Welcome to our blog. In this space we share stories of our lives as Sisters of the Precious Blood. We hope you find our posts both enjoyable and inspirational. Please note: all comments are subject to approval before being displayed.
Sometimes our Religion seems rather severe. And John the Baptist, the figure who appears today and next week in our Gospels, might seem severe too! But actually, even though the evangelist Luke says John is proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin — severe to our ears…
During the season of Advent, the Church prepares itself for the feast of the Nativity of Jesus, the “first coming,” but it also meditates on the final coming of Christ. “Advent,” the four Sundays before Christmas, was pretty well established by the late 6th century. But Advent was a penitential…
Today’s feast day ends our liturgical year, and this year it opens the week of our U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Both feasts are the kind that pull us out of ourselves and our day-to-day concerns. In the opening prayer for this solemnity, we pray “that the whole creation … may render…
It’s that time of our liturgical year when we hear apocalyptic Scriptures. Today they are from the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of Mark. This highly imaginative and symbolic writing was meant to both warn and to reassure people who were facing death-dealing forces around them. So we are…
The Church needs more widows like the ones in our Scriptures this Sunday! I had the experience of being in charge of three Catholic parishes, and let me tell you, finances are tough! People who drove me crazy included those well-intentioned volunteers who figured they did not need to give…
When I lived in Israel for three months, I came to appreciate the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. I lived in Bethany, up the hill from the Mount of Olives, and Bethany is a Palestinian village where there are many mosques that broadcast the chanted Arabic call to prayer…
So why didn’t Bartimaeus go home? This blind beggar sitting by the Jericho road apparently was a common sight, because the crowd knew his name, this “son of Timaeus.” Bartimaeus was bold enough to ignore the bullying of the crowd that tried to silence him as Jesus is passed by.…
Sunday’s Gospel is so very human. Two apostles, James and John, are trying to get to the head of the pack and sit at the right and left side of Jesus in the kingdom of heaven. When the other disciples hear about this, they get mad! Why them and not…
Once a wealthy man was regaling me with how many hours he spends opening the multitudes of appeals he gets in the mail — and the ways he decides among them. He gives several thousand dollars a week to various appeals. Then he added, with great seriousness, that a concern…
“The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, ‘Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?’” They wanted to see if Jesus would support the permission for divorce that Deut 24:1-4 gave them, or would he find a way around it? Indeed, Jesus gave an unequivocal “no” to divorce, citing…
