www.op.org/maryqueen Elmira, NY 14905-1998
SPRING 2005
Your Joy Will Be Full !
Dear Friends,
Last Fall we shared some
thoughts inspired by the splendor of nature’s openness to the pleasant
transition of another seasonal change. Many of you personally responded by
sending your own petitions for our October month of prayer to Our Lady of
the Rosary. Today we invite you during this liturgical season of joy between
Easter and Pentecost to prepare that hidden space within your heart and soul
to welcome the splendor of the Holy Spirit! Join us here at Mary the Queen
and from your homes actively participate in our annual Pentecost novena.
Along with the whole world, we watched with deep emotion the events of the
death of Pope John Paul II and the accession of Pope Benedict XVI. As to a
rich legacy, we turn to the former’s 1986 encyclical letter Dominum
et Vivificandum for our reflections during this time of preparation for Pentecost.
He wrote:
“(In prayer) the
church unceasingly professes her faith that there exists in our created world
a Spirit who is an uncreated gift. He is the Spirit of the Father and of the
Son: Like the Father and the Son he is uncreated, without limit, eternal,
omnipotent, God, Lord. This Spirit of God ‘fills the universe,’
and all that is created recognizes in him the source of its own identity,
finds in him its own transcendent expression, turns to him and awaits him,
invokes him with its own being. Man turns to him, as to the Paraclete, the
spirit of truth and of love, man who lives by truth and by love, and who without
the source of truth and of love cannot live. To him turns the church, which
is the heart of humanity, to implore for all and dispense to all those gifts
of the love which through him ‘has been poured into our hearts.’
To him turns the church, along the intricate paths of man’s pilgrimage
on earth: She unceasingly implores uprightness of human acts as the Spirit’s
work; she implores the joy and consolation that only he, the true Counselor,
can bring by coming down into people’s inmost hearts; the church implores
the grace of the virtues that merit heavenly glory, implores eternal salvation,
in the full communication of the divine life to which the Father has eternally
‘predestined’ human beings, created through love in the image
and likeness of the most holy Trinity.
The church with her heart which embraces all human hearts implores from the
Holy Spirit that happiness which only in God has its complete realization:
the joy ‘that no one will be able to take away,’ the joy which
is the fruit of love, and therefore of God who is love. She implores ‘the
righteousness, the peace and the joy of the Holy Spirit’ in which, in
the words of St. Paul, consists the kingdom of God.
Peace too is the fruit of love: that interior peace which weary man seeks
in his inmost being; that peace besought by the human family, peoples, nations,
continents, anxiously hoping to obtain it. ... Since the way of peace passes
... through love and seeks to create the civilization of love, the church
fixes her eyes on him who is the love of the Father and the Son, and in spite
of increasing dangers she does not cease to trust, she does not cease to invoke
and to serve the peace of man on earth. Her trust is based on him who, being
the Spirit-love, is also the Spirit of peace and does not cease to be present
in our human world, on the horizon of minds and hearts in order to ‘fill
the universe’ with love and peace.”
We invite you to participate in the Pentecost Novena by sending your prayer requests and by praying with us each day this beautiful hymn to the Holy Spirit.
older cars, creates instant interest in his ministry with his current one (shown) with its rack of long horns above the cab, and the all-over bright designs which his family helped to custom-paint. Its white horizontal stripe reads, “The world beckoned and so I went.
But people captured my heart and so I travel on.”
How apt a motto for a Dominican itinerant preacher!
On Sunday, February 20th, Diane Christine Farr, Novice Mistress
of our Dominican Laity Chapter entered into the Ancient Order of Virgins.
The 10:30 A.M. Eucharistic Liturgy for the Solemn Consecration of a Virgin
Living in the World was celebrated at her nearby parish church, Our Lady of
Lourdes, with His Excellency Most Rev. Matthew H. Clark, DD, Bishop of Rochester,
pre- siding. Concelebrating were Rev. Daniel J. Condon, Chancellor of the
Diocese of
Rochester, Rev. Jeremiah P. Moynihan, Pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes parish,
Rev. James Sullivan, OP, Provincial Promoter for the Domincan Laity, and Rev.
Michael Trainor, OP, our Chaplain. Only the bishop can perform the consecration
to this ancient form of life which was restored after Vatican II. As a bride
of Jesus Christ, Diane received a veil to show that she has been chosen from
other women to be dedicated to Christ and the service of the Church. Her ring
marks her as a bride of Christ. She received the book of the Liturgy of the
Hours and was asked to pray without ceasing for the salvation of the whole
world. After a reception at the Elmira Country Club, and still in her bridal
dress, she visited us in our parlor with other Consecrated Virgins from Washington
DC, Miami FL, Fall River MA, Lansing MI, and Kansas City MO,
arrived from the Domi-
nican Monastery of Our
Lady of the Rosary in Port
of Spain, Trinidad, West
Indies, on March 2nd in the
midst of a snowstorm such
as she had never seen
before. She expects to be
with us for at least a year.
Sister brings many talents
to our community, such as
her musicianship on the.
classical guitar.
Trinity who makes
a popular crochet-
top towel for our
Gift Shop needs
big buttons about
1¼ inches in dia-
meter. If you have
a few of that size
stored away and
not needed, please
send them to her.
Your Elmira Dominican
Sisters
