Fall 2012

O

n September 5, 2012, our Sister Mary Francis Sharbel of the Holy Eucharist passed away peacefully in the And Worship Him in Humbleness company of her sisters.

A Poor Clare of Perpetual Adoration for more than thirty years, she was for our community For our Beloved Sister a gentle witness to the beauty of a life of silent was also Sister Sharbel, devoted lover love, humble obedience and steady of chocolate, coffee and cats. She was perseverance. Her smile, so much a living embodiment of the idea of a joyful presence in itself, is missed loving God by loving everything He as a beautiful part of our daily life. created, from the lofty to the lowly, from the Popes and the saints to sweets, ith the delightful simplicity that a beautiful sunrise and the company characterized this cloistered nun and laughter of her sisters. She praised with a missionary heart, it was always God in her fidelity to her work and to very clear to her community what she the little obediences of the monastic loved. Sister Mary Francis Sharbel was horarium, and most of all in her three very proud of the saints whose names decades of faithfulness to adoration of she bore: St. Francis of Assisi and St. His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Sharbel Makhluf. Her ardent devotion to the Blessed Mother was seen in he poetry of a soul striving for holiness her daily devotion to the Rosary and is often not written according to the flowed naturally from the beautiful grammar of grandeur. Most often, it is love she had for her own mother. Our composed with the eloquence of silent sister was also appreciative of the little humility. Its cadences beat with the joys with which God graced her life.

Sister Sharbel, steadfastly dedicated to the recitation of the Divine Office,

steady rhythm of small but constant sacrifices, and of the enduring perseverance in faith that carves a friend of God from an ordinary person. Sister Mary Francis Sharbel lived a life of quiet littleness, a life centered most of all on Christ.

Because she retained a strong sense of her dignity as a soul consecrated to the Lord, she could gladly forgo recognition in order to live a vocation whose rewards she often never saw.

Because she loved the entire world, she could choose to remove herself from it in order to pray for it. Cognizant of the love of the Father for her, she could give up family and friends in order to pray that everyone would know of the love the Father has for them. With the heart of a true missionary, our sister knew that every act, no matter how miniscule in the eyes of men, could assume immense proportions when done for love of God and for the salvation of souls. Sister Mary Francis Sharbel, through her life of quiet charity, taught us all about what God can accomplish through one so decidedly fluent in the vernacular of the small act.

Let all Things Their Creator Bless

Oh, praise Him...

W

T

Quotes from her friend...

"O Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, intercede for me with Thy Divine and Only-begotten Son-----that He may forgive me for my sins and receive this sacrifice from my poor, sinful hands, offered by my weakness upon this altar. I have confidence in Thy prayers, O most Holy Mother."

St. Sharbel Makhluf: "I think only of others, Father. I have asked God that the force of my prayers not serve myself, but my neighbor."

the millennia, Throughout men and women have been

compelled to follow Christ more radically by embracing the evangelical counsels. This desire still echoes in the hearts of men and women today. past summer we This celebrated three significant

ceremonies: Sister Edith Marie of Our Lady, Ark of the Covenant, professed vows for the first time on June 30th, as did Sister Chiara Marie, of Jesus, True Light, on July 26th. Also, on July 26th, her blood sister, now Sister Marie St. Francis of the Crucified One, began her novitiate as she received the holy habit and was given her new name. the Year of Faith Ascommences, Pope Benedict

XVI's Apostolic letter highlights the enduring reality of the religious call, which our Sisters recently embraced, with the following words: “By faith, men and women have consecrated their lives to Christ, leaving all things behind so as to live obedience, poverty and chastity with Gospel simplicity, concrete signs of waiting for the Lord who comes without delay."

Tthe timelessness and undying

his short excerpt expresses

attractiveness of the Gospel. In every age we need witnesses of God’s Love, His Goodness, and His Mercy, which the consecrated life embodies by its very nature.

Total transformation in Christ by love continues to be, in our days as well as in days past, an irresistible ambition for hearts full of faith and hope. future presents us with a Themountain of challenges, yet

numerous opportunities for the

Sr. Edith Marie of Our Lady, Ark of the Covenant

expansion of the Gospel rise brightly as so many Christians explore new ways of engaging society with the truth of Christ.

We need increased faith and courage to give a new face and heart to the heritage, so vitally real and important, that is our Catholic faith. religious, Asourcontemplative participation in the New

Evangelization is unique in that our witness is not with words and actions, but with the gift of our very lives to prayer and penance for this great enterprise.

"Hhad e

Sr. Chiara Marie of Jesus, True Light

Sr. Marie St. Francis of the Crucified One

[Bl. John Paul II] become a 'sign of contradiction'…

In emptying himself of himself, he had struck a chord that resonated in billions of human hearts. And he had done so as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He knew, with T.S. Eliot, that 'in my end is my beginning.'

He defined and lived his life as a Christian Disciple…” In describing Blessed John Paul’s lifetime impact, George Wiegal puts before us the blueprint for the Christian disciple. The Christian life, and in our context, the religious life, is primarily a life-long imitation of Christ.

Our beginning is paradoxically inaugurated by ‘our losing our lives’ for Christ in order to be found in Him. May these Sisters be given the graces needed to be faithful to their consecration and desire to follow Our Lord in the religious life.

On

the

left

are

three

collages of pictures of our

Sisters'

special days.

Please

keep our dear sisters in your prayers.

Y

ear

of

F

aith

“He who believes has eternal life”

H

ave you ever experienced circumstances that tested your faith or shook your confidence that God would “work all things out for good” (Rom 8:28)? Today, are there not plenty of lies and doubts that would lure us from believing in God’s promises, from trusting that His power and love surpass all the world can offer, and thus hinder us from entrusting ourselves entirely to Him? Blessed John Henry Newman describes the crux of faith in this way: “If then faith be the essence of a Christian life … it follows that our duty lies in risking upon Christ's word what we have, for what we have not; and doing so in a noble, generous way, not indeed rashly or lightly, still without knowing accurately what we are doing, not knowing either what we give up, nor again what we shall gain; uncertain about our reward, uncertain about our extent of sacrifice, in all respects leaning, waiting upon Him, trusting in Him to fulfill His promise, trusting in Him to enable us to fulfill our own vows, and so in all respects proceeding without carefulness or

anxiety about the future.”

In this light, any Christian c o u l d attest that

opportunities to grow in faith are often painful - our nature resists letting go of its vision for what it cannot see, or risking “what we have for what we have not” – temporal ease, or the bearing of trials, for the sake of eternal joy. We are at first truly scared of the dark.

But gradually learning to live more on God’s grace than on our supposed selfsufficiency, we become truly free as we receive what the letter to the Hebrews calls “the substance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1).

F

aith requires long-suffering (Heb 10) and yet it is far more than a recipe for endurance here below. God loves us more than we can imagine!

He desires to share His own life with us and that begins now through faith!

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange wrote that “[Faith] is of the same essentially divine order as the beatific vision… it is, so to speak, the beginning of eternal life.” As Christ Himself said, “He who believes has eternal life” (Jn 6:47) – not ‘will have,’ but has eternal life! Life in God is now! Through faith

we can encounter our God hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, present in our neighbor, in the poor, the weak, the suffering, the sick, and His providence in the present moment. Beholding Him thus, we can love Him in the obedience of faith in action, which says, “here I am Lord, I come to do your will” (Ps 40:8). We see that, “Recognizing him requires a gaze of faith which is acquired through the habitual reading of the Word of God, through prayer and above all through the exercise of charity because the Mystery can only be fully known through love” (Starting Afresh From Christ).

A

s this Year of Faith, proclaimed by our Holy Father begins, we set out again amidst the confusion of this transitory world with the guiding light of the unseen, which is eternal (2 Cor 4:18). May we also experience that those struggles we find bitter and the “sufferings of this present time” (Rom 8:18) become embraceable by Christ’s presence in us. As faith grows, so does our capacity to love both our good God and those around us. Touched by grace, filled with faith, perhaps those we see each day will also “discover the joy of believing” (Pope Benedict XVI) and come to know Jesus, the Way, the Truth & the Life!

"O sanctissima anima, in cuius transitu cœli cives occurrunt, angelorum chorus exsultat, et gloriosa Trinitas invitat dicens: mane Nobiscum in æternum.

O most holy soul, upon whose passing from this life the citizens of heaven rush to greet you, the choir of angels shout with joy, and the glorious Trinity bids you come, saying: stay with Us forever.”

On

the evening of

October 3rd,

Transitus of Our Holy Father Francis. The "O Sanctissima Anima" (above) speaks of our Founder's entrance into the glory of heaven. Sancte Pater Francisce Ora Pro Nobis! we solemnly celebrated the

opening antiphon for the solemn vespers