by Jill Ragar Esfeld
jill.esfeld@theleaven.org
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Rain poured down on the altar arrange for an out of doors Mass of thanksgiving on the grotto of Mary, Mom of God Monastery right here the morning of Sept. 23.
The Mass, celebrating 15 years of the Neighborhood of the Lamb within the archdiocese, was to start at 11 a.m.
However by 10:30 a.m., the storm was intensifying and the forecast was grim.
Little Brothers and Sisters of the neighborhood ran by means of the downpour to relocate the Mass from its out of doors venue to the chapel of the Little Sisters’ monastery, Lumen Christi, a block away.
With out hesitation or regard for the rain and lightning, associates and neighbors pitched in to assist.
God works in mysterious methods. What might have been a soggy catastrophe became a heartwarming show of individuals serving to each other save the day.
Cozily crowded within the stunning Lumen Christi chapel and overflowing into the basement, patrons from completely different cultures and walks of life joined the Little Brothers and Sisters in thanksgiving.
The lightning and thunder had been no match for the melodic concord of the neighborhood as they sang the Mass.
“As we speak the Lord needed to see how artistic the neighborhood may very well be,” mentioned celebrant Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann. “They had been as much as the duty.”
Concelebrant Father Anthony Ouellette is aware of effectively how God can take a easy occasion and rework it into one thing great.
“I feel it’s superb,” he mentioned. “You propose on issues usually in your life; you don’t know what God’s going to do.”
Father Ouellette got here to know the Neighborhood of the Lamb when he was a seminarian in Rome.
“My relationship with the Little Sisters once I was in Rome was so useful to me,” he recalled. “It gave me a spot the place I might go on my time off and work of their yard and simply have a little bit little bit of peace and quiet, pray with them.
“It was very a lot of an oasis for me.”
Father Ouellette’s first Mass serving as a deacon was on the Little Sisters’ Roman chapel. That’s when Archbishop Naumann first encountered the order.
“I used to be entranced by the wonder with which the Little Sisters pray and have fun the liturgy, by their simplicity and by their pleasure,” he mentioned. “I didn’t come to Rome looking for a spiritual neighborhood for the archdiocese; this was not in my thoughts.”
Regardless of that, the archbishop mentioned the Holy Spirit moved him to inform the neighborhood’s foundress, Little Sister Marie, that he would welcome them in the event that they ever thought of establishing a basis in the US.
Members of the Neighborhood of the Lamb got here to Father Ouellette’s ordination to the priesthood in 2006 and visited the archbishop, hitchhiking by means of Kansas to present him a present of a loaf of bread, their neighborhood custom.
“It was a yr later that Father Anthony inspired me to jot down to Little Sister Marie and formally invite the neighborhood to come back to the archdiocese in Kansas Metropolis,” mentioned the archbishop.
Within the spring of 2008, the unique Kansas Little Sisters of the Lamb, in addition to extra Sisters and Brothers, got here to Kansas to determine their first and to date solely order in the US.
“It was not simply to have a home of God,” mentioned Little Sister Judith. “However we would have liked additionally to be temples of God — dwelling monasteries.”
On the finish of the Mass, because the solar started to shine for the remaining festivities, Little Sister Judith expressed gratitude to the neighborhood patrons.
“Thanks to all those that made these monasteries doable,” she mentioned, “by your providing, your prayer, your help, your friendship.”
Father Ouellette had many plans for his life aside from assembly a neighborhood of Little Sisters.
“So, it simply appears attention-grabbing to me,” he mentioned, “how God took one thing so regular, unusual — only a place the place I might go on my time off — and turned it into this.
“It’s stunning all these folks which were touched in methods by the neighborhood — so many various folks, completely different backgrounds, languages, cultures.
“It’s a lovely expression of the higher church.”
