By Katie Mahon, Communications Manager
After two years of adapting to changes brought on by the pandemic, Sr. BarbaraAnn Sgro, OP, is looking forward to starting 2022 on an optimistic note.
Sr. BarbaraAnn, a Sister of Saint Dominic of Blauvelt, New York, shared, “We have to learn from our past, but not repeat the mistakes of our past to help us inform our future.”
On the most recent episode of the Hearts Afire Podcast, Sr. BarbaraAnn further reflected on her hopes for the New Year personally and in her ministry as the Coordinator of Pastoral and Deaf Services for the Hudson Valley Catholic Deaf Center.
“(At the beginning of the pandemic), we had to rethink some new ways to come together. In 2021, it started to come back more slowly. People were starting to come back to church. They were freeing up their fears of what was happening.”
Presently, Sr. BarbaraAnn and her team are working on a new mission and vision statement to help her ministry enter into a strategic planning process and look at new technology and ways to reach out to other people.
She went on to explain, “There will be new ways to reach out to people, and the think tank will be bigger and greater. People will find new experiences to help them get in touch with their own spirituality because that’s what it’s all about; offering those opportunities for people to get in touch with their own spirituality and with God.”
Along with reflecting on this ‘exciting’ time in her ministry, Sr. BarbaraAnn also shared a message of hope for the New Year.
“We have to have the hope of not why God, but how is God in this with us and how is God partnering with us through our trials. That hope to me is so important is that what keeps us going and is connected to God.”
She went on to add, “To me, that’s the message of hope for the New Year that maybe through the experiences that we’ve gone through with Advent of reordering our lives and looking more deeply for God in our lives… that we will have a deeper sense of how God is with us in the good times and the times that are struggles for us.”