Laetare Sunday

Spring has arrived! The grotto just outside the entrance to the chapel hear at Lanherne.

The chapel (now sadly an Anglican chapel) at Lanhydrock, with Steve Best pictured a very good local craftsman who has been a tremendous blessing for the work of restoration here at Lanherne and who took time to show me around Lanhydrock (I'll explain below).

Grounds at Lanhydrock.

Grounds at Lanhydrock (buildings in distance).

Morning of the Annunciation at Lanherne.

Annunciation morning.

Dear Friends and Family,

A blessed Laetare Sunday! I hope this note finds you rejoicing appropriately. It has certainly been a blessed weekend here. As you can see from the photos, spring has arrived! While the winters here are cloudy and rainy, that leads to much greenery and many flowers, and the countryside is lovely when the sun is out.

I had a simple but beautiful celebration of the Annunciation yesterday, with a sung Mass in the morning, beautiful weather, time to take a jog down to the ocean, sermon preparation for Sunday, and some particularly blessed time of prayer in the early morning hours with Our Lady. So much to be thankful for. She has taken such good care of me for so many years. May She guide me for the rest of my life and always do with me as She wishes.

This week I received a private tour of Lanhydrock, one of the most visited National Trust (i.e. national "treasure") properties in England. This was thanks to Steve Best, pictured above, a very kind and tireless worker out here at Lanherne (to recall "Lanherne" is told English for the "Chapel of St. Hernan" and is the name for the Convent I'm at). He's friends with the curator for Lanhydrock and arranged for a private tour. The grounds and old home are quite impressive. It gives a glimpse into life of the nobility as it was lived in centuries past. The tour included all sorts of details including how the kitchen was run, servants' quarters and lives, where the children performed plays, the old billiards room the men used to retire to, etc. To be honest though it was in many was a tour of the empty things of this world. I couldn't help but feel how empty all of that was when the essential thing was missing: faith in Our Lord and a life spent serving Him. Some noble families of course did that and did it admirably, but this does not seem to have been one of those examples.

Why did I go on the tour? Well, Lanherne is a property as old, in fact older, than this other one and was owned by a noble family, but a family who were very Catholic and sacrificed greatly for their Faith, for some of them it cost them their lives, and eventually gave the home to the Carmelites to become their convent. So our building is also extremely important for historical purposes. The project director for our monastery works for the National Trust and suggested that I see some of their properties to get a sense of how they preserved things and presented them to the public. Lanherne is very unique in that it has authentic nuns still living in it!

The Masses today were a joy--a particular joy realizing that we are now just three weeks away from the celebration of Our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. It also turned out to fall on my birthday this year. Since entering religious life 21 years ago I've gotten in the habit of not celebrating birthdays, but the word leaked out somehow that today was mine and so the little congregation here prepared...

... a birthday cake with the Annunciation pictured on the top! Most of it was eaten by the children and others this morning (at my request), but they saved a large piece (only a small portion of which I'll manage to eat tonight!) for my supper. So in just a moment I will sign off here to have some dinner and some birthday cake.

May God grant each of you the peace, joy, and strength to live well these final three weeks of Lent. For "if we have died with Him we shall also live with Him; if we suffer we shall also reign with Him" (2 Tim 2:12).

In Cordibus Iesu et Mariae,
Fr. Tony Pillari