Advent – Christmas 2024 Update

Hello! This has been an extraordinary year for Santa Rita Abbey with the passing of three of our Sisters this summer, followed by the premier of the documentary, Final Vows this fall.

Here are a few scenes from the last several months.

The birth of twin fawns behind the statute of St Joseph and the Child Jesus at the end of July. This doe has given birth here every summer.

Sr Esther’s tiny vegetable garden flourished – tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, beets. Yum!

The documentary featuring our monastery of Santa Rita, “Final Vows,” is being released in 2025. If you missed its world premier at Big Sky Film Festival in February and the Fox Theater Tucson screening on September 8, it will soon be available for streaming and on DVD. Stay tuned for more details to come!

The September 8th screening was an amazing event. The theater was packed with an attentive and appreciative audience.

A Q&A session followed. Left to right: cinematographer and editor Jonathan VanBallenberghe, Sr. Pam, Mother Vicki, and producer and director Victoria Westover.

Back home at Cistercian Altar Breads at the monastery, sisters, employees, and volunteers have been busy all summer and fall producing whole wheat hosts to be used at Masses all across the USA. In October alone we produced over 1,000,000 people’s hosts in three different sizes!

At the beginning of November Fr Alan Deck, SJ, gave us our annual community retreat

Meanwhile, the fawns had lost their spots – how fast wild animal babies grow up!

Sr Clare celebrated her ninety-seventh birthday in November!

The week of Thanksgiving, a small group of seniors from Salpointe Catholic High School and two of their teachers visited us for a few hours.

After learning about our way of life and seeing our altar bread bakery in action, they raked up about 5,000,000 leaves in our front yard. Thank you!

As we enter into this season of Advent and Christmas, this quote from 1 Thessalonians 3 expresses our prayer for you and your loved ones. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.”

Come, Lord Jesus, and fill our troubled hearts, our troubled world with your Peace!