Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Dear Lent, You snuck up on me early this year, old friend.   I wasn’t quite ready for you!   But here you are again, and this year, you’re asking me an important question: how well do I really know you? I admit, you aren’t everyone’s favorite season.   You don’t have a reputation for being cheerful, after all.   But the more I get to know you, the more I realized that you aren’t all about sinfulness and sacrifice, though those are realities you speak.   The practices you invite us to embrace – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – are really about mercy!   If we embrace them well, they can nourish us, bring us outside of ourselves, and help us be more merciful with ourselves and others. Through fasting you invite me to take a break – either temporary or permanent – from the non-essentials.   This can help me to root out the parts of myself that get caught up in destructive habits or selfish behavior.   It can nurture gratitude and en...

Where I am in retreat ministry we are transitioning from one retreat mode to another.   Summer seems to be a slower pace.   Really it is only different kinds of retreats than the last ten months.   But another transition has been taken place at the retreat house - a technology one.   And it has our IT person frazzled. Bringing our network technology up to date and ensuring all computers talk "nice" within the network has also shown that our systems have been harboring viruses that the very good protection program could not detect.   Clearing them out has not followed the usual plan. In the meantime, I have contracted my own personal virus - a summer cold...in Florida!   Not the usual plan. These realities got me thinking that each of us may also be harboring spiritual viruses, emotional woes or psychological impasses.   It takes courage to ask for Divine help (which often comes through human sources) to identify and receiv...

When you show up it always seems to be surprise.   Not in regards to ministry.   No – much planning has gone on for your opening act – Ash Wednesday – and for all the Lenten Specials (what I call our Lenten reflections days). The “surprise” really is more about what Lent will mean for me.   Planning for others is one thing but planning for my own spiritual needs is another. Just before Ash Wednesday, reading a friend’s blog, I was reminded of something I had used for a Lenten talk a few years ago.   It was a litany entitled:   “Fast From – Feast On.”   You can “google” it.   The author’s name is: William Arthur Ward. My Lenten surprise – Holy Spirit inspiration – is to use this litany each day and take one aspect to work on throughout the day. Dear Lent. . .it seems you want even more.   I am now sharing this litany as a Lenten gift with each person who comes for spiritual direction during this season.   I give it to them at the ...