Many of us are in the daily grind of ministry and we don’t really know for sure if we are having a positive effect. We show up at our service sites day-in and day-out. We chime in at meetings. We help others with willing hearts and joyful faces, enlivened by our belief that we’ll encounter Christ…
Earlier this summer I was fortunate to be able to make a pilgrimage-of-sorts to The Simple Way, a Christian community in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia described as “a web of subversive friends conspiring to spread the vision of ‘Loving God, Loving People, and Following Jesus’ in our neighborhoods and in our world.” Like many thousands of…
Note from Sister Julia: A version of the following text was written for my coursework in my Introduction to New Testament course at Catholic Theological Union where I am a part-time student. The assignment was to write a Biblical commentary on a particular Gospel passage. The passage I selected was Mark 6: 7-13, which was the Gospel for this past Sunday. Jesus…
Note from Sister Julia: I have asked my good friend and occasional Messy Jesus Business contributor, Amy Nee-Walker, to share her perspective on the recent events in Baltimore for our readers this week. Amy and her husband Ted presently live in the Jonah House community in Baltimore with their one-year-old son. Here are her responses to my questions….
A vivid memory has been speaking to me all summer: a sunny spring day, as the fourth period of the school day began, a few excited ninth-grade boys came to class eager to ask a question. Their energy was animated and slightly nervous (“You ask her.” “No you ask her!”) for I believe they knew, at…
Sister Sarah Hennessey is a spiritual advisor for her local conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s National Council of the United States and serves as an emergency contact for those who find themselves in urgent need. The call came on a Sunday evening. A woman was at our grocery story and had…
By guest blogger Elizabeth Diedrich It is 7 p.m. and there are two things on my mind: I am hungry and I need to use the bathroom. Dinner service ended a half hour ago but one person has yet to leave. I wait at the back door, ready to finish my job, which involves making…
Guest blogger, Amy Nee One evening in May I sat on windowsill in the room I’d recently moved into at New York’s Maryhouse Catholic Worker. With legs folded into the frame, I watched a little window of sky that subtly made the dramatic shift from pale yellow to blazing pink without comment. I was sitting with…
Guest blogger: Steven Cottam One of my many duties as a religion teacher involves getting the students ready for our monthly school Masses. Despite our preparations together, predictably, some of the younger kids always get anxious. Recently, I was in a pew during Mass in front of a group of first and second graders when…
You must be logged in to post a comment.