Archive

Dear Kathleen, You have been gone for ten years. February 19 was a Tuesday in 2008. That afternoon your breathing stopped quietly, simply, almost unnoticed. You had gone home, as you had joyfully anticipated from the time of your stroke four months earlier. You had joined your Spouse, your parents, your beloved Madre Angela. I […]

“If, according to times and circumstances, the need arises to make new rules or do something differently, do it prudently and with good advice…,” St. Angela told the Company’s leaders in her last Legacy. Her words ring in my 21st-century ears. Angela modified her plans in response to a need that had arisen. On March […]

Not for St. Angela Merici in 1535, when she founded the Company of St. Ursula. She spoke (in Italian) of the “secolo”: the ordinary circumstances of lay life. Not for Pope Pius XII on February 2, 1947, when he issued the document that gave “secular institutes” this title and recognized their place in the Church […]

Through the Christmas cards and the baking and the wrapping paper, “Incarnation” wove a great question mark. What does it really mean? Scripture offers some avenues: “The Word was made flesh…” “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…” “An infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger…” But what does Incarnation […]

Being together – “insieme” – is what St. Angela Merici recommended so strongly to her daughters that one directive to the Company’s leaders uses the word four times: “Take care to have your daughters come together from time to time in the place you think best and most convenient… so that, together like this, they […]

Someone was missing from the Sanctuary of St. Angela last week in Brescia. And there was something new.

This was my first visit since the death of Maria Teresa Pezzotti. The long-time leader of St. Angela’s Daughters in Brescia had died last December. As we often rediscover a death through an empty space, my expectation of Maria Teresa in the pew behind me fluttered momentarily, then plunged into reality.

Congo & USA: 7405 miles distant and a mere heartbeat apart. “Small world” seems almost trite in this cyber-era. Still, some connections shake us into seeing how closely bound we all are, riding through space together on our small globe. Our thread is love.

Do you enjoy the insights of others who take the Gospel seriously? We’ll share ours and invite yours. Are you pondering contemporary reality? Maybe our consecrated life in the world will offer a fresh perspective. Are you seeking a wise guide for your own spiritual life? That might be Angela Merici. Through the centuries many […]