is the winter solstice of world history and, amid all the
advances and declines of this history, gives us the assurance that, here again,
the light will not die but already has the final victory in its possession. . .
We have a divine assurance that the light has already conquered in the hidden
depths of history and that no advance, however great, of evil in the world can
change this fact. The winter solstice of history has come irreversibly in the
birth of the child at Bethlehem.. .We are called to throw in our lot with Him,
to trust ourselves to the God who has taken the small and lowly as his sign. On
this night our hearts should be filled with a great joy, for despite all
appearances it is and will remain true: Christ the Savior is born.”