Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

For Dominicans, every day should be Thanksgiving Day.   We live in the gospel practice that all we have and all we need comes from God.   Our God offers us abundance everywhere we turn.   This grace comes with a huge invitation to offer to others this self-giving love of God.   We know that all we have and all we are is for others.   So, how do you live the spirit of Thanksgiving Day all year round?   Peggy Ryan, OP Casa Nona McGreal Waukegan, IL                

The other day, three friends that I had grown up with came over from Milwaukee to have lunch with me.   We had great fun reminiscing about those days.   Two of them are now married, soon to celebrate their wedding anniversary.   We met up at our class reunion – itself an event!!   The old place isn’t what it once was, which I guess is how life evolves…   We laughed about our teachers, the rules of the institution and the antics of kids in our class.   And we showed each other pictures.   (One of them accompanies this article.   That’s me, the youngest of the three, with my mom about two years after my dad died.) Remembering is an important activity.     We need to do it so we can dwell in who we once were, giving thanks that we have become the person we are.   Remembering is what we do at every gathering of believers when we read the stories of our common past in the scriptures.   And giving thanks is what believers...

This is the season of giving thanks!!   On Saturday those of us who had been in membership ministry during the past twenty-six years gathered to honor and thank our secretary, (who was with us over all those years) Mary Ellen Schonhoff, as she retired.  Over those years, she knew all of the women who were welcomed into the congregation during those years while also working with 50 of us who were involved in the ministry!  That’s a lot of people!! It was touching to hear and read the many tributes to Mary Ellen in the memory book that the current Relationships for Mission team put together – that’s what membership ministry is known as today in our congregation.   Through it all, the many changes in name and personnel Mary Ellen was gracious and present to every person.   She understood that this ministry is about relationship and held the office together over all those years. Ritualizing significant moments in our lives is important.  How have yo...