In the fullness of time
November is a wondrous clash of fullness.
It begins with the dying of gardens and green leaves, while All Saints & All Souls Days usher us into the Church’s month of prayer for the dead. This year, we not only note that the sun is setting earlier and earlier each evening but, too, that our sister Joan isn’t here. We buried her just last month, and the words of our brother, Fr. Jonah, waft back on the wind, “We pray for our sisters and brothers, who persevered in their preference for nothing but Christ, or died trying.”
Yet the month is climactic, too, splashing autumnal reds and golds upon field, forest, and sky, and peaking liturgically with the celebration of Christ our King.
Such extremes. But doesn’t it all, and the space between, just teem?
Sixty years after our 13 foundresses celebrated the first Mass at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey on November 4, 1964, we observed our anniversary in the honorable company of two of those very – and very beloved – foundresses, Sr. Gail and Sr. Genevieve. Founded on the Rock of Christ and built up by the love of our sisters, we are so thankful for this dear place, for every hidden sacrifice, every shared smile, every gift of self quietly tucked into the cracks and crevices of our high Mississippi River Valley bluff.
We keep a swath of our blufftop planted in native prairie grass. Every summer it sings with native blooms, bugs, and birds. But the prairie must burn in order to regrow. The fire sears us, with its wild beauty and powerful heat and scent of smoke and ash, and with the stark truth that we must, and want to, face:
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Yes, on the cusp of Advent, a season traditionally known as “little Lent”, it’s good to encounter this fire, these hallowed words.
Good to look back. Good to give thanks. Good to rejoice in the magnificence of last lettuces and sudden rainbows and homemade Thanksgiving pies. Good to look with love into the eyes of our sisters, even while the season around us whispers Let go. Live fully. In the name of Christ, die trying.