Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

This past week the RFM team brought together the new members for a series of activities and chats around congregational history and finance.  We did a lot of reading about the historical context and origin of the Sinsinawas Dominicans and visited several sites of Fr. Mazzuchelli’s footprint in the area.  Various groups of sisters graciously shared their experiences of the more recent history of the congregation and the different challenges that emerged.  There was also a session with our Treasurer to discuss how we live the vow of poverty and how the congregation as a whole manages its resources.  In Sister Mary Ellen Butcher’s remembrance she describes our kind of common life as one of “high-risk living” in which we lose control and “do not feather our own nest”.  What a wonderful and true depiction of what I’ve seen in all the sisters I know. The past couple of days I've been pondering it all and questioning what it means moving forward.   I've found myself coming back t

Why are you reading this?   Perhaps our Sisters, whom you love, taught you in grammar school? Or you’re feeling a pull to religious life and are checking things out?   Or maybe you’re just curious?   Whatever the reason, you’re always welcome here! Truthfully, my mind was blank for this month’s offering.   I’m preparing for First Vows in less than a month and have been preoccupied with that and what comes next.   However, Pope Francis’s recent environmental encyclical, Laudato Si , led me to settle on our bees. Did you know that the Sinsinawa Dominicans kept bees as early as 1896, and possibly even earlier?   Or that beekeeping was reintroduced to the Mound a couple of years ago?   “Why”, you ask?   Bee-sides (sorry) being incredible architects and engineers, bees are responsible for pollinating over 80% of the food we eat.   Bees are dependent on plant pollen for food; plants are dependent upon bees for reproduction.   Quite a symbiotic relationship, introduced by the hand of