Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

It is a cave of sorts. A Global collection of people are crammed together with luggage piled floor to ceiling.  Unlike the donkey, trains were on strike.   All faces glued, to the fine print of the ever changing billboard, announcing arrivals and departures.   People with a mission and a purpose like Mary and Joseph. The door swung in, edging us closer together, and the door swung out, making room for anyone who came knocking.   Are you waiting for an arrival, or for a departure?  Is your purpose being lived?   Here is what I gave birth to, as I waited to depart:   Like Mary and Joseph, we carry a call.   All we know, is something beyond our womb is calling us.   We find ourselves whether male or female pregnant once again!   Do we abort? Do we carry to term?   We worry.  How will we feed this call?   Wakening, we hope all is a dream.   It is a reality.    We've been here before. Over and over throughout our...

We’ve taken down our Christmas tree, the wreath and all the other decorations and stored them until next year.     My Nativity set has gone back into its box and put away. The angels and shepherds have gone.     The Magi have returned to their homelands.     The Christmas music has disappeared,     and the stores are now filled with Valentine’s Day things.     Christmas vacations are over.     In the liturgy Baby Jesus now appears as a grown man going to see John the Baptist.     What remains of this beautiful season is Emmanuel, God with us.   How do you experience “God with us” throughout the year?   LouAnne Willette, OP Austin, TX

In the Pax Christi USA   Guide Our Feet Into the Way of Peace: Reflections for Advent & Christmas 2021,  the reflection for Epiphany Sunday, January 2, tells a story about Robert Louis Stevenson. When he was a little boy, he “would watch the lamplighter walk through the streets…lighting each of the village street lights. ‘Look, Mother,’ he would say. ‘Here comes the man who punches holes in the darkness.’” What a great image for Christmas! In the Incarnation, God and a woman punched a hole in the darkness in birthing Jesus for the world. It’s a delightful idea to think of us, followers of Jesus, punching holes in the darkness as we do works of justice, when we help bring about reconciliation, when we bring peace and remain calm in the midst of the turmoil and division that swirl around us, when we express a spirit of joy even though the world offers so many reasons to be discouraged. In this season celebrating the coming of the Light of the World, let’s invite each other t...

I learned to value and appreciate the liturgical year when I first entered the convent.     Those early days of training focused a lot on the liturgical seasons. We steeped ourselves in the Scriptural readings of the day   and seasonal music.     It was there I identified the grace of longing.     Ahh, I thought. I am an Advent woman.     Longing and waiting have been a key faith identifier within me to this day. Whatever does that have to do with this Christmastide?  Again, in the Novitiate years, I came across a great spiritual writer:  Rainer Maria Rilke and his ‘Letter to a Young Man.’  I have leaned into this quote of his for decades now.   “. .   celebrate Christmas  in this  devout  feeling, that perhaps God  needs  this very anguish of yours in order to begin, . . .  It has not always been ‘anguish’.  Though this year there has been ple...

When I was a child I loved the song that began “All I want for Christmas,” and the answer was “my two front teeth…so I could wish you merry Christmas.” This got me to thinking, what do I really want for Christmas this year, this year that has been so challenging for everybody, a year that has called for patience, for reconciliation, for hope, for new ways of imagining being together.    I guess what I really want is what is on the front of the cards I am sending:  Peace—inner peace, peace in families, in our country and in our world.   May God’s peace surround all of us, despite the difficulties. LouAnne Willette, OP Austin, TX  

Can it really be that the Advent Season has already come upon us while we have been waiting and watching – waiting for this horrible virus to die out, watching in horror as the numbers of people infected soar.  As we continue to wait and to watch.  I reflected upon the words “wait,” “watch,” and “alert.”  It seems to me that we human beings spend a good amount of time waiting.  As a child, I waited for my birthday, for Christmas, for my turn, for “hurts” to heal.  As the first born in a large family, I remember watching my mother wait for the arrival of the next child to be welcomed into the family.  We then were alert to that child’s first tooth, first steps, first day of school.  We hear in the Advent readings from the prophet Isaiah the Israelites waited for release from captivity in Babylon for 50 years.   That was a lifetime for most.   About 20 years ago, the Sisters in our congregation committed ...

This time of year has mixed messages for me. “Hurry up and get ready for Christmas.”  “Slow down and “be” attentive to the season of Advent waiting.” This week the message is “Rejoice!” My heart likes the feel of finding joy. In our Dominican congregation we are in a time of transition. How blessed we are to have assistance in how to “be” in transition in a healthy way. In September we had a virtual assembly, an opportunity to tend to our heart and spirit in our transition. Our facilitators, Dominican Sisters Joye Gros and Teresa Tuite,  inspired us in a process of prayer, reflection, with music and story. At the end they left us with a song: “We Can Be Kind.”  This song is taking root in me. In my pastoral ministry at the Mound and Villa I promote  Mindfulness.  One of the aspects in living in the NOW is to have a daily intention. Since our September assembly I have encouraged the sisters to set an intention to “Be Kind.” Focusing on kindne...

Gifts have been opened. Songs have been sung.  I’ve eaten too many cookies this week.  So what has Christmas meant to me this year?   I attended all the Posadas in our parish and couldn’t help but think of the people in many parts of the world, including our own border, who, like Joseph and Mary, are asking for posada, a place of welcome, protection, shelter.  They eventually found shelter in a stable.  I have had the privilege of working in El Paso in a hospitality center for asylum seekers, mainly from Central America, and will be going again in February.   I continue to be  impressed by the graciousness of the people of that city in providing shelter, providing posada.   Christmas this year reminds me, too, that Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to seek asylum in Egypt.  They returned to their own country only after the danger was over.  Later in his life, Jesus gives us this c...

I don’t know about you, but this time of the year tends to be exceptionally intense for me.  Keeping the “wheels on” in everyday life in addition to preparing for Christmas leads me down the path of overwhelming.  During my daily commute to the Mound, morning reflection time, and before I go to sleep each night I am praying, “God, let me serve with joy, and let me know your peace.”  Fortunately, our good and gracious God, in infinite kindness has bestowed peace and patience upon me.   In addition, God has used both ordinary and exceptional events during Advent to remind me of what is really important.  One of those exceptional events occurred yesterday on Gaudete Sunday.  We were blessed with the perpetual profession ceremony of our Sr. Kathy Flynn.  What joy, peace, and excitement we experienced through the music, Word of God, preaching, and words of commitment during that ritual! In the program distribut...

So much nostalgia and warm fuzzy feelings come into play during this season of Christmas. It is all good because they have to do with relationships, with the joy we get from giving, with our gratitude at what God has done for us. One especially unforgettable Christmas for me was my first Christmas in the novitiate. I was dwelling on past Christmases with family and getting not only nostalgic but homesick. We went to chapel a half hour before Midnight Mass began, and the first thing I noticed was the Nativity window that was lit up with a special light. Then the music started. One of our sisters played the harp and another played the violin. Being in the midst of such awe and beauty, I almost felt I was in heaven. I came into contact that night with the true meaning of Christmas and the utter awesomeness of what the birth of Christ means for all of us. A Blessed Christmas to each of you! Do you have a treasured memory of a special Christmas? If so, what made it speci...

Holidays can be difficult for many people because of recent or past experiences of grief and loss -- experiences such as the death of a parent or sibling, job loss, loss of a home due to reduced or no income, health challenges and the fragility that comes with aging. Losses can also be anticipated ones that come with a serious diagnosis of a special someone. I know a lot of people who are experiencing some of those emotional challenges during this Christmas holiday season. And I know many survivors of loss who share their personal stories of breaking out into the light. Seems to me that each of them is experiencing her/his own Christmas story, as they continue to discover gifts and all that is waiting for them. In the mystery of all of our sacred stories, the light somehow breaks through. And somehow, with God’s grace and help from others, we can break out into the light. I have many Christmas (and other holiday) stories about light breaking in and me breaking out into the lig...

In the flurry of these holidays I have been struck much by the push and the pull, the beauty and the pain, brute strength and hope.   I so enjoy the loveliness of the lights, the invitation to be quiet.   And when I seek out some of this solitude I feel the angst of the year’s ending.   Hunger, violence, racial inequity, addiction to gratification all want to crowd out the hope that the birth of a child born in love and poverty brings. It reminds me of a favorite Christmas quote from Rilke:     “Dear Mr. Kappus, celebrate Christmas in this devout feeling, that perhaps He needs this very anguish of yours in order to begin; these very days of your transition are perhaps the time when everything in you is working at Him, as you once worked at Him in your childhood, breathlessly. Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to ...

This past weekend I was blessed to take part in the annual L’Arche Jacksonville Living Nativity.   This simple yet moving performance helped me to understand and experience the wonder of the nativity in a new way. L’Arche, which has been my place of ministry for the past four months, is a community of adults with and without developmental disabilities who share life together.   Those with developmental disabilities are called core members because they are at the heart of the community.   LArche is a place where people are authentic, where gifts are revealed and affirmed, and where those whom the world places at the margins can find a true home.   This spirit of welcome makes L’Arche a sign of hope to the world. The Living Nativity performance allowed us all to shine.   The narrators proclaimed the story with conviction, Mary was radiant, and the Star of Bethlehem danced his way to the stable with an infectious joy.   And I was reminded that as God...

Throughout this Advent season, I have been listening closely to the birthing dreams presented by many of the prophets in the daily readings.   Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and others dream of a new creation, a new way of being human.   In their dreams, rivers flow with justice, war is replaced with a massive effort to find food for the whole world, and archenemies, like the lion and the lamb, become friends.   So, I started looking for birthing signs around me.   Here is what I saw: ·       A gay couple feels totally at home and accepted in a convent of “elderly” nuns; ·       A high school basketball team shows good sportsmanship despite a jeering crowd; ·       Two long-time friends continue to work at their relationship by overcoming differences; ·       A prisoner of Apartheid becomes President and teaches the whole world about reconciliation; ·  ...