Day 24 - The heart of the IHM Community

The picture above was taken after Sunday mass at the Motherhouse. The Chapel is the centerpiece of the Motherhouse - it's WITHIN the Motherhouse itself. You come in through the front doors, cross the great tiled lobby, then through the first set of chapel doors, to the foyer, and then into the chapel itself.

The Motherhouse was designed by the father of Sister Margaret Brennan. He was architect of many important buildings in Michigan. It was built in the 1930's, following a fire that destroyed the earlier Motherhouse - incredible to think that such a building could have gone up in those days of the Great Depression. The windows are beautiful. They were brought over from Germany just before the beginning of WWII.

Mass is said here on Sundays and weekdays; occasionally, if a priest is not available, a service of word and communion is held instead. In the late afternoon, I go here for Evening Prayer (Divine Office) just before dinner.

All the sisters speak of the Motherhouse as "home,"  - as in, "when I first came home from Peru (or Nigeria or Kentucky or Albequerque) . . .  In spite of its size it has the feeling of a home. The sisters who are retired live here. There is a Health Care Center (a licensed skilled nursing facility) within the Motherhouse where not only sisters, but sometimes people from the surrounding town of Monroe, come after surgeries, etc. And its where those sisters live who require skilled nursing care. There is also a Memory Care unit where alzheimers patients live - elderly sisters, sometimes relatives of the sisters, sometimes lay persons. There's a store downstairs where one can buy the most important necessities; there's also a thrift store, a beauty salon, an ice-cream parlor, a physical therapy center, and a post office. Upstairs are administrative offices for the leadership team. Downstairs there are administrative offices for the congregation itself. It's very nearly a self-sustaining entitity.

Ooops! I hear a bell ringing!  Time for me to go to prayer - and then dinner - where there will be more good conversation! Almost every IHM sister was a school teacher in the beginning - other ministries branched out later. So lots of sharing of school stories . . .