Sister Alicia (in white) with me and Sister Eleanor
This week the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace celebrate the life of Sister Alicia Cavanaugh, CSJP who passed away late Saturday night at the age of 82.
I first met Alicia when she opened her home, and her heart, to me as a novice. I lived with Sisters Alicia and Eleanor for 3 months during my novitiate ministry year. I was placed in two very challenging ministries–three days a week working with survivors of human trafficking, two days a week helping women emerging from domestic violence situations attain restraining orders. Every day when I would come home from work after hearing stories of such hardship and suffering, there would be Alicia inviting me to sit down with a cup of tea and tell her about my day. She was always interested, always inviting, always engaged.
She was also extremely generous. She had a number of people in the neighborhood who would stop by regularly for a visit and a little bit of help. Whenever we went out in the car, she always had a small stash of one dollar bills to give to folks begging on the side of the road. And on more than one occasion, when I came home from work to make dinner, I’d find that the food that had been there in the morning when I’d made my plans for the evening meal was no longer there. Alicia, I’d say, do you know what happened to the tuna fish or pasta or rice? Oh, she’d say, so and so came to the door and she was just so hungry …. We of course made do and never went hungry ourselves. She’d always help me find something else in our ample pantry that would suffice … It was a good lesson for me.
During her time as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace, Alicia shared her generous heart with many people. She was a teacher in schools in New Jersey, California, and Kenya! She worked as Director of Religious Education and Catechist. But I will remember her for the lessons she taught me through daily living and compassionate care for all of God’s children, especially the poor and vulnerable.
It has been a while since I have written on the blog. Much has been happening in my own world — community meetings, travel, conferences, being a bit under the weather, and then another series of meetings.
There also has been so much going on in the world, much of it with far reaching consequences we cannot see.
And yet, much of the rhetoric, perhaps most of the rhetoric depending on who and what you listen to, is framing the situation quite narrowly and thus has blinders to the consequences.
When we frame our worldview, our response, our understanding of any situation from fear, we risk losing that which makes us most human. The best human responses, if you look at history or even your own life, come not from fear but from love, compassiom, wisdom, and a focus on the common good. We are most secure and have the best chance at creating a peaceful tomorrow when we draw upon what we share in common, rather than focus on what makes us different or divides us.
Fear blinds us to our best selves and our potential. No wonder Jesus told his followers, again and again, be not afraid. He was building a community of beloved disciples. He understood the temptation of fear and its power, but God is love and God calls us to love not fear.
For the non religious among you, other wise figures have understood this. FDR famously said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, whereas his wife Eleanor asked what I think is a key question: “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?” When indeed?
As Frank Herbert wrote in the sci-fi novel Dune: “Fear is the mind killer.” Fear also seems to act as a heart killer too. When our response to families fleeing terror and seeking safety turns into our own irrational fear of the ones who are literally and rightfully afraid for their lives, then we have turned a scary corner.
And whoever wrote these words attributed to Yoda in Star Wars was, I think, on to something: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
We human beinge have let fear win out before, and it has led to things like the Internment of Americans of Japanese descent by their own government, the use of torture in interrogation, and genocide after genocide.
We humans are better than that, and I think it all starts with how we frame our experience, our viewpoint, our shared reality: from a narrow closed off space of fear? Or from an expansive space of love, compassion, and human creativity in service of the common good.
The choice is ours … and our choices have consequences indeed.
Catholic life in the United States, judging by my social media feed, is alive with energy and excitement about the Pope’s visit, and rightly so. Sister Sheila, our Congregation Leader, will be representing us at the Papal mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception today. Meanwhile, I will have to follow the excitement from afar since I am visiting our CSJP community in the United Kingdom for a couple of weeks.
Guess who outside the Seafarers Centre
Today I had the sheer privilege of joining some of our CSJP Sisters and Associates on an outing to visit the mission to seafarers at the Immingham Docks, the largest port in this country. I had no idea what to expect, and ended up being very moved by my experiences today. At the end of the day it felt more like a pilgrimage than an outing.
Immingham is located near Grimsby, England on the North Sea, the town where our first Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace began our mission of peace in 1884. The mission to Seafarers there is part of the Apostleship of the Sea – a global Catholic Charity which ministers to all seafarers, regardless of nationality or belief. Some of our CSJP Associates in the area volunteer with the mission.
Fr. Column telling us about the cross in the Chapel – Sister Bridgetta looks on
At Immingham, we met Fr. Colum Kelly who is Chaplain to the mostly men, or “lads” as he calls them, who come from around the globe bringing imports such as coal, grain, biomass, wood, and automobiles to England. If you think about it, most of what we use comes to us wherever we are from places far, far away. And as I learned today, 90% of world trade is transported by ship. And, if you stop and think about it, those ships require human beings to navigate the seas.
That’s where the seafarers come in. A quick look at the visitors book shows that the seafarers come from all corners of the globe – Philippines, Vietnam, Poland, Greece, and Turkey to name a few. Fr. Colum told us stories of some of the cases he has been called in on to intervene, situations where the seafarers arrive in port hungry because there is not enough food on board, or in some cases they have not received their promised wages in months. Sadly, wage theft is a common problem in many industries, and is related to the reality of forced labor and human trafficking across the globe.
The stories Fr. Colum shared were powerful, and renewed my commitment to work against what Pope Francis has called the “globalization of indifference.” We live in a globalized economy, which means that we are intimately linked to the men, women, and sometimes children who harvest, mine, transport, and transform the raw materials which become the many consumer items we take for granted in our daily lives. Fr. Colum spoke of the invisible life of the seafarer. He also spoke with great passion and love for his ministry, which he described as the Church bringing its mission of hope and love to the margins, even in this invisible world to which we are all, in fact, connected.
Not all of the situations are so dire. Many of the seafarers work for honest companies, travel in safe vessels, and receive adequate food and regular wages. But they still spend as much as 9 months at sea, separated from family and isolated. The Seafarers Center welcomes them when they are in port with a shop, chapel, internet cafe, games room, money exchange, phone cards, etc… The mission was damaged in a flood after a tidal surge a couple of years ago, so the space we visited was bright and inviting. Fr. Colum and the lay chaplains also go on board the ships, offering a listening ear, providing religious services, and inviting them to the center. They also hold Christmas parties where they share gift boxes with toiletries and other sundry items donated from local parishes, often the only bit of cheer during the seafarers’ holiday.
In addition to learning about the mission and the life of the seafarers, we also were led in a couple of powerful meditations by Fr. Colum. One invited us to look at our own lives in terms of the cargo we carry–the “bad” cargo such as excessive busy-ness, past hurts, concern about what others might think, etc… — and our “good” cargo — our gifts and love and passion. How do we balance our cargo during our life’s journey, as we go about the work to which the God who loves us unconditionally has called us? Simple, really, but something which I found myself thinking about quite a bit on the two hour coach ride home.
Mary Undoer of Knots – a favorite devotion of Pope Francis
Fr Colum also shared with us a devotion to Mary which was new to me … Mary Undoer of Knots. Apparently this is a favorite devotion of Pope Francis, which he first discovered when studying in Germany depicted in a painting he saw in a Church. This depiction of Mary draws on imagery from one of the early theologians of the Church, St. Ireneaus. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis introduced and encouraged this devotion in Latin America.
Fr. Colum shared a prayer of his own to Our Lady Undoer of Knots — a fitting devotion of course for someone who works with seafarers! He also led us in a time of reflection on the knots in our own lives before we ended the day with liturgy in the chapel there at the mission.
Each of us, of course, often finds our thoughts, minds, and even prayers tied up in knots. We worry about this or that, we are unsure how we will do x or how we will navigate that sticky situation with you know who.
How beautiful to call on Mary the undoer of knots in these moments of our lives. I’ll copy Fr. Colum’s prayer below, because perhaps you too might like to call on Mary in this way:
Holy Mary, mother of God and our most blessed mother too. You know my problems, both small and large, that like knots are tight and difficult to undo. I feel restricted by them and do not know how to overcome them. The knots of my heart, the knots of difficult family relationships, the knots of loneliness, knots of things yet to be forgiven …. Mother of mercy, untie the knots I am burdened with, journey with me from the darkness of confusion, into a new path of light.
I am fresh off four days of laughter, prayer, and meaningful conversations with 70 other younger Catholic Sisters at the national Giving Voice gathering. Giving Voice is a grassroots peer-led network of younger women religious. The mission of Giving Voice is to “create spaces for younger women religious to give voice to their hopes, dreams and challenges in religious life.”
We gathered in Kansas around the theme “Crossing Boundaries in Religious Life.” We heard challenging words from our conference speakers, Sisters Sophia Park, SNJM and Teresa Maya, CCVI. Our peer GV leaders created a space where we could be present in the moment, an emerging theme of the days. We are living religious life with our elders as we let go of what was, and we are often looked upon as the future of religious life. These days together helped us to remember that we are also the present of religious life. We have touched the religious life that was, and we are building the bridge to the future. Yet we cannot forget that we are also the present. We are here now, called by the love of God to join in prayer, ministry, and service to the Gospel and God’s people in need.
CSJPs at GV! (with St. Joseph of course)
It was a joy to reconnect with old friends and to make new ones. It was also wonderful to be there with two other CSJP Sisters to share the experience. This was also the first Giving Voice conference in many years that I did not help plan. I had no jobs and was able just to come and be present and enjoy the light, laughter, and love of my peers. There were also five of us at the gathering who have stepped into the ministry of leadership for our Congregation. This was yet another gift of Giving Voice in my life, to have time to process and connect with peers in the midst of a similar life changing experience.
We were a beautiful embodiment of God’s diversity, coming from different congregations and parts of the country/world. While more than 90% of US Catholic Sisters are white, we are representative of the diversity of the US church. At one point of the speakers asked how many present were born in another country to raise their hand … almost half of the room raised their hands! What was perhaps most beautiful to me was how comfortable we are with each other. We laughed and shared, and laughed some more. We had fun and we had poignant moments and we were present to each other. And that, my friends, is pure gift and food for the journey.
Music often pops into my prayer sometimes to surprising effect. This morning I found myself praying with a song by Built to Spill, an indie band of my college years, not really punk rock but certainly punk influenced. The song is Center of the Universe and the lyrics go like this:
“I don’t like this air, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop breathing it. Who doesn’t think they’re the center of the universe.”
I remembered I had made a prayer video to this song a few years back when I was in a similar spot of needing perspective beyond the immediate, a reminder of God’s faithfulness. In the video I quoted Gustavo Guttierez: “Hope does not come in a parachute, it has to be created.”
I am not the center of the universe, and neither are those around me. As Pope Francis so simply states in his new encyclical Laudato Si, “We are not God.” (par. 67)
But, as Pope Francis continues in paragraph 77: “God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all creating things. ‘For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it” (Wis 11:24). Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness who gives it is place in the world.”
We are not God. I am not the center of the universe. But I and we have been created by love, for love, in love. We are called to be co-creators of hope, breathing in the good and the bad transforming it by our very existence and presence and creativity and love.
When I was in middle school and high school, my mother encouraged me to apply to attend summer programs for kids like me, or, as I liked to call it, summer camp for nerds. Generally held on college campuses, these were residential weeks on a college campus with other kids with similar interests.
These talented and gifted summer programs were organized by the State of Maryland Department of Education, and apparently they still happen. One year I attend history camp in at St. Mary’s University in Southern, Maryland, where we participated in an archaeological dig. The next year I attended a creative writing camp at Washington College on the Eastern Shore. And another year I attended a public service camp at the University of Maryland.
Flash forward 30 some years. I am back on a college campus this week with folks with similar interests, learning about interesting and important things. Only this time, I’m here with a bunch of other elected leaders of religious congregations learning about aspects of civil and canon law which are particularly relevant to our ministry of leadership.
Officially, it’s the Institute of Law and Religious Life, but some of us have taken to calling it “Law Camp.” And that makes my inner nerd very happy.
I am in Chicago for my graduation from Catholic Theological Union. The ceremony is this evening. I am looking forward to celebrating with classmates, faculty, family, and friends.
The last time I donned a graduation cap and gown, believe it or not, was almost 21 years ago. Now I get to add a velvet trimmed hood to the ensemble as I become the last Francois child in my generation to earn a Masters degree. Coincidentally, my nephew Conor already beat me to it so the next generation is on their way.
This morning I took one of my favorite Chicago walks by Lake Michigan. It is always nice to return to favorite places, especially ones that have become sacred spaces of memory, thought, and prayer.
The Chicago grad school chapter of my life is officially coming to a close. The leadership chapter of my life has already begun. And it is all part of a whole, weaving together threads of learning and practice, mission and ministry, trial and error, love and justice seeking, contemplation and action.
My time at CTU has been filled with many blessings. I have come to know my own Catholic tradition more deeply. I have grown in my identity as a Catholic Sister and in confidence as one seeks to share her gifts in following Jesus.
Sitting looking out at the wide expanse of Lake Michigan, I am filled with wonder, awe, and gratitude. God is good my friends. God is good.
I am coming to the end of my two week spring time sojourn in the United Kingdom. I came at the end of April to spend some time with our Sisters at our regional center in the midlands in advance of our Spring assembly which was last weekend. It has been a joy to be with our UK Sisters. I have had an inordinate amount of tea along with some wonderful conversations and a few treks in the countryside. Earlier this week I made the trek (by car!) to London. I’m staying in the same house where I lived for 3 months as a novice. It is so nice to be in another country, but yet to be at home. Another benefit of religious life!
I’m attending the Nun in the World Symposium: Catholic Sisters & Vatican II – a 3 day international symposium with academics from various disciplines (mostly it seems to be historians and sociologists who seem to get along but have divergent methodologies) and women religious. It has been fascinating to attend an academic conference about a subject near and dear to your heart. In fact, I suppose you could say I am one of the subjects of study! I was thinking today … many groups of people are studied by academics, but how common is it to have the people who are being studied attending the conference about them? Adding to the semi-surreal quality of it all, I just checked the Global Sisters Report website and found a blog post there which covers one of the streams of conversation I participated in at lunch today at the symposium!
Aside from those interesting aspects, the subject matter and research presented have certainly been thought provoking. Today we covered important areas such as race and class in religious life, prophetic witness and relationship to the hierarchical church by leaders of religious communities, the tension between being mainstream and marginal, and the newest generations of Catholic Sisters. There are over 100 participants from more than 10 countries. I even was able to meet another Global Sisters Report columnist, Caroline Mbonu, a Handmaid of the Holy Child Jesus Sister from Nigeria. We recognized each other from the pictures which accompany our columns on the Global Sisters website! She gave an excellent presentation on the experience of African Sisters ministering in the US as reverse missionaries.
All in all, it has been a very worthwhile experience and an opportunity to tap into the wider themes and key issues of Catholic women’s religious life globally. And there is one more day tomorrow, which will feature a series of presentations I am looking forward to with great anticipation on the Religious Life Vitality Project which was just completed here in the UK. Our UK Sisters participated in this project.
I head back to the States (Chicago for my graduation) on Monday. It has been a very good visit, with the prospect of many more over the next six years.
Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. I have been spending some time reading and praying with the message Pope Francis has issued for this day, which is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Pope Francis reflects on the task Jesus sets before his disciples in Luke 10:2 to pray that God may send laborers for the harvest.
Jesus command came in the context of his sending out missionaries. … Since the Church “is by her very nature missionary” (Ad Gentes, 2), the Christian vocation is necessarily born of the experience of mission. Hearing and following the voice of Christ the Good Shepherd, means letting ourselves be attracted and guided by him, in consecration to him; it means allowing the Holy Spirit to draw us into this missionary dynamism, awakening within us the desire, the joy and the courage to offer our own lives in the service of the…
For the past two and half years, I have been a full time student. And for three years before that, I was working full time and a part time student. Consequently, Saturdays (and often Sundays) have been either homework days or days that I do something else but feel like I should be doing homework. Rarely was I able to just be on a Saturday.
Sun shining over the Congregation Offices
The past two Saturdays, however, have been just that, an opportunity to be and settle into my new reality. There is lots of work to be done of course, and sometimes that will involved weekends. But rest and leisure and relaxation and renewal are also crucial to avoiding burnout. Hence, I’m really reconnecting with and enjoying the possibilities of a Saturday.
This morning I went on a long walk in the woods. I passed by Shalom Center where we have our Congregation Offices, but did not go inside. Instead I kept on walking, into the nearby park and onto the wooded trail towards the GW Bridge. It was cold and brisk but oh so lovely. A great way to start a simple Saturday.
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 