Summer in the Monastery
The summer has just flown by, and here we are already a full week into Fall already! We wanted to share with you a few pictures from some of the highlights of the summer. In June we hosted the fourth annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Summit, returning to the Monastery for Vespers with the nuns.
The fireworks for Fourth of July this year were cancelled due to heavy storms in the area, so we celebrated instead with some sparklers and glow sticks donated for the occasion. The city rescheduled the fireworks for a month later, and we climbed to the roof to watch them on the fourth of August. Also in July, we enjoyed a visit from the Hillbilly Thomists, a folk band composed of Dominican friars! They played several of their songs for us in the parlor. It was a real treat! The highlight of August was of course the solemn profession of Sr. Maria Rose (see earlier post for pictures!).
Throughout the summer our gardens have been producing lots of fresh vegetables, and a couple sisters made pickles with the abundance of cucumbers. We’ve had several friars come over the past months for lectures; most recently Fr. Vivian Boland, O.P. traveled from Rome to give us a set of lectures on several topics, including Aquinas on the Ideas in the Mind of God. Last but not least, we prepared for the beatification of Fulton Sheen over the course of the summer by making 1,000 “World Mission Rosaries,” a rosary designed by Bl. Fulton Sheen to help people envelop the whole world in prayer while praying the rosary, with a decade dedicated to each continent represented by a different color of beads. The rosaries we made (along with 74,000 others!) were blessed and distributed to the attendees at the beatification ceremony on September 24.
