To nurture and to be nurtured

Last Thursday I was with the Sisters of St. Anne, a religious community of five women--three of them are filipino, one is from the Bahamas, and the other from Brooklyn, though each has been in the order their entire adult lives. In that sense, given their life-long vocations, it's important to say that their home is at the convent in Arlington Heights, Massachusetts.

Every morning at 8:00am they gather in their exquisite (Ralph Adams Cram) chapel, stunning in its simplicity, for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. None of them is ordained so the sisters rely on priests from around the Diocese of Massachusetts to preside and preach. It's my privilege to be among the priests whom they invite; my day is usually the last Thursday of every month.

Arlington Heights is so close...it takes me fewer than ten minutes to get there. And without fail one of them is in the sacristy to welcome--with such warmth and genuine interest. Everything is neat as a pin...the sacristy, the vestments, and the altar furnishings are spotlessly laundered, and done so with devotion and years of steeped-in prayer. The liturgy is straight-up Prayer Book, but oh how they're there. The responses are are strong, and the quiet is long.

After Mass, as I drove over the hill into Winchester, I realized that I felt every bit as home there, with the sisters, as I do with the people at the Parish of the Epiphany, and that both communities have the capacity to do two things: to nurture me, and to be nurtured by me. If there's nothing else to the sacrament of Holy Baptism surely it's that...a mutual portion of Christ's presence.