Dear Family, Friends and Benefactors,                                       June 27, 2024

          Life is a circle.  As Redemptoristines, we have lived in mid-Hudson River area since 1957 when the Sisters arrived from Ontario. We were blessed to have lived in Esopus for over 50 years, close to our brother Redemptorists at Mount St. Alphonsus.  Twelve years ago, we were equally blessed to come share life with the Carmelites in Beacon. 

Like our Foundress, Bl. Maria Celeste Crostarosa, we have moved many times. Did you know that Bl. Celeste spent the first five years of her religious life as a Carmelite? After that monastery closed, she was instrumental in founding the Redemptoristine Nuns in Scala, Italy. Yet a few years later, due to liberty of conscience, she could not stay in that monastery any longer and moved a few more times before finally settling in Foggia, Italy.   

Presently, we find ourselves preparing to move again due to significant changes affecting us, and the Carmelite Sisters, in our ability to maintain the day-to-day functioning of our life.  Nevertheless, our life of prayer, praise and intercession endures.

We began exploring options in the New Year and quickly found the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, New York. Their openness and welcome were most heart-warming. The Dominican Community was delighted to extend to our four Sisters a place to continue our life of prayer with the ability to age in place.  In April, we definitively decided to join them. 

The Dominican Sisters of Sparkill live their mission as joyful women of prayer and compassion who proclaim the Reign of God through ministry for justice and reverence for all creation. 

We are so pleased to be able to live with another religious community. We are saddened to be separating from our Carmelite Sisters in Beacon and their beautiful, peaceful surroundings.  We Red Nuns thank the Brown Nuns profusely for opening their door to us: it has been enriching and beneficial to both our communities as we shared our contemplative lives.  We feel the Lord certainly had a hand in guiding our search to a new home.  We pray that our sharing living space with the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill will be another source of enrichment for both communities.

Amazingly, we discovered that each of us had a Dominican connection sometime in our lives. In Redemptoristine history, even Bl. Celeste Crostarosa had a connection.  She was influential in reforming a Dominican convent that ran an orphanage.  God-coincidences are everywhere: we learned that the Sparkill Dominicans’ foundress, Mother Alice Mary Thorpe, began her religious life with setting up orphanages.  Life is a circle.

Blessed Celeste speaks about the circle of life, “Immerse all that happens to you in life within the Circle of Pure Love.”  Our life is a never-ending circle set in motion by the Redeemer’s Pure Love drawing us ever deeper and closer to our loving God under the protective care of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

In gratitude and love for your friendship and prayers, may Our Mother of Perpetual Help tenderly hold all you close to her heart, and may the Redeemer’s Pure Love and mercy encircle you and answer all your prayers.

Your Redemptoristine Sisters

Come August, this will be our new address:
Redemptoristine Nuns or Sister’s Name
175  Route 340
Sparkill, NY 10976-1047 

Blessed Celeste and Our Mother of Perpetual Help

 

Blessed Mother Maria Celeste Crostarosa, foundress of the Redemptoristine Order in 1731, had a deep devotion to our Lady and placed all her cares and concerns within Mary’s hands.

It is unlikely that Bl. M. Celeste ever saw or even heard of the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.  During her lifetime, the icon of Perpetual Help was enshrined in St. Matthew’s Church in Rome between the basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran.  The church is now known as the Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori and our Lady’s icon is still enshrined there today.

In honor of the Blessed Mother, Bl. M. Celeste’s wrote,

“O my Lady and Mother, well can you say that all generations in heaven and on earth will call you blessed.  You are our only Hope, all nations will call you blessed; the angels and all the heavenly spirits look on you as their Queen, since you are the Mother of the great King; the just have recourse to you as to a Rock of strength and the Teacher of Virtues, safe Guide in this vale of tears, Gate of salvation; under your patronage sinners hurry to you to obtain pardon and protection… and all generations recognize you as Mediatrix and instrument of our Redemption.”   

Let us pray with confidence that Our Mother of Perpetual Help will hold in her hands all our intentions close to her heart.

MIRROR OF LOVE

 

It all began when Bl. Maria Celeste Crostarosa received a revelation while she was still a novice to, “Stamp on your spirit the features of his life and the resemblance of him that comes from imitation.   Be on earth living and inspired images of my beloved Son.  Carry him about as the life of your heart and as the goal of your existence and as the Master of your spirit.” Intent of the Father  “This instruction was for her soul like a polished mirror into which, she remained gazing continually at the dazzling light of the sun (Son) and found herself at once drawn into the divine splendor of her Well-Beloved.” Autobiography    Celeste, and the Order which she was to found, was called from the beginning to be for the world a Mirror of God’s Love.

Likewise, we are called to fix our gaze on the Son and, as if gazing in a mirror, see not only the splendor of His Being but in our own being a living reflection of God’s eternal love.   “It is in this that the Redeemer is able today to accomplish His work of salvation in us and through us.”  Const. 5    For, “The more we strive to live the love of Christ, the more the thoughts and feelings of Christ will fill our spirit and our heart, the more we will become His faithful images.”  Const.6

Like a double exposure of a photograph, one superimposed on the other, we endeavor to be Christ the Redeemer to one another:  “To be a living copy and faithful portrait of Jesus so that he might find himself in you, and you recognize yourself in him, your God through faith.”  Florilegium 6.

Bl. Celeste had a creative spirit.  Just reading her works gives us insight into the richness

of her inner life by the way she uses imagery in her writings.  She was also pliable in the hand of God by opening her heart and allowing God to shape and mold her, transform her into the image of the Son.

Everyone is called to remain moist and be shaped by God.  And by that transformation, we follow the Redeemer and make his saving action alive in our own time and place. This became clear to Bl Celeste when she marveled, “I no longer saw myself, but I saw You in my very self and myself transformed into You, my Most Pure Love.”

Jesus invited Celeste, and us, with these words, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross each day and follow me." (Luke 9:23)  Celeste’s response was, “Oh with what love I embraced the cross, loved it, desired it and took pleasure in it -- all for your love.”  She continues, “Likewise those who love bind themselves to the cross…savor the true and solid sweetness of God and the true peace found therein.”  Florilegium 118.

Celeste describes Jesus the Redeemer as the mirror of the Father.   She invites us to look into this mirror of the Son, saying, “Those who are pure of heart know the Father because they look upon the Redeemer fixedly with a gaze of love.” and adds: “They are children of the light because with the vision of right intention, they gaze into the mirror of the divine perfections of their God.”   The Mystic Who Remembered’ by Joseph Opptiz, CSsR      Let us be Mirrors of Love, of the Redeemer, of our God.

Question:      
How am I a ‘Mirror of Love’ witnessing to the world God’s love?

THE LENTEN PUZZLE OF LOVE

 

Blessed Celeste was a mystic and a prolific writer who was never 
at a loss for words.   And she shared regularly with her community
her experiences laying out all the pieces of God’s love. 

During Lent, we too strive to put together all the pieces of God’s extravagant love
which fills our days and our lives on our journey of salvation.  Here are some of Celeste’s pieces.

Bl. Celeste says: ‘As soon as you rise from sleep, thank the Creator for all the blessings of this day and offer to God all your words, actions and sufferings, abandoning yourself into God’s blessed hands.’

Jesus, in turn, said to Celeste as he held his divine heart in his hands, and says to us now: ‘Receive my heart to love me with my own love forever.  Embrace in my heart all my creatures and give to those souls all the love of my heart.’

During Lent we strive to have the heart of Jesus by loving as Jesus did.  Celeste says, ‘Make your life an echo of Jesus’ love.’  From the moment we wake up in the morning until we lay your head on the pillow at night we strive to echo Christ’s redemptive love.  In our busy schedules we are called to abandon ourselves into the hands of our Creator as we offer a sacrifice of love, praise and intercession that reaches out to embrace in our hearts all of God’s creatures and creation. Our mission as Redemptoristines is to be transformed into pure love.   Celeste often quoted Jesus in saying, ‘If someone asks you who I am, tell them I am Pure Love.’

Jesus said to Celeste and now says to us, ‘If you wish to give me pleasure, imitate that prayer which I offered in the Garden of Olives before my Passion, placing my whole spirit in my Father's hands!’   

Celeste says, ‘The just soul who loves takes delight in death at the hands of its Beloved.  Jesus lived dying and it is the living memory of Jesus’ dying that will be your life.’

How do we remember Jesus’ dying in our daily lives?  Remember what Jesus says at the Last Supper before he died, ‘Do this in memory of me.’   Every day at the holy sacrifice of the Mass we stretch out our hands as an offering to receive the Body of Christ.  This reminds me of a time when I was the Eucharistic minister; a woman, instead of saying ‘Amen’ to the ‘The Body of Christ,’ responded saying, ‘I am.’  What a profound statement.  To me, her reply was a confident, yet humble pledge of love.  We are then nourished by Christ, who lives and dies and rises in us for the life of the world.  In presenting our hands we give our whole self so that Jesus may live and work and pray in us. 

To unite earth with heaven, Jesus stretched out his hands on the cross to embrace everyone and everything with his redeeming love.  By our life of prayer. we stretch out our hands to embrace and support family, friends, benefactors and all of creation.

In regularly taking time to pray, we give ourselves the puzzle piece which binds the whole together, as the psalmist says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ ^{Ps 46:11}      This pray of quiet pleases God, soothes the soul and enables us to share in the viva memoria as participants in the life of Jesus who lived dying so that the world may be redeemed and rise to new life.   

United with Jesus, we offer our hearts to God at the service of God’s divine plan of mercy and love.  Trusting that Jesus has completed the puzzle of love in our lives, we pray with grateful hearts with Celeste, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for my very beginning and my very end.’ 

 

10 CHRISTMAS FILMS

 Had enough of same-old, same-old Hallmark Christmas stories which run 24/7/365?    You would think the true meaning of Christmas was to fall in love with someone you may or may not like when you first meet them.   Longing for some ‘meat’ or meaning?  Here are10 films in release order that might be a tad more inspirational or just plain fun, with a little romance on the side. 

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE 1946  Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and the adorable Henry Travers.  And the originally ‘Bert and Ernie’ Ward Bond and Frank Faylen.  Who could forget, ‘Zuzu’s petals!’ Enough said.

THE BISHOP’S WIFE 1947 starring the lovely Loretta Young, Cary Grant and David Niven, about a debonair angel sent in answer to a prayer.  

MIRACLE ON 34^TH STREET 1947 starring 8-year-old Natalie Wood and Maureen O’Hara, John Payne and Santa Claus (Edmund Gwenn).  “I believe, I believe.”

CHRISTMAS CAROL 1951 starring Alistair Sim.  The master of the double take, whose hooded eyes that try to hide all those feelings until they cannot be suppressed on Christmas Morn. “It all happened!  Now I know I never knew anything!  I must stand on my head!”

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS Gain Carlo Menotti’s 54-minute opera was first broadcast in black and white on network TV in 1951 starring Chet Allen and Rosemary Kuhlmann.   There is a color version starring Teresa Stratas which is also good.  It is the story of a lying cripple boy and his poverty-stricken mother who host the Three Kings as they journey to find the newborn King. The music is enchanting and the voices soar opening your heart to the question, “Have you seen the Child…? 

SANTA & PETE 1999 starring James Earl Jones, Hume Cronyn and Flex Alexander tell the tale of Bishop Nicholas’ journey to the New World to bring cheer to the newly arrived settlers, people of color and the Natives.  It is a charming telling of how St. Nick became Santa Claus.  

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT   1945 Starring Barbara Stanwyck posing as a
type of Martha Stewart, except she is inept at any of those homey virtues.  Also starring Dennis Morgan as a war time hero and the wonderful character actor S Z Sakall. This tasty comedy is a delight from start to finish.  

NOEL  2004  Starring Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, Penelope Cruz, Paul Walker and Alan Arkin.  A Christmas Eve drama revolving around the lives of five sad and lonely people whose stories interconnect and try re-create happy Christmas memories.

SILENT NIGHT 2004 This gripping Christmas drama stars Linda Hamilton as a German mother taking her 12-year-old son away from the horrors of WWII to her family’s cabin in the woods only to be invaded by 3 American GIs and 3 German soldiers on Christmas Eve.  She orders the men to leave their weapons outside. 
Will they obey?     

BONUS

NOELLE  2007 written, produced, directed and starring David Wall with his wife and daughter, Kerry and Brennan Wall and Sean Patrick Brennan.  It is a human story of two priests in search of the true power of love, forgiveness and redemption in a remote quirky village.