News, Women's Communities

Women Religious

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There is an interesting article in The National Catholic Register regarding the history behind The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) doctrinal assessment.

A little background: The Vatican established the LCWR in the 1950’s (originally named the Conference of Major Superiors of Women in the United States). In the 1980s those religious communities that did not share the political and religious views of the LCWR petitioned the Holy See to allow them to form their own association. This was finally done when the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR) was established in 1992.

The IRL Affiliate Communities are part of the CMSWR. Go to our website to see a list of our communities.

According to the article:

The average age of the members of LCWR communities is 73 and increasing, while their numbers fall. Meanwhile, what of the CMSWR? They represent 20% of all the women religious in the U.S., more than 11,000 sisters, but they are young, with an average age of 35 and falling, and they are growing fast. They are happy to state their fidelity to the magisterium of the Church, to pray together as the central focus of their lives, to work together in community apostolates, to wear recognizable religious habits and, above all, to promote and protect their consecration to Christ as the source and goal of the Church’s life.

 

Men's communities, Saints, Women's Communities

Feast of St. Norbert

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June 6th is the Feast Day of St. Norbert. May the Norbertines around the world be blessed by their most saintly founder, St. Norbert.

The five ends of the Norbertines are:

1) Laus Dei in choro (the singing of the Divine Office)

2) Zelus animarum (zeal for the salvation of souls)

3) Spiritus jugis pœnitentiæ (the spirit of habitual penance)

4) Cultus Eucharisticus (a special devotion to the Holy Eucharist)

5) Cultus Marianus (a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin)

Check out the Norbertine website of St. Michael’s Abbey (a thriving IRL Affiliate Community) in Silverado, CA, and the Norbertine Canonesses website as well which is a new community of nuns.

News, Women's Communities

Imagine Yourself

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Imagine yourself …… a Sister!

Watch this video of young sisters joyfully living out their vocations as a brides of Christ. Seeking joy in the world and finding it was not enough, these sisters found that doing the Will of God brought them happiness  and was incredibly freeing.

“Imagine Sisters” is a web and campus-based movement that aims to inspire the imaginations of young women to consider the beautiful call to consecrated life as a sister. With the guiding truth that one sister can change the world, Imagine Sisters strives to connect the world with sisters passionately embracing their call to serve the Lord.

The Web site is coming soon but in the meantime, watch this beautiful video!

Men's communities

The Boston HUB

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Last year, Sean Cardinal O’Malley asked the Brotherhood of Hope to minister to students in 12 institutes of higher education within a 5 mile radius in Boston’s Back Bay. With a total of 60,000 students, the brothers have their hands full. The name of the program is Hub – Hope for Undergraduates in Boston.

The Brotherhood of Hope, an IRL Affiliate founded in 1980, began serving Rutgers University in 1985. As evangelists, their consecration of God First, God Alone,  fuels their passion for the New Evangelization, primarily to college students at secular universities. Reaching out to inactive and uncommitted Catholics, they encourage conversion to Christ and His Church. Their hope is that their students will transmit this conversion-and-outreach passion into their vocation, family life, parish, and work environments. One student said after attending a retreat that “my faith became the priority over everything else.”

The Brothers describe themselves as spiritual marines, taking their “place at the frontlines of the Church. We seek to hold a place in the wall where it is weakest.” God bless them and all the students who seek to find their true vocation in life.

Women's Communities

Chrissie’s Journey

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On August 15, 2012, Christina Skelley will be entering the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Hamden CT to begin her time of formation in religious life. Her Q&A is a beautiful testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit working in a young woman’s life and a beautiful review of religious life in general.  Wise spiritual directors often say that when you find the right Order, you will feel at home and KNOW. Christina felt right at home with the Apostles and wrote, “I feel called to the Apostles because I really have a sense of being at home with them and fitting in with them. I feel free to be myself with them. They are deeply prayerful, down to earth, friendly, compassionate, and joyful.”

The Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are an IRL Affiliate Community. For them, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is “the first and most beloved of devotions.” It is at the center of their spiritual, ascetical and apostolic life. Their foundress Clelia Merloni urged the Apostle to be before she does, to adore before she witnesses, and to witness with the power of Jesus present within her who makes Himself light, love, conviction, and redemption.

May God grant the Apostles many holy vocations in this month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

 

Liturgical Year, News

Cor ad Cor Loquitur (Heart Speaks to Heart)

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In September, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI paid a special visit to a Pietà located in the shrine at Etzelsbach (Thuringia), Germany. Every year there is a traditional equestrian pilgrimage, which is held on the second Sunday after the feast of the Visitation. This commemorates the healing of horses who were cured when taken to the shrine during an equine epidemic.

The Holy Father obviously loves the pilgrimage site and has pondered deeply the miraculous image contained within. Located in East Germany, it survived most recently the Nazi reign of terror and the Communist takeover of the region. Here are excerpts of his relfections:

“In most representations of the Pietà, the dead Jesus is lying with his head facing left, so that the observer can see the wounded side of the Crucified Lord,” explained the Pontiff. “Here in Etzelsbach, however, the wounded side is concealed, because the body is facing the other way.”

It seems to the Holy Father that “the hearts of Jesus and his mother are turned to one another; they come close to each other. They exchange their love.”

“It is not self-fulfilment that truly enables people to flourish…. Rather it is an attitude of self-giving directed towards the heart of Mary and hence also towards the heart of the Redeemer.”

For a detailed history of the statue from a Zenit article, click here.  Or go to Fr. Z’s blog for an analysis of the Holy Father’s talk at the shrine.

Happy Feast of the Visitation!

Liturgical Year, News, Women's Communities

The Truth May Cost Us “Dearly”

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On May 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI expressed to US Bishops during an Ad Limina visit his “deep gratitude for the example of fidelity and self-sacrifice given by many consecrated women in your country, and to join them in praying that this moment of discernment will bear abundant spiritual fruit for the revitalization and strengthening of their communities in fidelity to Christ and the Church, as well as to their founding charisms.”

As the Year of Faith approaches (October), the Holy Father added that he hopes that all people will rediscover and “re-appropriate with joy and gratitude the priceless treasure of our faith.” Furthermore, “With the progressive weakening of traditional Christian values, and the threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly, the truth of Christ needs not only to be understood, articulated and defended, but to be proposed joyfully and confidently as the key to authentic human fulfillment and to the welfare of society as a whole.”

As we approach Pentecost, may we, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, have the courage of the Apostles to be bearers of the Good News in a world hostile to Christian values.

News, Women's Communities

EWTN’s Home Monastery is 50!

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On May 20, 2012, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration marked the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Mother Angelica’s Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Alabama. The monastery was dedicated on May 20, 1962.

By the early 70’s the sisters were duplicating Mother’s talks and printing “mini” books to explain the basics of the Faith. And in 1981, Mother launched Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in the monastery garage and the rest as they say is history.

I remember visiting EWTN in the late 90’s and attending one of Mother’s Live shows. She wandered around the set before the show began greeting people as if she didn’t have a care in the world and sat down with only seconds to spare. Everything came from a heart prepared by and with prayer. I had a message to give to her from a mutual friend that day and felt somewhat awkward doing it just minutes before she was to go on the air but she gave me her full attention and spent sometime talking with me. I was very impressed.

I thank God for EWTN which gave my housebound relatives a participation in the life of the Church and great consolation in the weeks before their deaths. May EWTN flourish and grow to the ends of the earth in all the languages of the human race.

For the full article in the National Catholic Register and many reflections on the 50 years of history, click here.

General interest

The Roots of the Religious Vocation Crisis

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In Rome last week, a conference was held at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross to resurrect the name and works of Jesuit Jean Cardinal Daniélou who died in 1974 in mysterious circumstances that clouded his work as a one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. His outspokenness on the truths of the Faith made him unpopular with the intelligentsia but his views on the decline of vocations and religious orders is still right on.

In an interview given in 1972, here are the reasons he gives for crisis facing religious institutions:

  • The evangelical counsels are no longer considered as consecrations to God, but are seen in a sociological and psychological perspective.
  • The group dynamic replaces religious obedience.
  • All regularity of the life of prayer is abandoned and the first consequence of this state of confusion is the disappearance of vocations, because young people require a serious formation.
  • In the name of a false secularization, men and women are renouncing their habits, abandoning their works in order to take their places in secular institutions, substituting social and political activities for the worship of God.
  • A false conception of freedom brings with it the devaluing of the constitutions and rules and exalts spontaneity and improvisation.

He concludes by saying that “experience will demonstrate if the vocations are more numerous in the houses of strict observance or in the houses of mitigated observance.”  I think we can answer that question today, at least in the Western world.

 

News, Women's Communities

Hold Back Nothing of Yourselves

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Our local seminary’s magazine (The Bridge – excellent by the way) has an article this issue about a new community of young women in Chicago called the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. Why are they in a seminary magazine? Because part of their charism is to develop a strong relationship with diocesan priests and they are in fact studying there to earn a Masters Degree in Divinity.

Led by Fr. Bob Lombardo, CFR, the sisters take to heart St. Francis’ admonition: Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He, who gives Himself totally to you, may receive you totally. They live in a desperate neighborhood of Chicago and they strive to help the local families with food and household goods and the children by keeping them out of gangs and off drugs. One of their goals is to have perpetual Eucharistic adoration in the newly renovated Church. After their theological training, they will teach religion in Catholic schools.

Please pray for them and the violent streets of Chicago that the Lord’s peace may come to dwell in all hearts.