Father Gavin Vaverek, pastor of Our Lady of Victory parish in Paris, TX, recently came and gave us a class on Lent. Father gives us classes on a variety of topics whenever he has time, and we always enjoy his great presentations and his witty remarks. In this class, Father encouraged us to “begin with the end in mind” when it comes to Lent, looking forward to the Triduum and Easter. He covered the main aspects of Lent–prayer, fasting, and almsgiving–encouraging us to use Lent as a time to grow in our Christian life and to keep up our good Lenten habits through Easter and beyond. Most of all, Father reminded us, Lent is a opportunity to grow in love and to share in the life of Christ. We had heard some of this before, of course–but it was a wonderful help to renew us in our Lenten practices, which can become mere form if we are not careful. And we can always learn something new about the spiritual life! Thank you, Fr. Gavin, for taking time out of your busy parish schedule and making the long trip from Paris (Texas, that is) to Lufkin! You are always welcome!
The community listens attentively to Fr. Gavin’s presentation. He’s a wonderful lecturer!
In the Eastern Orthodox church, the phrase, “Christ is in our midst” is used as part of the dismissal in Ordinary Time. As we finally post our Christmas season blog, we rejoice that although Ordinary Time has begun, we still live in the radiant light of Christ’s birth–Emmanuel, “God-with-us”.
Our Christmas season this year seemed extraordinarily busy. Maybe it was because of the short Advent season! But in fact a lot has happened. We have had many guests, many community celebrations, and a visit from one of our sisters in Trinidad. We’ll post more about her soon.
On St. Nicholas Day (we celebrated on December 7) St. Nicholas himself came bearing gifts for all the good nuns. Here we have the four sisters who met St. Nicholas for the first time, proudly wearing their hand crocheted scarves.
The aunt of one of our sisters sent an Advent calendar! Although it was not religious in any way, we enjoyed seeing each door open, marking the days from December 1 to December 24.
One of our traditions is to have creches set up in the various departments where sisters work. Although we try to preserve the memory of Christ always, and we have crucifixes up everywhere, the creche scenes are a reminder of Christ’s humble birth in Bethlehem, and encouragement for us to be more simple, humble, and childlike.
The Guild department, where we send letters and make enrollments
The library
The community room. Sister’s theme this year was light and darkness.
The infirmary
The kitchen.
The refectory. Thanks to our hardworking novitiate–they clean the refectory, and so they get to decorate it, too!
They also decorated the walls and tables. The novitiate had an angel theme this year, with angels on the walls and angels on the tables. All handmade!
Even the copy machine room had a little creche!
The statue of Our Lady in the hallway
We hope to bring you some pictures of the chapel soon too–it looked amazing!
On December 28, Holy Innocents Day, we celebrated the novitiate (and our two newer sisters, Sr. Carmen Gloria and Sr. Maria). We played fun games and our four newest sisters each got prizes. We are so happy they are with us!
We played “Pin the Star on Dominic’s Forehead”
We also played a fun cup and ball game. Our postulant Michelle was the clear winner of this game!
Sr. Maria, Sr. Mary Pauline, and Michelle with their prizes
Then came Epiphany on January 6! The novitiate hosted the professed in the novitiate building. In the morning, we played a lot of fun games. In the afternoon, we had a tea party and Christmas karaoke.
Popping balloons for prizes in the novitiate courtyard.
One of our games! We had to wear this basket and try to put bows into it with a spatula–harder than it sounds!
Enjoying afternoon tea and cookies.
“Glooooooooooooooria!”
In the evening, the novitiate sisters put on a delightful play for us–“The Fourth Wise Man”. They all did a great job with their parts and the scenery and stage props were very imaginative.
And, we had guests and free days and all kinds of other things! Thank you to all our benefactors who helped to make our Christmas season so beautiful, especially our faithful Knights of Columbus who always cook Christmas dinner for us. May all of you be blessed most abundantly in this New Year 2024!
Dominican Life on Lotus Lane 