This morning Andy was beaming with expectation about the trip to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life. While working in the pro-life movement is something he’s involved in, it’s much deeper. You can sense his passion. He’s fully engaged in whatever he can do to be a voice for

As we begin “Ordinary Time” in the Church year today, I’m reminded of a question one of the sixth grade students at Maumee, St. Joseph asked last week of four of us on a vocation panel: “Have you ever experienced any miracles?” Each of us responded by talking about the

Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of our foundress, Sister Maria Aloysia, and today we celebrate the birthday of our co-foundress, Sister Maria Ignatia. These two women are amazing examples of all that God can do in and through the lives of people who live with an open heart. Responding to

I’m “into” the pillars of Benedictine spirituality lately! This Sunday morning — how appropriate for a Sunday — I reflected on “holy leisure” as one of these pillars. Joan Chittister, OSB says this: “Leisure is the Benedictine gift of regular reflection and continual consciousness of the presence of God. It

I am a consummate football fan. I am a devoted Oregon Ducks fan. Watching them “play their little hearts out” on Thursday night as they raced across the field and exhausted their opponent brought me immense delight. Keep those Ducks quackin,’ I kept thinking! One of the pillars of Benedictine

As we celebrate today the feast of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, many thoughts come to mind. I often think of St. Elizabeth in terms of beginning the Catholic School system in our country, and rightly so, but something different strikes me today. As I read a little about her life

Wow! This is what I find myself saying today as we celebrate with our dear Sister Mary Clarone her 80th jubilee of profession. That’s right, I said 80! Eighty years of commitment to a vocation as a Sister of Notre Dame! Wow! Sister Mary Clarone has done some pretty amazing

What an amazing combination of life and death this week has been! Once again this year, I find myself a bit jarred by the contrasting feasts of the Church. It seems we just begin to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s birth and we’re abruptly drawn into the feasts of Stephen,

Snowflake pattern. Is that an oxymoron? Isn’t every snowflake unique? Then why was I given a pattern to follow in second grade when cutting snowflakes and hanging them on a thread? We are to pattern our lives on the life of Christ. The author of Philippians writes that he wants

Some events make the headlines on a given day and then are quickly forgotten: others become a part of the fabric of who we are as individuals and as a nation. The tragedy in Connecticut on Friday is one of the latter: we cannot simply turn away and forget what