An end is nigh, a new beginning awaits!

Dear blog readers,

One last reminder that tomorrow, April 13, this old blog will be deleted.  To stay in touch with us, please do visit our newly updated website at www.passionistnuns.org. There, you can access all our old blog content and subscribe to receive updates any time we make new posts, plus find a wealth of information about vocations, our retreat house, and the riches of Passionist life and spirituality.

Beginning tomorrow, this current url (www.passionistnunsblog.com) will no longer lead to this wordpress site, but will direct you to the new site as well, so there is no need to change your bookmarks!

 

All things pass away…

Dear blog readers,

Have you had a chance to check out our new website yet?  All of our blog content is now located on our snazzy redesigned website, and we have transferred all followers of this current blog over to the new blog.

If you did not receive a notification of the most recent post, “A Vocation Brochure of a Different Sort,” then there may have been a problem in transferring your email to the new subscription list.  In this case, you’ll want to resubscribe using the box at the bottom of this page so you don’t miss a moment of our monastic musings and escapades!

Please also note that on Friday, April 13, we will be deleting this old blog, so after that date this url of http://www.passionistnunsblog.com will direct you to our new cyberspace abode.

Yes, all things pass away, so we’ll see you on the other side…err…site, I mean. 🙂

Easter Sunday 2018

Alleluia, Christ is risen!  Blessed Easter greetings to each and all!

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Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb by Fra Angelico (Public Domain)

After His resurrection He appeared again surrounded with splendor more or less accessible to the senses.  His face, His tone of voice were the same.  he was the Jesus His friends knew before His death.  But His body, now breathed in the region of celestial light which was now in Him, and which will be for those who are crowned with justice, the mantle of immortality.

Our souls will be satisfied only when we see him enveloped in that eternal clarity.  Let us console ourselves while we are eagerly waiting, thinking that Jesus is unchanging, unfailing, eternal light, since He is always the same: yesterday, today, and forever.

In the meantime let us live united to Him, and we shall reflect our light for other souls.

Venerable Mother Magdalena, CP

Holiness is Love, p. 312

Holy Week 2018: Holy Saturday

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[Consider] Mary in her solitude after the death of Jesus.  Jesus was her all.  By offering Him she was giving everything to God; she had nothing left.  She could with all truth say: ‘Consummatum est.’  For then Mary was alone upon the earth….How long the hours seemed to Mary from Friday to Sunday when Jesus again showed her His divine countenance and consoled her with His love and light…

-Venerable Mother Magdalena, CP

Holiness is Love, p. 180

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Holy Week 2018: Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

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What was sufficient for God’s justice was not enough for His love.  This is the reason why Jesus chose to suffer….[I]n the Passion He speaks to us with His blood, His wounds, His death.  This was a more effective way to make us love Him than the voice of thunder.  God, having made Himself capable of suffering, it was necessary that he do so, in order to be able to say to man: I have loved you as much as I could.  And then to let him hear the Consummatum est from the Cross, the consummation of love.  Thus it was necessary that Christ should suffer, but only for the glory of love.

-Venerable Mother Magdalena, CP

Holiness is Love, p. 274

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Holy Thursday 2018

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Blessed time of the last supper in which the chained torrent in the Heart of Jesus burst open!  It is the hour of Jesus, the hour of all of us who have had and now have the happiness to eat of that Bread, the pledge of eternal life.  Loving us, He desired to assure our eternal salvation, to have us at His side in that new life, in His kingdom, where He has prepared to unite all His children around Him.  The pledge of that life without end is Himself.

-Venerable Mother Magdalena, CP

Holiness is Love, p. 342

Radio Station Update

Dear local friends of the Passionist Nuns–

Our radio station, featuring programming from EWTN, has changed to a new frequency.  You now can tune in to WJOR at 95.5FM.

New bumper stickers with the updated numbers are in the works, too!

A Pledge of Future Glory!

If anyone has tried to access our main website today, they might have noticed something strange….

 

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Yes, that’s right! An all-new, up-to-date, bright-and-shiny website for the Passionist Nuns has been under construction for the past month, and we are now putting on the final finishing touches. The project has been spearheaded and masterminded by our friend Mary Shaffer, who has been training Sr. Cecilia Maria to manage the new website once it is launched.

 

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We are SO EXCITED for you to see the new website, but since it is a Passionist website, it will have to undergo a cyber death before emerging to new cyber life, and so our website will be not be accessible during the coming sacred days of the Lord Jesus’ Passion. Sometime on Easter Sunday, April 1, the new site will burst forth onto cyberspace in all its new glory!

 

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Our blog will also be incorporated into the new website, so watch for further posts and announcements about that transition. All of our email followers will be transferred to the new RSS feed, so you should not need to re-subscribe.

 

And if you know someone who needs a website built for their parish, group, or organization, Mary Shaffer (who is also a talented writer) does excellent work for a reasonable price! Please contact her if you are interested in commissioning a website.

FAQ: Why wear a habit of mourning?

During Lent, we are sharing some reflections from our nuns on common questions about the Passion of Christ, redemptive suffering and penance, and some aspects of cloistered contemplative life.  Read the rest of the FAQs here, here, here, here, & here. We hope these may answer some of your questions, or help you to respond to the questions of others!

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Sr. Maria Faustina receiving the holy Passionist habit (December 2015)

Question #6: Why do you wear a black habit as a sign of mourning? Because of the Resurrection of Jesus, shouldn’t you wear a color signifying joy?

In our Passionist tradition, Our Lady of Sorrows appeared to St. Paul of the Cross (the founder of the Passionist Congregation) clothed in the black habit of a Passionist and asked him and his followers to wear the same garment as a sign of mourning and to keep her company at the foot of the Cross. We understand “mourning” as a compassionating love for Jesus Crucified, just as Our Lady had for Him as she stood at the foot of the Cross. One of our vows is to promote devotion to and grateful remembrance of the Passion and Death of Jesus. So, even though black is a color of mourning, it is meant to remind us that we are to compassionate Jesus Crucified and console Him in our daily lives, by a life of love and virtue.

Jesus has been resurrected and He has ascended into Heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father, and so He no longer physically suffers, yet He suffers still in His Mystical Body here on earth. And so, as long as one of His members suffers, we have reason to mourn and do all we can to intercede by our prayers and sacrifices until the final fulfillment when Christ comes again in glory and there will be no more mourning or suffering. And even though as Passionists we wear a black garment of mourning, I can assure you that we are a very joyful group of women!

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Holy Week 2018: Palm Sunday

The Gospel of Mark records that after Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, “He entered Jerusalem and went into the temple area. He looked around at everything and, since it was already late, went out to Bethany with the Twelve” (Mk 11:11).  Although Mark does not specify who offered Him hospitality, there is a tradition that Our Lord spent that night at the house of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, whom we know were dear to His heart.  In any event, the fact that Jesus was turned away from staying in Jerusalem that night by the hardness of men’s hearts has long been seen as an invitation of Christian souls to open-hearted generosity with the King, acclaimed with regal greeting, and then rejected within a matter of hours.  Each of us seeks to make our soul a “Bethany,” a place of rest and friendship for the Lord.

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With this aspect of Palm Sunday’s history in mind, we share a reflection from a holy Passionist nun, Venerable Mother Magdalena, on the time of Jesus’ stay in the house of Martha and Mary.

What must the humble sinner have felt when the Savior responded so completely?  He came to her house to rest from the many labors and dangers of His apostolate.  Bethany, the happy home of [Mary] Magdalen, was the favorite place of Jesus.

This is the recompense the Savior is accustomed to give to those who totally surrender to His love.  He goes to their house to heap joy upon them and to be able to admit them freely to intimacy with Him.

Who can imagine the happiness of the loving penitent in the hours that she spent with the Master, her glance fixed on the divine countenance?  The Lord rests in the love of [Mary] Magdalen and she, after so much searching for love, finally stops at the feet of Jesus and her rest is complete.

Venerable Mother Magdalena, CP

Holiness is Love, p. 193

As we continue on through Holy Week, we will share more reflections from this ardent Passionist’s heart!

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