There is an awful report about COVID and/or its complications striking a convent of Felician sisters in Livonia, Michigan. Beginning on Good Friday, 13 sisters have died. Many were infected and have recovered.
It is hard to imagine what the effect on that community will be. Since they were religious sisters, and not a young community by average age, it is likely that they have or had a strong sense of the Four Last Things. But still, to have it unfold like that in their midst must have been extremely difficult. Almost one quarter of the convent in such a short time.
TIME reports that 61 Felicians have died from COVID or its complications, worldwide.
Please, in your goodness, remember these sisters in your prayers. I am firmly convinced that the Restrainer, of whom Paul writes, is held back partly due to the prayers of faithful religious sisters.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescant in pace. Amen.
As it happens, a reader just sent me a relic of the Saint after whom these sisters were named by their foundress Bl. Mary Angela Truszkowska. They are “Felicians” because they were at a shrine in Poland dedicated to St. Felix of Cantalice, a 16th c. Capuchin friar and a friend of St. Philip Neri. His tomb is in Rome. He was the first Capuchin to be canonized.
I was about to send the relic off for a bit of maintenance, but is still here with me.
Perhaps this was somehow arranged by my Guardian Angel to prompt me to say Mass for those deceased sisters, and other women religious, who have died recently.
During this time, I’ve often been adding to the Propers also prayers for the sick, and indeed those sick and close to death. It is not now time to relax our petitions.
