Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Saying “yes” has been pretty easy for me, (although the call to religious life later in life mystified and puzzled me. For a while, no response made sense…until ‘making sense’ didn’t matter.) I’ve been reflecting on my ‘yeses’ lately, wondering if some were offered too easily; spoken sincerely but without depth of thought; offered with good intentions but with a failing memory of how the proverbial Road to Hell is paved. There are so many urgent needs in the world today that require a compassionate response – by someone, by anyone, by everyone. Saying ‘no’ seems implausible, cold, unkind, the antithesis of an authentic call to religious life; to any authentic life, really. Yet I am discovering that within every ‘yes’ is often an unspoken ‘no’.  Every ‘yes’ proclaimed contains a benefit, but also a cost; one that can dilute the impact of the ‘yes’.  It might be burnout, frenzied living, a sense of superficiality - of spreading oneself too thin. We simply cannot do ...

Saying ‘yes’ to religious life has resulted in additional opportunities to say ‘yes’ in a variety of other situations and circumstances.  I think that’s probably true for each of us, whatever our life’s call. Several months ago, one of my sisters asked if I would ride along when she drove Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP from the Mound to Chicago. Saying ‘no’ would not have been the end of the world for anyone involved. Saying ‘yes’, though, resulted in an unexpected gift, the chance to meet another sister from a different branch of the Dominican family tree. Sister Pauline Quinn started the prison dog-training program in 1981, a program now being used in prisons across the United States and around the world.  You can read more about her ministry, which includes aiding victims of trauma through her Pathways to Hope program, at http://www.bpofcourage.org .  Tonight, with the sisters with whom I live, I watched “Within These Walls”, a movie based on the inspir...