“To sorrow in the suffering of the world together may be what we need to embrace now, something beyond hope, deeper than hope, which is to honor our grief of a changing world. . . Rather than anchoring our hope beyond the struggle, always projecting ahead, perhaps locating joy within the struggle through our full presence can be our essential gesture at this moment in time.  To feel the pain of now and not look away.  To act not with the hope of moving forward, always forward, but to see the wisdom of stepping sideways as we create a different space, a more conscious space in the direction of pause, where we can breathe and gather ourselves so we can gather others around us and create a community of care, even within our own families, especially our own families” (Erosion, at 273). I find these words of the writer Terry Tempest Williams profound and not unfitting for this 32nd Sunday’s liturgy where we are encouraged to stay awake, to be present, to be ready for the encounter with the Lord. She is saying that our tendency, way too often, is to project forward, especially to project our hope forward…always forward and the suggestion is that perhaps we do this when we are clearly not ready.

“The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no one’s sin” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.24). These words of Thomas Merton are packed with meaning. First he says the ‘eyes of a saint make all beauty holy’….This vision or seeing is possible for everyone…the eyes that behold beauty connect the beauty with holiness…what is seen is beautiful and it is holy, imbued with Divine life….Then the ‘hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch,’ treating everyone and everything as holy, as gift of God

How do we love God? We are commanded to love God with our whole heart, soul and mind? This is the first commandment. From an incarnational reality, what does this mean? Well, Jesus implicitly gives the answer when he says the “second is like it” (Mt 22:34-40). Jesus means that to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is like the first commandment…the two are intimately connected and cannot be separated. To know what Jesus means by ‘love of neighbor’ we can turn to other teachings of Jesus: we are called to love our enemies; and if struck on one cheek we are to offer the other cheek; we are not to retaliate, either by word or by hand (Mt 5:43-44, Mt 5:40). To give another example, we have the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (Lk 10:29-37). Jesus tells this story in response to the question he is asked: ‘Who is my neighbor’? ‘My neighbor’ in Jesus’ mind and heart is expansive, it includes everyone: my enemy, the one who thinks different or whose views are different, who acts different, the one with whom I am in most conflict with right now, and even the one who would strike me down.

We are pleased to announce that Sister Gertrude’s book, Cardinal Basil Hume: A Pilgrim’s Search for God (Gracewing, 2019) is now available in Dutch and French. The Dutch edition is under the title, Kardinaal Basil Hume: Een Pelgrim Die God Zoekt (halewijn/Adveniat, 2020); the French edition, Cardinal Basil Hume: Un pèlerin à la recherche de Dieu(Saint-Léger Éditions, 2019). The book is the fruit of Sister Gertrude’s doctoral studies at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, where she earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology in 2015.

Every once in a while the utter beauty of creation is a knockout.  This photo captured the gorgeous fall days are capturedin this photo courtesy of Sr. Gertrude.  It was featured on her blog for Sunday, October18, 2020. Sr Gertrude has been faithfully writing