St.Leonard: Sisters of Sylvania

Showing posts with label Sisters of Sylvania. Show all posts

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Non-traditional vocations changing Catholic perceptions of Sisters

Monday, September 17, 2012

Team Sisters of Sylvania: Invitation to Pray for Peace

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Team Spiritual Care: O Little Town of Capernaum

Sister Kateri Theriault
Mission Integration

You’ve probably heard the saying, “All politics is local,” suggesting that people are mostly concerned about the quality of life in their neighborhood or town. The same might be said of religion. Though Christianity now counts well over 2 billion believers worldwide, it all began in Capernaum, a small fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Reportedly the home of the apostles Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the tax collector Matthew, Jesus selected this hamlet as the center of his public ministry after he left the mountainous town of Nazareth. Think of Capernaum as the mustard seed from which a great world religion sprung forth. And never underestimate the power of your own “small” life to bear great fruit as well.

TODAY’S READINGS: 1 Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37 (432)

“Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.”

CONTRIBUTORS

Alice Camille, Daniel Grippo, Caroline Hopkinson, Father Larry Janowski, O.F.M., Ann O’Connor, Joel Schorn, Patrice J. Tuohy, and Sister Julie Vieira, I.H.M.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Lunch & Learn with Sister Pat: Golden Jubilee!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Team Spiritual Care: Show some Real Zeal!

Sister Kateri Theriault
Mission Integration

Zeal is an obscure virtue during the season of Lent. We aim often for the virtues of self-denial, humility, fortitude, and others that seem to lend themselves to our desire for repentance and movement toward the new life of the Resurrection. With that repentance, however, is an opportunity to look at our life in relationship with God and make some real and positive change. That is where zeal can help. Zeal is the quality of eagerness and ardent desire in pursuing something. In Christian language, zeal is love in action. Let us continue this Lenten season with zeal, allowing love to impel us to look realistically, without judgment, at our life and make choices that more fully reflect Christ's life within us.

TODAY'S READINGS: Jonah 3:1-10; Luke 11: 29-32 (226)
"However, take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen."

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Team Spiritual Care: Ask and You Will Receive

Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive”. Matthew 7: 7

EVERYONE WHO ASKS WILL RECEIVE. In the Gospel reading we reflect on the words that gives us an open invitation into the heart of God. Jesus is inviting us to boldness when we pray. We are to expect answers. Will I be open this Lenten Season to Seek, Ask and Knock on the heart of God? Will I take the time to hear the voice say, “Come in, stay and rest with me”? The invitation is there. A transformation begins when we are open to the answers God may be sending our way. He knows our needs and desires.

Let us take time to simply ask God to come and fill our day with His presence. Thanking Him, knowing that God hears even a feeble whisper. Thank you God, for the answers we are not able to see. The Lord will complete the work that He has begun in me. Will I be open to this gift?

Rose Marie Golembiewski, R.S.M. Sisters of Mercy Toledo, Ohio

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Team Spiritual Care: The Purpose of Religion

Sister Kateri Theriault

Mission Integration

Religion has various functions at various stages of life. It is a guidepost from early life through to the end. It is a direction, a map. But it is not a guarantee of anything. Religion has corrupted as much as it has saved. Clearly, there must be something more than the religion itself that must be our goal.

In early life, in youth, the function of religion is the formation of conscience. Religion sets the standards that mark the path. Every religion, according to the Universal Code of Ethics adopted at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999, accepts four nonnegotiables: not to steal, not to lie, not to murder, and not to exploit another sexually. These are the guidelines of the good life. There is a law above the law, we learn. And that law is the end toward which we tend.

In middle age, religion becomes a social guide. It is a measure of our relationship with others. It creates the standards that measure the quality of the soul as well as the behaviors of the person. It becomes an attitude toward life. Some things are holy, some things are not. It is the ideals to which we cling, even as we drift a bit from the moorings of our early life. All the absolutes begin to be tested. We begin to understand that religion is more a deep-down struggle to believe and to do than simply a way of acting, sterile on paper, full of thorns in the flesh.

Finally, as we grow older, when we begin the last stage of life, it is clear that behaviors and failures are not the stuff of religion much anymore. Now, the ecstasy of life and the surrender to the Mystery become the last of the revelations of religion. Now, everything we learned long ago, gave up to some degree long ago, never left completely long ago, begins to make sense. Begins to become me. Begins my new beginning as a person.

Then, in the later years, religion ceases to be simply a series of rites and rituals, of rules and answers for which I get some kind of eternal points. Religion becomes what it was always meant to be: a search for a relationship with the Spirit who draws us on. Always on. Even to the point where “on” is unclear.

Religion is not a millstone around the neck anymore. It is the warm, soft, strong, hard awareness that yes, it has all been for something worthwhile.

– from The Gift Of Years by Joan Chittister (BlueBridge)