Here is a convent with a problem….that others wish they had! Ave Maria! Linda——-http://www.chnonline.org/2006-08-24/newsstory1.html
Cistercian nuns seek new monastery
Contemplative community’s growth among reasons a new monastery is needed; Archbishop Dolan lends support By Sam Lucero Catholic Herald Staff
The Cistercian nuns of Valley of Our Lady Monastery participate in Mass from the choir loft as Capuchin Fr. Leo Petrimoulx recites prayers from behind the altar below. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero)
PRAIRIE DU SAC — Hours before sunrise, life begins anew at the Valley of Our Lady Monastery. It’s a life like no other in this rural countryside. The 16 Cistercian nuns, who call the 122-acre monastery in Prairie du Sac their home, live a cloistered life of solitude and prayer. Each day they rise at 3:40 a.m. to prepare for matins, the first of seven prayer services, known as Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, held throughout the day.
While prayer is a hallmark of monastic life, it is not the only activity in which the nuns engage. There is time for individual and group study, as well as recreation. More importantly, there is time for work.
A cloistered Cistercian nun pauses in prayer at the Valley of Our Lady Monastery near Prairie du Sac, Wis. (Photo by Sam Lucero)To sustain their livelihood, the nuns bake altar bread. Their modern bread-baking operation seems out of place in a Cistercian monastery, whose roots go back to 1098.
The process begins with flour and water measured and mixed into a commercial mixer, blending gallons of altar bread batter. It is then pumped through a hose attached to a pipe and poured into an oven, where 30 heated irons bake the bread and move it along a conveyor belt. The oven is about 15 feet long and each baking iron is heated to about 325 degrees.
Starsha Johnson, one of two new postulants at Valley of Our Lady Monastery, counts altar breads in preparation for packaging.The computerized baker, manufactured as a cookie wafer machine and imported from Austria, produces about 6,000 11-by-15-inch sheets of whole wheat or white bread in about six hours. The nuns bake one day a week and cut and package the other five days. A workday is from about 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with breaks for prayer and meals.
The process, which involves 10 nuns doing various tasks, produces more than 12 million altar breads each year.
After the thin sheets of altar bread are removed from the oven, they must be softened. They are placed on racks and moved to a special room where a warm fog penetrates and softens the bread.
The Cistercian Sisters sit together in the dining hall, called a refectory, for dinner. On this hot summer evening, rather than heat up the monastery’s oven, the sisters enjoyed cold cereal and fruits.Following this dampening process, the sheets are stacked several inches high and placed on a bread cutter that resembles a drill press. The bread is cut into round hosts of three different sizes and then inspected for imperfections.
The wafers are gathered and placed upright on a half-tube rack in batches of 100. These racks are loaded onto another machine that packages the wafers in rolls of airtight cellophane tubes, ready for packaging into cardboard shipping boxes and transporting to more than 400 parishes around the United States.
Archbishop Dolan to host reception for nuns in Milwaukee Sept. 22
To raise awareness of the Cistercian nuns, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison will host a reception on Friday, Sept. 22, 5-7 p.m., at the Milwaukee Club, 706 N. Jefferson St., Milwaukee. Reservations for the reception can be made by calling Darryl Hanson at (414) 525-0980.
Success has come at a price. Expansion of the bakery has encroached on other parts of the monastery, including the infirmary, workrooms and living quarters, known as cells.
This shortage of space was an indication that a new monastery was needed, but it wasn’t the first indication, however.
From the time six Cistercian nuns arrived in Prairie du Sac from Switzerland in 1957 to establish the only Cistercian monastery of nuns in North America, it was apparent that some day a new monastery would be needed. The farmland purchased by the sisters included two buildings — one was a stone house built in 1850 and the other was a summer home for Gov. Emanuel L. Phillip built in the early 1900s. The buildings’ design did not meet the traditional requirements of a Cistercian monastery, but the sisters made do with their surroundings.
Construction of two buildings, one in 1964 to create living quarters for more nuns, and the other in 1994 to accommodate the altar bread operation, only postponed the inevitable. Even the chapel, where the nuns spend much of their day in prayer and song, is too small.
As the community of nuns grew and building problems — such as basement flooding, moldy walls, and inadequate heating — increased, the quest for a new monastery intensified. Population growth and building expansion around Sauk County made it clear that a new home in a new location would be needed.
The decision to find a new home came in 1999. After the Madison Catholic Herald published a story about the nuns’ plight in December 2003, Harvey and Marcie Yero of Highland in the Madison Diocese, offered to donate their 220-acre farm as a gift to the sisters. The land, worth more than $300,000, was donated in the name of Harvey Yero’s deceased wife, Dorothy. The land had been in Dorothy’s family since 1915, and Harvey believed she would have approved of the donation.
The gift of land for a new monastery was a prayer answered. Since then, the nuns have been praying for another dire need: assistance to build their new home.
Centuries ago, patrons such as royal families would pay for the construction of monasteries. Today, a fund-raising campaign is required.
With the help of Darryl Hanson, president of Hanson Fundraising Group. Ltd., in Franklin, a campaign is under way to raise $7 million for construction of a Cistercian monastery that meets the requirements of the order’s founder, St. Bernard of Clairvoux. The design requires a chapel, dining hall and kitchen, sufficient cells for up to 25 nuns, a guesthouse to accommodate visitors and a gatehouse where visitors make contact with the cloistered nuns.
Hanson has enlisted the aid of Thomas Bausch and Alfred Eberle, both of Milwaukee, to oversee the capital campaign which has “Fulfilling the Vision: Meeting the Need” as its theme. Bausch is a professor in the College of Business at Marquette University and Eberle is a former director of alumni relations at Marquette.
Sr. Roberta Boyer, capital campaign liaison for the Cistercian nuns, believes God will provide for the community — in God’s time.
“I guess I’m at the point where I kind of step back and say, ‘OK, Lord, it’s in your hands. You started this community. You finish it,’” she said. “It’s taught me a great lesson of faith, that I can trust our Lord to know that the funds will be there for what we need and only what we need.”
The present monastery property was assessed six years ago for more than $2 million, said Sr. Roberta. “We have had some inquiries, but since we just do not know when we can break ground, we have let people know that we cannot sell,” she said.
With the addition of six postulants in only five months, Sr. Roberta believes the community’s growth is part of God’s plan.
“I look at this (proposed) big monastery, and everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s impossible. It’s too big of a project,’ and I say if God wants that to happen, it’s going to happen. It will happen in his time,” she said. “Every Sister over here knows it’s going to happen, simply because (God) wouldn’t be sending us women for which there is no room if he wasn’t going to provide the room.”
Cistercians on the Web
To learn more about the Valley of Our Lady Monastery and the Cistercian nuns, visit their Web site. To view audio slideshows of the nuns at work and at prayer, go to the Catholic Herald’s online slideshows link.
