Hello

This is my second attempt at blogging and I wish to share today a very special experience I had over the Easter weekend.  My brother, John, is a priest for the Sioux City Diocese and has always worked in small parishes in rural Iowa.  After 46 years of ministry, he will be retiring.  Saturday, I drove to Wall Lake, Iowa where my family gathered to celebrate this occasion.  John and I are less than a year apart in age and we grew up like Irish Twins. There were six children in our family and we were blessed with loving parents and a marvelous education by the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.  Both John and I began our religious vocations right after high school and I celebrated my final vows at his first Mass. The prayer card that we created for this occasion expressed our hopes.

Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; the thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the upstart spring.  Thank God our time is now when wrongs come up to face us everywhere.  Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul anyone ever took.  Affairs are now soul size.  The enterprise is exploration into God.   Christopher Fry.

These words are no less relevant today as the struggles and injustices overwhelm humankind.  John and I rejoice in the years that we have spent embracing God’s mission to bring love and mercy to our world.  We have no regrets for our life choice but only hearts filled with gratitude for all the blessings we have received.

Margaret McGuirk, OP

Richfield, MN