Posts by Sr. Mary Valerie Schneider

Leaders who could have continued inspiring our country to greatness lie buried, along with their potential for inspiration in the hearts and minds of their fellow Americans. In this time of division within parties, at this time when political rhetoric has deteriorated to mudslinging, we have forgotten John F. Kennedy’s words: “Let us not seek…

My wish is that the next President of the United States would require every Congressperson and every member of his or her cabinet to spend a week touring our nation’s capital. They would be required to read every quotation at the memorials and monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. They would need…

Walking up the stairs to the Lincoln Memorial, I felt that I was approaching moral greatness in a man who claimed “I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my best each and every day.”  That daily best included not punishing the South after the Civil War. That daily best included integrity…

[Sister Valerie recently returned from a five-day trip to Washington, D.C. Over the next few days you will read of her impressions.] I recently had perfect weather in D.C., something which, I understand, is rather unusual. The cherry blossoms bunched in brown piles along the curbs, but tulips and flowering trees made the walks from…

This morning at the Mass at which the elementary school was present the kindergarten teacher received her “Second Holy Communion.” She had been received into the Church five days before at the Easter Vigil. From my vantage point on the piano bench I noticed her approach to receive the Body of Christ. Unlike past school…

When I awoke, I looked at the clock. 3:16. With a sleepy smile at the reminder that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” I went back to sleep, still exhausted from the rigors of a liturgist during Holy Week. Now in the morning when my mind focuses on the Son’s…

“I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”  (Isaiah 42:6b-7) Imagine God reading Isaiah 42:1-7 to you to remind you that you were formed…

The Solemnity of St. Joseph falls the day before Palm Sunday this year. The juxtaposition of St. Joseph whom we know only in the context of Jesus’ childhood with the passion and death of Jesus makes me wonder what role Joseph may have played during the passion of Jesus? Did memories of Joseph cross Jesus’…

Walking outside during a recent wet snow somehow had me reflecting on the parable of the Sower and the Seed in the context of a March snowfall in Ohio. It went something like this: Once there was a sky full of snow clouds from which small snowflakes fell lightly. Some fell on the lake. Others…

An unknown author wrote “Without faith, we are as stained glass windows in the dark.” A priest wanted to show the stained glass windows depicting the nativity of Jesus at all the Christmas Masses, but nearly every Mass was celebrated in darkness. He created an elaborate plan for a huge spotlight strung outside to illuminate…