Giving Thanks for 25 Years in Whitesville!
It’s hard to believe we’re approaching the silver jubilee of our relocation to Whitesville! Join us as we take a little stroll down memory lane …
It all began in 1989 when we engaged two professionals to plan the renovation of our chapel on Benita Avenue in Owensboro, and the construction of a small retreat house separate from the monastery area. Nothing was further from our minds than a relocation of the monastery!
Our goal was to fulfill the Church’s desire that “religious communities for their part, [and] contemplative institutes in particular...should offer to men and women of our day helpful opportunities for prayer and spiritual life, thus meeting a need for meditation and a deepening of faith which is acutely felt at present. They should also offer suitable opportunities and facilities for sharing in their own liturgical celebrations….” (Directives for Mutual Relations Between Bishops and Religious in the Church, April 23, 1978)
During the planning process, a shared vision began to take shape:
we came to a deeper desire for a chapel that would facilitate guest participation in our liturgies;
we became more and more convinced that city encroachment on the silence and solitude of our monastery was a growing threat;
we had new awareness of the value of the retreats we had offered at our monastery until 1968.
in discussing our need for vocations, we came to realize that many of us had entered the community as a result of making a retreat at the monastery.
Although the planning process stirred a new vision in our hearts, it resulted in a verdict we were unprepared to hear: we had an “architectural dilemma!” Try as we may, it just wasn’t possible to carry out this vision on our four-acre plot in Owensboro.
Then our first miracle happened - a movement of the Holy Spirit surprising us all! Without it being on anyone’s agenda, we came to a unanimous decision that we needed to relocate the monastery. And a miracle this truly was, for 18 women who rarely had unanimous agreement on anything!
Our bishop (surely more than a trifle worried about our small community with its big ideas) showed cautious openness to the project, responding with kind benevolence: “If you wait until you have the money, you will never do anything for the Kingdom of God.”
And so, with just the strong call burning in our hearts and total trust that “nothing is impossible for God”, we launched forth, after deciding against investing in a $20,000 feasibility study that might have proven us insane! Convinced that if God wanted it, nothing would stop it, we began to take one small step at a time. If God didn’t want it, He would show us. The entire project was placed daily in the care of St. Joseph, to whom we had always entrusted the temporal concerns of our monastery. We began to spread the relocation prayer and to enlist the help of relatives and friends.
Obviously, the first thing was to find land. From the outset, St. Joseph sent us generous helpers who believed in the value of Passionist contemplative life. Some offered to donate land. Others gave generously of themselves, escorting us all over the county to inspect prospective sites. We ended up with five possible locations, but the Nuns were sharply divided on every one of them! Meeting this impasse, we enlisted professionals to walk us through a decision-making process which resulted, not in a choice of land, but in our throwing out all five sites! Being back to square one, and weary after our four-month search, we were advised to rest for a while. God had other plans.
That very evening Vernon Wathen called about land for sale on Crisp Road in Whitesville. The next day, Sept. 24, 1991, the feast of St. Vincent Strambi, Passionist, two of us inspected the site, finding it very much to our liking. However, knowing that the community would have to reach an agreement on the purchase, we laughingly decided not to get too enthused until the rest of the Nuns saw the property themselves.
Sister Mary Elizabeth is ready to celebrate!
A few days later, three carloads of Passionist Nuns visited the site. You should have heard the excited, happy and grateful unanimity exploding that day! At last, God had shown us our promised land. The site met all criteria: a rural location, enough land to protect our monastic silence and solitude into the future, great natural beauty to lift the heart to God, and sufficient space not only for a larger chapel and monastery, but also for a small retreat house. A couple of the younger members thought that the best part was the three and a half acre lake stocked with fish!!
From that day on, the miracles of God gained momentum. The Catholic property owner gave us a large reduction on the price. With a generous grant from our long-time friends of the V.J. Steele Foundation, the land was purchased, and plans for the new monastery could begin.
The journey was not all joy, of course, and we didn’t expect it to be. Passionists know that new life in the Church comes forth only by a profound sharing in the Passion. Our relocation journey is a treasured memory of a communal experience of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Our hearts burn within us as we ponder these things, remembering them with you.