Posted: Nov 14 2005 at 3:34pm | IP Logged

In Advent, we gather each Sunday evening in the community room under the big green wreath that swings above our heads on long purple ribbons. There are four tall candles set in the wreath, and each week Mother Abbess lights one more, first sprinkling the wreath and us with holy water and then reciting the day's collect, full of the Church's immense yearning for he coming of the little Redeemer. Come! Come! Come!" And we stand under the wreath where the Isaias-candle burns, and the St. John Baptist-candle, and the St. Joseph-candle joined at last by the Mary-candle; and we sing: "Veni, veni, Emmanuel." The monastery is on tiptoe with expectation, and the colored ropes and bells and stars that happy-faced nuns will soon be draping and pinning all over the monastery take their meaning from these prayers and these Office chants.

The last days of Advent, we stand in our choir stalls and sing the glorious O's of the waiting Church. The youngest postulant, looking terribly important and heavy with her responsibility, goes to the tower to ring the great Maria-bell (Miguel, the smaller bell, will join Maria on Christmas Eve), while the nuns chant: "O Wisdom...O Key...O King...Come!"