NunEssential

"We had a Eucharistic Vigil last night in preparation for today's feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. On this day, 49 years ago, our SOLT community was founded by Fr. James Flanagan. It occurred to me once again last night that Jesus made us a certain promise. He promised He would be with us always, even until the end of time. This promise is fulfilled in many ways, but it is especially fulfilled in the Eucharist. As I sat there in the chapel while the sun set and the crickets began to sing, I gazed at the monstrance and pondered some of the stories of Jesus from the Gospel. Jesus in the Eucharist who poured out His grace here in New Mexico last night is the same Jesus who calmed the storm for the disciples. It is the same Jesus who healed the woman suffering dreadfully from a hemmorage. It is the same Jesus who forgave the woman caught in adultery, healed the blind who wanted to see and taught the people with authority. He is one and the same. St. Teresa of Avila commente...

I spent a little time on a silent retreat this past weekend which was a nice thing. Nothing like a little silence to make things in life clear, which is perhaps why the world abhors silence and does all it can to intrude upon the serenity of our minds. I finished another book, well ok, three more books. Oddly enough they all had to do with the subject of international conflict, more commonly known as war. One of the books was about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. It was really heartbreaking to me to read about mere children being forced into war, high on drugs, with semi-automatic weapons. Wow. It's hard to even imagine something like that, much less live through it. There was this quote by Mother Teresa on a little calendar that I have and she said (I am paraphrasing here) that war doesn't begin outside ourselves but it begins in our hearts. It begins with conflict and hatred in our own hearts and spreads outward. The best way to counteract war is to love our neighbors. It sou...

"Something I have been pondering these days in the desert is the will of God. Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Many people talk about the will of God as in, "Sister, I just want to do the will of God" or "I don't know what the will of God is for me." Well, what is the will of God? And how does one go about discovering it in his or her own life? Perhaps it would help us if we could keep in mind that nothing in our life is coincidental. Nothing. Every person that crosses your path, everything that happens to you during the day is providential, not coincidental. Now, perhaps we don't understand all of what happens to us but that's not really the point. That point is that God is doing something in and with our lives. The experiences we have in our ordinary, routine day are gifts from God. Notice that even in a like environment such as an office, or a school or a religious community wherein people have a similar daily structure, they don't have the e...