By Catherine Walsh, Features Writer —
As spring alternately steals and dances into Vermont’s Champlain Valley, Sister Betty Secord savors new life around her. In the fields, woods, pond, and barn of Mercy Ecospirituality Center—her home of the last eight years—she marvels that “everything is so alive and fresh. It’s wonderful to be working in the gardens again.”
By Catherine Walsh, Features Writer — When Sister Patricia “Pat” Coward was in the 7th grade, she never thought she’d become a sister. And she wasn’t sure what to tell her friends when her 18-year-old sister, Sister Donna Marie Coward, joined the Sister of Mercy. “Although I was proud of Donna, I had to be cool,” Sister Pat says. “It wasn’t cool to have a sister who was a sister!”
By Liz Dossa — Clearly, Amy is called to this ministry of empathy. “I think of the Tenderloin as a space of hope and light. In the midst of such adversity, people are caring for the community and for one another.”
By Sister Pat Kenny — Let us rejoice in that, and let us pray for the grace to grow in the understanding of both others and ourselves and sharing that understanding generously and wisely.
By Sister Patricia McCann — If we apply the moral teaching of “Brothers and Sisters to Us” to contemporary problems, it will move us closer to resolution of the racial divide that prevents us from actually being brothers and sisters in God’s human family.
Mara became strikingly aware of clean water shortages in Africa and other parts of the world. She decided right then and there that she was going to do something about it!
For three agonizing days after Super Typhoon Rai struck the Philippines in mid-December, local Mercy leaders waited for word from Sister Jean Delgado in the badly affected region of Southern Leyte, which was without power or internet service.
By Sister Pat Kenny — Our life spans outlast a butterfly’s by decades; they must do in a few days what we have years to accomplish, but don’t let that discrepancy fool you. There is purpose in every life.
By Sister Luz Eugenia Alvarez – The beginning of a new year usually is a time when we make New Year’s resolutions, trying to be better people.
By Sister Helen Libo-on – In the Philippines, we have the tradition of praying the nine days of novena to the Blessed Virgin Mary before celebrating the Feast of the Nativity.
By Sister Diane Guerin — In Advent, we, too, wait in joyful hope. What is our expectation? Do we welcome Jesus as a Prophet of Nonviolence? How are we, who profess in our Critical Concern of nonviolence, challenged to live this commitment each day?
There are so many connections between the anniversaries of Juan’s Piadosa Madre and Catherine’s Sisters of Mercy.