How would you answer this question?

"What gives you pleasure and joy? Let those be the things that lead you forward in life."
- Julianne Moore

How might you begin to let these things lead you forward? What would that look like?

Foundress Friday

Tales From The Garden

This fascinating article from the National Carholic Reporter features sisters from a variety communities, including the SSNDs. Read more here!

Visiting Women's Religious Communities in St. Paul

On Saturday, February 21 a group of women who live in the St. Paul, MN area spent the day visiting 5 different communities of women religious. Such events, often called "Nun Runs," have become popular across the country because they offer the opportunity to spend the day with sisters and nuns and to experience the prayer and community lives of a variety of communities. The congregations participating in Saturday's event included the Poor Clare's, St. Paul Benedician's, SSND's at St. Rose of Lima Community in Roseville, Sisters of St Joseph, and Visitation sisters of North Minneapolis.  

Who We Are - As Sisters

S. Tracy Kemme, contributor to Global Sisters Report

This article from a young soon-to-be-Sister of Charity (she is currently a novice) is a gorgeous reflection on the vows that all consecrated religious take. Though this article is not directly about the School Sisters of Notre Dame, it gives great insight into the lived experience and the way of life of generations of religious women and men, SSND and otherwise! If you are discerning about a call to religious life, or even just curious what religious life is all about, we encourage you to grab a mug of something cozy and READ THIS: Vows That Wake Up the World

Discernment Inspiration

Who are you called to be? http://www.ssnd.org/become-sister

Meet Sister Maureen Michael Byrne

This week for Meet a Sister Monday we would like to introduce you to Sister Maureen Michael Byrne! Her ministry in the field of Art and Spirituality is just one of the many unique ways that SSNDs live out their mission of education. See more of her artwork and learn her story here.

Sister Maureen Michael Byrne with some of her paintings and sculpture

Sunday Reflection

We love this quote from our Foundress! It has such an arresting quality to it. Take a little time today to reflect on whether or not you share her attitude. Most of us have a difficult time letting go and trusting in God the way that Theresa so often did! What makes trust difficult for you? When are you best able to trust God?

Discussion - Join In!

What are your questions about religious life? Is there anything that you've ever wanted to ask a sister? Comment with your questions and we can get a discussion going today and find resources to share with you for the future!

Foundress Friday

For more thoughts from Blessed Theresa and other insights into SSND, check us out on Pinterest!

Comic Books and Religious Life

 

The front cover of the 1940's comic book.


Its not everyday that we get a glimpse of the adventures of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in comic book form. Below is a link to a comic book from 1947 that tells of these adventures. Take a look at the history of SSND and imagine your own adventure as a religious sister!
http://www.ssnd.org/sites/default/files/files/YCL2014/ssnd-comic-book-1947.pdf

Welcome, Lent!

Lent is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on our lives, our journeys in faith, our relationships with one another and with God. Are we, as persons, aware of any habits, attitudes, or patterns of thought that need changing? Have we taken the time to examine the communities that we belong to lately with open eyes? What sort of growth are we being called to as we begin the journey towards Easter and new life?

We've collected a few Lenten resources that may be helpful for your prayer and reflection during this season. Feel free to pass this list along to others or to suggest additions!

Lenten Water Reflection: The members of the SSND Atlantic-Midwest Province Water Committee invite you to spend time during Lent 2015 to reflect on the priceless gift of water in our world today. To assist you, they have created an online Lenten Calendar that is designed to help us ponder, study, celebrate, and protect this natural resource, which is in severe ecological crisis. The Lenten Calendar begins on Ash Wednesday, includes weekly Sunday reflections and concludes with reflections for the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday.

Lent resource:  Creation Covenant is a 2015 Lenten resource that explores God's covenant with all creation in light of present-day habitat loss and the extinction of plants and animals.  The five-week program for individuals or groups connects Christ's suffering 2000 years ago with his suffering today "in ten thousand places" (G. M. Hopkins) so that we respond not only to Jesus’ suffering and death but also to the suffering and death within creation where God lives and acts.  Designed by Terri MacKenzie, SHCJ, Creation Covenant is a timely response to what Pope Francis wrote in Joy of the Gospel: "God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel . . . the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations.


Pope Francis' Message for Lent 2015 can be found here - it makes for good reflective reading, especially during this first week of the season. 

Speaking of the Pope, FOCUS (Fellowship Of Catholic University Students) has put together a list of his Top 10 Lent Tips.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has created a Lenten Calendar which offers daily suggestions for prayer and activity.

The great sisters at A Nun's Life have shared this resource - 40 suggested attitudes that one could give up for Lent!
 

Subscribe Today!

If you are enjoying following this blog, we encourage you to subscribe for email updates! Doing so will make sure that you know when new posts go up. Simply enter your email address in the box on the right side of this page.

We also encourage you to comment, ask questions, and share your ideas with us. What would be helpful or useful for you to see here? What would you like to see us post? If you are considering the possibility of religious life, your questions or insights might be helpful to others!

Discernment Inspiration

"Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer;

Only through prayer can they persevere and bear fruit."

- Pope Francis

Meet Sister Mara Frundt

For this week's edition of Meet A Sister Monday we would like to introduce Sister Mara Frundt! Sister Mara's vocation story was featured this past week in the Faribault County Register.

Mara Frundt has spent her life as a missionary

Mara Frundt has spent her life as a missionary

The full-length article can be found here: Mara Frundt Has Spent Her Life as a Missionary

Gospel Reflection

This Sunday we offer you another reflection from Sister Rea McDonnell, SSND on the day's readings. If you enjoy her writing we invite you to follow along throughout the week on the SSND website. 

 

Sunday, February 15, 2015 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Leviticus 13:1-2, 45-46; Psalm 32; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1: 40-45

Last Sunday we heard that Paul will be all things to all people, weak if they are weak, a slave to all. Today he continues his “trying to please everyone in everything I do.”  Paul is hardly a “people pleaser” in today’s terminology; this is a missionary technique that could well be used today, moving into a culture and building on what is worthwhile. Some people fault Paul for his arrogance, but his “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” is also the way Jewish missionaries brought the teaching of famous rabbis to Jews far from Jerusalem; a rabbinic disciple imitated everything about the chief rabbi.  Today we see Jesus, moved with pity (although a more ancient reading says “anger”), touching a leper.  What is the source of his anger?  Is Jesus angry at God/Moses for declaring any skin eruption unclean? Or at Jewish religion and  fearful society for banishing such a person? Or at the leper for hesitating to ask: “If you want to, you can make me clean.”  “Of course I want to,” Jesus responds.

Take a long, loving look at your anger.  From where does it stem?  Are you able to get angry with God, and express it?   What in our church and/or society rouses your anger?  Ask Jesus with great confidence (none of this “If you want to…” or as we more often say, “If it is your will…”) for what needs healing in your anger.   It IS God’s will that we be healed, that church and society be healed, that we channel our anger into action for justice.  Discuss all this with Jesus.

We offer you our anger, your gift to us to move us to justice and compassion. Help us touch your suffering and outcast people in person, or at least in our prayer.

Great Article from a Young Sister!

Sister Julia Walsh shares powerfully about her journey to religious life, particularly celibacy, as an average teen/young adult who liked and dated boys. What a great article! It will be particularly helpful to anyone who wonders how folks live this life - or whether or not they can, themselves!

Find Sister Julia's Article Here at The Global Sisters Report

Reflection Question

In what ways am I called to love within my society, culture, or communities?

What are your thoughts on this St. Valentine's Day? How might you be called to love?

Foundress Friday

We would like to offer you the opportunity to get to know the School Sisters of Notre Dame better by giving you a little insight each week into our foundress, Blessed Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger. This week we've provided you with a short biography of this extraordinary woman - most weeks this post will be a simple quote from her, a portrait, or a fact about her life. We hope that you enjoy getting to know Theresa and, by getting a sense of who she was, coming to better know the spirit of all SSNDs!

Foundress

Caroline Gerhardinger (1797-1879) lived during turbulent times in Bavaria.  At the age of fifteen, she was already a certified teacher in the school for girls in Stadtamhof near Regensburg. She was a very gifted educator whose enthusiastic and encouraging acceptance of the children soon made her a beloved teacher. Under the spiritual guidance of Bishop George Michael Wittmann (1760-1833), Caroline gradually recognized God’s call to found a religious community in order to respond to the needs of the times through education.

Spirituality

On November 16, 1835, Caroline professed her religious vows and took the name, Mary Theresa of Jesus. Her love for God, nourished and strengthened by her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, enkindled the burning desire of her life: to know God and to do God’s will. God’s cause was the only concern of her heart.  Blessed Theresa anchored her community in poverty and dedicated it to Mary.

Innovation 

In 1822, Caroline Gerhardinger had written, “The love of Jesus sees into the future.” As foundress, she endeavored to give the new congregation a future. She sent her sisters in communities of twos and threes to small towns and villages where they taught girls who would have been deprived of an adequate education. This brought about the development of a new form of apostolic religious life whereby all the sisters and houses were governed by a member of the congregation, a general superior. As a result, the congregation experienced rapid growth and acceptance, but Blessed Theresa and her sisters also suffered great hardship and painful struggle. In 1865, the rule and constitutions of the School Sisters of Notre Dame were finally approved by Pope Pius IX.  Blessed Theresa then continued to govern the congregation as its general superior until her death in Munich on May 9, 1879.

Beatification

On November 17, 1985, Mary Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger was declared “Blessed” by Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Beatification is the third of four steps in a process whereby the church declares that individuals may be honored and venerated due to their exemplary life of heroic virtue. This step is preceded by intense study of an individual’s life, writings, and virtues and, if he or she was not a martyr for the faith, proof of one miracle worked by God through his or her intercession. The fourth step of the process is canonization, whereby the person is declared to be a saint worthy of honor and veneration by the entire Catholic Church.


Information taken from ssnd.org.

Voices for Peace

This week's edition of Throwback Thursday features an SSND photo from a 1983 peace march in Washington! Sister Justine Nutz, SSND, who designed the banner and participated in the march 32 years ago, said that while she was singing “Blowin' in the Wind,” during the climate march in New York in 2014 “memories of other SSND marches in New York and Washington came back to me.” This banner, which says “Blessed are the Peacemakers - Daughters and Sons of God - School Sisters of Notre Dame,” features a dove carrying an olive branch, bursting through a nuclear warhead, surrounded by seven flames of the then seven SSND U.S. and Canadian provinces. Pictured are (holding the banner in front) Sisters Kathleen Wahl, Charitas Maloney, Margaret Kenyon and Justine Nutz. Behind them on the far right are Sisters Christella Sheehan and Eileen McKeever. About 30 sisters from Wilton, Connecticut, went to Washington for that peace march.

Introductory Video

Our communications office created this video in celebration of the Year of Consecrated life and in order to help spread the word about who the School Sisters of Notre Dame are. We hope that you enjoy it, and we ask you to share it with your friends and social networks!

Discernment Inspiration

"Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation."

- P. T. Barnum

Meet a Sister Monday

Sister Mary B. Odundo provides health education to children suffering from diabetes as their guardian watches.

This week's edition of Meet a Sister Monday features SSND Sister Mary Odundo! Speaking of her experience of call, Sister Mary wrote:

"I went home with a joyful spirit and, at the same time, with a questioning heart deep within. ‘How can I work for the Lord?’ Since I was only 12 years old, I did not understand the powerful experience [I had]."

Would you like to read more about her ministry and her experience of becoming an SSND? You can find the full article here!

Liturgical Reflections from Sister Rea McDonnell, SSND

If you are interested in short, heartfelt reflections on the day's readings to assist you in your prayer life, Sister Rea McDonnell, SSND may have just what you are looking for! Her reflections for each week day are posted on our main website for North America. We invite you to take a few extra moments for prayer on this Sunday and read what she has written about today's scripture readings!