This picture shows our province praying vespers in Marylake’s main chapel. This room was originally the ballroom of the Country Club. The orchestra played from the upper balcony on the right which we have sealed with plexiglass in order to air-condition. The “band balcony room” is now used as our daily choir. In Doctor Brinkley’s day [Nov 1937-1941] this main chapel was used as a “Spacious Lounge and Reading Room at the Brinkley Country Hospital.”

Our novice, Br. Juan Guillermo served the jubilee Mass of Fr. Raphael Kitz (center) and Fr. Stephen Sanchez (right). Raphael was celebrating 50 years as a priest, and Stephen 25 years as a Carmelite. We lost one of our overhead windows in July of last year when we attempted to air-condition the chapel for a wedding. The light fixture hanging to the left of the chimney came from the old Worthen Bank. The round gray circle in the chimney was where the Masonic emblem used to be. The presidential chairs came from the Oklahoma Governor’s mansion in Ponca City.

After the jubilee Mass our friars began to gather in the refectory for a gourmet meal cooked by a Swiss chef who used to work at the Excelsior Hotel downtown. In the back Father Luis Gerardo checks out his table decorations. The wall hanging is a deacon’s dalmatic which was worn on 27-July-1952 for the dedication of the Monastery. This room had served as the dining room for the original Country Club, for the Country Hospital, and for various Boys Camps before it was consecrated as our monastic refectory.

In the old days, a skull was set at the head table as a reminder to the friars of what the body they were feeding would eventually turn into. The friars were exhorted to run to the cross with the same enthusiasm they use to run to the table; and to cautiously approach the table with the same reluctance they would normally approach the cross.