Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Ukraine

Update from the Benedictine community in Lviv, Ukraine

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The situation with the reception of refugees remains intense. People from the eastern regions of our country continue to arrive here and seek refuge.  Most of them managed to escape the bombardments by evacuation trains or green corridors and have already witnessed the explosions.  They are often very stressed and need to be taken care of.

On the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, there are 117 people (44 of them children) in our monastery without monks and nuns (139 in total).  We were able to increase the number of beds a little and create a more comfortable stay for them.  In total, more than five hundred people during this period asked to stay overnight or stayed at the monastery for some time.  Now we have mostly families who are permanent and don’t want to go any further.  With some of the families we developed a warm and friendly relationship, they quickly became part of our family.  At the Easter Vigil there was the Baptism of our youngest resident, Nicol Scholastica, who was only two weeks old at the time of her arrival.

Thanks to your help we can take these people in and give them everything they need, and we are infinitely grateful that you are sympathetic to our suffering and that you are close to us in such a concrete way.

The Benedictine Sisters of Florida and our donors have contributed to the refugee relief.

We thank you for your loving support to the Sisters and their missions!

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Pope’s Act of Consecration of Russia and Ukraine to Our Lady

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Act of Consecration

to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Basilica of Saint Peter

25 March 2022

O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, in this time of trial we turn to you.  As our Mother, you love us and know us: no concern of our hearts is hidden from you.  Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence!  You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace.  We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars.  We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations.  We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young.  We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.  We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons.  We stopped being our neighbor’s keepers and stewards of our common home.  We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters.  We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves.  Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

Holy Mother, amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war, you remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life.  He has given you to us and made your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the Church and for all humanity.  By God’s gracious will, you are ever with us; even in the most troubled moments of our history, you are there to guide us with tender love.

We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart.  We are your beloved children.  In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion.  At this dark hour, help us and grant us your comfort.  Say to us once more: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother?”  You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times.  In you we place our trust.  We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, you will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid.

That is what you did at Cana in Galilee, when you interceded with Jesus and he worked the first of his signs.  To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, you said to him: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3).  Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded.  We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace.  We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness.  How greatly we need your maternal help!

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.

Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world.

Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.

Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.

Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts.  May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew.  Amid the thunder of weapons, may your prayer turn our thoughts to peace.  May your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs.  May your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land.  May your Sorrowful Heart move us to compassion and inspire us to open our doors and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.

Holy Mother of God, as you stood beneath the cross, Jesus, seeing the disciple at your side, said: “Behold your son” (Jn 19:26).  In this way he entrusted each of us to you.  To the disciple, and to each of us, he said: “Behold, your Mother” (v. 27).  Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome you into our lives and our history.  At this hour, a weary and distraught humanity stands with you beneath the cross, needing to entrust itself to you and, through you, to consecrate itself to Christ.  The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate you with great love, now turn to you, even as your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice and poverty.

Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine.  Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love.  Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world.  The “Fiat” that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace.  We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more.  To you we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.

Through your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days.  Our Lady of the “Fiat”, on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God.  May you, our “living fountain of hope”, water the dryness of our hearts.  In your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion.  You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace.  Amen.

~by Pope Francis

 

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Benedictine Women Send Donations to Ukraine

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Benedictine Women Send Donations to Their Sisters in Ukraine

~Original story from Benedictine Sisters of Erie.

The Benedictine Sisters of Florida have joined with women’s Benedictine monasteries around the world in offering financial support to Benedictine Sisters who serve in the Ukraine. By way of Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum (CIB), whose members represent women’s monasteries on almost every continent, the sisters have sent more than $200,000 in dollars and euros to aid victims and refugees of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The monies have gone directly to Mother Blandyna Michniewicz, Abbess of the Monastery of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in Warsaw and a CIB delegate for the region of Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania. She and the sisters in the Ukraine are working together to meet needs as best they can.

Sister Lynn McKenzie, OSB, moderator of the CIB, communicates information received from the sisters in Poland. “The nuns of the monastery in Zhytomyr have evacuated to another monastery in L’viv, in the far western part of Ukraine. I have learned that they are receiving approximately 100 refugees from other parts of Ukraine per day and feeding them and sending them on their way, hopefully to safety. We pray for the safety and good health of the nuns now in L’viv. Indeed, we pray for all Benedictines and people of Ukraine who have lived through this atrocity. We give God thanks for their fidelity and love.”

In addition to financial assistance, CIB sisters in Germany have also organized the shipment of medicines and bandages to Ukraine. The transport went from Germany to Warsaw and from there passed through a “well organized ‘corridor’ and transportation network in Ukraine to reach the most needy,” according to Sister Caterina Gorgen at the Benedictine Abbey of Engelthal in Germany.

If you would like to offer financial assistance CIB is collecting funds. All monies donated through this link will go directly to the Benedictine Sisters in Poland for immediate refugee relief. DONATE HERE.

 

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Pope calls prayers and fasting

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Pope calls for day of prayer, fasting

for peace in Ukraine

 

S. Lynn McKenzie, CIB moderator writes: “There are Benedictine nuns and sisters in Ukraine who need our prayers.  I heard from the CIB Delegate of CIB Region 7 which includes Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania – she has been in touch with the abbess of the monastery of nuns in Zhytomyr Ukraine who said that the military base near them was destroyed by shelling last night.  Some people in the area are coming to the abbey of the nuns to take refuge.  I’m afraid that this will spill beyond Ukraine borders.”

VATICAN CITY | As the threat of war loomed over the world, Pope Francis called on people to pray and fast for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday.

Before concluding his general audience Feb. 23, the pope called on believers and nonbelievers to combat the “diabolical insistence, the diabolical senselessness of violence” with prayer and fasting.

“I invite everyone to make March 2, Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting for peace,” he said. “I encourage believers in a special way to devote themselves intensely to prayer and fasting on that day. May the Queen of Peace protect the world from the folly of war.”

In his appeal, the pope said he, like many around the world, felt “anguish and concern” after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The pope said that due to the “alarming” developments in the region, “once again, the peace of all is threatened by partisan interests.”

“I would like to appeal to those with political responsibilities to do a serious examination of conscience before God, who is the God of peace and not of war, who is the father of all and not only of some, who wants us to be brothers and sisters and not enemies,” he said.

He also urged world leaders to “refrain from any action that would cause even more suffering to the people, destabilizing the coexistence between nations and discrediting international law.”

Putin’s recognition of the two breakaway regions’ independence was seen by Western leaders as a violation of international law protecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and as a move that could pave the way for a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of the Russian president’s actions, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced sanctions against several Russian banks and institutions.

In a statement released Feb. 22, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, said Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has caused “irreparable damage” to the “logic of international relations.”

He also said the Russian president “destroyed foundational principles for a long-term process of restoring peace in Ukraine” and “created the path for a new wave of military aggression against our state.”

~Article by Catholic News Service posted on Florida Catholic Media
February 23,2022
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