On September 3, 2015, many visitors will be coming here inside our enclosure. It is the day of the Opening of the Beatification process of our Co-foundress, Mother Mary Michael, Adolfine Tönnies. We, in the Motherhouse, anticipate this day with joy and silent prayer of thanksgiving.
Mother Mary Michael is for me a model contemplative religious. I admire her resoluteness, determination and her decisiveness, yet at the same she humbly submitted to authority, respected and honored the decision of others, and was simple enough to ask the opinion of the Sisters under her charge. She was humble, but not the “crawling” kind of humility, but a humility that is completely founded on truth and love.
A true servant of the Holy Spirit, the God of love, she has love God simply and trustingly like a child. Her love was quiet, nothing that attracted attention and yet effective and edifying. To think of her childlike love for God, her great devotion to the Eucharist and her missionary zeal as well as her quiet and hidden fidelity even in little things edify and inspire me. Her gaze was fixed on God and on his will. She had lived her religious life to the full, gave her all and gave her best because she loved!
Her eventual beatification is not so much for her as for us, her Sisters, and for all the faithful devoted to her. We need in this modern time a help and a spiritual friend and sister who will help us come close to God and will show us the way to him again by the example of her childlike love and trust in the Divine Providence. She will be for us a “signpost”, pointing us the right way to our true home. May she intercede for us now; may she help us see and follow the way that leads to God. (Watch her video here )
