Little Known Yet Greatly Loved
Last Saturday, Oct. 14th, we held the Opening Mass of our Year of Preparation for the 75th Anniversary of our Foundation, and it was a resounding success! There are so many of you to thank and not enough words to thank you with. Bishop Manny Cruz was the main celebrant, and his love and appreciation for us and for our vocation overflowed in his homily. Dear Bishop Manny, thank you for reminding us of the “determinada determinacion” that we need to go deeper!
We were honored with the presence of Bishop Greg Studerus, who has agreed to come back and say one of our special Masses during this year, the Mass for artists. Stay tuned for the details!
With these two Bishops were nine priests, all close friends and several present or former chaplains at our monastery and present or former pastors at St. Magdalen de Pazzi Parish. They supported us in the past and in the present and we hope that they will continue to support us in the future.
Our special thanks go to all those who helped to organize this celebration and to make it special: to our outstanding Externs, Cindy and Charlie, who hold a special place in our hearts and in our prayers. To Nancy Weidner and Monika Szmul who help us regularly and who went beyond the call of duty in helping us that day! To Diana Vitanza and her friends and colleagues of the Lay Carmelites of the LCC at Kinnelon, who stood out beautifully among the congregation by their Carmelite scapular. Dear Lay Carmelites, it was a joy to meet you! We are most grateful for all you did in helping to prepare the reception and in supplying the snacks that kept our visitors to the speakroom from fainting by the wayside!
We want to thank in a very special way Sr. Matilda DeLucy, SCC, whose singing and organ music lifted up everyone’s souls beyond anything we could have desired. Dear Sister, thank you especially for bringing our Carmelite music alive and for drawing everyone to join their voices with yours in the other hymns and Mass parts. It was truly a moment of harmonious synodality!
Finally, we want to thank all of you who came in person and all those who watched by livestream at that time or later. We Nuns have all left our own families to form a unique family here in our Carmel, but Jesus promised “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold.” You, our friends and benefactors, are that hundredfold, and I mean that literally! We were told afterwards that there had been 100 people attending that Mass and we had the joy of meeting many of you in the speakroom, and you had the joy of meeting us! That rarely happens, but a 75th anniversary is a very special time, and it should be celebrated in special ways.
This Mass was a beginning, and we need to go forward. A hundred people were with us to celebrate, a hundred people who know us and many of whom have known us for a long time. But as the title of this Blog says, we are still “little known”. We have a friend who has worked with many religious institutes. We shared with her an article about the vows of religion, Facing the Final Veil, and she wrote us in reply, “People have a big misunderstanding about your life and vows -what they truly mean and what they symbolize for our fallen world.” We contemplative nuns have a mission in this world and at this time. We are called to help people re-discover the power of prayer, the harmony of religion and spirituality, the value of ordinary actions.
Please continue to help us make these realities known and cherished, especially among the young and the marginalized, and all those who are searching for meaning and friendship and peace.
Keep us in your prayers as we keep you in ours!
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D.