Daily readings for October 8, 2016: Gal. 3:22-29; Ps. 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Lk. 11:27-28 You are all one in Christ Jesus. – Gal. 3:28 We live in a society that has a tendency to divide us into enemy camps. Violence and squabbles due to differences like politics or culture have become strangely normalized. No matter…
I am about to leave the beautiful, safe and peaceful Northwoods of Wisconsin and travel to the U.S./Mexico border for the weekend. I’ll be joining thousands at the SOAW Border Convergence in Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico; with other Catholic sisters and members of Giving Voice as we pray and give witness for peace and compassionate…
Lately, falling has been on my mind. The season for this is approaching, as leaf after leaf will soon let go and make its journey downwards, trusting the winds to take them where they need to go. I have been thinking about the sensation of falling, but not for the reasons you might expect. It…
“So, you’re Catholic, but you’re married to a Lutheran pastor. How does that work?” I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been asked this question in my seven years of marriage. Depending upon the inquirer, I have a few canned answers that easily roll off the tongue, but the simplest and most genuine is this: “By…
This week at Sunday Mass I had a full-body prayer experience that transcended the ordinary. I am Catholic. Full-body prayer is nothing unusual; it’s basic Catholic functioning. Stand, sing, sit, listen, sing, listen, speak, kneel, stand, shake hands, sing, walk, eat, drink, kneel, sit and stand. Through the rhythm of movements, our hands, feet, mouths…
In the midst of a war, I found my home in the Catholic church. I was a college student, majoring in history. Studying history meant, among other things, studying war and the destruction and injustices that wars had repeatedly caused. The more I studied this side of history, the more passionate I became about social…
Last summer, I sat in a small circle of with other sisters my age at the Giving Voice conference. We were praying in silence, integrating the question our speakers had invited us to consider: What sort of borders do we desire to cross? In the quiet, I recalled a fear that had surfaced earlier, when…
Today, this high holy day, at liturgies worldwide, we will know no sacrifice at the banquet table. Communion will be different, stirring up spiritual hungers to remind us of the pain of our loss, the awfulness of the absence of Christ. On this solemn day, an unusual ritual will file us forward; all of us are…
Right now, at this Internet-saturated time in history, screams for help are coming out from the shadows. As Christians, we can choose to ignore the serious pleas for help and deny the existence of problems. Or, we can we do as Jesus instructs and heed the call coming from the wilderness. Let us study the…
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…
You must be logged in to post a comment.