By Sister Madeleine Marie, S.s.E.W.

Two weekends ago, I had the opportunity to travel to the diocese of Sioux Falls, SD, to speak to the catechists of St. George parish in Hartford about Come, Follow Me.  As a native St. Louisan, I am always happy to be back in the Midwest! This trip was full of surprises at every turn. As my first flight to Dallas was about to land, I got word that my second flight to Sioux Falls was cancelled due to an impending blizzard. The gate agent rerouted all the Sioux Falls passengers to Omaha, saying that the flights there were “wide open” and not yet cancelled. I beat the blizzard by about four hours, so I stayed overnight in Omaha. They were out of one-way rental cars, so I spent the evening trying to find a way to get out of Omaha–something that is really tough when there’s a blizzard! I was worried that I wouldn’t make it, but the next afternoon, Leona and Richard Kavan, our longtime friends and volunteers, generously drove me to Sioux City, IA, where Shane Van Diest, the St. George DRE picked me up.

I was blown away by the kindness of St. George’s parishioners. Fr. Paul King arranged for me to stay with the Lammers family at their acreage in Hartford. Barry Lammers’ family has been involved in rodeos for quite a while, and he taught me the basics of roping while I was up there. Patty and Barry showed me around the city of Sioux Falls, and we hiked around the Falls.

I also spent time with Todd and Julie Ernster and the family of Rechelle Dissing. I am especially grateful to Rechelle’s mom, Mrs. Burggraff, who made her famous chicken necks for dinner. I have to be honest: I was hesitant to eat them when I heard her say, “chicken necks,” but they were really good!

St. George employs a monthly family catechesis model and has integrated Come, Follow Me into the monthly meetings for the K-6th grade students. Joining us via zoom from England, Sr. Hyacinthe Defos du Rau, a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Joseph and translator of Come, Follow Me, explained the background and pedagogy of the program and led a sample session for the catechists. After she spoke, I related some of the stories from my teaching of Come, Follow Me and gave some advice for how to prepare the sessions based on my experience. 

On the following day, I went to St. Lambert’s parish in Sioux Falls where I taught a lesson of Come, Follow Me to a small group of students. They were a very receptive bunch, eager to listen, answer, and pray. I am grateful to their DRE, Ellen Bauman, for this opportunity.

I first learned about Come, Follow Me through an article in The Sower (now The Catechetical Review). This article, The Child’s Potential for Contact with God, was a translation of a 1959 conference given by Bl. Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus, the founder of the secular institute Notre Dame de Vie. He pointed out how a baptized child who has not yet reached the age of reason has none of the obstacles to prevent him from communicating with God in prayer. Bl. Marie Eugene continued by explaining how serious education in prayer is important for these little ones: “It is important to make the most of this age, of the child’s innocence and purity of heart, to create in him spiritual reflexes that will carry him to God later on, as if they were second nature. Thus will the movement of grace and divine life be inscribed along with his natural reflexes in order to enrich his soul already with supernatural life.” This was something that I had never considered, but it made perfect sense given what we believe about the sacrament of Baptism and its transforming effects on the soul!

The end of the Bl. Marie Eugene article mentioned Come, Follow Me, a catechetical program developed by members of Notre Dame de Vie. This program, tied to the Church’s liturgical year, offers an opportunity to encounter the person of Jesus through contact with the Word of God, the Scriptures. The lessons are structured according to the maturity of the children and consist of a prayerful reading of a passage and employs carefully selected questions. 

Over the next several years, Come, Follow Me kept popping up in different places. There were several more articles in The Catechetical Review highlighting various aspects of the program. Later, I attended a diocesan in-service day where Dr. James Pauley of Franciscan University spoke about how a diocese in France was radically transformed by switching to Come, Follow Me. The more I learned about it, the more I was convinced that this fit in with our community’s charism of “teaching spiritual things spiritually” (1 Cor 2:13). This was confirmed when I visited the Nashville Dominicans’ motherhouse in April of 2018, and one of our foundress Mother Mary Gabriel’s friends, Sr. Luke, came up to me and told me, “You should do Come, Follow Me! It’s a program that Mother Mary Gabriel would have loved when she was teaching.” I answered, “Sr. Luke, you are the voice of the Holy Spirit right now because I was just thinking of asking if we could look more into this program!” Shortly afterwards, we began teaching a small class of 4-8 year olds, and our sisters introduced it to the younger students at St. James School in Gadsden. Last year, we also taught the K-2 students at St. Barnabas, an inner city Catholic school in Birmingham.

The program makes use of silhouettes to assist the children in interiorizing and responding to the passages. When I went through the lessons on Moses with my St. Barnabas students, the silhouette illustrated Moses’ posture of prostration before God. The next lesson was the call of Samuel, and we discussed how we can dispose ourselves to hear God speaking to us. The children immediately connected the idea of silencing our bodies with the silhouette of Moses, and one of them asked, “Can we pray like Moses?” The children, who all had problems focusing, spent about 5 minutes in silent prayer. The next week when I came, one of the boys asked, “Can we pray like that again?” They ended up asking their regular teacher if they could spend 5 minutes in silent prayer everyday!

The beauty of Come, Follow Me is precisely this formation in prayer. Each session ends with a time of group prayer, and the children are free to stay as long as they wish. They are encouraged in the first year as 5 and 6 year olds to stay in prayer long enough so that God can speak to them and transform their hearts. The natural fruit of this time is that the children often decide to set up places of prayer in their own homes. We gave the children who came to the Come, Follow Me class at Casa Maria small San Damiano crosses for their prayer spaces. One of the little boys made himself a prayer room in a large box. A set of twins set up a chapel behind their dad’s chair, where they once prayed a whole rosary (One of them said, “Except that we couldn’t remember the Hail Mary so we just kept praying the Angel of God prayer”). Another little boy said that he was going to wear his cross around his neck so that he could take his prayer space with him wherever he was and make time to pray.

If you are interested in learning more about this program, please feel free to contact me through our website.  I am happy to help in any way that I can. 

Over the past year we have been considering how we can renew in-person retreats and meet all the safety standards for COVID19.  Much thought and prayer has gone into the decision to begin inviting retreatants again to Casa Maria Retreat House.  We are required to limit the number of retreatants who can attend and follow the guidelines concerning the virus.  These requirements, while a burden in many ways, are well worth the effort to provide in-person retreats again!  Although we still have to visit with masks and distancing, the gift of being in the presence of our retreatants and in the same Chapel for prayer is a blessing beyond words.  One of our Sisters shares her thoughts with you:

“I’m an extravert and our apostolate of catechesis and retreats is right up my alley.  I’ve always enjoyed visiting with retreatants whenever I could, engaging in joy-filled conversations.  But this has not been possible with COVID19.  We had only been in lock-down a couple of weeks before my dreams at night became filled with crowds of people!  I know it has been hard on a lot of people. At least in the convent, we have our community of Sisters; but I miss interacting with our retreatants, old and new. 

A retreat is a time and a place provided for people to come and get away from daily distractions – and hopefully worries, though we always bring those with us – and spend time with God in prayer.  It is also an opportunity for retreatants to connect with other like-minded people. They can discover they aren’t the only ones in the universe who believe as they do, though sometimes they may feel like the odd ones out!

 

Finally, this last fall, we were able start up live retreats – just not in our usual way.  There is social-distancing and we wear masks, taking the precautions we must.  Nonetheless, now we can invite people to come back and have the rich experience of time away with God in a holy place largely without distractions.  (Have you ever felt that the term “social-distancing” is an oxymoron?)  We can only accommodate about 15-20 people with the COVID regulations, but now at least some can interact live with the retreat priest, other retreatants, or us sisters (socially-distanced, of course).  And we live-stream the retreat, but I feel that a “live studio audience” has to be better than a zoom meeting any day of the week.

For my part, I am happy to have even limited “real” retreats (as we’ve taken to calling them) and we pray for an end to this pandemic and look forward to seeing all of you again at Casa Maria!”

 

 

 

 

Now that Winter is upon us again, our friends at Nature’s Edge Landscaping have begun our next stage of property improvements.  After they did such a beautiful job restoring the lawn outside the Convent wing and adding new drainage lines, we asked them to do similar work outside the Retreat wing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lawn outside the Retreat wing has long needed additional drainage work.  Over the years the ground has settled and eroded, and often retains standing water after a hard rain.  We are working to control the water in this area and then we will relandscape around the building.

We also had a fence installed to screen our air conditioning units and transformer, making the area safer and more sightly.

The drainage in this area is difficult and necessary and we pray the results of this project will be a blessing for both the Sisters and our retreatants!  (To see pictures from previous projects, visit our Photo Gallery.)

Last month, Father Bryan Jerabek, Rector, and Mr. Bruce Ludwick, Jr., Director of Music and Organist, at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham, invited our community to lead the Cathedral’s sung Vespers for Sunday, December 6th.  We had the joy of practicing for this special occasion over the past few weeks.  Our choir, directed by Sister Benedicta Marie, not only prepared Solemn Vespers, but also provided much of the prelude music beforehand.  We shared a few favorite choral and solo pieces that we use for special liturgies throughout the year and two organ pieces played by Sister Margaret Mary.

We were grateful to be so warmly welcomed by the Cathedral Parish and to be joined together as a diocesan family with all those who were able to attend with social distancing.  Music is a cherished part of our community life – both liturgical and non-liturgical music that lifts our hearts to praise God.  When the whole Cathedral joined together in singing the opening hymn, “Lo He Comes”, it was breathtaking!  The congregation joined us in chanting Vespers, including the Magnificat in alternating plainchant and polyphony verses. What a joy to chant the Psalms in such a resonant space, where the echo of voices resounded and seemed like angels were answering!

The event was a blessed experience for us, and we hope the recordings below contribute to your Advent preparations for Christmas!

 

The following is a 15 second clip of the Sisters warming up with “O Sacrum Convivium” by Roberto Remondi.  To hear the full song recorded during the Prelude, visit our Soundcloud page.

Although not part of our usual liturgical repertoire, we thought the following soaring piece by Mozart would be a perfect addition to our prelude music for this occasion.

 

Sister Margaret Mary played Baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude’s “Preludium in D,” which was a special treat for her on the Cathedral pipe organ!

 

The whole congregation joined us in the opening hymn of Vespers, “Lo He Comes”.

 

The Sisters sang the “Alma Redemptoris Mater” Chant to conclude the Vespers Liturgy.

 

The following is a short clip from the the Third Psalm of Vespers.  You will notice the special psalm tone we used to highlight the Alleluias.