Teacher Appreciation Day

Sister Callistus Arnsby teaching piano to a student at the Sacred Heart School of Music, London, Ontario. Sister of St. Joseph Archives.

As a very shy 12-year-old I knocked on the door of the most esteemed piano teacher I ever knew. The door opened and there stood Sister Callistus Arnsby welcoming me into her piano studio. A beautiful grand piano filled most of the room. A cushion carefully embroidered with musical symbols topped the chair beside the grand. Music scores and biographies of musicians filled the open shelves, and behind the closed cupboard doors were hidden more tools of the trade: music liners for the blackboard, chalk, manuscript paper, recital notes, exam requisitions. This was truly like stepping into another world.

Though I felt overwhelmed and in spite of my shyness this seasoned professional set me at ease and encouraged me to enter more fully into the contemplative world of sound. Sister Callistus knew how to call forth a presence to the experience of making music, not just reading the notes. She was sensitive to the ebb and flow of a musical phrase. She helped me realize that the weight applied to an individual key could vary so that a phrase would take shape, a melody would lift and fall, like one crescendos and decrescendos when singing a best loved song.

This music making was not only about performing a piece for a recital or the Kiwanis Music Festival, but it also was about building confidence, and a sense of identity. When memorization became a challenge and sometime failure, she would encourage and advise new techniques for calming nerves and send me off to the next recital opportunity.

Sister Callistus led our St. Joseph’s School of Music through the height of its success and then as time warranted, helped guide all who taught with her, to a new environment in collaboration with the Western Ontario Conservatory of Music. Sister Callistus is remembered by numerous musicians. I thank her for the extraordinary ways that she helped me grow in my love of music and music-making.

On this National Teacher Appreciation Day for whom do you give thanks?

-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj

NATIONAL TEACHER APPRECIATION DAY

National Teacher Appreciation Day is on the Tuesday during first full week in May as a reminder to show appreciation for teachers everywhere. We are using this National Day to say thank you to all teachers for their time and dedication to educate our children.

image: Geert Pieters Yanna Zissiadou/Unsplash

Palm Sunday

Palm/Passion Sunday, March 29, 2026

Walking the journey of Lent we consciously and unconsciously hold onto melodies, images, and words. What has stayed with you? Mine are deeply embedded melodies of compassion, mercy, pleas for courage, Kyries, and ultimately praise for God’s constant love in the midst of our chaotic world. The celebration of liturgy does this to me.

A world torn by war, hatred, violence is evil personified. A Eucharistic heart grown large out of the mystery of dying and rising is indeed Love personified. When the texts of our liturgical prayer draw in the reality of our world situation, we breath in and out Divine compassion.

This Sunday, Palm/Passion Sunday, we praise as we parade with palm branches, then we try to settle our joy into a deep listening, making space for the suffering of the Anointed One, the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ.  The proclamation of the Passion is indeed a sustained poignant experience.

There is an earlier moment in the liturgy that makes way for the hearing of the passion story: the singing of Psalm 22, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.” The melody in Catholic Book of Worship III was written by Brother Donatus Vervoort, (1931 – 2014) a deeply spiritual man who strove to serve persons in need with an understanding mind and a warm heart. I dare to say in the shaping of the melody for Psalm 22 his lived experience of war in the Netherlands, stretched and molded his understanding heart. When we sing that plaintive antiphon, our hearts are stretched to encompass the passion of the Christ, and the passion of our world.

But let me introduce you to another setting of that psalm. This is the composition of David Willcocks, SJ. This 6-minute video begins with a brief commentary on Psalm 22, followed by the cantor’s prayerful ministry.

Jesus lived among the people of his time in humanness not clinging to his divinity. He came to show us how to manifest God’s love in our world.

This Palm/Passion Sunday might we be shaped by the liturgy and carry into our lives the remembrance of his suffering, and all who know abandonment, cruelty and the horror of war.  May our liturgy this Palm/Passion Sunday reveal to us Christ’s compassionate heart for the whole world and all creation.

-Sister Loretta Manzara, CSJ

All four gospels record this significant and prophetic event. You can find them in Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-44; and John 12:12-19.

Image: Paul Moody/Unsplash

4th Sunday of Advent

The Hands that First Held Mary’s Child

Every year I look forward to this fourth Sunday of Advent. The readings finally bring us closer to the mystery of God being born among us. Some years there are only one or two days of preparation for the Great Feast. Very rarely do we have the opportunity to enjoy the full week of expectation.

On Friday of Week Three we began reading the account of the birth of Jesus according to St. Luke. That day we heard of the plight of Zechariah and Elizabeth as the angel announced they would birth a child in their old age. Luke continues in the Saturday reading announcing that Mary of Nazareth will also conceive – a child who will be holy and called the Son of God. There is a hint her of the man Joseph to whom she was engaged. Now, here we come to the Fourth Sunday of Advent, with a return to the gospel of Matthew and who do we find – a sleeping Joseph! The angel appears and settles Joseph’s concern about publicly dismissing the pregnant Mary. Joseph awakes from his sleep and takes Mary as his wife.

There is such a burst of surprise, wonder and awe in these birthing announcements. Frequently my prayer focuses on the feelings Elizabeth and Mary experienced in facing these wondrous events. More recently my thoughts are turning to Zechariah and Joseph in the midst of their struggles to believe. I share with you a hymn I have grown to love. Perhaps it will also help you move into the human reality of this mystery. Thomas Troeger the hymn text writer muses on what Joseph as man, as father may have felt, feelings that well-up as he cradles the child, as he is overwhelmed by the dream memory, as he gently holds the tiny form in his palms.

The tune that is suggested for this hymn text is RESIGNATION. You can find that in most hymn books. In Catholic Book of Worship III it is number 538.

 -Sister Loretta Manzara, CSJ

The Hands that First Held Mary’s Child

1.      The hands that first held Mary’s child

Were hard from working wood,

            From boards they sawed and planed and filed

            And splinters they withstood.

            This day they gripped no tool of steel,

            They drove no iron nail,

            But cradled from the head to heel

            Our Lord, newborn and frail.

 

2.      When Joseph marveled at the size

Of that small breathing frame,

            And gazed upon those bright new eyes

            And spoke the infant’s name,

            The angel’s words he once had dreamed

            Poured down from heaven’s height,

            And like the host of stars that beamed

            Blessed earth with welcome light.

 

3.      “This child shall be Emmanuel,

Not God upon the throne,

            But God with us, Emmanuel,

            As close as blood and bone.”

            The tiny form in Joseph’s palms

            Confirmed what he had heard,

            And from his heart rose hymns and psalms

            For heaven’s human word.

 

4.      The tools which Joseph laid aside

A mob would later lift

            And use with anger, fear, and pride

            To crucify God’s gift.

            Let us, O Lord, not only hold

            The Child who’s born today,

            But charged with faith may we be bold

            To follow in his way.

Text: Thomas H. Troeger, b.1945, © 1985, Oxford University Press

Reprinted under OneLicense #A-711091

Image: ian borg/Unsplash

Jubilee Hope

These recent weeks have produced a whirlwind of unsettling news. Tariffs being announced,  delayed and then re-announced, natural resources being claimed for other countries benefits, national geographical lines of allocation seen as arbitrary, employment In manufacturing swinging in nets of insecurity.

Yet in spite of all of this there is an aura of hope around us, as citizens of Canada pull together to claim a deeper identity, and as provinces strive to create new trade agreements. For some of us this aura of hope is resonating with our faith and particularly in this year in the call for a Jubilee.

Pope Francis designated 2025 as a Jubilee Year of Hope way before most of these uncertainties listed above took shape. Diocesan offices have quickly pulled together resources, planned pilgrimages to historic churches and organized trips to Rome. What strikes me with the greatest intensity is the underlying principle of a Jubilee year.

“The term Jubilee reflects an older Jewish tradition where every fiftieth year the land was to lie fallow, debts were forgiven and slaves were freed. Holy Year Jubilees are now celebrated every 25 years unless a special occasion warranted an extraordinary year be proclaimed as with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015-2016.”  (info from London Diocese website)

With each Jubilee, advocacy groups focus on the forgiveness of debt. This year a number of groups have come together under the banner Turn Debt into Hope.

I cite a couple of resources that explain this opportunity far better than I. Here is a wonderful video by Development and Peace:

On March 18th a webinar From Ecological Debt to Ecological Hope was presented by ORCIE (Office of Religious Congregations for Integral Ecology).  Guest speakers were Journalist Elton Bozzetto, Sr. Nilva Dal Bello, CSJ Brazil & Dr. Sue Wilson, CSJ Canada, with Sasquia Antunez Pineda, ORCIE Advocacy and Communications Officer. Learn more with ORCIE’s new position paper: Linking Ecological Debt to Global Financial Exploitation. A shorter executive summary is available.

 Let’s continue to look for the signs of hope in our world.

-Sister Loretta Manzara CSJ

WORLD WATER DAY 2025 - OUR JOURNEY AND OUR FOCUS

Periodically I receive reports of how our CSJ in Canada Congregational donations are supporting access to clean drinkable water around the world. I am so very grateful that we are participants in change globally by helping to dig water wells, to restore water towers, expand water lines, and provide water filtration systems, and in Canada collaborating and advocating for water protection with Indigenous peoples.

In 2017 we became a Blue Community along with our sister congregations in and with the Federation. Our pledge was to promote the recognition of water and sanitation as human rights, to promote safe water and wastewater services, and to phase out the sale of bottled water at municipal events (because water sold this way becomes a commodity for profit).

This year to celebrate World Water Day, March 22, the United Nations’ focus is on the preservation of glaciers.

The UN agencies in charge of the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation have drawn up a dozen key messages, highlighting the importance of glaciers worldwide.

We cite only one message in this blog:

“A glacier is a large accumulation of mainly ice and snow, that originates on land and flows slowly through the influence of its own weight. Glaciers are found on every continent. They exist in many mountain regions and around the edges of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. There are more than 275 000 glaciers in the world, covering an area of around 700 000 km². Glaciers are considered as important water towers,  storing about 170 000 km3 of ice, which amounts to approximately 70% of the global freshwater. Glaciers are a source of life, providing freshwater to people, animals and plants alike.”

With global warming our glaciers are melting. The melting changes life on earth as we know it: sea levels rise, fresh water is added to the oceans, less salt disturbs the gulf stream and changes its pattern. Watch this 4 minute video from National Geographic, Climate 101: Glaciers.

The relationship of human activity and the gift of water is a fine-spun web. Let’s learn all we can about how our actions affect the gift of water. This year focus on glaciers as we mark World Water Day 2025!

-Sister Loretta Manzara, on behalf of the Federation Blue Community Steering Committee

Image: Sime Basioli/Unsplash