A Day for Trees

National Love a Tree Day – May 16, 2022.

With every tree there is a story. Tree Day was actually started quite recently by the people of Hyderabad in India. On 15 May 2016 the group Hyderabad Rising rose to protest against the government's plans to cut down thousands of trees around the KBR National Park, to make way for an expressway. Thousands of people of people from all walks of life rallied to protest. Successful, millions of trees were planted as the city residents became more devoted to and appreciative of their trees. It is now a recognized “Tree City of the World” by the UN & World Arbor Day.

But trees also become intertwined with our lives.

Some years ago, at our local St. Michael’s church, an old and respected maple tree was standing in the way of a parking lot. There was a great uprising from parishioners when the pastor announced that the maple tree would have to come down. The old tree held so many memories for the people. They had come to the venerable tree often to have pictures taken at significant and special occasions in their family - First Communions, weddings, funerals and reunions. The old maple tree was a part of their own family history, it had been with them and witnessed the most significant milestones in their family’s life.

An arborist was consulted to assess the health of the tree. It was reported to the congregation that the old tree was failing and there was concern that a branch might fall or the tree might collapse and cause injury to someone or a car. Insurance cost now became part of the concern and rationale. Eventually the pastor said that it would have to come down but in a nod to the concerns, a new tree that was 15 years old would replace it, planted to the side of the parking lot. We did lose old the tree and were consoled by the arrival of a new one was planted for the future generations. But that old maple, still in the hearts and treasured family photos of many had taught us a lesson. That tree is now kin to us all.

Sister Linda Gregg, csj

A Tapestry of Love

Happy Mother’s Day

This Sunday families gather, many virtually, to celebrate our Mothers.  We want to celebrate these wonderful women who gave us life, and whose lives were spent in selfless giving and loving.  What we might say today with our words is important but less important than what these women have said with their lives.  Their actions show us what love really looks like.  Were they perfect?  No, they were not, but their responses to us, their children, created a tapestry of love full of meaning and memories that influence how we live today. 

“a tapestry of love full of meaning and memories that influence how we live today

There is a song sung by the Wailin’ Jennys called the “Parting Glass”.  After my mother had died, my large family went back to mom’s home to be with each other.  As we so often did, we started to play music filled with memories and had a very strong sense of my mother’s spirit with each of us.  We started sharing stories of my mother and realised that those stories and memories will never leave us.  She is still with us.  So we asked my brothers and sisters who play musical instruments to play something to mom.  Then we found a bottle of wine and poured a wee bit of spirit in each glass and sung this song called the “Parting Glass”.   This might have been my mother's wish to each of her children. So whether our mothers are alive or gone, I ask you to lift a glass to your mothers and say thank you for so much.

-Sister Joan Atkinson, csj [re-posted]

Alleluia! Christ Has Risen!

Christ has risen, Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

After this holy time of preparation during Lent, we burst with the spirit of Easter joy which will carry us forward as we share the truly Good News with a world that is sorely in need of good news.  How will you celebrate this Easter?  A joyful Easter liturgy?  A quiet day with a chocolate bunny?  A gathering with family or friends?  An Easter hike?  Hopefully, there is some way for each of us to experience that sense of Easter joy which is a gift from God.

For myself, Easter Sunday will start with mass at the Cathedral in Hamilton, followed by coffee with some of the Sisters.  In the afternoon, I will join my family in a long standing family tradition of an Easter Egg hunt and Easter Quiz at my brother’s house.  Being COVID times, it will be held outside.  [A side note:  As this will be the first time we are gathering in over two years, we will meet the new babies in the family who arrived during the COVID pandemic including one little fellow who arrived at the very start of the pandemic in January 2020 and whose name is Cove.  No, it is not short for Covid.  His father is Irish so he was named after the city of Cobh in Ireland but knowing that most people would not know how to pronounce Cobh, they decided to spell it as it sounds.] 

This joy we experience as an Easter people who recognize and rejoice in the Resurrection needs to be shared with whoever crosses our path.  How it is shared can be summed up in the words of one of our wise Sisters:

‘The most important thing is loving the person in front of you’.

Amen.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

-Sister Nancy Sullivan, csj

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Image: Unsplash/Bruno van der Kraan

GOOD FRIDAY

Image: Unsplash/Wim van 't Einde

As a child I always wondered what was so “good” about Good Friday given its silent solemnity in Church and at home where I truly had to uncharacteristically “behave”, and because of the sadness of the commemoration itself.

Sometimes, even as adults, we can become stuck in the “gloom” of the day, and it becomes almost impossible to see beyond it. Indeed, this year given the war in Ukraine, violence in so many places locally and globally, the continuing pandemic and its repercussions, the devastating consequences of climate change and its consequences for the poorest of the poor, we may be feeling very stuck, overwhelmed, and frustrated – alone in the darkness! On the other hand, some of us may want to deny “Good Friday” and move directly to the alleluias of Easter morning. Sister Gemma Simmonds says that in this case “we can appear glibly optimistic and superficial in our engagement with the crucifixion of Christ that continues in his desperately suffering people and God’s desecrated creation.”

So, then what is so “good” about Good Friday? Perhaps it is the paradox of light in the darkness, the both/and of cross and resurrection, death and new life echoed in our liturgical celebration of the Easter Triduum and in the natural world with its springtime promise of new shoots emerging from the still cold Earth. Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim in Norway describes this reality. He writes,

“The path will, in a Christian optic, necessarily go through the cross; but the cross is a passage, the emblem of Christ’s Pasch. It looms large on the horizon but bears the promise of new, endless life and flourishing to be found on the other side.”

Here we find hope in the darkness, promise in the shadows, the very place and condition of our growth and new life. In Christ’s acceptance of his suffering, definitely not chosen but imposed upon him by forces of injustice, we see the goodness of unconditional love. And, as the ancient hymn reminds us, when we “survey the wondrous cross”, we see the One who extravagantly loved to the end and then loves the world into resurrection.

“It is precisely this great love that invites and calls us to love radically”

image: unsplash/Yannick Pulver

It is precisely this great love that in turn invites and calls us to love radically, to the end, to join our own struggles with the suffering of the world; the suffering world that includes not only we humans but the whole of creation. In Romans 8 we read that creation itself cries out for liberation. God’s salvation embraces all the world’s sufferings, cosmic, social, and personal. This Good Friday, let’s seek the goodness of the day, embrace it, and live it by our presence, image of God’s presence, and then as we intone again the great alleluias of Easter may we receive hope and become God’s people of promise in this struggling world.

-Sister Mary Rowell, CSJ

Saint Joseph's Day - March 19

© Michael O’Neill McGrath, OSFS www.bromickeymcgrath.com

Joseph, one who trusted the outrageous freedom summoned by his night dreams; one who lived beyond the cultural norms of his time.

Joseph, whose whole life was grounded in care for others.

With Love on St. Joseph’s Day from all the Sisters of St. Joseph

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Artwork: “This version of the Flight into Egypt was inspired by the plight of the refugees fleeing oppression and murder in Northern Iraq because of their religion. Images of parents and little children reminded me of St. Joseph fleeing with his family to Egypt, to escape Herod. Together let’s pray for something beautiful in your own world, wherever you live, to counter hatred and terrorism.”

-Michael O’Neill McGrath, OSFS | © Michael O’Neill McGrath