Among the many blogs I follow, one is "Stuff Christians Like" written by Jon Acuff. Why? Because his stuff is hilarious, because it makes you wonder "oh my gosh, are there really Christians out there like that?" and because sometimes it'll really make you think.

His latest blog post is Does God want you to be miserable?. He explores the question "why do we assume that when we give God our life He's going to make us do what we hate?" which is actually quite a good question about vocation. Why do some people discerning think that, in order to become a Sister or a priest, they need to give up what they're passionate about? Why do they think that they'll be miserable but hey, they'll be doing what God wants them to do, right? Because there's something in today's Christian society - and I don't know what it is or where it came from - that tells us that.

Here is an excerpt from his blog entry. 

I do a joke when I speak to church groups. I say, “Every Christian knows that the first thing God does if you give him your life is make you move to Africa to become a missionary. You’ll go zero to hut in about 4.2 seconds.” And folks laugh, but there’s a crazy truth behind that joke. If we think the first thing God will do to us if we come close to him is the worst thing we can imagine, then we serve the worst God ever. 

If you’re not wired to be a missionary in Guam, if nothing about that feels at all like what God has uniquely created you to do, why would he immediately call you to that task if you trusted him with your life?

Go check out the rest of his post. It's worth the read!

Be Joyful! I Say It Again...'Be Joyful!': Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli

So I posted about the feast day of the Martyrs of Angers, not even realizing that the Daughters had two other feast days within a week - Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli today and Blessed Rosalie Rendu next week. I've already done a post on the life of Blessed Rosalie Rendu, one of my Daughter of Charity "favs", but Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli is even lesser known.

Sister Giuseppina was Italian, as you may have guessed already by her name. After becoming a Daughter of Charity, she spent most of her life ministering to the poor on the island Sardinia (yes, I had to look it up too) She became Sister Servant (the superior of the house) there and did something that may have been revolutionary in its time - she introduced the Sisters to the womens' prison. The Sisters then began to visit the incarcerated and minister to them. She organized the first youth group volunteers and taught catechism to the poor, illiterate and those without religious education.

A few years later, she was called to Turin (Italy) to serve as adminstrator of the province and then directress of the Seminary (noviciate), but soon the community realized that the climate of Turin wasn't doing well to her health and how attached Sardinia was to her and vice versa and sent her back there. Upon her return, she opened a School of Religion for young people and worked with sick infants and children. During World War I, she used her time to care for wounded soldiers.

But perhaps the greatest part of her reputation comes from her work with a group called Monelli di Maria, a group of orphaned, homeless, and abandoned children. Originally, these were just a group of street children that knocked on the Sisters' door asking for food, money, etc. Sister Giuseppina re-named this group something to the effect of "Mary's Street Kids" While she did make sure they went to Mass and were taught catechism, to Sister Giuseppina, serving them meant also serving Christ in the person of her neighbor. So she taught them how to read and write, as well as a trade that would give them a job and off the streets. By teaching them about God and His love for them, she also made them aware of their own dignity - they who had been denied an education because of their poverty, they who had been kicked out of their homes by their parents, they who had been orphaned, they who the world left behind.

Sister Giuseppina died in 1924 at the age of sixty one. Her last words were "Yes! Thank you!" That picture of Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli is probably one of my favorites of any Daughter of Charity in the cornette. She is so full of joy and energy in the picture - as if the photographer caught her at the end of a laugh. And when you think about all she was doing at the time of that picture - working with kids at the orphanage or school or working with the street kids - it really is amazing that she had all that joy and energy. Here's a pearl of wisdom she left us:

Joy is a great remedy. I recommend it to you and I do so very enthusiastically...! Be joyful! I say it again 'be joyful'! When we are joyful, we are less aware of evil and are cured more quickly. Cast all your cares on God; He is the best of fathers and will look after you as well as possible. (Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli)

Yet Another Daughter of Charity Feast Day!

It seems like every month, there is at least one Daughter of Charity feast day. In November, we have three in a row!

Today's feast day is for Blessed Marie Anne Vaillot and Blessed Odile Baumgarten, two martyrs of the French Revolution, part of a group known as the "Martyrs of Angers" (a town in France). Another martyr of the French Revolution, also a Daughter of Charity, Marguerite Rutan, was beatified less than a year ago.

You can find a great homily about these two martyred Sisters here by Fr Richard McCullen, one of our former Superior Generals.

How blessed am I to belong to a community with so many saints!

(Picture from the Daughters of Charity Australia website)

The Baltimore Ravens, Field Goals and Holiness

It's a week since Baltimore was dealt a heavy blow, when, in a matter of just a few seconds, our hopes for a Super Bowl were suddenly silenced, our hopes for glorious karma of winning a Super Bowl in Indianapolis were gone and men (and women) cried out in disbelief.

It all happened when our kicker Billy Cundiff missed the field goal that would have tied the game and sent us into overtime. (Or, you could argue when Evans dropped the touchdown pass that would have won us the game)

Some fans went into fits of anger, maybe throwing whatever they could get their hands on. But I think many of us, including myself, sat for a few seconds thinking "Did that really just happen??". And as for me personally, I spent the next few hours in a daze of disbelief.

I know what you're thinking "Okay, Amanda, what in the world does this have to do with your blog? It's just a football game", to which I would say "Just a football game?! What?!"
No, just kidding.

After I awoke from my daze of denial, I started thinking about the game in a different light. I realized that, while we lost, overall the Baltimore Ravens have nothing to be ashamed of. Yes, you read that right. Our quarterback, Flacco, played better than Brady did. Our defense held the Pats offense to field goals instead of touchdowns and they sacked Brady various times. People, NFL commentators and fans alike, didn't have a lot of trust in Flacco before the game - they relied on our defense to win it. Instead, the team worked like just that - a team, rather than individuals.

So, what does this have to do with holiness? A lot, I think. The teamwork that the Ravens exhibited represented how we humans need to work together as a community to lead a holy life. Just as Flacco couldn't have won that game by himself, Ray Rice couldn't have won that game by himself, nor could Ray Lewis or Terrell Suggs - so we can't reach holiness without the help and support of others. In the Acts of the Apostles, the first Christians weren't Christians individually - they became a tight community, a team. We can't live a Christian life alone and we've known that from the very start of our religion. Sometimes working as a team means role models, sometimes that means encouragement, sometimes that means a shoulder to cry on, and sometimes that means remaining optimistic in the face of adversity.

After the Ravens lost, Ray Rice responded to the various complaints by fans by his Facebook status: "And one more thing...games consist of SIXTY MINUTES, NOT 20 seconds so before y'all start bashing MY kicker on this page, let me say this is a TEAM sport, win or lose...so if you want to be negative, keep it to yourself." Ray Rice presents an excellent example of teamwork....even after the game, after the loss, he refers to Cundiff as his kicker, not the kicker. He also presents a good (although secular) example of Galatians 6:2 "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" So the Ravens didn't win and sure, there were things that they could have done better, but they worked as a team and they almost made it to the Super Bowl. That makes the game nothing to be ashamed of. 


In a life of reaching holiness, we might be sacked, we might fumble, we might miss the pass....or even miss that crucial field goal....but if we work as a team, we might just get closer and closer to holiness and, by doing so, get closer and closer to Christ. And that means everything.

So while others are still grumbling about our missed opportunity, I say "thank you, Ravens, for a great season, a good game and for making me reflect on my own Christianity"

My Biggest Sacrifice: The Family of My Soul

Today was a day where half of me wasn't there. Sure, I worked in the Hispanic Ministry office, typed up bulletins and did everything that needed to be done....but part of me was somewhere else. Why? Because I knew, thousands of miles to the South, two of these goofballs on the right were making their perpetual profession, the goofball on the far left being one of my closest friends during my two years in Bolivia. I imagined them laying prostrate, flowers being thrown around them, the huge smiles on both their faces. But instead of being there, I was here in middle Georgia doing office work.

I miss them. A lot.

Only recently have I truly discovered my biggest sacrifice entering religious life. I knew it coming in but its reality has slowly taken root - leaving behind the girls of the orphanage and the Sisters I lived and worked with for two years (the same community I entered). They aren't family, but for two years, they were my family. And while it's been almost three years since I moved back to the United States, they've continued to feel like family.

And now I am a postulant with the Daughters of Charity, a community that puts a heavy emphasis on the belief that your family becomes our family and has regular family visits. Yet I know those Sisters in Bolivia, those girls, are not my family. They grew up in a different culture, a different country, even sometimes a language I don't even know. But there is something deeper than blood that makes them family to me, as if it was the utter being of my soul that picked them out to more than just former co-workers/housemates to me.

But the truth is I don't know when I'll see them again, I don't know if I'll see them again. (Saying that, thank God for modern technology....for the use of Skype today to hear their voices, for chats over Gtalk)

They are, by far, the biggest sacrifice I've ever had to make to be a Daughter of Charity. The strangest thing is, though, I somehow know this is where God wants me....which is where the conflicting feelings of the joy of true vocation and the sorrow of unwanted sacrifice clash. Where the sting of loss mixes with a somehow-authentic sense of "it's all worth it"I'm sure those two Sisters who made their perpetual profession today would tell you the same thing. They each had to sacrifice something to reach where they are today, to dedicate their lives entirely to God. They both entered the community in high school but there are sacrifices even for high school girls and even more as they continued on in community life. Those two women that made their perpetual vows today...women that I have seen chase loose chickens around the convent, twist their faces in all sorts of funny ways to make others laugh, hold my hand as they used an escalator for the first time, beautifully demonstrate the dances of their Aymara ancestors.....are truly examples for me. They inspire me. I am so proud of them and I am so blessed to know them. Perhaps that is why God brought them in my life, so that they be sisters of mine, inspiring lights for me to follow, even from a thousand of miles away.

That doesn't make missing them any easier though.

My Hope as a Writer

St Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers, a category that over these months I've slowly realized I am part of. In honor of his feast day, I'll use someone else's words to justify my own in this blog:

I am content that these pages show me to be what I am - noisy, full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my house is, You live there! (Thomas Merton, Sign of Jonas)

Thomas Merton wrote that of his own journals of Sign of Jonas and I easily say the same for this blog. I hope that these posts show to all who I am - not in the superficial sense of being a postulant of the Daughters of Charity, but on the deeper level of someone made whole with the love of God, yet still broken from sin and imperfection. I long to always be authentic and that, with that authenticity, I desire to witness to God's amazing love for all in perhaps one of the strangest ways: strokes of keys that merge together to form joys, sorrows, and prayer.

St Francis de Sales, pray for us writers!

Keeping the Dream Alive: A Guest Post by Widian Nicola

Guest blogger: Widian Nicola, Program Coordinator at the Center for FaithJustice, devout follower of St Vincent de Paul and his spirituality, and very good friend :)

It has been almost half a century since the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. painted to the world the colors of his dream: a portrait when "one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers"  And when "one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." 

This dream is a picture that is still in the process of revealing itself. Although the picture might be unclear, it is indeed continually being painted. It is being painted in the paradoxical nature of our human condition: that of suffering and joy, acceptance and rejection, love and ignorance, temperance and violence, freedom and oppression, and life and death.  Dr. King realized that while a dream could be fully realized, it is not given birth without birth pains and cannot develop without growing pains.  "You have been the veterans of creative suffering," Dr. King said, "continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive."

How magnificent!

What are we to say to the challenge of living in a world that struggles to live out the ultimate Divine Dream of God, as Dr. King did?  The Dream, also called the Kingdom of God, where life overcomes death and love overcomes hate?  It was Jesus who, both divine and human, perfected the art of living in the tension of an imperfect world that could only be restored through redemptive suffering.  Why was he able to do this? Temperance. 

Temperance is the moderation in the indulgence of a given hunger, the discipline of self-control, or perhaps self-restraint in the ways in which we act in self-righteousness. Jesus knew how to live out the Dream here on earth.  He knew how to live with the strain of suffering coupled with joy.  Regardless of the ways in which Jesus suffered, ultimately, he knew that the glory of God must be revealed through temperance: by surrendering and saying yes to the ultimate will of God (death) when it might have been easier to quit, give up, or practice the art of surrendering to the hopelessness that many of us suffer as a result of our human condition.

Abraham refused to give up and pressed on that his dream might become a reality. Moses refused to be a slave and led his people out of oppression that his dream might become a reality.  Job refused to curse God and pressed on that his dream might become a reality.  The Blessed Mother refused to give up that her dream might become a reality.  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, David, Peter, Paul, Mary Madeline refused to give up that their collective dream might become a reality. Dr. King, Mother Teresa, Vincent de Paul, Dorothy Day, Francis of Assisi, Oscar Romero, Joan of Arc, Thea Bowman refused to give up and pressed on that their collective dream might become a reality. 

For Jesus, temperance was not gained through discipline but was channeled through the love he already had within.  Part of the reason Jesus perfected the virtue is because he saw that it is something not be earned, but one that is already within and must merely but accessed.  It was temperance that allowed Jesus to respond with love instead of retaliation, with forgiveness instead of judgment, time instead of an instant, passive resistance instead of revenge.  It is the temperance of the cloud of witnesses in our church family that teach us how to live in the tension, not being ignorant to the ways in which dreams are fully realized: through suffering.

So the paradigm shift is not to ask, “what am I going to do with my life,” but “what can I do with my life that I might join in the collective voice for change in our world?”  In honor of Dr. King and the many saints who have led the way for us to experience a foretaste of God’s Dream yet were not able to see the ways in which they have given life through their sacrifice and struggle, let us celebrate reconciliation through the love they gave more fully.  

May each of us open our hearts to the ways in which God wants us to love, most especially through our vocation.  May we live with the same hope and despair our forerunners lived with in such perfect and peaceful tension.  May we live with courage and temperance of our own self-righteous desires so that we may see our modern, Vincentian, and collective dream come to fruition.  For comprehensive immigration reform, fair housing, education, and end to racism, abortion, human trafficking, and the death penalty; let us live well "on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice"

"Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.  I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.  This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."