This coming week is a special week for my community. We are all gathered here at Clyde, MO
for a Congregational Assembly.
An Assembly is called whenever there are important matters for the
entire congregation to discuss.
Our sisters from Wyoming and from Arizona arrived Saturday by car and by plane. It must have
been an interesting site to see 25 sisters board the plane in Tucson, AZ. (I can honestly say that keeping that many sisters together
is a little bit like herding cats!)
To kick off this week, we celebrated those sisters who have a special
Profession anniversary in 2012 during our Sunday Eucharist. We had a sister celebrating her 25th
anniversary and six sisters celebrating their 60th anniversary. So,
adding all those years up, that is a total of 385 years of singing the glories
of God and adoring Christ in the Eucharist!
During our Eucharistic liturgy, all the jubilarians stood up
in front and renewed their vows.
As I watched them do this, I realized how much all these women have
mentored me in my own monastic life. They are more gray and more frail than when I first
met them 18 years ago when I entered, but their faithfulness to our way of life
is still an inspiration for me.
Even though there is much talk about the aging population of
religious communities today, to have these wisdom figures in the community is truly
a blessing. One of our
‘elders’ was visiting a newly founded community a few years ago and a young
sister told her, “we wish we had some wisdom figures in our own community.”
Some of the wisdom I learned from these special women:
Sr. Benita encouraged me to pray the way that was best
suited for me; Sr. Mary Jane
patiently kept vigil with me during a time of personal struggle; Sr. Bede
shared with me her love of the Jesus Prayer; Sr. Anita taught me to see baking
bread in a spiritual light, Sr. Laurentia taught me to ‘just roll up your
sleeves and get to it’ when something needed doing; Sr. Maryellen makes the
whole community smile with her antics; Sr. Cheryl taught me that sometimes the
best temporary solution to a problem is to eat EXTREME chocolate brownies,
a.k.a. ‘dump bars.’
Wisdom comes in many forms, we just have to have our eyes
open to see it.
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