Celebrating Joyfully

National Vocation Awareness Week: November 3-9, 2019

National Vocation Awareness Week is an annual celebration of vocations to consecrated life and to ordained priesthood and the place they have together with all others through their vocations to live the good news of the Gospel in service in the world. The week-long celebration was begun in 1976 as an initiative of the Catholic Bishops of the United States. Recently, and thankfully, the celebration had begun to “creep across the border” and is now finding a place in Canada.

In addition to celebration this event is a call through prayer and education to re-create awareness of the joy of consecrated life and priesthood in the Church and world. It is an invitation to young people to consider where God may be calling them in loving and fulfilling lives. It is also an invitation to each and all of us to renew our prayers for an increase in vocations to consecrated life and priesthood - that is, to lives of “living faith, living mercy, living joy and living beauty” for a world so in need of the hope and promise of Christ today.

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I Am Water: introduce yourself with water

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From our CSJ Blue Community website. 

Many of the actions we can take to honour water as a human right, shared commons, and sacred gift are collective, yet the ways we describe who we are and where we are from can shift the broader water-agenda in profound ways. 

https://www.bluecommunitycsj.org/post/i-am-water-introduce-yourself-with-water

Weekly Pause & Ponder

It’s easy to forget what an amazing gift life really is.  Our lives are nothing but a cosmic blink.  Even our seemingly all-encompassing world is just a tiny blue dot circling an average sized star spiraling around a galaxy of 200-400 billion stars, which itself is one galaxy among billions more.  Yet for one brief moment, we get to experience the wonders of existence of consciousness.

Positive Quotes About Life taken from:    www.keepinspiringme.com

Always in My Heart

What is this life beyond the grave of which our faith speaks?  Where does our spirit go when we have, as Shakespeare writes, “shuffled off this mortal coil?”  Every day in every way, humankind has wrestled with the issue of immortality.

In Christian tradition, the Church celebrates All Souls Day on November 2nd.  This month’s damp and dreary weather in our Western Hemisphere seems to be an ideal time to stop and pray for our loved ones who have gone before us.  In churches, we write the names of our dearly departed in a special book of remembrance which remains in a prominent place throughout the month.

Many people ask, Is there really life after death?  From earliest days to the present century, philosophers have grappled with the world’s eternal questions.  Why are we here?  What is the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of death?  Is there an afterlife?    

I too, have thought deeply about the existence of eternal life.  At the end of my search, my faith, my upbringing and one defining moment satisfies my query.  Several months after my beloved father’s death at age 64, I was walking in the grotto area of our spacious grounds, thinking of all that had transpired since his untimely death. I could feel his comforting spiritual presence as I sometimes did.  Suddenly, I sensed a quick “whosh” like air racing upward beside me and a letting go beyond me.  I whispered, “O Dad, you’ve gone.”  Instantly, I sensed he knew that I would be fine without him. His spirit was in another dimension.

How does one put into words what we know instinctively but cannot explain? Undoubtedly, each of us has had experiences of deceased loved ones being close at hand.  However, some experiences are too deep for us to share.  Why would anyone believe us anyway? 

Every November, I am grateful for our annual All Souls Day to honour departed family members, friends and all those who have died before us, signed with the seal of faith.

- Sister Jean Moylan, csj