Our Dear Friends,
The Lord sends out His word to the earth/swiftly runs His command. He showers
down snow white as wool/ He scatters hoarfrost like ashes. Yes, Spring has
indeed come to Mount St. Francis! The surprises of the Lord are many and
manifold however, and the last days of February were anything but wintry, with
balmy temperatures calling forth crocus, daffodils and other signs of
springtime. Not even the slightly icy-sounding rain the evening of the first
Sunday of March prepared us for the vision greeting us on its first Monday: a
landscape entirely blanketed in a still-falling snow! We were quite delighted at
the sight and said it was a special gift of Our Lord for Sister Maria, on loan
from our monastery in Los Altos Hills, California. Out there, snow is even more
rare than it is here so this was almost her first real experience of it.
Actually even for us, it was the biggest snowstorm we have had since the one in
January of ‘04 that delayed our big move from Newport News for almost two weeks
until the date chosen by the Lord for that momentous event.
Five years have already passed since that January 30 which we usually
commemorate with specia1 tales of the day and photos on display to recall not
only the happenings but all our friends and workers who made it possible. This
year however, we marked the day by moving (What else?) As you may recall from
the last issue of this august publication, plans were in the works for
re-arranging a number of areas in our monastic home to provide larger spaces for
more practical care of our sisters recovering from surgery or having special
needs at one time or another. Of course, altering that space required shifting a
few others as well. And so, the last weeks of the Old Year found several of us
once more in the process of packing boxes for transfer. The distance would be
much shorter this time, of course. Either two floors down to the basement to a
couple of unused areas which include the rooms newly finished by our devoted
Knights of Columbus or one floor up to several small rooms about to be created
from two larger ones that were not being fully used. Phase I of our project --
the division of the large rooms on the second floor actually began about a week
before Christmas and, even with a break for Christmas decorating and celebrating
was completed in time for us to observe Mt. St. Francis Day (as we have dubbed
that penultimate day in January) by the above-mentioned move.
The state of the economy this year actually brought us to another milestone in
our history: our first homegrown Christmas tree! Yes, the pine trees that were
just knee-high when we arrived have now grown quite large, so a few days before
Christmas Mother and another Sister went scouting. Result: a lovely full white
pine reaching from floor to ceiling in our community room. The following evening
it was surrounded by Sisters happily decorating its branches with lights, balls,
and various other ornaments until it resembled that Tree of Life spoken of in
the carols. As Mother Abbess blessed it at the end of recreation, we prayed that
the economic Grinch would not be able to steal anything of the true meaning of
the feast, but only help people come to a deeper appreciation of it. Our Holy
Father remarked some years ago that
if celebration means simply a self satisfied enjoyment of one’s own affluence and security, then there is really no place for that kind of celebration today. But... a Christian feast — the birth of the Lord, for example, means something entirely different. It means that the human person leaves the world of calculation and determinisms in which everyday life ensnares him, and that he focuses his being on the primal source of his existence. It means that for the moment he is freed from the stern logic of the struggle for existence and looks beyond his own narrow world to the totality of things. It means that he allows himself to be comforted, allows himself to be moved by the love he finds in the God who has become a child and that in doing so he becomes freer, richer purer.