The Fund supports quite a few Dominicans and by chance the cards I have scanned to-date are all from Dominican sisters. I'll try to scan some more tomorrow and perhaps there will be other orders represented.

We had the joy of spending time with Sr. Mara Rose last summer when we were in Nashville for the profession of vows by two other MEFV grant recipients. God willing, Sr. Mara Rose will make final profession with the Nashville Dominicans this coming summer.

Adoration of the Magi
Fra Angelico

She writes (on December 8th): A quick note to say hello and let you know I'm getting along quite well especially with vows. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to live such a fulfilling life in this community.

Classes are over for the semester and we are preparing our hearts, minds and house for Christmas. All of the sisters will come home in the course of the next two weeks, so we must prepare for the increase in numbers. It's always a joyful time.

Please know of my prayers for you and your intentions.

Sr. Mara Rose's card included a poem by St. Cosmas:

For a Christmas Card, the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist are able to use their logo for double duty. It is printed on simple white card stock with the well known prophecy from Isaiah on the inside: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given ...

Our grant recipient with the Sisters of Mary wrote the following Christmas greetings: A most blessed and grace-filled Christmas to you! May the precious Infant's eyes rest upon your loving hearts today and always!

I am so grateful for all you have done, and continue to do, to promote and support vocations! If it were not for you, I would not be here!

Please know of my daily prayers for you and your intentions! God Bless
In His heart,
Sr. Francis Mary, OP

I must note here that most of the MEFV's grant recipients see Katherine and I as the personification of the MEFV. But their offering thanks and prayers should always be read as offerings for all the benefactors of the MEFV.

Okay, we're not travelling just now, but I should still be posting, so I've got a new project: Posting the Christmas cards we received from our grant recipients and their communities together with excerpts from their greetings. This is perfect material for this blog as the goal is to give our donors and friends a glimpse into all the vocations made possible by the MEFV.

I think it's also a great way to spend Christmastide. That's right: it's still Christmas until Candlemas on February 2nd. We have the Christmas trees still up in our house to prove it. I simply love it when we get some of these cards January. One year we got a card from a religious community on the very day of Candlemas!

(Okay, I have been corrected. It is not actually Christmastide now. That ended with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord on January 13th. It is now the third cycle of the Christmas season: the time after Epiphany. But traditionally, it is understood that Christmas ends with Candlemas, so the trees will stay up until then.)

As usual this sort of thing turns out to be more work than expected, but our new (and very cute) portable Canon P-215 scanner will help make things easier. And taking it slow will provide plenty of posting fodder. I had a momentary pang of concern about the copyright holders of the cards, but if I keep the resolution low, I think I'll keep within the confines of fair use.

First up is the card from Sr. Ann Dominic, novice with the Dominican Congregation of St. Cecilia (more commonly known as the Nashville Dominicans).

She writes: Merry Christmas from St. Cecilia's Convent! I hope this Holy Season is filled with many graces and blessings. Know of my continued prayers for you and of my gratitude for all the support you have given me. The gift of my religious vocation brings me such joy and I pray that this time of formation will allow me to go out to all the nations and preach the Good News. With Prayers!
In Mary, Star of the New Evangelization,
Sr. Ann Dominic.

My dear readers (the few, but the intrepid) may your Christmas Day be very merry and very joyful.

For me Chirstmas is a constant reminder of the mind boggling fact of the Incarnation. God's Son humbly offered the sacrifice of an entire life as one of us, from the Incarnation to the Cross. To be co-eternal with God and yet to take flesh. And not just to appear from nowhere as a teacher, but to embrace all the formative stages of frail human life. That our Saviour chose to become a flesh in Mary's womb, to be born, as we all have been, helpless and completely dependent on human parents. To be formed by them through childhood maturing as a young man in the normal way. (As an aside: This shows an amazing trust of God for His creatures.) To enter His mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God at His adulthood, while living in physical poverty, and all the while knowing how He would depart this world in total giving for the good of our souls. And all this as the preeminent way to lead us to Heaven.

Astonding and Overwhelming!

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the desire of the nations and the Savior thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God.

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

O King of the Gentiles and desire thereof, Thou cornerstone that makest both one, come and deliver mankind, whom Thou didst form out of clay.

This is not an O Antiphon post.

Yesterday we introduced the family of our fundraiser to the joys of choosing and cutting a Christmas tree on the grounds of a Christmas tree farm. This is something Katherine and I have done almost every Christmas of our married lives. Our first home was in Richland, Washington which is just east of the Wenatchee National Forest. Somehow we had heard that you could pay a small fee (back then it was really small, like $5) and get a permit to cut a live tree within the forest.

So on the Friday after Thanksgiving, Katherine made turkey, stuffing, & cranberry sandwiches and we drove our little Honda sports car into the forest down roads more appropriate for pickup trucks in search of the perfect natural tree. We'd stop in a likely (and legal) place and stomp around in the wet and/or snow for about an hour considering likely candidates.

When the best was finally located, I'd drop a piece of plastic on the ground, lie down and cut the tree with my hand saw. Then Katherine and I would lug it back to the car where it always miraculously fit in Honda's dinky little trunk, mostly. Then we'd be back in the car, running the engine to warm ourselves, and eating our packed lunch.

One of the features of these outings was the long drive to and from the forest: Two hours to get to Wenatchee to get the permit, another hour to get into some remote part of the forest. So when we later had to settle for Christmas tree farms, it felt more like the real thing if the farm was located in the next state over.

We had three Christmases back west before moving to upstate New York and having to settle for Christmas tree farms instead of National Forests. But the basic conditions are still there: Cold, often blustery weather, rural environs, lots of stomping around looking for the perfect tree, and dragging our trophy back to the car. Wait, wait. We no longer do the dragging thing with big trees -- we let the farmer come get it for us.

Like the last couple of years, we got two trees yesterday. A small one to sit on a table in our living room and a tall one to go in our high-ceilinged library. The one in our library is placed below a glass block landing that leads to our offices at the top of our house. It's quite interesting to view the decorated tree through the glass floor:

Study of a Christmas light

And our fundraiser's family throughly enjoyed themselves. They took more time to find the perfect tree than we did: only two votes in our family, there are ten votes in theirs. But in the end, the second youngest's opinion won out.

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et unbra mortis.

O Day-Spring, Brightness of light eternal, and Sun of Justice, come and enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel, qui aperis, et nemo claudit, claudis, et nemo aperti: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel, that openest and no man shutteth, and shuttest and no man openeth: come and bring the prisoner forth from the prison-house, and him that sitteth in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O Root of Jesse, Which standest for an ensign of the people, before Whom kings shall keep silence, Whom the Gentiles shall beseech: come and deliver us, and tarry not.