Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Three of us made up a local community for a number of years. Just recently  we became four of us.  The three of us left a residence in which we formed  community in order to join another sister who  now is able to live in the parish  house where she works. How do I find all the things that I brough t with me  in boxes?     How do we form a new community?    Prayer together is important.    Meals together are important.    In both prayer  and celebration, we meet  those that each of us has met as we have gone to  the places where God called us—                    o     The homeless person who came to the bookstore o    The sister/brother ill with cancer     o    The young person in the prayer group at prison, who was sentenced for life o    The friend whose relative just died o ...

Do you ever have a moment of ‘communion’ that you know you must take notice of?  It is not quite an ‘ahaa’ moment.  Rather it is a sort of soul-stirring that can make one ponderous, curious, scratching one’s head and insistently aware. Easter Wednesday I kept thinking about my friend ‘Pam’.  She was a thousand or so miles away from me.  She lived with a debilitating and life-threatening disease. It was no longer easy for her to talk on the phone.  So occasionally I would send her a phone text.  Easter Wednesday morning I sent her a text writing ‘a gentle hug and my love. . .no need to reply’.  The very next day I learned that she had requested an ambulance ride from the hospital back to our Motherhouse.  Once ‘home’ Pam quickly and quietly breathed her last. What I failed to recognize is that Pam had in fact ‘initiated the contact', this communion.  It was her life-loving spirit who had...

I have a beloved twin sister who hates to shop but also knows she needs some new clothes.  She always wants me to go with her and when I ask her what we’re looking for, she answers, “I’ll know what I want when I find it.” How many of us have that experience – maybe not at a shopping mall or online retailer – but in searching for wisdom, insight, a new way to pray, a new challenge in study?  I’m always grateful when someone recommends a new book or article because “It is really mind stretching.”  Like my love/hate relationship with exercise, I could easily stick to my favorite mystery writers and read nothing else or listen only to my favorite podcast, but it’s when I choose to or am encouraged or challenged to search, stretch, push my comfortable boundaries, that I discover that I have found what I truly wanted. It is a choice we must make, in large and small ways, to search for what we truly want, even when we’re not sure what that is! ...

Earth Day is an annual event celebrated on April 22. Worldwide, various events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day now includes events in more than 193 countries, which are now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network. Pray and reflect with this   10-minute video produced by the   Catholic Climate Covenant   that includes images of endangered species projected onto the façade of   St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. https://youtu.be/_1CED8o7mKI

Lately, it seems to me that God has been reminding me and calling me even more intentionally to service.  Scripture proclamations, novels I’m reading, and conversations I engage in all seem to have this thread of service running through them.   In the Scripture readings for the liturgies of this Holy Week alone, nearly every day there is either a story about service or Jesus speaking of following Him requires being a servant to one another.  During the Holy Thursday liturgy, this is symbolized by the washing of feet (or hands).   We are all called to service in some shape or form. When my biological sisters retired from their full time jobs, each of them very quickly found a volunteer opportunity or part-time job where their interests and skills could help another person, extended family, neighbors, or local population.  When one of my sister friends moved to the Mound this past year, the Prioress of the Mound community a...

Photo Credit:  Sheila Yousuf-Abramson/Fred Oskin We often spend time in Lent looking within.  What is getting in the way of our relationship with God?  We focus on fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  For Dominicans, Lent must also have an outward focus and involve the world in which we live.  How is our relationship with God moving us toward those on the margins, our sisters and brothers?  Recently, Dominican University’s School of Social Work boarded buses at (UGH) 4:30 a.m. to go to our state capital, Springfield, IL.  We participated with other graduate programs in the National Association of Social Work Advocacy Day.  We met with legislators.  We connected policy to programs.  We stood up for our sisters and brothers who are left outside of access to basic human rights.  Lent calls us to this kind of accompaniment.  The wide mercy of God calls us to walk with...

I changed my sheets the other day and I thought I’d flip over the mattress only to realize that my mattress only has one side. So I turned it around instead and put the head down were my feet go. My mattress is a cumbersome thing but as I struggled to turn it around I found myself thinking of our local Lake Wingra and the cyclical turning over of the waters. This happens in Fall and Spring and allows life to continue under the ice in the depths of Winter. In the winter the warmest water sinks to the bottom of the lake. This mixing of waters distributes oxygen and Nutrients to support life under the ice covered lakes. In the Spring, when the ice on the surface melts, the turnover reverses with the warmth and nutrients moving closer to the surface A seasonal miracle, this turning over. What is turning over inside me as we move deeper into the Lenten season? Under the ice cover am I taking the opportunity to seek out nourishment and life in these Lenten depths? When Easte...