Fall Happenings
We had an exciting array of saints and more attend our annual Halloween / All Saints Eve party this year, with perhaps a record number of Sisters in costume! From left to right, we have St. Albert the Great (Siena, our dog) with a squirrel (Sr. Mary Veronica) holding St. Albert the Great’s treatise De Animalibus (On Animals), with a scan from a manuscript of his entry on squirrels on the inside! Next is Sr. Dominic Mary and Sr. Judith Miryam, who are together dressed as one of our hallway corners, which has a whiteboard on each side which we use as the house notice-boards. They wrote a whole set of hilariously funny notes on the whiteboard which spoof things often found on the whiteboards. Next is St. Paul (Sr. Lucia Marie) being let down in a basket from a window in the city wall (by Sr. Joseph Maria) - see 2 Cor 11:33. Kneeling in the front is St. Catherine de Ricci (Sr. Maria Mercedes), who received the stigmata and would experience Christ’s passion each Friday. Standing behind is Bl. Anthony Neyrot (Sr. Mary Magdalene), a Dominican friar who apostatized to buy his freedom after his ship was captured by Muslim pirates. St. Antoninus, a fellow Dominican friar, appeared to Anthony in a dream shortly after his death. He was martyred after appearing publicly in his Dominican habit as a witness of his return to the Faith. In the back to the right is yet another martyr, St. Perpetua (Sr. Bernadette Marie). Next we have Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati (Sr. Marie Paul) wearing a small white scapular to show that Bl. Pier Giorgio was a Lay Dominican. To the right of Pier Giorgio is St. Francis (our aspirant), complete with stigmata! Kneeling in the front we have Judith (Sr. Marianne) holding the head of Holofernes, and behind her Bl. Carlo Acutis (Sr. Mary Agnes) and St. Dominic (Sr. Maria of Jesus). Finally on the far right we have a retreat day sign! (Sr. Maria Julia). Sisters take a private retreat day once a month, and put up a small sign on our whiteboard indicating that they are on retreat that day.
We enjoyed some donated Halloween candy, and closed out the evening with a traditional story we read every year.
After the celebration of All Saints Day comes our remembrance of the faithful departed on All Souls Day. We concluded the All Souls Day Mass with the Libera procession to our cemetery, accompanied by our chaplain who blessed the graves of our departed sisters. The Libera procession is named for the opening of the sung chant of the procession, the text of which prays in the first person on behalf of the faithful departed:
Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna, in die illa tremenda
Quando cœli movendi sunt et terra
Dum veneris iudicare sæculum per ignem.Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that fearful day,
When the heavens and the earth shall be moved,
When you shall come to judge the world by fire.
This refrain alternates with verses sung by the chantresses, the last of which is particularly beautiful and fitting:
Creátor omnium rerum Deus, qui me de limo terrae formasti, et mirabíliter proprio sánguine redemisti, corpusque meum, licet modo putrescat, de sepulchro facies in die judicii resuscitári: exaudi, exaudi me, ut ánimam meam in sinu Abrahae, Patriarchae tui, júbeas collocári.
Creator of all things, O God, who formed me from the slime of the earth, and wondrously redeemed me with your own blood, and, although it now decay, will cause my body to be raised up from the grave on the day of judgment: hear, o hear me, that you may command my soul to be placed in the bosom of Abraham, your Patriarch.
All Saints Day and All Souls Day are followed a week later by our celebration of All Dominican Saints and All Dominican Souls. As on All Souls Day, on this day of prayer for our departed sisters and brethren of the Order the Mass is a Mass for the Dead, again followed by the Libera procession to the cemetery.
We have enjoyed some lovely weather this Fall, and have been spending a lot of time outdoors lately at recreation! The leaves are mostly gone from the trees now, but some still remain, including our Japanese maple tree which is a gorgeous dark red. Sisters are now busy preparing for Sr. Mary Ana’s final profession next Sat, Nov 23 - please remember her in your prayers!