Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

One pillar of Dominican Life has been the focus of my thinking and praying recently. I am a very independent person and have grown up doing things for myself, so when I became sick and needed assistance in November I began to understand what community means. I had to rely on my sisters to lift things, pick things up off the ground and even take notes for me in class when I was not able to go myself. They willingly helped me but still let me to do what I could do, however small it was. Community means helping even when it is not convenient, but also allowing others to still do for themselves. When I went to the Mound this Christmas break I continued to expand what community means. I was blessed to lead some of the sisters in an art project and to witness their sense of accomplishment and pride when they had a number of completed projects in front of them. Over the next couple weeks I heard what the pictures were being turned into. Community means sharing the gifts I have and...

On your life journey, are you sometimes impatient of always being in process?   I am and o ver and over again, I’m called to listen to the advise of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.   We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability.   And that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow. Let them shape themselves without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on as though you could be today what time will make you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Believe that God’s hand will lead you. And accept the anxiety of feeling yourse...