Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Soon it will be time to read the story of Mary and Joseph searching for shelter.  Each of us will be called to look into our own hearts and find room for the Christ.  How will she or he come this year?  Will it be a stranger?  Or, will it be a familiar face to whom we do not want to open our door? The Sisters of the Upper Mississippi River Valley invite us this Advent to consider welcoming the Immigrant.  These Sister risk-takers, including the Sinsinawa Dominicans, want to ask us for a space in our hearts and our prayers and our lives for someone newly arrived to our country.  Instead of the government’s stance on designing “secure communities,” these women want to be “welcoming communities.”  They want to welcome the one who another would deport or cast away as unimportant. So, for whom are you making room in these last weeks of Advent? Peggy Ryan, OP Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

One of the ways I connect with others in ministry is through the interfaith community.   At one time I co-chaired with a local rabbi the Interfaith Clergy Committee of the Palm Beaches. Among the people I have gotten to know and consider friend and colleague is C.B.   He is an assistant Imam at his mosque and a journalist by trade.   He recently asked some of us to reflect on the days we hold as holy during December.   He said it needed to be ‘tweet’ size but we could go over that word count just a bit. In these days of Advent into Christmastide into Epiphany, I thought of the word Peace and the need for true peace within ourselves, our various relationships and in our world community.   This is my offering to C.B.’s invitation to ‘tweet:’ Peace – Salaam – Shalom – Paz.  In one word, in every language, the holy seasons of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany, for Christians, is one of peace.    As Jesus says in the Gospel of John:  “Pea...