Hope calls for abandonment, for letting go of our power in order to surrender to God’s power. In an Advent meditation on trust, Elizabeth Seton quotes Psalm 126:5: "Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing." The farmer has to let go of seed, surrender what is tangible and controllable, in order to let it fall into the ground to produce fruit. He weeps because of letting go, and needs radical trust to believe the time will come when he reaps rejoicing.
Sr. Nancy Kellar, SC

* * * *

Your sensitive souls seek out the suffering ones and find the ways to love them into fuller life.  We Sisters of Charity have always done that.
   As you talk together in these coming months and listen deeply to each other’s desires for our dear Community, do hold fast to our mission of Charity. I pray that the Spirit of love for God and God’s people will guide you to what you must do to sustain the gift of Charity in New York and Guatemala and wherever God will lead you.
Words of Mother Elizabeth Boyle to today’s Sisters and Associates,
as imagined by Sr. Margaret O’Brien, SC

* * * *

Love opens the door between two worlds. Advent invites us to risk the inward journey. God waits for us on the threshold to welcome us into the new place of belonging.
   God, Father and Mother, you sent Jesus as the Child of Destiny. He came to tell us that we all have a place in the family you loved into being. As Advent unfolds its mystery of unconditional love, help us reach out to our sisters and brothers broken by poverty and alienation. Help us to set our table with the bread of compassion, the wine of mercy, and the light of justice and peace.
Sr. Mary Mc Cormick, SC,
from her book of prayer, Belonging