Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is horrified at the violence we witness in our world and appalled by the recent acts of bloodshed in Paris, Beirut, and throughout the Middle East. We continue to pray for all who suffer as a result of these senseless acts of terror. We also pray for the strength and courage to respond to this violence with love and mercy. We refuse to let these acts of death and destruction sow the seeds of fear and mistrust that threaten to tear our communities apart and lead inevitably to more violence and harm. We are witnessing the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. More than 4 million Syrians have fled violence in their homeland and 12 million more are displaced internally. Syrian refugees are fleeing exactly the kind of terror that we have witnessed in these past few weeks. More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives, many more have lost family, home, and community. At a time when the world is in des...

The other day, three friends that I had grown up with came over from Milwaukee to have lunch with me.   We had great fun reminiscing about those days.   Two of them are now married, soon to celebrate their wedding anniversary.   We met up at our class reunion – itself an event!!   The old place isn’t what it once was, which I guess is how life evolves…   We laughed about our teachers, the rules of the institution and the antics of kids in our class.   And we showed each other pictures.   (One of them accompanies this article.   That’s me, the youngest of the three, with my mom about two years after my dad died.) Remembering is an important activity.     We need to do it so we can dwell in who we once were, giving thanks that we have become the person we are.   Remembering is what we do at every gathering of believers when we read the stories of our common past in the scriptures.   And giving thanks is what believers...