Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Recently while visiting some sister friends, I asked “whose chair am I in?”  After a long pause the listeners gave me a quizzical look?  One said, “What do you mean? Who’s Jeremiah?”   After I reiterated my question with more clarity, a round of raucous laughter ensued.  Often at our community supper table we can get into a fit of laughter over something that happened during the day…like the newly arrived refugee child who took Sister Nora’s chair and proclaimed, “Me teacher, you no”.  Or Sister Emeric’s telling us about meeting a woman who was cleaning a toilet on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant.  Upon questioning the reason she was doing this, the woman proudly proclaimed that she was writing a book: The Travelling Toilet and was getting the toilet ready for the trip. Joy is truly a hallmark of Dominican spirituality.  For me personally, I was drawn to these amazing motivational sisters who loved one another, embraced the gos...

This first week in the New Year always holds special meaning for me. Primary, of course, is that January 6 th is the traditional celebration of Armenian Christmas!  (In the West we know it as Epiphany, and the image of Wise Men and camels come to mind.) January is also the month when my family honors all the saints who have left this life to dwell forever in the peace of God:  my mom, my sister and my aunt.  Each of them left indelible marks on my life – even though it is taking me time (probably the rest of my life!) to understand and appreciate them! I also look forward to reflecting on the words from the First Letter of John (quoted above), because they are an invitation to consider the year TO COME, just as anticipating the New Year was an opportunity to look back.  The message is that we are to greet each person we encounter with the same enthusiasm as those Wise Men from the East greeted the babe…  We are to practice the spiritual discipline of that ba...

Last Tuesday, three days into the Octave of Christmas we celebrated the Feast of St John, the disciple Jesus loved and whom Scripture tells us leaned on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper. At Mass the priest said that because John loved he was able to know [Jesus] more deeply and hence the reason the Gospel of John is so different from the others. John is writing as a lover.  He said at the end of time it is love that will last into eternity.  Love he said lets us touch eternity in the now! Isn’t that true of love? I find that I am able to look on things and on life from a different perspective – a more compassionate one.  I am able to risk being vulnerable in the presence of another. As I reflect back on the last year I am so grateful for Love and for the way Love has allowed me to touch eternity in the now! My prayer for the New Year is that you and I would be more willing to risk in the name of the greatest love of all, Jesus.     Thi...