By Kate Lucas It almost seems like this week’s readings make us choose sides. On one hand, there’s a God of love, compassion, forgiveness in Jeremiah. On the other, in Hebrews and John, there’s a God who abandons his child and causes despair. So which God is real? How can both be true? Can we [...]
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by M. Nelle Carty Two weeks before Ash Wednesday, the “check engine” light went on in my car. I looked down, puzzled what could be wrong. I had just had my car serviced several weeks earlier, and the mechanic told me I should be “good to go for a while.” I saw that I was [...]
Filed under: Nelle Carty, Spiritual Identity | Tagged: burnout, dryness, lay ministry, renewal | Leave a Comment »
by Jen Owens And God so loved…the world…that He gave…His one…and only son, That whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. As Jaci Velasquez belted it out from our music minister’s boom box, I felt affirmed, congratulated even. I was one of the blessed ones, the lucky ones, the privileged. I [...]
Filed under: Jen Owens, Sunday reading reflections | Tagged: christianity, francis x. clooney sj, harvard divinity school, hinduism, interreligious dialogue, Jesus, krishna, loyola marymount university, word of god | 1 Comment »
By Sr. Julie Vieira, IHM I spent a good part of last week at my IHM Motherhouse. True to our namesake, I was a good “Sister Servant” as my charge was to be present at 4 days of important community meetings as the official minutes-taker. One of the metaphors that the meeting facilitator used throughout [...]
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By Kate Henley Averett A friend of mine, a white woman, shared with me once that her adopted son, when he was only two years old, had looked up at her while playing and said “Mommy, I wish that for just one day you could know what it was like to have brown skin.” I [...]
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By Kate Dugan Compassion: It doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people; it doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other. That’s Karen Armstrong’s definition and, as I roll it around & try it on for size, I find myself falling in love with this way [...]
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by Angela Batie As often happens, a student recently came into my office wanting to direct me to a YouTube video. This time, though, it wasn’t a video of a person mimicking of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance moves or a tribute to the four main chords in pop music. Instead, it was the priesthood recruiting [...]
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by Jessica Coblentz There were thousands enthusiastic young people gathered for Mass at the Anaheim Convention Center last weekend. I was there, too, standing at the back of the dark arena praying with the masses. It was Youth Day, the kick-off of the largest annual religious education “Congress” in the world. It was my first [...]
Filed under: Jessica Coblentz | Tagged: Cardinal Mahoney, catholicity, community, lay ministry, Religious Education Congress, Vocation | 6 Comments »
By Johanna Hatch On the last night of finals my junior year of college, before the end of the school year scattered us to the four corners, my friend Liz and I decided to act on a whim and dance in the grass to celebrate the completion of another year. After coming home from the [...]
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by Kate Lucas Awhile ago, when the leaves were falling and my Friday night was as wide open as Lake Superior, I wrote about solo living and the seeming loss of community in our busy, independent lives. Well, a couple months have passed. The snow has blanketed everything with the wet, heavy stuff (which I’m sure [...]
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by Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello When I was seventeen my good friend Dave and I decided to go canoeing on a small river in New Hampshire in March just as the ice was breaking up in the early spring thaw. We both loved the outdoors and had often hiked and run through the woods in the area, [...]
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