Easter Sunday 2025
Preaching by Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Happy Easter! It might not feel as happy this year since the majority of our sisters has been in quarantine and so many have been ill. Yet it is still true – Christ is risen. We can say Alleluia!

Even as some are still in isolation watching this liturgy from their rooms, even as those off campus cannot join us in person, even as our country and world are struggling profoundly, we can affirm the promise of life for all in the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.

As I sat down to put words to this preaching, I recalled another season and another story – The Grinch, by Dr. Seuss. Most of you know the tale – The Grinch lives by himself with his longsuffering dog, far up a mountain. He’s a grumpy sort, hence the name – Grinch. He especially hates the joy of the Who people down in Whoville at Christmas as they sing and celebrate, and he mistakenly thinks their joy comes from their material gifts and decorations. But even though he tries to destroy their joy by stealing everything, he hears them singing and realizes:

He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch has a conversion!

We try to celebrate Easter with great joy – coming together in our faith communities, having beautiful music and liturgies, spring flowers, enjoying a special meal with community members or family.

Yet, even when those important elements are taken away – be it by norovirus, family conflict, political divisions, grief – it is still true that we can celebrate the resurrection of Christ 2,000 years ago and seek signs of resurrection, of life, and of hope, all around us.

These things haven't stopped Easter from coming! It came!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

Indeed, as people of faith we are to hunt for hope and bear witness to others around us.

We know that first Easter was a hard one for Jesus’s friends and followers. Even though Jesus prepared them, they just weren’t ready for his terrible death. They were forlorn, confused, and tired. Some felt guilty about how they had not been there when he most needed it. They were living under an oppressive regime that some thought he would help overthrow. It was a time of great discouragement.

Yet, he had still risen. And bit by bit they came to understand and even encounter him.

In the Gospel, John realizes something special has happened when he sees the head cloth rolled up and set aside. He doesn’t fully understand, but he’s starting to believe and hope.

Mary Magdalene, the faithful friend of Jesus, has come to the tomb to mourn. She doesn’t leave. She waits, but she is made temporarily blind and deaf by her grief. She’s so distraught she doesn’t even seem to be amazed that angels are speaking to her. She hears Jesus speaking to her and sees him, but assumes he is the gardener. She sees no signs of life, of resurrection.

But then she hears her name – Mariam, Mary. As Scripture says, “the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” Jesus says, “I know my own and my own know me.“ On hearing Christ speak her name, Mary wakes up from her grief. She has already physically turned toward Jesus, but now she has an inner turning – she realizes Christ is present, is still with us. Everything changes. At that moment she learns to stop expecting Jesus to be as he was and realizes he is present in a new way, and she is sent to announce this good news! She accepts her mission to be the first witness and first preacher of the resurrection!

What about us? Are there ways we are blocked from seeing life and hope?

I know that as I watch the news or scroll through my social media, I can get very discouraged about what is happening in our world. I imagine those in isolation may be getting frustrated. People are worried about their finances in this climate. We carry a lot of anxiety.

All that is real – AND, at the same time, there is another reality that is also present and holds us all: a God who began, sustains, and holds all creation; Jesus Christ who came to Earth to share our experience with us and made us divine siblings, and siblings to all beings and creatures; God’s promise of ultimate meaning and life calling to us from the future.

How do we witness to that reality?

We turn, we listen for the Divine One’s voice calling to us, we open our eyes to see signs of hope and resurrection – co-workers doing double shifts to feed and care for us, family members who continue loving in challenging relationships, a sister who tries to bring joy to those around her, those among us who express gratitude, the many people working for justice and truth in this nation (including us), those generous people who give their lives in service in areas of war and great tragedies…there are so, so many signs of life, hope, and resurrection.

Remember, the resurrection was unexpected and unfathomable. Some of the signs of resurrection we encounter will also be where and how we least expect. We’re called to great attentiveness.

Easter invites to commit anew to open our eyes, ears, and hearts and to find our way to name and be signs of resurrection hope for our world in union with the Risen One.

And, wherever you are, here in the chapel, watching from your room, tuning in via livestream – we can all together proclaim: Christ Is Risen, Alleluia!

 

Easter Vigil 2025
Preaching by Sister Elise García, OP

Saturday, April 19, 2025
Luke 24: 1-12

We have been on quite a journey with Jesus this Holy Week – accompanying him, like the women, all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem – as we also struggle with a norovirus infection here on our campus, deaths and other illnesses, and the dreadful national news we all ingest each day.

On Palm Sunday, our Sister Corinne Sanders reminded us of the fiery love that was at the heart of why so many followed Jesus – and why he was put to death. She gave us an encouraging word for these challenging times. Corinne spoke of our call “as faithful followers of Jesus, awakening each morning tending to the fire of love, sustaining the weary with a word of hope, refusing to allow Love to be extinguished.”

Many of you participated in the beautiful Holy Week retreat that our Sister Patty Harvat offered, entering into the Passion journey through the eyes and heart of Mary. Patty invited us to reflect on what that harrowing experience must have been like for Mary, as a mother losing her beloved son to such savage cruelty. Mary, the woman who from the beginning pondered so many things in her heart. How do we, like Mary, meet the finality of the death of loved ones and the loneliness it evokes in our own lives?

As we entered the Triduum, on Holy Thursday, our Sister Sara Fairbanks invited us into an imaginative journey with Jesus stooping down to wash our feet. Would we not respond as Peter did? “Lord, you wash my feet? You will never wash my feet.” She then invited us to imagine what we would ask Jesus to do, if we could. “Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to …… .”

If you are like me, your imaginings might have expanded as Sara observed, starting by letting Jesus know you need him to restore your health or that of a dear friend – or to rid the Motherhouse of the norovirus infection! You might then have asked him to please restore human kindness and civil discourse in our nation or to end wars and violence around the world or to safeguard our imperiled Earth home.

Sara asked us to then “imagine Jesus kneeling before us with a basin of warm water, tenderly washing our feet and drying them with a towel, as if to say, ‘Welcome home to God’s household of unconditional love.… Savor God’s lifegiving love for you – and pour it out in service to our world.’”

On Good Friday, the solemn day when Jesus was hung on the cross and died, our Sister Fran Nadolny wondered what his followers said to one another that evening when they huddled in fear and anguish? What, Fran asked us, would we say to one another? She then invited us to reflect through the evening and into this morning on what we have learned from our journey as followers of Christ – and on what we might share with one another.

Tomorrow we will hear from our Sister Lorraine Réaume and see what she will invite us to reflect on, as we celebrate Easter Sunday.

Tonight we enter the tomb. We enter the uncovered tomb with the women that Luke names: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James.

These three and the other named and unnamed women – including Mary, the mother of Jesus – who appear in each of the four Gospel narratives of the Passion were present from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee to its horrific end. They were the first to witness new life.

Our Dominican Sister and theologian Barbara Reid, OP, writes, “Luke’s Gospel like all the other Gospel narratives places women as witnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus, as witnesses to the burial of the body in the tomb and as the first to hear of and then to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus.”

And so, Sisters, Associates, and friends, we are now with Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary, peering into the tomb with its rolled away stone. We have brought spices and ointments to tend to the body of Jesus.

But he is not there. Two dazzling angels suddenly appear. We bow our heads, terrified.

As they remind us of words we heard Jesus speak in Galilee, we slowly raise our heads. We remember that he had told us he would be handed over and crucified, and on the third day would rise again. The angels ask: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.”

We leave the tomb with the Gospel women and quickly go to “announce all these things to the eleven and to all the others,” as Luke writes.

After more than 2,000 years of patriarchy, the testimony of women is still questioned. But Sisters and friends, the Good News that those valiant women – our sisters in faith – were the first to proclaim has perdured. Our witness and testimony, then and now, to the cruelty of despots and to the beckoning signs of new life will endure.

Whether mocked or ignored, we will watch and pray. As faithful disciples, we will continue to seek truth – and speak it, in love.

 

Good Friday 2025
Preaching by Sister Fran Nadolny, OP

Friday, April 18, 2025

On this very solemn day, I find it strange that it’s called Good Friday. We are remembering a death—a very horrible death—at the hands of people who were afraid of a new way of being. Remembering anyone’s day of passing is sad.

And yet, there are so many different ways to think about this moment. There is John’s version as we just heard. In the eighteenth century Handel wrote "The Messiah" which was a very poignant, classical music journey through the life of Jesus. And fifty years ago Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote "Jesus Christ Superstar" which was a rock opera of Jesus’ passion as seen through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. Often, there are reflections on the Seven Last Words of Jesus—the words which he spoke as he was dying.

I wonder what his followers said about him that evening after he died? Did they pretend that they would have been more faithful than Peter was? Did they really want to open themselves to the other in love and peace as he did? What were their individual takeaways from Jesus’ years with them?

We know how Jesus’ story ends. But, in this moment on this Good Friday, what takeaways from Jesus will you carry with you into this evening and into the morning dawn tomorrow?

 

Holy Thursday 2025
Preaching by Sister Sara Fairbanks, OP

Thursday, April 17, 2025

“Lord, you wash my feet? You will never wash my feet!” Peter’s words could well voice the frustration of the entire group. “You are the Christ, the Messiah of God! We don’t need you to wash our feet! We need you to defeat our enemies, to liberate us from the tyranny of Rome! You were sent to bring the reign of God on earth! But wash our feet? Never!”

If you are anything like me, you might share the frustrations of Peter and some of those first women and men, who had their feet washed by Jesus. In the Holy Thursday liturgy, the Church invites us to imagine we are sitting with the disciples having our feet washed, how might you express the sentiment of Peter? Take a moment of silence and complete this sentence:  Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to _____________. (Say what comes to your mind.) Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to ____________.

I need you to restore my health, my well-being, end the quarantine! I need you to heal my sister friend, my dear family member. I need you to defeat the political forces that daily attack our democracy and upend our world in social and economic chaos. I need you to protect us against the devastation of our planet. “But wash my feet? Never.”

Jesus responds to us with a heart full of compassion, “You do not understand what I am doing. I have come not to reveal a God intent on rescuing you from life’s pain, and suffering. I come united in divine love, because LOVE is God’s only genuine power in the world, one that works through self-giving service, and nothing more.”

Jesus used the common practice of foot washing to symbolize God’s lavish hospitality, that welcomes everyone into the household of God. Our shared love-life with God begins with God’s invitation, God’s initiative. As the evangelist reminds us, “We love God, because God first loved us.”

Jesus says to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. Do not resist God’s love. Do not be afraid. Learn to accept God’s love with an open and brave heart. Like the Samaritan woman I met at the well, receive God’s love like a fountain of life within you. Like Mary, who anointed my feet with oil and wiped them with her hair, the fragrance filling the whole house, savor the boundless love of God! When you savor God’s love within, you are ready to pour out that love in self-giving service to the world.” “So,” Jesus says, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet…love one another as I have loved you.”

As the meal progresses, Jesus expands this teaching even further. Sister Mary McGlone writes, “Clearly aware that he was on the brink of suffering, Jesus summarized his mission as he blessed and broke the bread. He equated the bread with his body and the cup with his blood: his entire self. As he had done throughout his mission, he offered his whole self to them.” After they receive his body and blood, Jesus gives them the most challenging commandment of all: “Do this in memory of me.” This command means far more than to enact a ritual with bread and wine. Jesus asserts that communion with him means enfleshing God’s love through service and offering our lives for others, all the way to the cross.

This final command of Jesus, reminds me of our dear Sister, Catherine of Siena, who called Jesus a “gentle lover,” even a “mad lover.” She said, “Jesus ran to his cross like a mad lover. It was not nails but love that kept him on the cross.”

Now that we have contemplated the awesome gift of divine hospitality that Jesus wanted to communicate in the breaking of the bread and the washing of the feet, let’s imagine again Jesus kneeling before us with a basin of warm water, tenderly washing our feet and drying them with a towel, as if to say, “Welcome home to God’s household of unconditional love and connection. Savor God’s lifegiving love for you, and pour it out in service to our world.” As you imagine Jesus washing your feet, hear the concluding verses of Jan Richardson’s poem, “Blessing for the Brokenhearted”: 

“…a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this—
as it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot fathom but will save us nonetheless.”¹

 

¹In The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief by Jan Richarson, Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016

 

Palm Sunday 2025
Preaching by Sister Corinne Sanders, OP

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Jesus was, at the end, as he was his entire life: Loving, self-giving, a teacher, kind, forgiving, and acting justly. And on this day, in his darkest moment, when despair and hopelessness could overtake, he leaned again into the loving embrace of his Abba Father, in whom he trustingly placed his life.

His great gift to love and embrace all which drew so many to love and follow him was also the reason he was scorned and feared by those in power; for them this fiery love must be put out.

Our scripture today ends with Jesus crucified and buried with the women engaged in preparation for the Sabbath. Today is also our day of preparation as we enter the week we call Holy.

We will bring to close our Lenten journey and at week’s end, we will enter into the Triduum.

We do this as faithful followers of Jesus awakening each morning tending to the fire of love, sustaining the weary with a word of hope, refusing to allow Love to be extinguished.

 

New Year's Day 2025 - Mary, Mother of God
Preaching by Sister Bibiana "Bless" Colasito, OP

Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Numbers 6:22-27
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:16-21

On this solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, let us bring into our presence today the memories of our mothers, deceased and living. Let us also bring our sisters into this gathering, on whose shoulders we stand. This celebration of Mary's motherhood is not only a memento of her role in the mystery of the incarnation but also of the women in our lives who were instrumental in who we are now. Like Mary who carried Jesus in her womb, our biological mothers gently took us into the world too. When the appointed time came, our sisters in the congregation took us into their loving arms, nurturing the gift of vocation in us, and guiding us in the life that we were called to live. Their nurturing and life-giving love underlines the motherhood that all of us need today and the coming generation.

Central in the Gospel today is the presence of the shepherds. Upon hearing the good news from the angels, the shepherds “went with haste” to Bethlehem (Lk. 2:8-20). Interestingly, the shepherds mentioned in the scriptures are nameless people who came to worship the baby Jesus. They were referred to as shepherds. They did not even represent a certain number. They were mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (2:8-20) “as shepherds watching their flocks at night.”

This good news about the birth of Jesus was not only made known to the shepherds. It was also announced through the guidance of a star to three wise men whose names were also absent in the Gospel according to Mathew.

However, during the medieval period, the names Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar became commonly accepted in the Christian tradition. These names were recorded in various texts and depicted in art and literature. Over time, unlike the shepherds, the wise men were given names and numbers, as they were three learned men from the East.

In the narrative of the birth of Jesus according to Luke, diversity, equity, and inclusion are the resounding message of the gospel. In the social and cultural contexts of the Jewish people, shepherds were generally considered marginalized and held a low social status. They were often seen as part of the lower class and were sometimes viewed with suspicion or disdain. Their itinerant lifestyle and the nature of their work kept them on the fringes of settled community life and religious observance. This made it difficult for them to adhere strictly to ceremonial laws, further contributing to their marginalization.

But why would it be that the good news of that Christmas morning was first revealed to the shepherds? The preference of God in revealing himself is for the humble and the simple, demonstrating that the message of salvation is for all people, regardless of social status, regardless of cultural upbringing.

Today, a huge number of faceless and nameless people exist everywhere. They are the shepherds of our time. Their number is even unimaginable. They are in cities and rural areas, scouring the darkness for safety and shelter. For them, darkness may mean literal night, a state of fear, confusion, or uncertainty. For our sisters and brothers who are unfortunate to have this condition, life is always on the brink of death.

On this day of the New Year, let us pray that the wings of grace and abundant blessings travel to the numerous people who need God’s blessings.

Let our positive energies accompany these wings of grace to embrace those who are lonely and desperate, those who need healing from broken relationships among families, friends, and communities. With faith, let us recognize the mystery of the Incarnation as a grace to be shared with everyone—women and men, young and old alike.

Like Mary, may we treasure the words of the Gospel and ponder them in our hearts.

As we enter the Jubilee year, let us pray that all people may seek forgiveness and foster reconciliation in all hearts.

May the care for our sisters and brothers, the care of our Common Home, and love in every family be our new beginning and resolutions of this New Year.

Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo! Manigong Bagong Taon!

 

Feast of the Holy Family
Preaching by Sister Fran Nadolny, OP

Sunday, December 29, 2024
1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28
1 John 3:1-2, 21-24
Luke 2:41-52

Good morning! Today’s feast of the Holy Family was established by the Church to honor family life in the example of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. In the United States the number of nuclear families such as the Holy Family’s is very low compared to the time that the feast was established. So, I am choosing not to focus on family, but to focus on the strength and trust and promises practiced by two women in today’s readings. As you heard, they are Hannah and Mary who both seem to be the dynamic forces in their families.

Hannah, childless for so long, has prayed for a child and she conceives and gives birth to Samuel. But her story does not end there. Since she has promised to dedicate the child to God, Hannah takes Samuel, when he is three or four years old, to the high priest, Eli, and hands him over to Eli with the words, “He is dedicated to God for life.” As difficult as that must have been, Hannah was a woman of her word; a keeper of the promise she made.

And then in today’s Gospel, Luke relates the story of Jesus who takes it upon himself to remain in the temple where he is captivated by the teachers who were there. Jesus is eventually discovered, appropriately reprimanded, and returns home with his parents. And Mary, according to Luke, “kept all these things in her heart.” She was a keeper of the promise she had made so long ago when she learned of her motherhood and she responded, “How can this be? Let it be.”

These women had made promises and were determined to be faithful and committed to their word even when the results were almost unbearable. Because promises and resolutions are not the same, this preaching is not a precursor to New Year’s Day and our intentions to do or be better.

What are the promises we have made? For most in this chapel, we have “made profession and promised obedience.” Might this be a good day to ponder that in our hearts? For those who have professed marriage vows to each other, might you ponder that in your hearts? Or, what other – very different – promises might each of us have made and what implications have those promises had for you and for others? Maybe it’s a promise that you keep daily, weekly, monthly, annually.

However, the more I prayed about my preaching, the more I realized that we do not live in a perfect world and promises are tricky business. With great deliberation and pain, promises are not kept. It is at those moments that we are reminded of Jesus’ message of forgiveness – of ourselves and others: Something we need to remember and practice.

Our intentions are to be keepers of promises. Our promises are very personal and probably number no more than five – if even that. But promises kept change the world – sometimes in huge ways, sometimes in very small ways. So, keepers of promises, on this day for families – guided so beautifully by the selfless examples of Hannah and Mary – how is it going for you and your promises? Well, I hope.

 

Christmas Day 2024
Preaching by Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP

Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-6
John 1:1-18

I typed in the word “Word” on YouTube, and I got a lot of tutorials for Microsoft Word. That’s not the Word we’re hearing about here.

Then I thought of the expression “word.” You might not all be familiar with this one – it’s a slang way to let someone know you’ve heard them and received their message. For example, “I want you to come to my house tonight.” The response is “Word” – that means I got it – I’m coming.

That’s a little bit closer – it is receiving and acknowledging a message, a word.

Then there is the expression we all know, “You have my word.” That’s a serious promise. A commitment to be faithful to one’s word.

And isn’t that what God is saying to us in this Gospel: “You have my Word” literally. My very Word, my very self, became one of you, dwelt among you. You literally have my Word.

The world may not always accept that Word, and indeed, there are many forces against the word of life.

How many yearn for that word Isaiah speaks of in the first reading, a word of peace, good news, and salvation – We can’t help but think of the many struggling places around our world, and of Earth herself. The promise of the messenger can seem so far away.

And yet the Word became flesh in a time as desperate as our own. The Word chose to dwell with those who were oppressed. No doubt had the Word instead become incarnate in our time, it would have been in a place like Gaza, or Ukraine, or Haiti. Or some of the more impoverished and neglected areas of this country.

It's a long-haul promise. Can we trust it? Do we believe in ultimate peace, good news, and salvation for all people and creation?

More importantly, can we witness to it? Can we be witnesses with our word, our light – or rather the Word and light of God that can shine through us?

We are all probably familiar with the quote from Meister Eckhart, the 14th century Dominican mystic, who said, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to Jesus fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to Jesus in my time and culture?”

The Word came into the world and joined with us and all of creation in a unique way, through very intimate and personal relationships and connections.

We are now part of that family. The Gospel refers to us as becoming “children of God.” That is not referring to our innocence or our infantile role. On the contrary. In the Hebrew culture, adult adoption was a practice and seen as a real and sacred relationship.

God has adopted us to be adult children, part of the family going forward to continue what was begun – to also be ‘words’ that bring light, peace, and truth.

Just like Jesus, we can do that through our personal relationships and connections.

Do you remember the theme of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ tree at Comstock Park this year? It was “Won’t you be our neighbor?” We are planning more ways to truly connect with our local neighbors.

We have Sisters who are members of the NAACP and the Diversity Circle, who recognize that we need to journey together to achieve authentic racial equality and interculturality.

We have Sisters and Associates around the country who bring a word of peace and hope through literacy, peace education, serving the formerly incarcerated, and so much more.

We have a committee to welcome Sisters new to campus, helping make what can be a big transition go a little smoother, in a spirit of care and love.

And we have among us many of you here who express a word of gratitude to our coworkers, who offer prayer and encouragement to those who work hard to care for us.

Wherever we find ourselves, we can join with the Word of God to shine a light of hope and peace. Our world is yearning for this message. Our world needs people who witness to a belief in peace, a belief that this world is not ultimately heading toward destruction, but, somehow, is being called from the future by the God of life and hope.

This life in God started from the primordial beginning with a Word that brought all into being.

It continued as that Word took on flesh and began life as a baby – a sign of hope and life and trust in a future – and grew into a human and divine figure who showed us how to live and love.

It is our turn – we are to speak, to live, a Word of light and life and hope in our world. What Word is God wanting to say through you this day, this year, with the rest of your life?

I close with a prayer from a group of contemplative Dominican Sisters:

May the Word of God
Spoken through each of our lives
Bring love and peace to the world.

Merry Christmas!

 

Christmas Eve 2024
Preaching by Sister Elise D. García, OP

Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Isaiah 9:1-6
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

Our Gospel reading resounds with words and phrases we hear in carols, see in nativities, find on Christmas cards – with all the warm and tender elements of a story we rejoice in hearing every year at this time. It is a story so sanitized in our collective imagination that it’s easy to lose sight of its terror – and its true wonder.

Let’s look at it again, reading more deeply between the lines.

The Gospel begins by telling us that Cesar Augustus issues a decree for registration. This is not an innocuous civil duty. It is a tactic employed by a tyrant to maintain control over an oppressed people. It signals this as a time when people lived in poverty and fear, a time of division and repression.

It was no small task to obey this decree. The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is about 90 miles, like walking from here to Flint, Michigan. Under the best of circumstances, it would have taken at least four days, walking about 20 miles a day.

As we know, Mary was nearly nine months pregnant. Even on a donkey that would have been an arduous and exhausting trek. Further, the most direct route was through Samaria, a territory where hostilities between Jews and Samaritans may have persuaded them to take an even longer, but safer, route.

And then there’s the matter of the unmarried pregnant teenager, who was making this treacherous journey with her faithful betrothed. The journey was fraught with peril of all sorts.

When at last they arrive in Nazareth, they find no place to stay and seek shelter in a stable – presumably already filled with barnyard animals. It is there, Luke tells us, that “she gave birth to her firstborn son.”

Now most of us in this chapel have never given birth. But for those who have – and for those of us who have accompanied women as they gave birth – we know that those simple words, “she gave birth,” hold hours of excruciating pain and agony. They also hold the fear of the very real threat of death in childbirth for both mother and child, especially in those days and under such hazardous conditions.

Did Joseph find a midwife for Mary? Or was it he who received and then handed to Mary the bloody bundle of what Gerard Manley Hopkins so beautifully called “God’s infinity dwindled to infancy”?

Now come the shepherds, disheveled – and smelling of sheep, as Pope Francis would say. It is into this mess, this poverty, this field hospital fraught with fear and uncertainty, that they witness God’s love made incarnate.

The deep wonder of it all is revealed not by a sanitized glow but by its grit and gristle – by the painful mess of giving birth, then as now, to new life in the midst of troubled times when so much hangs in the balance. It is precisely in times like these – in times like ours – that the light of new life is born. Emmanuel. God is with us – and within us.

Into the harsh reality of our times, it is ours to bring the light of God’s love – our love – into this cold midwinter’s night and into whatever is ours to face in the days and eons to come.

 

Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
Preaching by Sister Patricia Harvat, OP

 

Monday, October 7, 2024
Zecharaiah 2:14-17
Acts 1:12-14
Luke 1:26-38

What’s in a name? A lot! Dominican Sisters always have a longer name attached to them in addition to the place they are located:

♦ Mission San Jose Sisters are the Congregation of the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.
♦ Amityville, Sparkhill, and the Cabra Dominican congregations also have names related to the rosary.
♦ Dominican Sisters of San Rafael are the Congregation of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
♦ Edmund Dominicans were the Congregation of Holy Cross.
♦ New Orleans were the St. Mary’s Dominicans and Eucharistic Missionaries.
♦ There are the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Mary in Columbia.
♦ Our Filippino Sisters were Our Lady of Remedies, and now that is their Chapter name.
♦ And of course, our Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary.

My sense is that the titles reflect Dominic’s devotion to Mary and to the Passion and death of Jesus. One of Dominic’s favorite ways of praying was kneeling or standing before the crucifix. Also I wonder if Doña Juana, his mother, had some influence on his devotion to Mother Mary! Two years ago, Joan Delaplane, OP, preached on this feast. Joan quoted the words of Edward Schillebeeckx, OP, “For the most part, people live by stories…. Without stories we should lose our memories, fail to find our own place in the present, and remain without hope or expectation for the future.”

The history of this feast goes back to October 7, 1571, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the Battle of Lepanto. It was through the intercession of Mary and prayer of the rosary that Christians overcame the Turkish forces. One year ago today, October 7, 2023, the deadliest attack against the Jews since the Holocaust occurred and has escalated beyond Israel and Palestine. And today we still pray – pray our rosary, pray our litanies to Mary, and light our candles to end this horrific story of humankind.

There was a short video on Richard Rohr’s email meditation by the author Adam Bucko, and the title was, “What would happen if you let heartbreak be your guide?”

Today’s heartbreak of warring nations frames our prayer. It’s the space out of which we pray. We turn to Mary, who also lived out of that space of heartbreak as she watched her Son be misunderstood, retaliated against, scourged and put to death. Like Mary at the Anunciation and in the upper room, we too are frightened, humbled, full of doubts, full of so many questions, but something stronger than those feelings enables us to trust, as did all our founding mothers and women in our war-torn countries. We, like them, “let heartbreak be our guide” as we finger the beads of our rosary.