Flickr: Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. Our palms from last Sunday are now behind us, a foreshadowing of the whisper we will hear once again next year, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." However, during Holy Week, the message of ashes is more pertinent than ever....

Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself.  Is that the message of (last) Sunday’s Gospel? There was a song years ago “Don’t Worry be Happy.” Is that what Jesus is telling us?      I think we need to remember this reading is part of the Sermon on...

Whose feet need washing in our world? This is ours to do.

A Position of the Heart He seduced the Cross into making love. He coaxed it, pressed it to himself, Until it was difficult to see which had initiated the embrace, which was making the offering. And which one had actually given in. Jo-Ann...

Take some time out today and pray with these three reflections and accompanying music/poetry.

That encounter taught me that I/we are often the ones who need to reach out and include, rather than exclude. We are the ones who must truly be the tender, healing touch of the God we say we believe in.

Flickr: Pennsylvania National Guard “In our call as Christians, as Catholics, as people, we should be able to help one another without being asked to do it,” says Sister Connie Kelly, a Dominican Sister of Hope. She’s not all talk. Sister Connie was the Campus...

When Dominican Sister of Hope Mary Alice Hannan, OP heard about a congregation of Dominican Sisters who devoted their lives to serving the homeless, she knew she wanted to meet them. There was just one caveat: the group was located in France, and they adhered to the...

In her address to the Dominican Symposium in 2007 held in Adrian Michigan, Ann Willits quoted Jamie Phelps, OP, who said “though it is common to speak of our living today in a global reality, all too often we do so with 'eyes that see but not see and ears that hear...

As I reflect this Lent on the early discovery of the immensity of the nature of this Mother Earth both in her mountain and ocean, it gives me a new understanding of Hope.

As we journey on the road to resurrection, we look back to the beginning which began in a desert, then continued up a mountain, and now we find Jesus resting along the roadside by a well. He is easy and pauses for some refreshment. He really doesn’t want much: just a...

Flickr: Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.   When we were in grammar school, no one would have called us well-behaved, especially during Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoons in Lent. But we were quiet as we timed the priest from station to station and silently cheered...

Today, we bear ashes on our foreheads, given with the whisper, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." On Ash Wednesday, the message of ashes is more pertinent than ever. Ashes are more than an Ash-Wednesday sign of our Christianity and our belief in a God who...

Is this blessed and broken universe and all it contains, all it ever contained, the body of Christ? Even today?  

After the public display of Ash Wednesday, God moves among us unnoticed in everyday life. During this first week of Lent, we are reminded God takes up residence in the lives of the unassuming ones. And, as always, God visits them at unexpected...

We all enjoy “something new:” a new friendship, the opportunity of a new job or ministry, a new home, a new discovery that can lead us in a new direction, the sense of new life after surgery or treatment for a life threatening illness. The prophet Isaiah invites us to...

Holy Saturday A no-thing day. No table, no cross, no empty tomb. Just darkness. Deep down soil, earthiness— Hidden treasures perhaps. Seeds waiting for mystery to unfold In warmth In moisture In unexpected, ground-breaking energy… The Spirit lives. Holy Saturday time:...

Three sisters share ways to grow in holiness during Lent, aside from giving up your favorite food or dessert.

Three sisters share their reflections on making almsgiving more than clicking the donate button.

Ask some Dominican Sisters of Hope what they’re giving up for Lent, and you might be surprised at their answers. Lent is traditionally a time of fasting, almsgiving, and penance; but it’s easy to lose the true meaning of these when we focus our attention on display or...

Flickr: Matus Laslofi In her prologue to At Home in Wisdom’s Tent, Donna Markham, OP states, “We desperately need dialogue – not more discussion! Dialogue describes the kind of conversation which builds a synergistic, new, and better understanding of an issue....

Finding the time and space –let alone quiet– can be a task in itself, not to mention cultivating focus and connection. 

We have begun the journey of reconciliation and conversion, Lent. This season of the church year is about repenting for our personal faults and sinfulness. It is about self-analysis and conversion. What do I (you) need to change? In the readings of the season we are...

It was the path Jesus embarked upon and it is the path that we too must embrace as we enter into these final days of Lent.

Lent never seems to arrive on time.Whenever we’re ready for it, it seems to come too late in the calendar year, and when it arrives early, it seems we’ve just put the Christmas decorations away.With the arrival of Ash Wednesday this year, we’re faced again...

Unthinkable The angelic body bowed low in adoration Before the woman soon-to-be- with child.   "Blessed," he called her. "Why?" she asked.   "Chosen," was his answer. He waited. She wondered.   "How? Not now," she said. "God...