Celebrating my Mission of Love

By Sr. Marie Flowers

This past weekend I had the best day of my life!!  The many circles of my life all collided in a celebration of love as I professed my perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as a Sister of Charity of Nazareth.   Surrounded in the church and connected via live webcast to sisters, family and friends around the world, I proclaimed my perpetual YES to God's invitation.

As I've reflected on this commitment, I prefer the term perpetual vows over final vows. It's not like a final exam in school where you show what knowledge or skill has been mastered. My commitment is not finite.   The commitment is perpetual into the unknown future.  For me, perpetual means each day for the rest of my existence here on earth and in heaven, I commit myself in love, to love, to be love.  

A few months back I had the privilege of gathering with our Future of Charity group for a weekend of sharing and deepening of our relationships.  During our closing prayer, we gave to each other and received from each other a blessing. The song lyrics playing in the background were "I send you out on a mission of love..."  In planning my vow liturgy, I wanted to concretely witness my mission of love, so I borrowed Jesus' model and washed the feet of my brother and my community provincial. 

How I'd love to know what the future holds and what plans God has.  My perpetual yes to this mission of love, calls me to trust that God's mysterious plan for a future full of hope will unfold in new and surprising ways.  I am so grateful to be on this amazing journey! 

Lessons from a Snail

By Sr. Tracy Kemme

A few weeks ago, I was jogging down the sidewalk when I noticed four adorable children playing in their driveway.  I had talked with them on a walk once before, when they “sold” me popcorn from their lemonade and snacks stand, even though I had no cash on me to pay.  Today, I slowed and waved.

“Hi, girls!  You’re the nice people who gave me popcorn, aren’t you?”

One who was crouching over something intently peered up at me.  “You remember us?”

“Of course!” I assured and crouched down myself. “What’re you up to today?”

“Well,” started the oldest and apparent leader of the little troupe, “we have a snail.”

She pointed, and I saw the little creature in a shoebox lid on the driveway.  The crouching girl was still bending over the snail, and a chubby toddler in a romper and diaper sat staring, too.

“Cool!” I said.  “Do you have a name for the snail?”

“Yep,” declared the ringleader, matter-of-factly with her little hand on her hip.  “God.”

A snail named God.  My whole face burst into an amused smile, and then, retracting my laughter inside, I nodded with serious agreement: “Great name.”

I turned to watch the snail with the little ones, mesmerized, as it has been ages since I’ve taken the time to do so.  We all smiled, perched on our knees, eyebrows raised in delight.  It was amazing to see tiny “God” stretch out her stocky neck and then pull the rest of her body along.  The small movements didn’t look like much, but they were steady.  Before I knew it, “God” was clear across the shoebox lid.  I was genuinely surprised.

“Wow, wasn’t that cool?” I exclaimed.  “We think of snails as very slow, and watching it, it didn’t look like it was doing very much.  But it was moving!”

Later, I chuckled to myself as I considered my comment about the snail named God.  Of course, this encounter had something to teach me about my own relationship with God.  In the day to day, it’s easy to feel like God isn’t doing much.  I get impatient.  But, if I stop and look back, I can see that God has brought me from one corner of the shoebox lid clear across to the other.  God is always at work, moving in our lives in both discreet and pronounced ways, getting us just where we need to be.  If we take a moment to stop and observe, like the girls and I crouched over that little snail, we might be surprised at how far God’s steady, faithful hand has carried us.

It’s a good moment to stop and peer intently at how God has been working in and through this Future of Charity Blog.  In August of 2014, we met as the Future of Charity for the first time.  During the course of the weekend, as we shared our hopes and dreams, the idea for a collaborative blog surfaced.  Three of us agreed to begin work on it.

In October, we found ourselves together on a Google Hangout, connecting from Cincinnati, Louisville, and New Orleans.  Across the miles, we began praying about what God was calling forth.  Many questions had to be answered:  Where will we create the blog?  What will it look like?  What is the mission?  Who will write?  When?  How often?  About what?  How will we post and maintain the blog?  How will we advertise?  Who will read?  And more.

Over the following month, the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the collaborative work of many shaped the nebulous idea into something concrete.  By the end of November, the blog existed, we had an idea of how it would work, and almost fifteen Future of Charity sisters were on board to blog!  We launched on November 30, 2014 – the opening of the Year of Consecrated Life.  We Future of Charity sisters hoped that our blog would help to “wake up the world!”

Since then, we have committed to making time to share on this blog what God is speaking in our hearts and lives.  We’ve had wonderful support from the Sisters of Charity Federation.  Now, looking back, we know that God, “the snail,” has been on the move!  In eighteen months, we’ve offered 140 posts.  We have 23 bloggers from different congregations.  And, you all have viewed our blog 41,372 times.  When we spoke out loud that we hoped to start a blog, we didn’t know where it would go.  But God did.

As with the snail, I find myself saying, “Wow!  Wasn’t that cool?!”

You’ll notice a few changes on the blog as we come back from a month of transition.  The beautiful layout is updated to include and echo our brand-new Future of Charity logo, created by Future of Charity sisters.  There is a new blog team to carry on the ministry.  And, we’re changing our posting schedule to once per week on Fridays.

We are grateful to be a part of this collaborative ministry.  We hope it has enriched your journey, and we invite you to continue to walk with us and share our blog with whoever would appreciate it.  In the midst of our lives, it is good to stop, crouch down, and wonder and our God at work and on the move, even when it doesn’t feel like it.  As for the Future of Charity Blog, we know that God brought us here, and we trust that same God is creating the path before us!

The Wait is Almost Over!

The May-cation is finally over, and the Future of Charity Blog is back in action!

Check back tomorrow for our newest reflection by Sister Tracy Kemme, SC.

Also, be sure to catch up on previous posts

by clicking through the Blog Archive menu to the right.

Under construction!

To all of our faithful readers,

The Future of Charity blog is taking a little May-cation.  It deserves it, don't you think?!  The blog will be going through some updates and transitions throughout the month, so we won't posting regularly.  Don't worry -- we'll be back in June!  We look forward to continuing to share our journeys with you.  Thanks for the 39,454 pageviews and all the support!

See you in June!

New life: in Earth, and in me!

By Judy Donohue

In taking a walk this afternoon, I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the springing forth of nature.  I saw eight turtles sunning on the bank of the lake.  I observed two Canadian Geese nesting, preparing for the little ones to come. The red buds are in full bloom; the dogwoods are beginning to come out. The beginning of leaves are forming at the end of tree branches. So exciting and encouraging.  God is renewing the Earth with spring growth!

Spiritual direction is also a springboard to new life. Having the accountability of talking to a spiritual director each month has increased my self-awareness. She is able to gently point things out areas in me that I am blind to.  This has been stretching and good, sometimes painful. 

Looking at my personal and spiritual growth over the past year, I see similar excitement in viewing the new growth from spring flowers and budding bushes. In the fog of the novitiate, I have wondered “Why am I going through this? Will this ever make sense?”  

As I see maturity developing, I am encouraged. I’m growing in knowledge on how to relate to people, how to be thoughtful of others, how to be less selfish. I am excited about growing in my ability to build community.  To be able to communicate my ideas, contribute my talents to my community being built with a greater noble purpose. Religious life is too grow together with others (lay and consecrated) in so many ways.  

While walking, I saw a mother push her one year old baby in a carriage.  I think how much her life has changed because of the birth of her baby.  She can’t do what she wants. She has to get up at night and feed her child.  She has to change, bathe, rock to sleep her infant.  She does this out of love.  God has put that maternal instinct in mothers/fathers.  She is glad to do it for the joy of raising a child.  In becoming a Sister, knowing God is forming me into a mature, loving, less judgmental person has been hard work.  But knowing I will be a better person, friend, sister, confident encourages me to persevere. 

My spiritual director encourages me to feel my feelings. In feeling my feelings, I’ve learn not to shut down my pain because it will come up somewhere else.  I give myself permission to feel my pain and with time, move on.  When you are driving on ice and start to skid, you turn the steering wheel toward the direction of the skid to recover.  If, out of fear, one turns away from the skid, you spin out of control and land in the ditch. So too with our emotions. As I turn to my feelings and feel them, I recover, but if I avoid them, I spin out of control.

One day, driving back from Evansville, Indiana, I stopped for a prayer break at St. Meinrad's.  While in the chapel, I looked out a window and saw a tall, stately pine tree.  I realized that this was once a seed that cooperated with the sun, water and earth around it.  It grew to become a huge, lovely creation. It did nothing on it’s own.  As I cooperate with the graces around me and relax, God makes me into who I am to be. Let go and Let God.

As I care for myself through spiritual direction, I am a better servant to those around me.  As we take care of the earth through what we buy and products we use, we develop integrity and pride in our community.  We have something to pass onto our children/nieces/nephews and grandnieces and nephews, not only in clean air but also with clean hearts of  great faith.  Celebrate new life!

Why be a Daughter of Charity? It's What I'm Made For

By Kara Davis

This reflection is a response to a blog written by Catholic speaker and high school theology teacher, Katie Prejean.  She so eloquently described our universal call to holiness, our vocation of love, and her personal testament to the vocation of Holy Matrimony.  As I read her words, I couldn’t help but insert myself, and my own journey of understanding God’s call in my own life.  This reflection is meant to echo Katie’s insightful words, but under a different lens, the lens of the vocation of consecrated life.  You can read Katie's blog by clicking HERE!

“Why do you want to be a Sister?”  That is a question I hear a lot now a days as I dive more deeply into formation with the Daughters of Charity.  Most of the time, I look at my watch and ask the person how much time they have for an answer.  I could share the saga of my discernment journey, where my boyfriend of all people encouraged me to go check out the Sisters.  When folks as me, “Why do you want to be a Daughter of Charity?” I could tell the story of being casted as a Daughter of Charity in a play about the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and the very lines I delivered in the play prompted me to explore the call to serve Christ in the face of the Poor.  I could also go into my year as a Resident Catholic Worker at the St. Hedwig Haus of Hospitality, where I encountered Christ in the women and children who were in need of a home and support of a loving community.  I could possibly describe the deeply personal journey of discovering my deep desire to be made whole, a wholeness that only God could provide.  And yet sometimes, I simply respond with a half honest answer, “I want to be a Sister so I don’t have to worry about what to do on a bad hair day.”  (You know, just cover it up with a veil.)

I have come to accept that more and more people are going to ask these questions, especially after I actually become a Sister, and it has encouraged me to ponder a more concise, yet authentic response that does not take three hours to explain and is not so deeply personal that I am sharing my heart with a complete stranger.

One of my favorite definitions of vocation comes from Frederick Buechner, who states, “Vocation is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”  It is a two-part discernment.  What is your deep gladness, the deep desire that God has placed in your heart?  And then, how is that deep gladness a response to the needs of the world?

God designs each and every one of us with a longing for this deep gladness, communion with Him.  By being made in the image and likeness of God, we are designed with a great capacity for love, for God is love.  St. Therese, The Little Flower, puts it best when she writes, “I realized that love includes all vocations, that love is all things, and that, because it is eternal, it embraces all time and place.  Swept up by an ecstatic joy, I cried, ‘Jesus, my Love!  At last I have found my vocation.  My vocation is love… I will be love.”

Indeed, we are all called to love and be loved, for we are God’s beloved sons and daughters.  We live out our call to love in a variety of ways, often through marriage, priesthood, religious life, or single life.  God gives us the gift of discernment and invites us to ponder how are we called to grow in union with Him, sharing His love in the world, and spreading the gift of God’s self with our brothers and sisters.

When I was poking around with some extracurricular theological studies in college, I was introduced to the concept of “kenotic caritas” in my Moral Theology class.  We read a chapter titled, “Love and Liturgy,” by M. Theresa Lysaught, and this article changed the way I approached the Eucharist and viewed our vocation of love.  We are all called to participate in God’s love, a love that does not merely give, but gives all.  We are all called to that self-emptying, prodigal love, which seeks not its own interests, but pours out in love for the other.   

I was so drawn to this call of kenotic caritas, and felt that God had created me with a great capacity for this self-emptying love.  I felt as though God had attached me to a special faucet where I could fill and refill my cup as I emptied it out to others.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the vocation of consecrated life is a call “to follow and imitate Christ more nearly, and to manifest more clearly His self-emptying is to be more deeply present to one's contemporaries, in the heart of Christ” (CCC, 932).  The call of consecrated life is a call to incarnate God’s kenotic love in the world, to meet the world’s great need for love in an absolute, total gift of self.

To do that, I will give myself completely to God, in community, for the service of the Poor.  Consecrated life is the vocation to which God has called me.  The call of a Daughter of Charity will allow me, the future Sister Kara Davis, to increase in love, grow in authentic holiness, and draw more deeply into communion with God.

The life of a Daughter of Charity will require humility, an awareness of gifts received by God, gratitude for these gifts, and putting them to use in service.  Humility also requires an acknowledgment of my own human limitations, a difficult reality for a young person ready to take on the world’s deep need.  I am reminded that I am but a mere servant in the hands of God.  The life of a Daughter of Charity will require simplicity, an authentic witness true to the call to self-emptying love in the context of the community.  Simplicity is a readiness to seek God in all things.  Finally, the life of a Daughter of Charity will require charity, the kenotic caritas that flows from a total love of God, poured out to the Sisters and those whom we serve.

Consecrated life brings me into closer union with God, loving in the complete, self-emptying way for which I am created.  I do not have to become a Daughter of Charity to serve the Poor.  There are plenty of people who serve the poor who might be married, have children, or live the single life.  I also do not have to become a Daughter of Charity to live in community.  There are intentional communities all over the world that live together and pray together.  I also do not have to become a Daughter of Charity to surrender my life to God.  There are religious congregations, secular institutes, and a number of other formal ways I could give myself to God.  However, when all three come together:  Given to God, in community, for the service of the Poor, there you will find a Daughter of Charity.  There you will find a servant of the Lord wrapped in humility, simplicity, and charity.

So now, when I am greeted with the question, “Why be a Daughter of Charity?” I might still share about my journey of discernment, the play, and the Catholic Worker House, maybe even the convenience of a veil on a bad hair day, but my first response will be, “Because it’s what I’m made for.”

On the Way

By Whitney Schieltz

Last weekend, the theme for our Future of Charity gathering was The Appearance on the Road to Emmaus.  I spent much of our time together, and the time since, pondering the passage: Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way…?”  It got me thinking of the way that has led me to where I am today and where it is taking me.  Growing up, God was not a part of my life; or should I say, I was ignorant and indifferent to God’s presence in my life.  It wasn’t until my early twenties that I began to feel the love of The Father, the friendship of The Son, and the mysterious workings of The Holy Spirit.  Fast forward a few years, and here I am as an Affiliate with the Sisters of Charity.  Me!  Considering religious life!  How did I get here?  If I’m really meant to be a Sister, then why hasn’t my heart been burning for God my whole life?

Recently, while reading James Martin’s Jesus: A Pilgrimage, one particular line jumped off the page at me.  It was Matthew 14:31, “Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’”  Although I had heard that verse many times before, in that moment I could feel myself, like Peter, being tossed around in the waves, gasping for air as I struggled to stay afloat.  Then, looking up, I saw the smile of a friend who knew me better than I know myself—a friend who has been with me my who life.  But instead of questioning my faith in him, I heard Jesus challenging me with something else: Why do you doubt yourself?  Why do you doubt the road you’re on?

Why was I doubting?  Before moving to El Paso last October to begin my Affiliate stage with the Sisters, I had a lot of concerns about how I would adjust to the changes.  As a Midwesterner my whole life, the thought of relocating to the Southwest was hard to imagine.  On top of that, my complete lack of Spanish skills made living on the Mexican border somewhat daunting.  In the past six months, however, I have undergone personal and spiritual growth that I probably would not have experienced back home.  When I thought of the two travelers on the Road to Emmaus, they were not standing still.  Jesus was walking with them just as he has been walking with me my whole life, whether I realized it or not.

Even though I knew I would be stepping well outside my comfort zone this year, I took that step because I knew it was what I needed to move me forward.  I needed this new experience to grow—as a person, as a woman, as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister, and as a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Ending up here was not by mistake.  And this time has not changed me into a different person.  It has given me the opportunity to discover and embrace who God created me to be.

This week was the 6-month checkpoint for my Affiliate period, which means an evaluation by my director and local community, as well as a serious conversation about whether or not I am ready to begin the application for Novitiate.  Among my many considerations while weighing the options of staying in Affiliate another year or moving on the Novitiate, one of the most important questions I asked myself was: Where do I have the most potential for growth?

When I think of how much I’ve grown in this time as an Affiliate, I recognize not only my progress but also my potential to grow even more—in my personal life, in my spiritual life, in my community life, and in my ministerial life.  So although I am looking forward to discovering what lies ahead along the way, for now, I am excited to extend my time of growth, discovery, and discernment as an Affiliate in El Paso.  And knowing that Jesus will be walking with me, my heart is finally burning within me!