Women’s History Month: Mother Theodore and the church

After receiving the Blessed Sacrament upon her arrival at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Mother Theodore Guerin examined the church a little more closely. This is what she writes about it:

“No tabernacle, no altar, for can the name of altar be given to three planks forming a table forty inches long, supported by two stakes driven into the ground? — that is all, for there are no altar cards, no stand for the missal, in fine, nothing but what I have mentioned. A cotton cloth is spread over these planks; there is a small altar stone; and now you have the whole altar. Except at the time of Mass, the pyx, the chalice, and the rest are covered with a dark blue calico which seems to have been used as a bedspread by the good country people.”

To view some of the early sacred vessels used by the Congregation, click here.