Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble keeps a small ceramic skull on her desk and tweets the thoughts it inspires daily. Despite the morbid connotations, most of Noble's tweets about death aren't really about death at all.

Take a plant cutting and let it grow in new soil: Keep the constitutive elements (lifelong consecrated celibacy and community) and replant them. Engage today's seekers in open and honest dialogue and then give them space to create community. Trust in God to lead us.

"People who pass by, who go ahead in life without taking account of the needs of others, without noticing the many spiritual and material needs, are people who pass without living; they are people who are not useful to others."

Sr. Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and a longtime advocate for immigrants and refugees, will receive the University of Notre Dame's 2018 Laetare Medal at the school's graduation ceremony May 20.

My dream for the associate-religious relationship is that we become compassionate collaborators living in respectful mutuality — that we become a "we and us" and not a "they and them." This dream is not only for the associate-religious relationship itself, it is for the witness "we" as carriers of our community's charisms provide to our hurting world. As Sr. Joan Chittister said, "Each of us — lay and religious — carries a piece of the truth — but only a piece."

GSR Today - Measuring progress in a country such as Haiti with its myriad of challenges is risky, fraught with potential disappointment and few milestones. But my visit last fall with Sr. Janet Lehmann, director of the nursing program at University of Notre Dame Haiti's Jacmel campus, and some of the school's students pointed unequivocally to brighter prospects.

Visual essay - In the Volta Region of Ghana in west Africa, the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Church Congregation run a health care facility, the Mater Ecclesiae Clinic, and the Mater Ecclesiae School for young students in the area. Their convents include facilities for baking bread, meat pies and Communion wafers — which are distributed for Masses all over the country.

"The Eucharist is where we can move from the otherness to oneness. It is our identity. If we don't see our neighbors as the image of God, then we become aliens ourselves."

From Where I Stand - There was a time in life when I wanted things done and wanted them done now. I still want things done now but over the course of the years, I discovered that, at least where the church is concerned, I was looking for action in the wrong places. 

In Conversation - Listen to excerpts from Standup Sisters, a live annual storytelling show hosted during National Catholic Sisters Week.