No doubt you remember Uriah Heep, the character in Dickens’s novel David Copperfield who kept referring to his “umbleness.” All the while, Mr. Heep was nothing but a scheming hypocrite. His humility was fake, used as a tool to manipulate others into thinking well of him. People who are truly humble are admired. Those who […]
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I just finished writing an endorsement for a book that is built on the premise that there is divine presence in all of creation. This concept is scripture based, for we read in Jeremiah 23:24, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.” When the Son of God became incarnate, he united himself […]
Not so long ago the reflection in my book Heart to Heart with Mary (seen below) prompted me to consider how saints, Mary in particular, let God use them without reservation. The Divine Potter July 20 My child, God sent the prophet Jeremiah to the potter’s house and told him that Israel was like clay […]
The other day I told two of our cooks that the saint whose feast day landed on their birthday could be considered their patron saint. One man’s birthday was the feast of St. Basil, which was appropriate for a cook. When I told the other man that his saint was St. Josaphat, he commented, “It […]
Last week I wrote a blog about donkeys. “Coincidentally” while doing spiritual reading this week, I came across a reference to Nikos Kaszantkis’s novel Zorba the Greek: One day Zorba was riding on a donkey with his boss. As they met a traveler on another ass, Zorba’s eyes were transfixed on the stranger. Chided for […]
A donkey is a member of the horse family. On the first day of my retreat, we were invited to think about why Jesus chose to ride a donkey into Jerusalem as a prelude to his execution. He could have come like the king he was—riding on a white stallion. The chief reason he came […]
I am on retreat this week. Please select a previous post that piques your interest! Back next week after praying for the world. But … To continue my coincidences from last week: Yesterday I was playing the piano in our Village when a woman, a widow, walked by and asked, “Did you just play ‘Ah, […]
The other day when I went to the supermarket, I realized that I had forgotten my bag and would therefore contribute to the enormous amount of plastic polluting our world. Dismayed, I entered the store and grabbed the first shopping cart there. Lo and behold, in it was a large bag neatly folded up, which […]
Last week I was in a piano recital of classical music at the Village where I live. Not having played seriously for years, I practiced furiously for weeks, recapturing skills I had in the eighth grade. Only two of us Villagers volunteered to play for the two-hour event, so in the end “outsiders” were invited—accomplished […]
The Sisters of Notre Dame of Chardon, Ohio, belong to an international congregation of more than two thousand apostolic women religious. We are one in mind and one in heart for the transformation of the world in Christ. 