The Easter Sundays’ Gospels beg for a road trip. On Saturday, April 21, 2012, Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, Novices and Postulant Regina Lehnerz, after jamming on seasonal liturgical songs the night before, packed up musical instruments, grabbed highlighted musical scores and traveled @60 miles southwest to West Bend, WI. Here we arrived, open to hearing the Scriptures, breaking bread and anything else that we may experience with the Catholic Community of St. Frances Cabrini in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
Why West Bend?
True, other travelors have named and praised this “paradise in the heart of the Kettle Moraine”. But for us, this is Regina’s home, the place where her parents live across the street from St. Frances Cabrini Church. It is a place of faithful friends and families that have supported her own journey of faith. It is truly a place of the heart.
A Place of Connections and Welcome
As always, we never visit a place where we don’t meet others in the congregation who have other connections to our Community (e.g. Sister Georgianna Rank’s sister Helen lives here!) These kinds of conversations (God-incidences) always ‘make our hearts burn’ with a greater love for our Sisters’ witness throughout the years and the blessing of belonging to one, holy, apostolic Church.
Indeed, we experienced an overwhelming feeling of welcome. Father Nathan Reesman was quick to introduce us and his vocation-focused homily couldn’t have included more mention of us. For the first time in our parish music outreach, we had our own sound team of techies (Bruce and Regina’s Dad, John) who upgraded the quality of our musical talents. Kathy (Regina’s Mom) also joined our choir adding a strong, familiar voice to the congregation helping them and us feel more comfortable praising God.
On the way home, the first part of the Gospel reading came alive in our vehicles:
The two (nine) disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread (including the pizza at Lehnerz’s :)!)
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