In celebration of National Vocation Awareness Week (Nov. 1-7), Sisters Colleen Crossen, Sarah Crotty, Janet Mock and Rita Murillo offer personal reflections about their path to religious life and the gifts of living in community during a global pandemic.
Sister Colleen Crossen, CSJ
I was blessed to move into the Motherhouse during the early days of the pandemic and spend time in our chapel every night in contemplative silence before the blessed sacrament.
Through this time of prayer, I felt so deeply connected with the suffering world and was aware that my Sisters throughout the Congregation were united in prayer for the global community.
As a Congregation, we continue to draw strength from the Love of God, the love of each other and the love of the dear neighbor, living in joyful hope that someday we shall overcome and all may be one.
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Sister Sarah Crotty, CSJ
My gratitude and love of community has deepened. Because I have pledged to live my life among this community of women, even now I don’t find myself alone. In fact, I am surrounded by support and love and care. I have often said that life in community, Religious Life, makes me a better person (certainly a happier person) than I would otherwise be.
Community calls me outside of myself. And now, in a time of pandemic, community holds me, comforts me and give me the courage to keep moving forward in faith.
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Sister Janet Mock, CSJ
We are no longer in an era of change; we are in a change of era. Long-standing structures are collapsing. Almost every institution that held firm for centuries is giving way. They no longer can hold and sustain the consciousness that is emerging from all we are learning about God, about the universe of which we are a small and significant part, about one another.
There are attempts to go back to a simpler time – in Church and Government and the Economy – to ease the pain (for a privileged few) and give simple answers to complex realities that may quell anxiety for a time. Or we move forward and embrace the times in which we live, a kind of change that happens, historians tell us, every 500 years or so.
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Sister Rita Murillo, CSJ
During this pandemic, our Sisters continue to reach out in love to the “dear neighbor” even when physical presence may not be possible because of COVID-19 concerns.
Our ministry of intentional prayer is even more powerful than my legal ministry caring for children. The numerous requests for prayers and the responses when those prayers are answered witness to a relationship with the “dear neighbor” that transcends any physical impediment.
This draws me to continue to live in this Congregation of Great Love.
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