ALELUYA !

Como Emily expresó, tuvimos una semana santa hermosa. El sábado nosotras celebramos la vigilia de Pascua en la iglesia, Siete Fundadores Santos. El sábado santo es me día favorito del año. ¡Adoro dar la bienvenida a los catecúmenos y compartir su alegría de recibir los sacramentos por primera vez! Celebramos la misa del Domingo de Resurrección en la parroquia, Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz. Celebramos la Pascua con nieve también.

Por la mañana preparamos la cena y llamamos nuestras familias para desearles una Pascua feliz. Sr. Carmen y yo escondimos acerca de 100 huevos por toda la librería para que las otras hermanas pudieran encontrar los huevos y ganar premios. Fue muy divertido verlas correr de aquí para allá y gritar de alegría al encontrar un huevo. Por la tarde nosotras empacamos los carros para el NCEA (Asociación Católica Nacional de Educadores) y por la mañana Sr. Jerome, Sr. Laura, Emily y Julia salieron para Indianapolis. La noche del miércoles nosotras nos reunimos con el club de lectores de este mes y discutimos el libro, Cuan Grande Es Su Dios. ¡Fue una gran discussion!

La noche del jueves Julia y Emily volvieron a casa y compartieron todas sus historias y su experiencia de la feria de libros tan grande. Ellas se acordaron de sacar fotografías para nosotras. ¡Estamos contentas de tenerlas de regreso!

Esperamos la visita del hermano de Emily, Thomas, que vendrá este fin de semana ! Esperamos llevarlo al museo de la ciudad y a ver el arco por supuesto!

Les deseo que celebren bien los 50 días de Pascua - Alina

Holy Week!

Can you believe it's Holy Week? We've reached the end of Lent already! And what a beautiful journey it's been. As Julia hinted, last weekend was a busy one for us. Sr. Laura and Julia had an exhibit at the Archdiocesan Men's Conference; Sr. Carmen and I had one at the Homeschoolers' Conference; and Alina and the others sisters manned the fort in the bookcenter! We were all able to make it home for our Faith and Film Night that evening.
Then on Sunday, we helped at a youth rally organized by the Archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry. It was beautiful to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass with the many young people who attended.

The week proceeded as normal...apostolically, we are preparing for our exhibit at the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) in Indianapolis next week. Sr. Jerome, Sr. Laura, Julia, and I will be going and meeting Sr. Laura Rosemarie, who is driving from Chicago. We'll drive there and set up on Monday and Julia and I will drive back on Thursday (Sr. Jerome and Sr. Laura will stay through the weekend to do a parish exhibit). So we've been packing boxes and stuffing flyers and of course praying for all the people who will be there! It will be a new experience for Julia and me because it's a national exhibit. It will be bigger and busier than the other exhibits that we've done. I'm looking forward to meeting the people and seeing how our mission can fulfill so many important needs.

We've been blessed to celebrate the Easter Triduum in all of its richness. We watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" on Wednesday evening to set the tone for our reflections. On Thursday morning, Sr. Caritas, Sr. Laura, Alina, and I went to the Chrism Mass at the cathedral. It was really beautiful to all the priests processing in and renewing their commitment to priestly service. After the bookcenter closed Thursday evening, we had an Hour of Adoration together, and after supper, we went to the Mass of the Lord's Supper at St. Peter's. The Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper is my favorite Mass all year. It always makes me reflect on what a great gift we have in the Eucharist -- the total self-gift of Jesus to us.
On Good Friday we had a retreat day. Several of us went to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois to spend the day. They had a beautiful outdoor Stations of the Cross (and probably at least a couple hundred people were there!). Their Good Friday Commemoration of the Lord's Passion was also very moving. On Friday evening, we split up to experience a couple different services: Sr. Jerome and Julia went to St. Raymond's Maronite Cathedral for a burial service for Jesus, and Sr. Laura, Sr. Carmen, Alina, and I went to the Benedictine monastery for Tenebrae.
Holy Saturday always has that sense of anticipation for me -- anticipation of the resurrection and the unbounded joy that comes with it. I pray that you have a very blessed Easter and know the risen Lord in a new way this year. As always, feel free to leave us comments or prayer requests! God bless you!

- Emily

Fr. Coutinho addressing the people

Go and Make of All Disciples

It should come as no surprise to you that this week was another full one! But the busy-ness is a blessing because it means Jesus is giving us many opportunities to meet, love, and serve His people.

Alina told you about her vocation talk last week with Sr. Laura. There was also a Vocation Fair last weekend at St. Margaret Mary parish which Sr. Carmen, Alina, Sr. Caritas and Emily attended. Emily and Sr. Carmen went Saturday night to set up a display and then Alina, Sr. Caritas and Sr. Carmen went back for the Sunday Masses at the parish. My understanding of the fair was it was an opportunity for kids and parents to get to know more about religious communities and priestly vocations, as well as meet some members of different congregations. They each said it was a blessed event!

The Knights of Columbus host a ‘Nuns Night Out’ each year for religious sisters in the diocese, which was also on Sunday. Sr. Carmen, Sr. Laura, Sr. Caritas, Sr. Agnes, Emily, and Alina all partook in the festivities. Sr. Laura was the ‘ping pong tournament champion’ (with Alina a close second ;) while Emily won a prize for being the youngest representative of a religious community. Lots of bingo was played, and there was even a clown who made balloon characters for the sisters. Needless to say, much fun was had.

And hold on, because we’re not done yet with last Sunday! Emily and Sr. Laura then left to go set up an exhibit at a parish in the Diocese of Belleville in IL. The parish of Sts. Peter and Paul was having a parish mission and the adult faith formation coordinator invited us to have a book display. Emily and Sr. Laura set it up Sunday and picked up the materials Wednesday night. The coordinator for faith formation was taking care of the exhibit during the week. They said it was a success! God is faithful!

Okay…tired yet? The week has just begun! Each postulant had to work on and give a presentation before our classes these past 2 weeks. The topic was vocation. We each ended up using a movie clip and creating power point presentations. It’s always neat to see the different angles we take to present similar information J We each chose different movie clips of secular movies (Julia chose Keeping the Faith, Alina picked Spiderman II, and Emily used Evan Almighty) to raise questions that often come up in discernment: What is God’s will for me? Why me? What if it’s not in MY plans? These presentations concluded our Discernment Class that we’ve been having in house. Now we are moving on to a unit on Communication.

Whew! There is one last exciting item! Last night was our March lecture night at the book center with guest speaker Fr. Coutinho, SJ, the author of How Big is Your God (see also pictures of Alina and Sr. Caritas from 3 weeks ago) It was a HUGE success. No, really. It was HUGE! We had over 70 people come to hear Father speak! He gave a very memorable and helpful talk on how we sometimes put limits on our God in our images of Him. Listening to him speak and seeing all the people there made our mission come alive for me. So many people were able to hear God’s Word and the Truth of His Love for them personally last night. It was great that we could be a venue for that message, which is what our mission is all about. We are just vessels, venues for God’s message!

All right, that’s enough for one week! But stay tuned because we have 2 conferences and a Faith and Film night this weekend!! Thanks in advance for your prayers!

Peace in Him,
Julia

Empezamos esta semana con nuestro retiro mensual. La temperatura afuera era 75 grados. Todas gozamos algún tiempo afuera en el sol. Para el martes la nieve regresó y nuestra clase fue cancelada. Mientras Sr.Agnes y Sr.Laura afrontaron las calles peligrosas para ir a recoger a Sr.Carmen del aeropuerto, yo junto con Sr.Jerome y Emily jugamos en la nieve. ¡Habían nueve pulgadas!

El miércoles por la noche nosotros tuvimos una reunión de cooperadores. Los cooperadores de la familia Paulina son personas láicas que desean colaborar en nuestra misión.Tuvimos una hora de adoración juntos y entonces miramos parte del video de la beatificación de nuestro fundador, Santiago Alberione (Italia,2003). Me conmovió ver tantos Paulinos quienes celebraban juntos.

El jueves por la mañana Sr.Laura y yo tuvimos una feria de libros en la escuela de San José en Wentzville. Me emocionó ver a los niños escogiendo los libros juntos y haciendo comentarios sobre algunos que ellos ya habían leído. Por la tarde nosotras dimos una presentación vocacional a los niños de pre-kinder hasta el octavo grado. A los niños más jóvenes nosotras les enseñamos una canción sobre el seguimiento de Jesús. Aún cuando salimos de la sala de clase nosotras todavía oíamos a los niños cantando. A los niños mayores nosotras mostramos un power point sobre el llamado a misión y mostramos un clip de Spiderman que todos gozaron.

Los viernes de Cuaresma nosotras hemos estado participando en los “fish fry’s” en nuestras parroquias vecinas que siempre concluyen con el Via Crucis. ¡La familia de Julia está de visita en St.Louis y nos acompañarán esta noche!

Aquí están algunas fotos de la feria de libros y el fruto de mi retiro.

Con oraciones, Alina

A Joke a Day...

We had a weekend filled with apostolic and cultural activity! On Friday we had our Faith and Film Night on "Pay It Forward." We had a really good group of people, some of whom had been before and others who were coming for the first time.
On Saturday night we went to the Rigali Center (the former seminary, now diocesan offices) to see a production on the life of St. Bernadette called "The Smallest of All." It was put on by a group called Theater of the Word. We know the founder of the company and his daughter, as well as another young woman in the production. Theater of the Word's aim is to "preach the Gospel without being preach-y," and they did a good job on Saturday night. It's exciting to see how many ways the Word of God can come alive.
Finally, on Sunday Sr. Laura, Sr. Carmen, and Alina held an exhibit for the Spanish Masses at St. Cecilia's. It was a way of continuing our outreach to the Hispanic community.

Sr. Carmen is in Anaheim, CA this weekend for a catechetical conference. The conference is hosted by the Diocese of Anaheim, but people attend from all over the United States, and we have a huge exhibit there. Sr. Carmen went to help with the exhibit, especially with the Spanish-speaking attendees.

I would like to share one of our morning rituals with you. Every morning, at breakfast, we read the "joke of the day." Sr. Mary Caroline, one of our older sisters in Boston, has made it her special mission to share a joke a day with the community of Boston. When the postulancy moved to St. Louis from Boston about a year and a half ago, she started sending the jokes one month at a time, so as to be sure that the postulants had their joke a day. Because, as she says, "A joke a day keeps the devil away!" The jokes range in topic from the Bible to nature to just about anything you can think of -- cows, in the case of this morning's joke: "When do cows go to sleep? When it's pasture bedtime!" Sometimes they elicit hearty laughs, and at other times groans, but we're always grateful for Sr. Caroline's joke apostolate. I will leave you with her motto: "Be joyful -- the Lord loves you!"

Have a blessed week!
- Emily