Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Our liturgical calendar for the beginning of February starts off with the Feast of the Presentation.   It remembers and celebrates the bringing of the child Jesus by his parents to the Temple and links us back to the feast of Christmas. That got me thinking about all the times we present – emphasis here on the second syllable.  We present a child for Baptism, we present a married couple at the end of the wedding ceremony, we present a graduating class to the assembly.  We make presentations, we make presents.  What connects this world of Presentation to our lives in these weeks of Ordinary Time?  The connector is this amazing truth:  Everything is a gift and all is connected to the ultimate gift of Incarnation, to the gift of God’s humanity that transforms our own and the entire universe forever.  We are challenged to make present, in our own daily lives and common experiences, the beauty and the reality of thi...

One of the challenges of our American culture is sustaining attention to what is slow moving or thinking something is over when it has only begun.   The Easter Season is one of those times in our liturgical church calendar that is hardly noticed by most of us. There is Easter Sunday – with all the trimmings – whatever that may mean for parish communities, families, vowed religious, etc.   But once the sun sets on that Sunday, am I – are we – noticing the season we are in? It is during the Easter Season we hear readings from the Acts of the Apostles – considered part 2 of St Luke’s writings.   I appreciate this New Testament book because it is the story of us – of our beginning as church. Even so, I need more than this one book of scripture to keep me focused and all the unfolding of this season.   In some of the eastern Christian churches people greet one another with this exchange:   “Christ is Risen” with the response: “He is Risen indeed.”   While...