NunEssential

I am sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted something. Please know that I receive every comment that you submit and readily respond when I can. Please also remember to include your email address in the body of your comment so I can respond to you! Below is a small reflection by our SOLT member Sr. Anne Marie Walsh on the courage to be a missionary in whatever place we find ourselves. Courageous Love The meme on the left came off a page of Fr. Richard Heilman. I would like to reiterate something I posted once already, a thought of Pope Francis. The field of mission is the human person, not a foreign location. I'm amazed at how many people have to go to a foreign mission to see the "poor" for the first time.  Anyone who cannot see that this country, (especially after watching the whole election cycle at this time) is mission territory is either incredibly oblivious to the state of  souls here, or, is blinded by their own pride.  Our country ...

Want to attend an awesome conference this summer? Check out our SOLT Love and Mercy Conference on July 8th and 9th at Our Lady of Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, TX! The evening and following day will feature great SOLT speakers and reflections on love and mercy in both English and Spanish. See the flyer below for more details! Hope to see you there!

Want to help out a good cause? Check out www.projectlightfilms.com and see their beautiful new film project ministering to teens. People are doing great things in the Church and in the world! You can donate to help create the film by visiting the website. Here is the promo video for the project:

I love finding new and beautiful things that people are doing. Check out The Vigil Project for some beautiful music and just plain beauty itself. I am embedding a video featuring the song "Were You There" (I know it's Easter but it's just so lovely) and it gives you a taste of what they are up to! You can find more awesomeness (and some Easter hymns) at www.thevigilproject.com WERE YOU THERE // feat. Andrea Thomas - #VIGIL from 4PM Media on Vimeo .

Our beloved SOLT Founder, Fr. James Flanagan, passed away this Holy Thursday morning surrounded by members of our community. He was 91. We are incredibly grateful for the gift of his life, his vocation, his witness of holiness and his fidelity to God. May he rest in peace. Read more about Fr. Flanagan and his passing from our SOLT website.

Hello dear readers- Thank you for all of your questions and speaking invitations! Please remember to leave your email address in the body of your comment or else I will not be able to respond to you personally. To the person who just shared with me their story and asked a personal discernment question, please leave me another comment with your email address! Thanks! My prayers are with all of you in these last days of Lent. Peace- Sr. Miriam

(AP Photo) NFL great Peyton Manning announced his retirement today . During a press conference, the 39-   year-old quarterback tearfully expressed his gratitude to the many people who contributed over the years to his life and career. He thanked friends, family, fans and even foes whom he encountered in his 18 seasons in the NFL. He laughed, cried, reminisced and spoke with hope for the future. As I watched Peyton say goodbye to professional football, I was thinking of how highly people regard him as a person. Sure, he is a stellar athlete who will most likely be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Yes, he holds numerous MVP awards. I think, however, people see in him something more. They see a hardworking, sincere person who is devoted, not just to winning football games, but to God and his family as well. He is embroiled in no scandal, no off-field antics. He has not forgotten where he came from and I think we will likely see him in some leadership position in the future. ...

Happy Sunday, y'all! Several of you have asked me when I will be leading another Mother/Daughter retreat and I am happy to announce that the next one will be April 29th-May 1st at our lovely retreat center in Corpus Christi, TX. For more information, see the flyer below. To register for the retreat, click here

Friends- Here is Part 2 of my little Lenten Journey series! Hope it blesses you-

I love this tweet posted yesterday by Pope Francis.  I think one of our greatest fears and sorrows is the belief that we will be forever marked by our past- by what we have done or what has been done to us. Perhaps we fear that "victim", "loser" or "rejected" is our deepest identity. We spend so much of our lives coping and trying to compensate for what we fear might be true.  Lent reveals the truth. And in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we find that our deepest identity, our deepest calling and yearning, is actually one of relationship- being sons and daughters of God. When we embrace the courage to face our sin and brokenness and receive ongoing mercy, our lives are transformed.  This is the Good News- that Jesus became man; that God took on flesh. He assumed all to redeem all.  His life, death and resurrection changes everything.  We need not remain prisoners of the past.  We rise to our true identity in the glorious freedom of the...

Every driver knows that one of the worst places you can find yourself is in the "blindspot" of another driver. You know, that little space in the line of sight between the coverage of the rear view or side mirror and the actual car next to us. I think we've all had the experience of checking our mirrors and then changing lanes, only to hear the mad blast of a horn as a car speeds by that was previously unseen to us. As our heart races over the near collision, we practically break our necks double checking the next 12 lane changes. And then sometimes the collision does happen. We "could have sworn there was no car next to us" but the accident happens and the problems and trauma ensue.  One of my friends noted that this is true in our personal lives as well. How many times have we "run into or over" others simply because we didn't "see them." It's the boss who regularly becomes angry and screams at his employees because "that...

If you've ever been to a 12-Step meeting, you know that at some point the group or someone in the group will usually pray or reference the "Serenity Prayer."  That well-known prayer is found on wall hangings, plaques, dishes, prayer cards, etc. and the text usually reads, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  Would that we all lived that short prayer! Imagine how different our daily lives would be?  And yet, there is more.  That short excerpt is actually part of a longer prayer which continues: Living one day at a time;   enjoying one moment at a time;  accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;  taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;  trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;  that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever i...

I posted this on Twitter yesterday and couldn't help but post it here as well! Bringing a little mercy for all the coffee lovers during this Year of Mercy! God bless you :)

Wishing all of you readers a blessed and hope-filled New Year. We may deeply encounter Jesus in a new way this year. He is "the face of the Father's mercy" as Pope Francis so aptly wrote in his letter of introduction to the Year of Mercy. This is not merely a warm sentiment or personal feeling. Jesus pierces time and space to become one of us, to assume our sin and brokenness and set us free. This is Good News, indeed. Christ is our strong foundation and the Light of the World. He is our hope, our shield, our refuge.  May this Year of Mercy be one of tenderness, truth and deep encounter with Christ and others. If we want the world to change, we must be willing to continually encounter Christ and bring Him to others. We must willing to release our "grasp" on the offenses of the past; the hatred, resentment and indifference. It takes a lot of energy to carry resentment and close our hearts to God and others. We must lay down our sin and choo...

A power blogpost featured below written by Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT Facing Our Immortality in Light of Christmas Anyone who has ever received an unexpected diagnosis of cancer or some other serious disease knows the power of the experience to suddenly and radically change the inner world in which we normally live. Anyone who has lost a loved one especially without warning, experiences the same thing. Perception, understanding, the hierarchy of what we have up to then considered important suffers a seismic shock and shifts the plates of our current existence into a completely changed landscape which can seem foreign and strange and certainly frightening in many ways. Having been through this myself several times, and watching those around me, I've come to realize that the shock comes not so much from facing our own mortality as it does from not having faced our immortality. That's the real problem. To say we now are brought to a place where we have to face our own mortalit...