Teaching our hearts to love is an adult task. It means I am responsible for what I pay attention to, what I teach my heart so that my choices are informed and loving. I recently spent a week on the Texas/Mexico border where my heart had a chance to test what it loves.
My prayer was for health and life — the best for me and my friends and the woman we all called Mother. How was I to accept reality, when I presumed the all-loving God had let me down woefully?
Horizons - As I moved closer to making my final vows, choosing a motto was a way to have something that would encompass, in a few words, why I was ready to say yes to forever. I chose "Love never fails" from 1 Corinthians 13:8.
Milwaukee has been shaken to its core. I'm sure I am not the only one who didn't sleep, and I have no personal connection to Molson Coors. Every siren startled me and helicopters hovered long into the night.
From Where I Stand - The 40,000 women at the U.N. Conference on Women 25 years ago in Beijing stood up and said no to invisibility. No to powerlessness. And then they said yes — and listed all the things that needed to be done.
In Manila, the Philippines: I meet the homeless along the street, begging at doors, camping under the bridge, stopping vehicles on the road asking for coins, lying on the sidewalks — so frail and exposed to rain and sun.
Horizons - Our resilience varies in how we are able to bounce back from difficult experiences and bask in the renewing light of joyful moments. The invitation of Gaudium et Spes is to strengthen each other.
None of us graduate from needing community, accountability and guidance. None of us belong on pedestals, but with our feet firmly on the ground as the people of God walking together.
What a moment of grace for South Africa and all the participants who — despite the violence that took place at the beginning of September 2019 — beat the odds and came on the pilgrimage!
Transgender people are who they say they are. I have witnessed their incredible courage and faith in the pursuit of living an authentic life. It is what we call transformation in God, conversion of life.
The Amazonian synod is a process that I suspect is just beginning. There are still many roads to open, many challenges to face and many networks to build so that the ecology is understood, prayed for and considered integral.
Horizons - The words from Ash Wednesday reverberate throughout Lent: Now is the moment you and God have been waiting for. What if we lived each moment of the season, beholding the perfection of that moment?
I have come to Namibia to offer spiritual direction to young Benedictine women in formation who, along with their other community members, seem to be thirsting in the biblical sense, with strong spiritual desire.
Sacramental ashes are only an outward sign to remind me of its deeper purpose and meaning: my need for renewal, repentance, conversion and transformation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Sr. Ann Margaret O'Hara's story — living in her congregation's health care facility after a stroke, experiencing a nursing home as a patient — challenges us not to look away from her witness, or others' experiences in different settings.
Horizons - Although for some the pain of not belonging is more present in daily life and social structures than for others, we can all fill in the blanks in one way or another, at one moment in our lives.
Since March 2006, the Community Homicide Prayer Vigil group has organized over 530 vigils. When looked at as an accumulation, isn't that number "massive?"
I have heard remarks about sisters' "easy" lives: job and retirement security, just having to pray, free summers and vacations, no responsibilities for children or finances. Here's a reality check.
Contemplate This - The range of justice issues the church embraces challenges us to exercise our prudential judgement, honed within a well-formed conscience.
