Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Founded Madonna House, in Combermere Canada (Death Dec. 14)
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Catherine de Hueck Doherty died on December 14, 1985, after a long illness. She left behind a spiritual family of more than 200 members, and foundations around the world. She left to the Church, which she loved passionately, a spiritual heritage that is a beacon for this new century. The following is taken from a Letter to Madonna House Family:
“We need to be poor! Let us live an ordinary life, but, beloved, let us live it with a passionate love for God. Become a mystery. Stretch one hand out to God, the other to your neighbour. Be cruciform. … Christ’s cross will be our revolution and it will be a revolution of love!”
Catherine Kolyschkine was born in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia, on August 15, 1896 to wealthy and deeply Christian parents. Raised in a devout aristocratic family, she grew up knowing that Christ lives in the poor, and that ordinary life is meant to be holy. Her father’s work enabled the family to travel extensively in Catherine’s youth. At the age of 15, she married her cousin, Boris de Hueck. Soon, the turmoil of World War I sent them both to the Russian front: Boris as an engineer, Catherine as a nurse.
The Russian Revolution destroyed the world they knew. Many of their family members were killed, and they themselves narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. The Revolution marked Catherine for life. She saw it as the tragic consequence of a Christian society’s failure to incarnate its faith. All her life she cried out against the hypocrisy of those who professed to follow Christ, while failing to serve him in others.Catherine and Boris became refugees, fleeing first to England, and then in 1921, to Canada, where their son George was born. In the following years she experienced grinding poverty as she laboured to support her ailing husband and child. After years of painful struggle, her marriage to Boris fell apart; later her marriage was annulled by the Church.
On May 17, 1947, Catherine came to Combermere, Ontario, Canada, with her second husband, American journalist Eddie Doherty, whom she had married in 1943.
(Image of Our Lady of Combermere at Madonna House)
Guests arrive from various countries to live and work at Madonna House.
Madonna House itself developed as a Training Centre for lay apostles. Over the years many thousands of guests — young and not so young, lay and cleric, men and women of many cultures, Catholic and not Catholic — have been inspired, set on fire, born anew and renewed in spirit through the hospitality and formation received at Madonna House, and have taken their experience home to the marketplaces.
Madonna House itself developed as a Training Centre for lay apostles. Over the years many thousands of guests — young and not so young, lay and cleric, men and women of many cultures, Catholic and not Catholic — have been inspired, set on fire, born anew and renewed in spirit through the hospitality and formation received at Madonna House, and have taken their experience home to the marketplaces.
Among the hundreds of guests each year, a few receive a vocational call from God and his Mother to dedicate their lives to him through Madonna House, and pour out their lives in the apostolic works of the Madonna House community. They make promises to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience according to the spirit and mandate of Madonna House. The scope of the Apostolate now extends from our training center in Combermere to eighteen mission houses in various countries.
(Image of the Madonna House Chapel)
Madonna House is constituted as a Public Association of the Christian Faithful within the Roman Catholic Church, under the authority of the bishop of the Diocese of Pembroke. Since 1958, the Madonna House family has included associate clergy: priests, bishops, and deacons serving in their own parishes, dioceses, and ministries, living and proclaiming the Madonna House spirituality in multiple countries and innumerable ways.
Madonna House is constituted as a Public Association of the Christian Faithful within the Roman Catholic Church, under the authority of the bishop of the Diocese of Pembroke. Since 1958, the Madonna House family has included associate clergy: priests, bishops, and deacons serving in their own parishes, dioceses, and ministries, living and proclaiming the Madonna House spirituality in multiple countries and innumerable ways.
Members of the Madonna House community live a simple daily routine beginning with a brief prayer service, followed by a day of work, and ending with Mass and dinner. Work at the main house generally consists of the day-to-day maintenance of the community, care of a farm, and the sorting and distribution of donations to the poor.
The spirituality of the Madonna House Apostolate is summarized in The Little Mandate, a "distillation" of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ brought forth by the apostolate's foundress. Some members of the apostolate live in "poustinia", meaning a small, sparsely furnished cabin or room (the term poustinia has its roots in the Russian word for "desert"). For these few staff workers, their voluntary life as poustiniks is somewhat like that of a hermit, though less strict.
(Images: Companion of the Cross priests visit Madonna House/EWTN Priest, Fr. Mark visits Madonna house with Companion of the Cross priest Fr. Jerry Gauvreau)
Madonna House welcomes guests into their community, allowing anyone to come and join their daily routine of work and prayer for varying lengths of time at their training centre in Combermere. Also, once a year, a program is offered to families at Madonna House's summer camp called Cana Colony. Cana Colony was begun as a response to the request by Pope Pius XII to Catherine Doherty in 1951 that she and Madonna House would "always remember the family. " Cana Colony began the following year and the camp is located at the edge of Bennett Lake.
Madonna House welcomes guests into their community, allowing anyone to come and join their daily routine of work and prayer for varying lengths of time at their training centre in Combermere. Also, once a year, a program is offered to families at Madonna House's summer camp called Cana Colony. Cana Colony was begun as a response to the request by Pope Pius XII to Catherine Doherty in 1951 that she and Madonna House would "always remember the family. " Cana Colony began the following year and the camp is located at the edge of Bennett Lake.
The main work of the Madonna House Apostolate is serving the poor — both the physically and spiritually poor. Donations sent to the community are redistributed locally and internationally. Through their missionary field houses, Madonna House staff workers serve the needs of the poor in many ways, from "prayer and listening houses" to soup kitchens.
The apostolate maintains a non-profit publications department, Madonna House Publications. It publishes the works of Catherine Doherty and other members of the community as part of its mission to spread the Gospel. The Madonna House monthly newspaper, Restoration, has been in continuous publication since 1947. Madonna House also works to promote the cause for canonization of their foundress, Catherine Doherty.
To Join Madonna House Click the link https://www.madonnahouse.org/
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