The longest day of the year started with the funeral Mass of a 101-year-old sister in our diocese. As we celebrated her life, it felt as though the passing of an era was revealed before us.

For more than four decades, 8th Day Center for Justice has educated others about the oppressive structures operating in their own backyards. Now, 43 years after 8th Day first opened its doors in downtown Chicago, women religious are shepherding the center through its final year — an intentionally monikered "year of gratitude" that kicks off Sept. 30.

"The poor have much to teach you. You have much to learn from them."

GSR Today - For too long, habited nuns have been used in media as quaint, and frequently infantilized, curiosities. At the same time, sisters who wear secular clothing go unnoticed and largely unappreciated.

The amount of news we hear or read from every corner of the globe has exponentially increased. In turn, there is an increasing sense of disempowerment or impotency in the face of such suffering and pain because we don't know what we can do.

Sr. Chelsea Bethany Davis, 26, says she is the youngest professed sister of the Daughters of St. Paul. Davis is about four years from professing her final vows. She spoke with Global Sisters Report about life as a millennial sister at a time when about 90 percent of American women religious are over 60.

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle."

We need to open ourselves to the full range of human ingenuity and seek new roads in religious life, while continuing to ride the road we're on that won't change: loving and serving those whom Jesus loved.