News From Home

September 2026

By Sister M. Anselma

Dear Family and Friends,

When people encounter our Sisters, they often tell us that we have a lot of Joy! Well… if you have been around the Mother of Good Counsel Home lately, you may have noticed twice the Joy around!!

The United States Motherhouse convent for our religious community is located in Alton, IL and typically houses 50 – 60 Sisters. Over the past few years, through a number of disruptive building issues, we have determined it is time to complete a wholesale renovation and refresh of the infrastructure of the Motherhouse campus. It is truly important for the health of our Sisters so we can continue to serve the way God intends!!

After almost two years of planning, we literally emptied two-thirds of the campus for the 1^st phase of the renovation which will last twelve months. Then in a year, we will shift everything once again and prepare for the 2^nd phase of the project which will last another eight months. It is no small feat, and one that we have embraced as a community on both the physical and spiritual level!

But where do all of the Sisters go in the meantime??!! Well, part of the answer is… to the Mother of Good Counsel Home!! Over the past month, we have welcomed an additional thirteen Sisters to our convent here! Some of those Sisters have been transferred from our Infirmary in Alton to be cared for as residents within the Home. The rest have filled up the convent bedrooms we have available. We are now twenty-four Sisters strong and joyful!! It is so beautiful to see the Chapel filled with Sisters at prayer time!

In the midst of preparing for their arrival, we had planned to reseal the convent bedroom windows, many of which were leaking. With further investigation, however, we discovered resealing wouldn’t do the trick. The windows were in bad shape and needed to be replaced. Guess how many windows we have in the convent… Fifty-Three!! That’s one huge, unplanned capital project!! Yikes!!

But God is faithful and is always helping us! Shortly after the discovery of this need, I shared this story with some Mission Supporters of the Home. Later, a couple approached me with the desire to pay for the windows!! What a blessing!! By the time the Sisters from Alton arrived, every bedroom had a beautiful new window!

We can now appreciate and pray with the quote from St. John of the Cross below! Our old windows were fogged up due to moisture between the panes, and we couldn’t see well through them. Our new windows are so clear that all we see is the beauty of God’s creation surrounding us!

“The soul on which the divine light of God’s being is ever shining… is like this window. If the window is totally clean and pure, the sunlight will so transform and illumine it that to all appearances the window will be identical with the ray of sunlight.” – St. John of the Cross

Thank you to the generous Mission Supporters who have made this possible! May we all be like new windows… allowing God’s light to shine clearly through our lives so that others may see His beauty!!

In His Merciful Heart,

Sister M. Anselma
Administrator

By Fr. Nick Muenks

In his first letter, the apostle John exclaims, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God! Yet so we are. … We are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-2). Every human parent hopes that their child will grow up to be like him or her, sharing the same virtues, values, and joys. Every human parent also hopes that their child will be unlike them in certain other ways—they hope that their children will avoid mistakes, sins, and sorrows. Of course, God our Father has none of those things, and so His promise to us to simple: “We shall be like Him.” But what a promise!

What am I going to be when I grow up? As John says, I do not yet know fully. Still, I know something about it. If God wants to make me like Himself, then I can look to Jesus Christ to see what that is like. As John says in the Gospel, “no one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him” (John 1:10). Jesus Christ is the model for a child of God, fully grown-up. But when I think of all that Jesus did and suffered, growing up as a Christian begins to feel quite intimidating.

Growing up is a constant process of being stretched. We have all looked at compassion on the tears of a little child who has been stretched beyond his limits by a task that is too hard, a bruise that hurts too much, or a need to stay up too far past bedtime. The littlest things are hard at first, but become natural as we grow older. Being a child of God is not any different. It often feels as though being a Christian is harder than it should be! We may feel that we have too many responsibilities, too little rest, too many temptations, too much going against us, too many sorrows. For God, these may be little things, but we are only children, and for us, it is all we can handle, and more!

Little children have no embarrassment about asking (even demanding) help from Mom or Dad. They expect to receive it when they ask, and they ask like people who expect to receive what they ask for. Rarely do we have the confidence to treat another adult the way we treated our parents when we were small. But we should have the same confidence in turning to our heavenly Father, and for the same reason: we are His children. Jesus drove his home by asking the crowds to reflect on their own experience of being parents. “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 7:11-13)?

Why do parents give good things to their children? Because they love them. Because they want to see them flourish. Because the child’s destiny is to grow up, and the parent wants to help the child become something greater. God is the same. He knows we are constantly being stretched as we grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and because of that we can expect Him to help us. Therefore, “let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help” (Hebrews 4:16). As God’s children, we should be turning to God constantly. There is no question of bothering Him, or possibly wearing Him out, as we might have done at times with our earthly parents. They were only human, and for them to get tired out was natural. But our Father in heaven is supernatural, and there is no limit to His power or good will. If we plead for grace when the Christian life begins to stretch us—and then go forward confidently, as children who expect to receive their Father’s help—we will find in time that the supernatural life comes naturally. As it should, for that is the life we will be living always, when we have grown up.

Fr. Nick Muenks

Chaplain

Golf Tournament!

By Sister M. Luka

Our 23rd annual Gold Tournament is this month on September 21st!! We’ve had an amazing turnout this year so far!

We are in need of one more beverage cart sponsorship to complete our sponsorships for this year’s tournament, so if you are interested, please reach out to me ASAP!

Thank you to everyone who’s participated this year already. We can’t wait to golf with you!!

Sister M. Luka

Mission Support Coordinator