Visitation Monastery of Minneapolis

by Sr. Karen Mohan, VHM

"Alleluia!" Easter Baskets for our neighborhood children, courtesy of St. Odelia's parish

“HAPPY EASTER!!  This can be our daily greeting as the octave of Easter unfolds. Yes, for eight days we are steeping ourselves in the life of Jesus RISEN!  Many wonder how Easter is celebrated in our monastic community?  Well, I would say, “FULLY!”

Every part of our day throughout the Triduum was given over to prayer and the Liturgical celebrations of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and the “feast of feasts” itself: EASTER Sunday!  From that fullness, our monastery’s  “Easter look” began to take shape.  The chapel became a “resurrection garden” complete with the Paschal candle and Easter water from our baptismal renewal at the Vigil; and in our two houses all the Lenten purple was replaced with Easter colors, Resurrection icons and flowers.

Outside, our garden cooperated in this transformation!  The tulip fronds peeked out and even the rhubarb — looking like fists of spring green and red — began to make its presence known.   On Easter Sunday a few jonquils and tulips blossomed in honor of our Risen Lord!  To people living in warmer climates, all of this is no big deal.  However, those of us in THIS part of the world are still in shock that we had no March snow in Minneapolis — for the first time in 100 years! — and we had a few flowers in bloom on Easter Sunday!

During the Easter octave, at our Liturgy of the Hours, we chant the same psalms and antiphons during the Easter octave:

Our Easter Chapel, aka, "The Resurrection Garden."

The splendor of Christ risen from the dead has shone on the people redeemed by his blood, alleluia

The Lord has risen as he promised

This is the day the Lord has made, alleluia!

The wisdom of the Liturgy is to let the Easter message take hold of us, and repeating these sung  antiphons and the psalms helps  us in that process.

One of our dear friends, Linda Goynes, came in to the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil! She is a great gift to the Roman Catholic Community at Ascension Parish and in our neighborhood.  In honor of her confirmation, after the Vigil we welcomed a number of her friends and faith companions to our monastery for a little reception.  Hospitality is always an extension of Eucharist for us and an opportunity to build community with others.

Sister Mary Frances baked 30 loaves of “Easter bread” to share with our neighbors, and our friends, the Delmonico grocers, provided the ham for the occasion.

Easter Blessings! The sisters gather around Vis Companion and newly baptized Catholic, Linda Goynes

That hospitality continued on Easter Sunday when some of Sister Katherine’s and Sister Mary Frances’   family members joined us after Mass,  and in the afternoon, helping us welcome over 100 children to receive the Easter baskets prepared by caring people from St. Odelia’s Parish.  One of my favorite parts of this afternoon was bringing six little children up to the chapel at the Girard house for a thanksgiving prayer to Jesus. I taught them an “Alleluia “song and we later sang it for our guests.  One of the children, new to me, came from a troubled house down the block where a shooting had taken place just five days before.   I hope she will keep that “Alleluia” song in her heart. Her presence reminded me that Easter is not a sentimental feeling but a deep and abiding trust that the power of God’s life will always triumph over whatever darkness we encounter. And whatever experience any of us has with the Risen Jesus will always be accompanied by the people with whom he loved most: the children, the poor, the suffering and those bound by life’s heavy burdens.

“…whatever experience any of us has with the Risen Jesus will always be accompanied by the people with whom he loved most: the children, the poor, the suffering and those bound by life’s heavy burdens.”
- Sr. Karen Mohan, VHM

As our community drove over to  be with our Sisters in Mendota Heights in the late afternoon where we would join them for Vespers  and   Easter dinner together, our motto, “LIVE + JESUS,” came to my heart. This is what Easter at the Visitation Monastery is all about:  celebrating the One in whom “we live and move and have our being”….

May Jesus come alive in you, my reader, in me and in all our Visitation Sisters throughout the world as we celebrate our 400^th anniversary this year!

May the words of the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins  take hold of all of us this Easter octave:

Let Him Easter in us

Be a dayspring to the dimness of us

Be a crimson-cresseted east.

“This life is short but is very valuable, for by means of it we are able to acquire eternal life.”-St. Francis de Sales

It is Good Friday, after journeying this Lenten Season with you, I find myself today reflecting on leave taking. In my short life, I have done a lot of leave taking, especially these past two years where my family and I have moved with

Wind Farm in Milford, Utah

my husband’s job, building wind farms.  Last night, I contemplated Holy Thursday, I imagined Jesus surrounded by his dearest friends, some who would betray him, what a bittersweet moment that must have been for Jesus as he gently washed their feet, as they broke bread together, as they shared their hearts. What was that night like for Jesus who would be doing the leave taking? What was that night like for those who would be left behind?

My mind swirled with images of my own bittersweet goodbyes. When we left Boston last year, our friends gathered with us on the shores of Singing Beach for dinner. We played in the sand, we drenched ourselves in the water, we swaddled babies in towels and blankets as the sun set. Then my heart held memories of saying goodbye when we left Minnesota the year before that. Our friends and family gathered for a bar-b-q in our backyard before the movers came to uproot us from a place we thought we would be for a much longer time. Did Jesus think he would be around for a much longer time? Did he ache that night as the dishes were cleared and washed and goodbyes were said? I find myself here in Santa Fe building a life with what we are given. It is magnificent in some ways, the beauty of the mountains and the desert is stunning, the few friends we have made our age are incredibly kind. I think of dear friends and family that I no longer live near, whom I hold in my heart fiercely with love and gratitude. Is this a glimpse of how Jesus holds us in his heart?

Leave taking is heartbreaking. It invites us to grow in ways we never dreamed, to encounter things outside of our imagination, it invites our heart to stretch beyond what we thought was its initial capacity. Today we mark Jesus’ final leave taking, his death before his resurrection. Years ago, I spent time in Placencia, Belize. Upon my arrival, a village member had passed away, it was the seventh day of her passing and the village was busy with preparations for an all night vigil of singing, dancing, and food preparation. I was invited to participate. This Dugu is how the Garifuna people mark the person who has left the physical world and began to journey into the spiritual world. They celebrate this crossover. I was awestruck by the celebration.  As dawn emerges the Garifuna people offer a plate of food by burying it, so that their loved one is welcomed graciously. When I finally went to sleep on the concrete floor, I slept lightly to the singing, the chanting, the dancing that processed on. How do we accompany those spirits that have passed before us? How do we sit with Jesus today as he prepares to take his leave? How do the Visitation Sisters of North Minneapolis mark these holy days?

Sister Karen, Sister Katherine, and Sister Joanna share their traditions at the Monastery for Holy Thursday: “Foot washing together at noon on Holy Thursday, a very meaningful ancient custom. We began in the chapel with the reading of John 13: 1-15. Following the scripture, we sang,”  Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you…,”  then we processed to the living room to the circle of chairs, the pitcher of warm water and bowl for the foot washing, and the towels. On each chair was a slip of paper containing a group of people whose feet we would symbolically wash and pray for during the foot washing.  We listened to meditative music during the ritual, closed with a prayer, the sign of peace and the song, “Live Jesus.” Each sister did something to help prepare the Christian Seder meal which we had at 5 pm before going to the 7 pm bilingual Eucharist at Ascension.  We invited six guests to join us and had a special prayer at the beginning reflecting the Passover prayers. After the Liturgy at Ascension in a Church filled with young Mexican families, we returned to Fremont for one of my favorite parts of the evening, the transfer of the Blessed Sacrament from the Fremont to the Girard chapel. We light large vigils and process right down the street, past the troubled corner house where we called out, “God bless you”  to those gathered on the front porch there, and proceeded four houses further to our Girard residence.  There we place the Blessed Sacrament in our upstairs “chapel of repose” until Saturday night.  The chapel is decorated until midnight, and now has a simple sanctuary light in front of the tabernacle.”

“On Good Friday it will be simpler. The tone is a day of great quiet and solitude. We do have our evening meal together and the day is ended with the Litany of the Passion for those who do not attend the evening service, say, at the Basilica or at the Ascension. We’ll gather in the morning for Lauds, and at mid-day for the Liturgy of the Hours. Then in the evening there is another Tenebrae Service at the Basilica or a dramatization of the Way of the Cross by the Spanish speaking community at Ascension. The whole nature of Good Friday is quiet prayer, alone and together.”

St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe, NM

Eight Good Fridays ago, I found myself in a privileged space, visiting a good friend, Meghan, at the Casa de la Solidaridad in El Salvador. The people of El Salvador invited us into their Good Friday tradition of creating sawdust mosaics on city streets. They began the drawings on Holy Thursday, and exquisitely render pictures of Jesus’ final hours, of Oscar Romero, of martyrs, of faith. These pictures spread throughout San Salvador all drawn with prayerful love and roped off until mid day of Good Friday when we gathered with their faith communities, took off our shoes, and processed with the crucified Lord through the streets. We walked through the holy ground of each mosaic barefoot, the colors from their prayers swirling onto our feet, sinking into our skin, becoming part of our story, leaving our feet stained. The sky darkened during the procession, and seems to wherever I have marked Good Friday, even if only momentarily. I  realized the people of El Salvador know the suffering of Jesus on Good Friday. Perhaps that is why the celebration on Good Friday in El Salvador is larger than that of Easter Sunday. How is the crucified Christ alive in our lives? How is the risen Christ alive in our life?

Now, I find myself in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Santa Fe, translated as the Blood of Christ because of the

St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe, NM

hue it blushes at sunset.  As my boys and I participate in Holy Week here, I find myself again in a procession, one that took place after Mass on Palm Sunday, only instead of colored sawdust swirling around our feet the red earthen dust swirled and tourists lined up around the plaza where the procession ended. What are you asked to take leave of, to empty yourself of in order to be filled with the risen Christ of Easter?

“In His wisdom, your heavenly Father has foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. That cross that He now gives you He has considered with His all knowing mind, constructed with His gentle hands, weighed with His divine justice, and tested with His own loving arms–to be certain that it would not be one inch too large or one once too heavy for you.

Then, having fashioned this unique cross with you in mind, He took one last glance at you and your courage before sending it to you–a special gift, blessed and anointed by your heavenly Father.” -St. Francis de Sales

Blessings on this Good Friday,

Elizabeth Eilers Sullivan, Visitation Alumna ‘93