Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Feast day of Catherine of Siena, April 29th I humbly admit to my simple Catholic background; I went to public schools, Sunday and Holy day mass, and rudimentary catechism classes in our rural church on Saturday mornings.  I never opened a Bible until I went to a Catholic college – and even then I slept through a lot of that class!  So when I entered the Congregation I was in left field when it came to knowing my roots.  That was especially true when it came to learning about Catherine of Siena.  A) I’d never heard of her and B) after hearing of her all I could think was “What was she thinking?” – all that solitude and crazy fasting and extreme self-denial and dialogues with Jesus and…I could go on.  So here we are on her feast day all these years later and thanks to great contemporary scholarship by Dominican women and others, I have new and deeper insights into Catherine’s life of faith, her intense and loving service to the Church and ...

As Dominican Women, we strive to live our lives grounded in the Word of God.  Lent becomes an opportunity for deeper reflection on our relationship with the Source of All Being.  One of our sisters, Marta Alken, OP recently wrote an article in which she highlighted four points that reflect a life centered in God: -  we strive for relationships that are enlivened by creativity – the ability for self-reflection, for change, for giving and receiving, for solitude; -   we have a capacity to experience a wide range of emotion – feel all of life for ourselves and others, -  we have the ability for self-transcendence—the capacity to lay down our lives for others and work for the common good, -  we recognize a healthy self-esteem – we understand that we are part of God’s web of life. ¹ I have used these four points as my daily reflection during Lent.   A life centered in God is a life that inspires joy, vision, imagination, detachment, disposs...

I have always believed that living in community allows one to become an Easter person, or a person dedicated to resurrection and hope.   As Dominican women, we are offered the great gift of living in community “for the sake of our mission.”   In other words, our lives at home should give us all we need to be gospel women.   We live together to cherish gifts, inspire prayerful hearts, accompany each other in whatever struggle arises, learn to laugh, dream and act to make the world a better place, as well as occasionally love off the rough edges.   We can let each one become new, no matter what the circumstance.   Where do you find resurrection happening?   Where do you hear hopeful voices these days? Peggy Ryan, OP Whitefish Bay, WI