Christmas of the Heart
by Meri Rani

Wed 14th December 2011

Christmas of the Heart is making the love of Christ our own. Contemplating Christ, we begin to understand what true love is. True love is not so much what we could do for others as what we could suffer for and from others. This is clearly seen in the life of Jesus. Jesus loved in deeds – countless good works for the people but his love excelled in suffering and dying on the cross for men – for the very men who led him to his death. He suffered from men and for men – for us. This is true love.
 
No one suffered so closely to Jesus than his mother as Simon prophesied, “A sword shall pierce your heart.” Her sorrowful Heart one with Jesus’ pierced Heart suffered from men and for men.

Bl. Maria Virgo, co-foundress of the Missionary Sisters, who transferred to the cloistered contemplative community and died at the age of forty-seven, understood also what true love is. She wrote: “It is better to suffer for love than to enjoy love.”

Praising God for the 150th Birth Anniversary of our Co-foundress, Mother Mary Michael
By Meri Rani

Wed 23rd November 2011


Mother Mary Michael’s Vocation Story:
 
Adolfine Tönnies, (later, Mother Mary Michael) took up a teaching course in Muenster, Germany for two years after which she qualified for a teaching job in a mission school in Rendsburg in which she excelled as a school teacher from 1881 to 1891. She was well loved and highly esteemed. The call to religious life developed slowly. For a long time she was not clear about what God wanted of her. She wrote to Arnold Janssen with candid openness: “This thought has preoccupied me for years but I never said anything about it.”