It's hard to believe I've been here in Milwaukee over months now, and that at May 9, my postulancy will be over. It feels that I got here only weeks ago, learning how to fit into a life of community, service, and prayer. With the end of the term so close, I'm surprised I haven't thought more about t...

Well, it's now been 5 days since I got back from my annual retreat (see previous blog posts); 5 days since, like Peter, James + John in the account of the Transfiguration, Jesus invited me (not that I had much choice! :-) to come back down the mountain into the "world" and share with others the grac...

Surely, I thought, this must be a joke as I read a news headline saying that the word “nun” has been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. But it’s no joke. Lisa Saunders, a mom in Ireland, discovered that the new edition of the dictionary had dropped a bunch of words. Upon cl...

The Franciscan rule is famous for its spiritual seductiveness and elegant simplicity. It is easy to desire but hard to put into practice without making glosses and concessions. Over the years since professing and promising this rule of life, I have surprised myself in what has turned out to be the h...

Worth Abbey, the location for the enthralling and ultimately moving 2005 BBC 2 reality series "The Monastery" (see here and here) is the subject of the following article on the BBC News website. It discusses their taster weekends that they initiated in the aftermath of the tv series and the thousand...

February 2nd is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. It is also the day in which the Church celebrates in a particular way the gift of consecrated life in the Church. It is a day to reflect on the fact and gift of the consecrated life, as it is given in the particular circumstances of this day...

Long over due.... And, it ought to be interesting. There are many faithful sisters who have given up their lives to serve the Lord in various ways. What is interesting is the sudden explosion of vocations in traditional religious orders where there is a focus on the fundamentals: Building virtue and...

Last week in Washington, DC, I met a nun who is not Roman Catholic. She’s Maronite Catholic. She is the founder of an order of sisters called the Maronite Sisters of Christ the Light. Her order is the first Maronite order of women that has its base and mission in the United States. All other M...

There’s been a lot of media around the topic of declining numbers of Catholic sisters and nuns. Beyond the veil: Debate continues on why number of nuns is declining, a recent article from Catholic News Service, highlights a couple of arguments about why the decline in number. “Italian Cl...

[A reflection for National Vocation Awareness Week, January 11-17, 2009] During the sexual abuse crisis, the retired archbishop of San Francisco, Most Rev. John R. Quinn, wrote: “I believe, in fact, that this is the best time in the history of the church to be a priest, because it is a time when t...