St. Blaise.

St. Blaise (d.316) was the bishop of Sebastea (which is in modern Turkey). One story holds that he cured a young man of a fish bone stuck in his throat while Blaise was on his way to martyrdom. He is the patron of illness to the throat, wild animals, and wool combers. On his memorial, we get our throats blessed with the crossed candles.

Feast of the Presentation

February 2nd was the Feast of the Presentation which is 40 days after Christmas. Years ago, monks have told me that they kept the Christmas trees up until then! We bless candles that we will use for the year (some of them). We began Mass in the St. Joseph's Chapel with the blessing of candles and processed to the church.

The Wise Men have arrived at the Creche.

Epiphany celebrates the introduction of Jesus to the Gentiles, in the form of the Wise Men or 3 Kings. This Nativity Set was recently repaired and repainted. The Wise Men and the camel all look great.

Br. Thomas

The first week of the year we were blessed to have a visit by Br. Thomas of Einsiedeln Abbey of Switzerland. This is the Abbey where our founder, Vincent Wehrle, was from. Br.
Thomas is spending the year studying at St. Meinrad's in Indiana. Here are a few pictures of him (one with a picture of Bishop Wehrle).

Chrismast Creche in the Church

A few pictures of our Christmas Creche in the church. We know that this set was in the church prior to the bankruptcy of 1924 according to Br. Victor and may have been purchased in the early 1910s. This past year, the parish raised funds to repair and repaint the figures. Here are a few pictures of the renewed Nativity figures. The pictures do not do justice to how good they really look.

Christmas gathering with the Sisters of SHM

On December 28th we had our annual Christmas gathering with the sisters of Sacred Heart Monastery. We start the evening with prayer (obviously, the best way to monastics to start anything) at Vespers followed by a meal. After this, we gather in our community room for visiting and games. Sr. Patty reported that the pinochle players were on their best behavior. I'm not so sure that this could be said for our Trivial Pursuit players of Sr. Phoebe, Br. Basil, Br. Bertrand, and Br. Alban. However, a good time was had by all.

Christmas Cheer

Christmas day is spent at our wonderful liturgies and other communal festivities. However, clean-up still needs to be done! Here are a few pictures of our clean-up after our Christmas dinner and also gathering in the community room for dessert and chat.