Honoring Name Days

Angel window at
Saint Scholastica Convent,
taken by Sister Nancy Bauer

In our monastic community, we honor name days every day because usually at least one sister is named after the specific saint of the day. For example, my name day is December 27, which is the Feast of John, beloved apostle of Jesus, even though it might be logical that since my first name is “Mary Jane” that I would want to honor our Blessed Mother on a Feast of Mary. However, I chose my second name because that was the name I had at home. I was “Jane” or “Janie.” Since Jane is a diminutive of John, I chose the feast of John the Evangelist.

Apparently, the honoring of name days is somewhat widespread in a Catholic world because my family of origin practiced this custom, especially within my mother’s family. Her youngest brother was Joseph, and therefore the relatives all gathered at his house on March 19 to help him celebrate his patron, St. Joseph.

On my Uncle Tony’s name day in January, we again gathered to celebrate him. It was a wonderful custom to keep up with cousins and close relatives that my relatives imitated from Grampa, my mother’s dad. He was named Paul and had a brother named Peter, and therefore on the feast of Peter and Paul in late June, we drove to his farm and got together with aunts, uncles, cousins and even neighbors. Everyone brought food so we could have a huge feast as well as spend a great part of the day together, playing games (such as horseshoe), catching up on family gossip, or trying out smoking behind the barn.

It was great fun. I loved knowing I had a huge extended family besides my immediate siblings. The same celebration extended to my father, Michael, as my mother’s spouse. Thus, the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel was a great feast for me and my family. I loved the picture of the Archangel, superior among other angels leading the battle against Satan. He was a hero and extremely good guy!

Even though this is one of those delightful family memories, one realization I have had as an adult woman in a religious community is that the feast and feasting was patriarchal. Never did we celebrate my Mother’s sister, Aunt Fern (Veronica), for example, who was one of the women whose kindness to Jesus on the way to Calvary is remembered through his beloved face imprinted on the cloth she used to wipe his face.

So, when is your name day and how will you celebrate?

Mary Jane Berger, OSB

Renewal and Reflection in the New Year

Mississippi River at Itasca State Park,
taken by Sister Laura Suhr

Rosh Hashanah ended tonight (September 20) when the sun went down. It was a two-day celebration of the Jewish New Year which flows into Yom Kippur next week. These are the holiest days of the Jewish year.

This morning, Shira and I walked along the Cumberland River. We came to renew our friendship as well as share the Jewish ritual she introduced me to and I brought to our Christian community several years ago.

But first, this is a season of chesbon hanefesh. It is a time, all over the world, that Jews take time to reflect on the past year. It is more like a Jesuit Examine that lasts two days than a party, though there is time for celebration. The Jews take this New Year to reflect on relationships and especially their relationship with God. Time is spent recalling what went well and where they missed the mark. An important part of this reflection is to try to make amends with persons one might have hurt knowingly, or unknowingly, during the year.

For the ritual we brought bread to the river, broke it into pieces, and threw it into the water. It is symbolic of throwing away all we have done which is sinful and hurtful. We each shared something we’d like to get rid of during the New Year and then we prayed from Micah, “…cast all our sins into the ocean’s depths…” The intent is to return to the creation God intended, or become our true selves for the first time. Tashlikh means “to cast away.” The water has to be moving water, and Jews have become quite creative in making that happen if they don’t live by a body of water. The whole idea is that the ducks/fish eat the bread and it goes back to the earth fertilizing new growth. We ate an apple on the way back to the farm as a symbol of the sweetness given to us by God through life.

The Jewish New Year is not at all like the New Year Americans traditionally celebrated with parties, dropping the musical note in Nashville, fireworks, champagne, confetti and kissing strangers in Times Square. New Year’s Eve in the United States is quite a contrast to the way Jews begin their New Year which is an introspective and holy time. With the pandemic, I truly felt the need to be and do something different even though our New Year celebration is a couple months away. Sharing the Jewish New Year today helped me look to the future with hope.

I’m wondering if the pandemic will change the way the New Year is welcomed in on January 1, 2021, across the world? What do you think?

Pat Pickett, OblSB

Ruminating in Repetition

Sisters praying Liturgy of the Hours in the Oratory

“Right now, this seems to be a period of time when we’re almost caught in this sense of repetition, each day not knowing where we’re going. There’s not the sense of forward momentum in our lives,” concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein said recently, speaking with an NPR reporter about her new album, "A Character of Quiet." Recording at her home in Brooklyn, N.Y., during the pandemic, she chose music with “a kind of ruminative quality...reflective and introspective, and also painful.”

Every day, three times a day, the Sisters of Saint Benedict’s Monastery meet communally to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Opus Dei, the work of God. Every three weeks, the liturgical cycle repeats the same sequence of Psalms. Seventeen times a year, they pray—chant and recite—the same cycle. The same words, over and over.

This year, when the world slowed down to shelter in place, my husband and I were able to enter more fully into the Opus Dei. At home, at the same time as the sisters, we pray the same cycle of psalms, timeless cries of the soul to God, in words that are “reflective and introspective, and also painful.” Every three weeks, we repeat the cycle.

About the repetition of notes in Etude No. 16 by Robert Glass, Simone Dinnerstein says, “Even though the notes sometimes just remain the same, the playing evolves...[the] music forces you to listen in the moment, while you’re playing it. Because although it seems at first glance that it’s about repetition, actually, it’s about constant change.”

The liturgical cycle of praying the psalms and listening to scripture readings may seem to be about repetition, but actually it’s about change. We don’t pray to change God. We pray that we might be constantly changing.

The pianist plays the same pattern over and over, and yet, as she repeats that pattern, the music is not static. It is moving, transforming.

In prayer, in the salty-sweet sound of our voices, in meditating on and speaking/singing words scented with the beauty and pain of life, our minds and hearts marinate in truth. We are infused with despair and joy, need and fulfillment, longing and hope, loneliness and connection—the entirety of human experience. As we repeat the cycle of prayers and readings, something is happening. Repetition is bringing our thoughts and feelings into harmony with our speech and actions.

“But you have to be open to it,” the pianist says. “You have to be listening while you’re playing...you have to be open to hearing those changes.”

Bringing our present situations and needs to the prayers, listening to hear changes, we hope that who we are—what we do—will be more and more in harmony with the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts.

Every day to close the midday prayer at the monastery, the leader recites, “May Christ dwell in our hearts through faith.”

And we respond, “May charity be the root and foundation of our lives.”

May we be open to hearing the eternal music of our prayers, repeating, evolving. May we listen in the moment, as we are praying, while the pattern is transforming us.

Tracy Rittmueller, OblSB

We've Only Just Begun

 

The St. Benedict statue in Sacred Heart
Chapel, taken by Sister Nancy Bauer

We’ve Only Just Begun – Song by Roger Nichols

As September begins, I, and many Benedictines begin worldwide, our rereading of the Rule of Benedict. I’ve been reading the Rule for 66 years, at least. If I was faithful, this would mean I’ve read it and reread it about 200 times. I’ve read books and books about the Rule and the Be medicine way. I’ve gone to countless Benedictine conferences and retreats. I’ve been affiliated with Benedictine communities and of late, Saint Benedict’s Monastery for the last 34 years. Yet, Tuesday, when I read the prologue, “Listen carefully, my child,” once again I was thrilled. Thrilled to begin again. Benedict later on in the Rule tells me, “Always we begin again.” We are not finished. As the song says, “We’ve only just begun.” I believe love is like that. We are all beginners in love. That gives us a patch of eternal life. It’s not just one thing after another. It is about one who loves us into being. And God is not finished. Nor are we. Always we begin again.

Charles Preble, OblSB

Walking With God in a Fragile World

Dew drops on a spider web, taken by Sister Nancy Bauer

"Walking with God in a Fragile World"

It's the title of the book I'm reading.

Great title...

But it's that "ing" word that catches me!

No doubt: We ARE in a fragile world
though the word "world" is too global a concept for me.

"World" is big, over THERE

where planes, drones, guns,
bloodshed, deceit, endless destruction
happen daily, moment by moment.

"World" is too far removed from me, HERE

where yellow-leafed trees surround me
and bouquets of golden mums,
food three times a day and coffee in between.

HERE, where I don't constantly worry about

my child out on the street or the horrible fear
in my gut when the telephone sounds...

HERE we have bathrooms, soap and water,

friends to meet our helplessness, and a
chapel to harbor our miniscule worries.

HERE, we have only begun to see and feel the effects

of climactic change.
We doubt that catastrophe
will ever overtake us...NO,
not here in America!

So, LORD, how can I walk in the fragile world...

"over there"
"down south"
"on the east coast"?

"By walking with Me..."

"There's that bothersome 'ing' word again...
something in progress, Webster suggests!

'But I'm beyond 80,' I tell myself; others can do it better, faster..."

Yet, deep within, I hear sounds of another voice:

"That's not enough!
You, my friend, are sufficient to the task too! Wake up!
Are you watching and praying? Not even for one hours?"

"Is that perhaps You, Lord, speaking to me? 'Yes' You say?

Then, help me with those 'ing' words."

Please! Let me never close my eyes to the terrors

of this fragile world
and its impending danger
even as I sit here, even here,
watching and waiting for You,
weeping over our 21st century Jerusalmen,
where millions of seemingly unimportant people die.

We are vulnerable, Lord...

wounded and wounding.

Please, have mercy on us. Please...Amen.

Renée Domeier, OSB

The Rose and the Gardener

A beautiful rose taken by Sister Karen Streveler

She arrived on Mother’s Day, a miniature rose bush in a pot wrapped in floral paper. I regarded her as a house plant and watched five little buds turn into pink flowers. When the flowers dried up, I snipped them off and decided to try my luck planting her in the ground in the backyard, even though I’d always thought roses were too snooty and needy for my kind of gardening. 

She thrived for a few weeks and produced another batch of buds. Alas, the chipmunks found her and nipped off the buds and left them on the ground just to annoy me. 

By then I’d grown fond of her, so I found a larger pot than the one she had arrived in, tucked her in with new potting soil and set her on the front porch. Before she even had a chance to produce buds, I discovered what looked like little eggs on her leaves. Oh no, aphids! Google told me I could either dust her with a chemical or throw her away.

I decided to give her one more chance. I plucked off the leaves where I saw eggs and set her on a garden bench that the chipmunks couldn’t surmount. The afternoon sun beats on her, but I water her every evening. She’s in full bloom. At the first hint of frost, she can be a house plant again.

I want to be like my rose. I trust my Gardener will put me where I need to be and protect me in hard times.

Marge Lundeen, OblSB

Faith and Fun

Sister Lois Wedl participating in a bean bag toss game
at a St. Benedict celebration at the College of Saint Benedict

When I was invited to be part of an evening of prayer followed by a social event with youth, I eagerly said “Yes.” I was energized by their spirit and presence to one another. After the formal faith formation part of the evening, which included the sharing of a sister’s vocation story, many youth and adults started telling each other where they experienced God during the day. After that, it was time to have some fun in the gym. So, after the concluding prayer, everyone present was invited to be part of the bean bag toss; another sister and I were a team. So, adults and youth were tossing the bean bags back and forth until one team reached the sought-after points to claim the title of winner. While many games were happening at once, I experienced faith being shared in the sportsmanship during the evening within this faith-based community of youth and mentors. It seemed so natural for both generations to spread the good news of the Gospel by playing this simple bean bag game; in the end, everyone was a winner. Laughter filled the gymnasium and countless conversations filled the air. So where do you experience fun in your faith journey?

If you would like more information about Saint Benedict’s Monastery, please contact Sister Lisa Rose at lrose@csbsju.edu.

Lisa Rose, OSB