Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

How do you define what or who is most important to you?  Where does your energy go?  What would you grab if you had to run out of a burning building? There are so many ways to ask each of us what really matters.  For Dominicans, our mission to share with others the fruits of our contemplation centers our lives around the life of Christ.  We name mercy, love, peace, and justice as our main concerns.  Prayer, study, community, and preaching make up the rhythm of our days and our nights.  We work to free ourselves, our Congregation, and our world from racism.  We join with others to find ways to live sustainably. Gun violence, the protection of our planet, being concerned for the equity and inclusion of all of God’s children, the plight of migrant refugees and immigrants searching for ways to feed their families, fair voting, and making sure that all those who have been marginalized can tell that we are with them….these ...

The seed catalogs have arrived!  This sign of Spring never ceased to thrill me as a kid and continues to be exciting even today!  There is a joy in choosing seeds to plant in the earth, believing that by burying them in the dark loam, life and color and fragrance and even food will be the result. Jesus reminds us of that paradoxical truth in an honest, visceral way.  “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain.”  The seed must be planted, must be buried, must face an unknown future to ultimately find the nourishment and energy it needs to break open to the light it seeks.  This metaphor, offered for our reflection on this 5 th Sunday of Lent, never grows stale, never lets us off the hook in our need to reflect on the mystery of dying and rising in our own lives, in our Earth, in our universe.    This past year we have all learned something about dying; now we face new beginnings in a changed landscape.  H...