My dear family Christ,

On the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, I had the great joy of celebrating Holy Mass for the Abbey of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Westfield.  At this Mass, Sr. Stella Duryea, OSB, made her solemn profession as a nun of the Abbey.  It was a beautiful and grace-filled day.  I hope to have some photos to share but thought I would share my homily from the Mass in which I tried to capture the significance of this profession for her and the Church.  Please pray for Sr. Stella and all the Sisters in Westfield, they are a true gift to our Diocese.

God alone suffices,
+John J McDermott

 

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!

Reverend Mother Benedict, my dear sisters of the Abbey of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my brother priests, deacons, oblates and friends of the Abbey and most especially members of Sr. Stella’s family, what a joy and blessing for us to gather today as we both honor Our Lady and her glorious Assumption and witness Sr. Stella’s solemn profession and consecration to Our Savior Jesus Christ. I can imagine that like Our Lady, our spirits are rejoicing in God our Savior.

When I first received official notification of the date of Sr. Stella’s profession, accompanied by the text and musical notation for the Consecration Prayer, I began to practice immediately to ensure that this Mass would be celebrated with all due reverence and, I hope, precision (as you will soon note, it is a lot of Latin). As I studied the text with its translation, it became apparent the great care the Church has given to the development of this liturgy. As we continue and move into the prayers of Sr. Stella’s solemn monastic profession and consecration, let us take time to ponder and reflect upon all of the elements of the rites because they communicate such great beauty and reverence and remind us of the absolutely necessary gift of consecrated life for the success of the Church.

Over the course of the last few months, I also received more information about Sr. Stella’s personal choices associated with her profession. As I took notices of these choices, I began to think she was simply being a copycat.

First: Her motto – God alone! Seemed very close to my episcopal motto, God alone suffices.

Second: Her emblem – The Grain of Wheat – the gospel for my episcopal ordination was “unless the grain of wheat dies….”

And so I thought she was simply giving a nod to her bishop, but upon further consideration and study of the Rite of Profession and Consecration, I realized that her choices had nothing to do with me (I’ll try to get over this), but had to do with her responding to the Holy Spirit and her desire to die totally to self in order to live for God alone, to unite her will and her entire life in a loving communion with her Divine Spouse Jesus Christ.

This being said, her choices did cause me to reflect upon my ordination and led me to consider an idea shared by Cardinal O’Malley in his homily which I believe provides an essential consideration for all of us today, especially for Sr. Stella. In his homily, the Cardinal quoted Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation: “if we are not giving people God, we are not giving them enough.” In the context of an episcopal ordination, this quote was a reminder that what a bishop is called to do is to bring God to the people under his care. But, if we rephrase this quote just a bit, it reminds us what all of us are called to do according to our personal vocations, but what is most especially true for Sr. Stella today: “if we are not giving God our entire selves, we are not giving Him enough.” Bishop, priest, married, single, young, old, God wants us entirely. Today, Sr. Stella makes a public and solemn profession that she is responding to this call and giving herself to God alone.

Through her profession of the evangelical counsels, through her vow of stability, her consecrated virginity, her commitment to the praying of the Divine Office, her participation in the Liturgy, her acceptance of the labors entrusted to her by her superiors, to her embrace of the Rule of St. Benedict and to her personal and private prayers offered on behalf of all of us, she is making it clear to us and to the world, that she wishes to live for God alone, like the grain of wheat, to die to self in order to bear fruit that will last.

Pondering this total gift of self, it seems so appropriate that we are celebrating it in the context of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary, always our model and intercessor, loved a life for God alone. From the moment of her Immaculate Conception, to the Annunciation, to the home at Nazareth, to the Wedding at Cana, to the Foot of the Cross, to her Son’s resurrection and ascension, to the descent of the Holy Spirit, and even now in the glories of heaven, she lived, not seeking her own glory, but to give God the glory, or in the words of the Prayer of Consecration, Our Lady “lived a life worthy of praise without seeking to be praised.” She lives to teach her children, including Sr. Stella, to do exactly the same. Our Lady’s total “yes” to God allowed the Word to become Flesh and issued in a “new heaven and a new earth. Sr. Stella’s “yes” to God today, consecrating herself as a daughter of St. Benedict, means that through her work and prayer, she will not only grow in her relationship with Christ, her Divine Spouse, but will also make Jesus Christ present to her community, to her Diocese, to her State and to the world, through her witness. By living for God alone, nurtured by the Divine Office, nourished by the Blessed Sacrament, strengthened by her labors at the chicken coup and in the blueberry patch, she will contribute to the coming of the reign of God in the world. While some might consider her life in the cloister to be without merit and an attempt to escape from the world, because she does this for God Alone, it transforms it into a sacramental gift for the Church and the world. Because she is doing this out of love for God alone, it transforms everything she does here at the Abbey into an offering to God for her sanctification and the sanctification of the entire world.

And so today, we ask Our Lady to watch over her daughter in an Abbey dedicated to her Immaculate Heart. That just as Mary said yes and lived for God alone and brought us Christ, so through Her intercession, Sr. Stella’s yes also brings Christ to her and according to God’s will to all of us. Through the prayers of Mary, St. Benedict, St. Scholastica, all the saints and our prayers may Sr. Stella come to possess “God in all things, whom she is choosing above all things.” May her soul always proclaim the greatness of the Lord and her spirit rejoice in God her savior. May she die to self like the grain of wheat and truly live for God alone.