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October 16, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – Every day is a gift from God and an opportunity to find new, creative ways to reach out to God in prayer.

That is the message that Sister Maryetta Churches, OP, hopes the users of her 2026 calendar take with them every day of the approaching year.

“The message for people who use this calendar would be to try to find the Lord in new ways this year – through art, through prayer, through journaling, through expanding your horizons – and find a new relationship with the Lord,” Sister Maryetta said.

Sister Maryetta ministered for 25 years at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Brighton, Michigan, teaching groups to pray with art and creating All Souls Day posters featuring photos of parishioners who had died in the past year. When she left the parish in 2020 and moved to the Motherhouse in Adrian, she created a calendar based on her artwork to help parishioners remember her. She continues to create calendars, now reaching a wider audience. 

She hopes members of her larger audience will draw inspiration from the calendar – featuring artwork she created during her own journaling and prayer time in recent months. Each month also includes prompts to help people deepen their prayer life and their relationship with God.

Sister Maryetta hopes that the calendar will help people find new ways to pray. “Do whatever fits your style,” such as journaling or drawing, she said. “I’m trying to get people to do something different and make it a prayer. Communicate with God – speak and listen and use different techniques that speak to you.” 
Sister Maryetta herself is responding to a new call in her life. “It’s a call to the newness of me,” she said. “But I have no idea where it’s leading me. The call is exciting and unnerving, and I want to focus on becoming more.”

She encourages others to experience God’s call in their own lives. “He’s calling you,” she said. “You are precious in his eyes and he loves you, and I hope you can say back, ‘You are precious in my life, Lord, and I love you.’”

The calendars sell for $15 and will be available at the Weber Center Shop on the Adrian Dominican Sisters Motherhouse Campus. The Shop is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesday to Friday and 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday; it is closed for lunch from noon to 12:45 p.m. Visit the Weber Center Shop in person or reserve a copy by calling 517-266-4035.

Sister Maryetta also hopes to receive feedback from those who purchase and use her calendar. She can be reached at [email protected]. 
 

Caption for above feature photo: Sister Maryetta Churches, OP, displays a painting of the Holy Spirit, one of her works of art featured in her 2026 calendar.

September 17, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – The feast of St. Phoebe – declared a saint by the early Church before the canonization process was begun – was celebrated on September 10, 2025, in St. Catherine Chapel at the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse. The Liturgy and an afternoon program on St. Phoebe were organized by the Spirits Rising Mission Group of the Adrian Dominican Sisters.

“I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is [also] a minister of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and help her in whatever way she may need from you, for she has been a benefactor to many and to me as well.” These words, taken from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans (16:1-2), are never proclaimed from the pulpit as part of the Catholic Church’s lectionary, but they are used by many in the Church to uphold Phoebe as a deacon and minister of the early Church.

During the liturgy at St. Catherine Chapel, Associate Kathryn “Katie” Love offered a reflection on Romans 16:1-2 and the Beatitudes. She noted that St. Paul lifted Phoebe “as an example – a woman whose ministry strengthens the body of Christ” through her leadership, service, and care for God’s people.  

Phoebe’s legacy has been carried on by women throughout the course of Church history, Katie said. “Think of the women who opened their homes as house churches in Paul’s time … the women martyrs who gave their lives for Christ … the women religious who have taught, healed, and cared for the poor across centuries … and the mothers and grandmothers who have passed the faith from one generation to the next.”

She encouraged the assembly to remember Phoebe and to “give thanks for the countless women who have carried the Church on their shoulders – in the early days, in history, and right here among us now.”

Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, delegate of the Spirits Rising Mission Group, led Sisters and Associates in an afternoon program that included input on St. Phoebe and opportunities for small- and large-group discussion. The program explored the role of St. Phoebe and its implications for the role of women in the Catholic Church today.

“Phoebe is the only person directly named as a deacon and benefactor” in Scriptures, said Sister Cheryl, an iconographer who created an icon of St. Phoebe and presented it to the Adrian Dominican Sisters on the Feast of St. Phoebe in 2024. The icon is now on display in the gathering space of St. Catherine Chapel. 

“We recognize and honor her as our sister,” she added. “She used her power for the good of others and for the Gospel. Perhaps we could reflect on how we use whatever social power we have to come to the aid of the needy. If we do that, Phoebe will be proud to have us as her successors.”

Sister Cheryl noted the “ongoing discernment” over women’s ordination to the permanent diaconate, a role distinct from that of the priest. One of the primary documents of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, describes the role of the deacon. At the disposal of the bishop, the deacon is called to “serve the whole people of God and take care of the sick and the poor.”

Sister Cheryl contrasted the recent 60 Minutes interview in which Pope Francis stated that the issue of women’s ordination was closed with Paragraph 60 of the summary of the Catholic Church’s three-year Synodal Process, which calls for “full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women” and requests that the “discernment of diaconal ministry for women remains open.”

Understanding the difference between the 60 Minutes interview and paragraph 60 is one step towards continuing the discernment of women deacons, Sister Cheryl said. She also encouraged participants to sign on to the request that the Feast of St. Phoebe be restored to the Roman calendar and that the reference to St. Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2 be restored to the lectionary. 

The celebration of the Feast of St. Phoebe was in response to a request by Discerning Deacons, an organization whose mission is to “engage Catholics in the active discernment of our Church about women and the diaconate and contribute to the renewal of this ministry for our times.”
 

Caption for above feature photo: Participants in the September 10, 2025, presentation on St. Phoebe engage in small-group discussion.