Looking out my bedroom window this morning, I watched the
healthy, bright green leaves on the hillside trees sway and bend in the breeze.
Within a moment, I called to mind the pandemic coronavirus that is causing so
much death and sorrow for all of us. Neither do the leaves keep me from hearing
Benedict’s words in Chapter 4: “Keep death daily before your eyes.” The number
of cases, deaths and sorrow increase daily. 
As some of you may remember, our property sits above the
muddy Ohio river and is large enough to give us some protection. We have
isolated ourselves, but are able to let walkers and runners use our main drive
around the Academy buildings. We can walk to our cemetery and beg those sisters
to do something: Enlighten those seeking
a vaccine. Keep safe those who care for the sick and dying. Protect our
employees whose personal circumstances allow them to come to continue to work.
Console those who have lost family and friends.
Keep yourselves and your families safe.
Sr. Mary Catherine Wenstrup, OSB
Thank you and all the Sisters in the cemetery especially my beloved and missed Sister Theresa Landry from Louisiana. We continue to pray the rosary for Covid 19 to end and all of those who provide care.The Lord has blessed us. My brother in law James Schoolcraft was in the hospital for 6 weeks and has returned to community living at the Veterans Community Center. My daughter is an RN caring for these patients. Sending love to you and all of the Sisters at Saint Walburg. Sincerely, Brenda Goode
ReplyDeleteDear Sister, thank you for this good word -- Saint Benedict reminds us to know our mortality and get the work done -- in consecrated life to pray, to maintain the community by working in the fields, to teach, to clean, to make the breads. This is not advice I would advise if I was on my own, how could I cope with that, but in community or family, to remind ourselves of this, while in the embrace of the love of brother or sister, surely that must be good. I have been reading the Book of Ecclesiastes for the first time and I discovered an interesting thing. It is very dark as you read it closely but it is a darkness we must reject -- and also there is a value there that seems so worldly (he says that money is the solution to all our woe at one point). I checked the word for money, and discovered silver! It's not really money surely that he is talking about, or it's about how we might use money. Silver the wings of a dove. Build a holy place to be happy in. Happy Whitsuntide, God bless OSB amen.
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