VOCATION OFFICE E-NEWSLETTER APRIL 2019

laudare, benedicere, praedicare TO PRAISE, TO BLESS, TO PREACH

April 2019

"He is Our Peace”

-Ephesians 2:14

INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Paschal Triduum and Easter at the Motherhouse Re lection on the Seventh Beatitude Recent Travels and Visitors Art Re lection on the Front Cover Image Saint Spotlight and Recommended Reading: Blessed Margaret of Castello Fra Angelico, Noli Me Tangere, 1440-41, fresco, 180 x 146 cm,Convento di San Marco, Florence

Noli Me Tangere Praying with the artwork of Blessed Fra Angelico The Noli me angere fresco of Fra Angelico is more than just a beautiful depiction of Saint Mary Magdalene's personal encounter with Our Risen Lord; it is a pictorial representation of the theology of the Resurrection.

“Saint Thomas says that [the risen body of Jesus] keeps the marks of the Passion not only for the proof that it is the very same body that was nailed and lanced but also as a make of ‘special beauty,’ as a dashing emblem of the God-man’s trampling upon death. This Thomistic insight inds its way into Angelico’s art. In the Noli me angere fresco in San Marco, the smudges of red paint used for the spring lowers of the Easter garden are repeated in the wounds of the risen Gardener, as if to say: ‘His lesh has lowered again like 1 the rose.'"

Re lecting on this same work, Georges Didi Huberman, further observes that the little blotches of red paint over the white smudges in the ield are not painted randomly without forethought. “[T]hese red blotches are painted like—that is, exactly in the same manner as—Christ’s stigmata. These red blotches are even painted the way Fra Angelico painted stigmata in general, Christ’s or Saint Francis’s, everywhere in San Marco: they are small circular in lections of the brush 2 that deposits its thick pigment of terra rossa."

As we continue throughout the Easter Season and re lect on the gift of the Resurrection, may we be assured of the fact that all our sufferings will not only be transformed into some good, but they will lower in beauty just as Fra Angelico depicted Christ’s wounds blossoming into new life in his painting of the Resurrection.

The illustration to the right showing the detail sketches of Fra Angelico’s Noli me angere were accessed from https://ar andtheology.org/2018/04/20/sowing-the-stigma a-areading-of-fra-angelicos-noli-me- angere-by-georges-didi-huberman/.

Original Source: Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration, p. 20 1 Saward, John, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty:

Ar , Sanctity and the Truth of Catholicism, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 60.

2 Didi-Huberman, Georges, Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and

Figuration, Translated from the French by Jane Marie Todd, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 19-20.

Blessed are the Peacemakers, For they shall be called Sons of God. A Reflection on the Seventh Beatitude Many words suit the freshness of the Easter season. “Joy,” “triumph,” and “life” spring to mind—as, of course, does the forty-days-absent “Alleluia!”

But one word can claim pride of place today: “Peace.” It is the irst word Christ speaks to the Apostles in the upper room. It is the gift Christ gives to Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1618-1619), Peter Paul Rubens Magdalen in the garden, and Peter on the shore. And if Saint Paul is to be believed, “It is the Lord”—“for He is our to peace” (Ephesians 2:14). In the days of the Triduum this peace-making was evident: Christ is handed over to suffer and die so that we can be at peace with the Father, and through Him, with each other. This is the peace-making revealed by the Risen Lord, which is not so much a matter of negotiation, bargaining, or “taking a stand,” as it is about standing in His light. This is the peace-making to which we are invited with the words “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called sons of God.” With this Beatitude in mind, we recognize that the peace we “make” is not as the world gives, but is Christ’s gift—speci ically linked to the gift of wisdom. By the Spirit’s gift of wisdom, we are enabled to see as God sees.

When trouble, stress, anxiety, and suffering seem to indicate His absence, the Spirit assures us that Christ, our Peace, is with us. The One whose love con uered sin and death for all time is with us to raise our charity to the heights of heroism. Seeing as God sees, we love as He loves. We love the “unloveable” and we love until it hurts—because we have met the One who loved us irst.

Holy Week at the Motherhouse

Easter at the Motherhouse

Blessing of the Paschal Fire O God, who through your Son bestowed upon the faithful the ire of your glory, sanctify this new ire, we pray, and grant that, by these paschal celebrations, we may be so in lamed with heavenly desires, that with minds made pure we may attain festivities of unending splendor.

Western Connecticut State University In March 2019, Sister Mary Madeline visited Western Connecticut State University.

While she was there she gave an oncampus lecture "Life to the Full: Are You Surviving or Thriving?"

She also presented on "Living a Christ-Centered Lent" at the Newman Center and enjoyed time with the students discussing living our Catholic faith as women on a college campus.

Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas March 27- April 2 Sister Peter Marie and Sister Bernadette Marie were invited to attend Texas Christian University's bi-annual Horned Frog Awakening Retreat. They were delighted to spend time with the students and share various aspects of the vocation to consecrated life. Sister Bernadette Marie also presented to the students a talk entitled "Surrounded by so Great a Cloud of Witnesses."

Below: The sisters participated in a vocation panel with Father John Shanahan, T.O.R.

Right: The sisters also spent time discussing the talks with their small groups.

Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas March 27- April 2 The sisters were also invited to the University of North Texas for their Thursday Night Mass & Meal gathering at Saint John Paul II University Parish Center. The sisters enjoyed praying, participating in Mass and visiting with the students and FOCUS Missionaries. The night ended with Sister Peter Marie giving a talk about vocations and God's plan for your life.

While in Texas, the sisters also visited with students at the University of Dallas and the Sisters who are professors at the University.

California State Fullerton April 9-11 Sister Peter Marie and Sister Bernadette Marie were invited to travel to California by the FOCUS Missionaries of California State University in Fullerton. Sister Peter Marie gave the keynote talk for the Titan Catholic Fully Alive event. The sisters also were able to pray the rosary and attend Mass on campus, visit with students, and host a women's vocation evening at the FOCUS Women's House.

Fostering a Devotion to Our Lady Recently our sisters in Jackson, Tennessee welcomed a few irst graders and their families for prayer and fun at their convent.

During the upcoming month of May, traditionally considered "Mary's Month," it would be a great time participate in a May Crowning or to have your own!

Above: A student from Guerin Catholic High School crowns Our Lady.

Ideas for the Month of May

Make a morning offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary the irst thing each morning when you wake up.

Pray a decade or more of the rosary while walking or driving.

Ask Mary to help prepare your heart to receive her Son in the Holy Eucharist at Mass.

Blessed Margaret of Castello - Patron of the Unwanted -

Bl. Margaret of Castello was born in the fourteenth century in Metola, Italy to noble parents who wanted a son. When the news was brought to the new mother that her newborn daughter was a blind, hunchbacked dwarf, both parents were horri ied... Determined to keep her out of the public eye, her father had a room without a door built for her onto the side of the parish church... The parish priest became a good friend, and took upon himself the duty to educate her. He was amazed at her docility and the depth of her spiritual wisdom.

When Margaret was sixteen years old, her parents heard of a shrine in Citta di Castello, Italy, where many sick people were cured. They made a pilgrimage to the shrine so that she could pray for healing. However, Margaret, open to the will of God, was not healed that day, or the next, so her parents callously abandoned her in the streets of the town and left for home, never to see her again. At the mercy of the passersby, Margaret had to beg her food and eventually sought shelter with some Dominican nuns. W. R. Bonniwell writes, “Her cheerfulness, based on her trust in God’s love and goodness, was extraordinary. She became a Dominican tertiary and devoted herself to tending the sick and the dying” as well as prisoners in the city jail.

How does Margaret’s story apply to our times?... In the eyes of the world, she was useless, and what right do useless people have to live? Bl. Margaret helped innumerable others by her life and her good deeds, inding holiness by uniting her sufferings to Christ’s. And now, some 670 years after her death, she teaches us valuable lessons by her very being.

Bl. Margaret lived a life of hope and faith, practicing heroic charity, though little was shown her in return... Deprived of all human companionship, Margaret learned to embrace her Lord in solitude. Instead of becoming bitter, she forgave her parents for their ill treatment of her and treated others as well as she could. Her cheerfulness stemmed from her conviction that God loves each person in initely, for He has made each person in His own image and likeness.

Bl. Margaret died on April 13, 1320 at the age of 33.

More than 200 miracles have been credited to her intercession since her death. She was beati ied in 1609. Thus, the daughter that nobody wanted is now one of the glories of the Church.

This article was taken from our website: https://www.nashvilledominican.org/community/our-dominican-heritage/our-saints-and-blesseds/blmargaret-castello/. For more information about Bl. Margaret, please see the book recommendation on the next page.

Recommended Reading

The Life of Blessed Margaret of Castello By: Father William R. Bonniwell, O.P. If you are looking for an inspiring story of a hidden saint who practiced heroic charity even in the midst of being abandoned and hurt by those closest to her, this biography is for you.

Father Bonniwell does an excellent job of portraying the details of Blessed Margaret's short, but rich life in an easy to read and enjoyable text. Just over 100 pages, this book provides the reader with historic details about Margaret's life, virtues, and family background. May the reading of this book help you to make concrete the words of Saint Paul that Margaret lived in her life, "“My grace is su icient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR A LINK TO BUY THIS BOOK.

The bind cripple did not restrict her apostolate to the sick and dying. If anyone began a conversation with her, Margaret would try to repay their kindness by raising the person's heart and mind to God, thus fulling to the letter St. Dominic's admonition to "speak only to God or about God." ( from p. 73)