New Year's Day
Every New Year's Day we gather in the Chapter Hall after breakfast for the Drawing of Patrons, and this year was no exception. The three youngest sisters(in religion, not necessarily in age) are asked to come forward and read out the sister's name, her new Patron Saint for the year, her quotation and the special intention for which to pray. This year the Community's Patron Saint is St. Catherine of Siena and the special intention is for Cardinal Tobin! Sr. Mary Martin used quotations from Scripture this year.
New Year's Day is a recreation day for us, and in the morning the sisters were invited to go down to see what the parlor looks like now that it has been stripped. The top left picture below shows the new wall and door that blocks the construction area from the nuns' living quarters. That big hole in the middle picture is in a corner of the floor. The workmen were checking to see what is between two walls below. The bottom left picture is a view from what was the public side of the parlor towards the chapel. You can't recognize it anymore now that the construction wall is up in the vestibule! (Sorry, that means no more bathroom for the duration of the build! But the new wing will have an updated handicap accessible bathroom, so it will be worth the wait.) The bottom middle picture shows an unexpected surprise...heating pipes running vertically through what was the old partition...directly in the middle of the room. They'll need to reroute those!
Some sisters gathered in the community room for a morning of board games. First came "Murder in the Monastery," the monastic version of Clue. Sr. Marie won that game, and quite quickly! Next was Settlers of Catan, which has gotten a lot of use since the Novitiate received it at Christmas. We ran out of time, so Sr. Joseph Maria/Sr. Maria Johanna and Sr. Mary Ana tied with the highest number of points. We have some intense board game players in this community!
