Founder's Day Liturgy
Preaching by Sister Bibiana "Bless" Colasito, OP

Friday, June 27, 2025
Matthew 7:24-27

 

Good morning!

On November 8, 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan – locally known as Yolanda – struck the central part of the Philippines, a catastrophic storm that left a trail of destruction in its wake. My family was among the countless victims. We lost everything, including our means of livelihood. The death toll soared into the thousands, with coastal communities bearing the impact of the tragedy. As we know, the Philippines is an archipelago facing the vast Pacific Ocean, especially vulnerable to such natural disasters. In coastal areas, homes often lack stable foundations due to shifting sand and limited solid ground. Yet in the absence of a storm, life by the sea can feel like a piece of paradise.

The Gospel today contrasts two builders: one who builds on rock and another on sand. The rock symbolizes strength, stability, and a firm foundation while the sand represents instability of things built on a poor foundation and superficiality.

Historically, Jesus' audience would have understood the significance of a strong foundation. Houses built on solid rock were far more resilient than those on shifting sand, especially during seasonal storms.

Today, we are celebrating our 102nd Foundation Anniversary. One hundred two years of existence as Adrian Dominican Sisters founded on rock by a very determined woman, who did not give up laying the foundation of our Congregation until her death on January 8, 1924. Founded on love – I say love, because whoever could endure such huge tasks as that of Mother Camilla Madden without a big heart – we are now reaping the fruits of that labor.

Mathew’s Gospel on building a foundation on a rock has deep relevance in our present world. In a time of uncertainty, rapid change, and shifting values, people seek stability, something solid to build their lives upon.

Like many other congregations in the U.S. and other countries, we are seeking firm footing upon which to build a future grounded in hope, love, strength, and stability. The invitation to engage in open dialogue about what lies ahead of us is vital, as it will enable us to shape a shared life founded on enduring principles. We look to Mother Camilla as a guiding light – her legacy is a foundation built with wisdom, love, charity, and a clear, unwavering vision of what the future could be.

Builders like Mother Camilla are visionaries. With a keen sensitivity to what lies ahead, they lay the foundation of their structures with foresight and precision, thoughtfully preparing the ground for what is yet to rise. Mother Camilla’s precision and foresight for the future continue to guide us today as we discern our future that is still unknown.

It is our work now to discern how to build our future. Should we build it upon a rock or sand? The choice is ours!

 

Founder's Day Morning Prayer
Preaching by Sister Carol Gross, OP

Friday, June 27, 2025
1 Corinthians 3:9c-11

 

As we watched the deconstruction of two buildings on the campus during the last few months, we saw how deep and strong those foundations were. Now we are watching new foundations being laid for the new historical building and the staircase at the west end of the Maria building. To build the new, something was sacrificed.

Physical buildings need to be torn down, but buildings of faith continue to be built on the same foundation. St. Paul tells us today that faith in Jesus Christ is that foundation. Whatever our generation is called to build, we need to build carefully with faith even though it means sacrifices and risks. After Vatican II, Sister Mary Phillip Ryan wrote a challenging essay about the history of risk in the congregation. There are still risks being taken and we are called to take more of them as we build on our future in faith.

Jesus built a firm foundation of faith with His disciples. Although we honor Mother Camilla today, all of us are founders and builders. Not one of our superiors acted alone without the prayers and support of the Sisters of the first reception crowd with Sister Gregory Bishop, Sister Alma O´Reilly, Sister Evangeline Theisen and twelve more. Every Sister adds a brick to the building. Mother Camilla had Co-workers, too – Jacob Hartmann and John Flynn were handymen and Miss Lynch and Mrs. Cavanaugh helped with laundry and sewing at the time of the founding of St. Joseph Academy. What would she have done without Dr. Charles Ormonde Reilly? Today our donors, former students, and families of the Sisters are continuing to build with us on the foundation of the congregation with faith and fidelity to the master builder. What a responsibility we share!

May God continue to guide us as we build on the firm foundation who is Christ. Congratulations to all of us on this Founder´s Day!

 

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
Preaching by Sister Marilyn Barnett, OP

Sunday, June 22, 2025
Genesis 14:18-20
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Luke 9:11b-17

 

I prepared this reflection on The Body and Blood of Christ well before the event that happed last night when we learned that President Trump ordered the bombing and destruction of three nuclear facilities in Iran. We, as a nation, are now in a place we hoped we would never again be. Our thoughts and feelings are many, and our fears real. What will happen? Where do we turn? What do we do?

Yesterday, in this holy place, we celebrated in The Eucharist the lives of so many of our Sisters and the myriad ways they have made this world a better place through the many years of pouring out their love of God.

Today, in this holy place, we gather again to celebrate the Eucharist on this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. And what better place to be. We who are the body of Christ. God speaks to us in so many ways and Eucharist is God’s chosen way. I hope this reflection will renew your hope that this is where we turn and what we do as Christ’s Body.

Today’s feast of The Solemnity of The Body and Blood of Christ, for most of us, is still referred to as the Feast of Corpus Christi. This feast of Corpus Christi was first proposed by Thomas Aquinas to Pope Urban IV, and created in 1264 as a feast which focused solely on the Holy Eucharist.

It became associated with processions of the monstrance carrying the Holy Eucharist around the church – or outside, in climates that were amicable – and usually after the processions the celebration of Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament took place. (Tantum ergo…)

Corpus Christi became a yearly festive event with wreaths of flowers, green boughs, and the ringing church bells, and it took on the culture of different countries in its celebrations. In Brazil/Portugal, people laid down street carpets of sand, salt, flowers; in Peru it was surrounded by festivals and music.

Over the centuries it developed primarily as a devotional feast. Its name was changed after Vatican Council II to "The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ," in consideration of the developing theology taking place in scripture and ecclesiology, as well as in the emerging understanding of our place in the universe.

The Council in 1962 tried to move us from adoration to ‘meal.’ In 1826, Brillat-Savarin, the French gastronome, wrote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

When we gather for worship, we bring to public ritual expression our understanding of and relationship with
   • the God of Jesus Christ, 
   • Jesus, The Word and Sacrament, 
   • and one another, as the Body of Christ.

This public ritual expression, or liturgy, expresses and forms our identity as Christians – It is a communal act. Together, we celebrate sacraments.

Vatical Council II in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy describes public worship/liturgy as the heartbeat of Christian life, the gathering of the body of Christ together – to pray, to give thanks, to remember the ancient stories that tell us who we are – and then to send us back into the world to live out these stories.

Eucharist is the center of this life. As we know there are four distinct sections to our Eucharistic celebrations:
   • Introduction 
   • Liturgy of the Word 
   • Liturgy of the Eucharist 
   • Closing.

The first and last sections are deliberately short and are, as they say, a way of getting to the ‘meat’ of the liturgical celebration. The Liturgy of the Word has been described as an opportunity 
   • to eat and consume the readings proclaimed,
   • to listen and digest the scriptures of the day,
   • to make these scriptures an integral part of our lives and our prayer.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist depicts what we do. The Eucharist prayer, which is addressed to God, is a prayer of thanksgiving to God for all God’ s blessings and for the gift of Jesus. It describes in great beauty our purpose for gathering as a community of faith. It describes the energy of Divine Presence amidst us, which we might call grace or the Spirit, and it describes God’s gift of God’s self in the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ. ‘It is almost beyond imagination that we are being fed with the very life of God.’

While I was studying Sacramental Theology, one of my colleagues also studying in this field told me something I will never forget. She said, “Marilyn, if we really understood what we were doing when we celebrate Eucharist, our knees would tremble.” And, sacramental theologian Kathleen Hughes adds: “We celebrate the Eucharist as promise-makers, as those who know their need of God and the nourishment of holy food and drink to live a faithful life.”

Proclaiming the scriptures feeds and resolves our minds & hearts, eating the meal feeds and strengthens our hearts and bodies.

How we partake and eat the foods of Word and Sacrament affect/impact us, just as much as the meals we consume. So, as we reflect back to yesterday and the meal we consumed as a continuation of our identity as The Body of Christ, and as we recalled today’s Gospel narrative of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, we pray that the love expressed in that meal be multiplied, and feed a world today hungering for peace.

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

 

Jubilee 2025 Liturgy
Preaching by Sister Elise D. García, OP

Saturday, June 21, 2025
Wisdom 7: 7-12
1 Cor 12: 4-14
John 19: 25-27

Happy Jubilee!

In celebration of your 25, 60, 70, 75, and 80 years of magnificent service to the people of God as Dominican Sisters of Adrian – and some of you also as Dominican Sisters of Edmonds and of Our Lady of Remedies – it is so fitting that our readings today are centered in the Spirit. For surely all of you have sensed the working of the Spirit in your lives through all these amazing years of faith and fidelity?

How else would you have responded to the call were it not for the presence of the Spirit? And not just the call that first drew you into this astonishing path of religious life – but to each of the calls that have summoned you over the years.

Calls that took you to places near and far, to ministries you thought were beyond your reach, to a multitude of challenges and opportunities you never imagined for yourself, to the calls that are now summoning all of us toward an uncertain future and, in God’s time, to the ultimate call of entering the paschal mystery.

In John, our Gospel reading today, we are taken right to the cross where the crucified Jesus gives his final command. Who is there with him? The women. His mother Mary, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. This is one of the few passages in scripture where there is a reversal of naming! Usually, the names of the men are given – but not of the women.

In this, his last command, Jesus effects a change in relationships. It is a change not only between his mother and the disciple but also between himself and the disciple – now becoming siblings, children of Mary and also of God. Jesus is drawing this disciple – and by extension the other disciples and all believers – into his own relationship with God. As the Wisdom Commentary observes, “Those who believe are now reborn of God.” (See Wisdom Commentary: John 11-21)

In responding to the call to enter this religious life – and by your profession of vows – you too effected a powerful change in relationships. Not only with those in your crowd – and with all of us in our global Dominican sisterhood – but also with all the people of God to whom you have dedicated your one “wild and precious life” in loving service through the Way of Jesus.

You have dedicated your life to prayer – and, as Wisdom tells us, prudence was given you. You may never have had to give up “scepter and throne,” but you did give up all the trappings of success in contemporary life – and “the spirit of Wisdom came upon you.”

We know from Corinthians that each of you was given a manifestation of the Spirit for some benefit – for a different form of service – and how beautifully you have manifested your gifts of the Spirit through your religious life.

All of you magnificent educators, from grade school to high school, to colleges, universities and seminaries – you have served as musicians, theologians, artists, literacy and ESL tutors, principals, university professors, deans, administrators, counselors, religious and special ed teachers, campus ministers and Spanish language translators.

You have enriched and gifted our Church through service in parishes and dioceses as liturgists, pastoral ministers, directors of adult faith formation and lay formators, as well as spiritual directors, church personnel administrators, treasurers, diocesan counselors, and directors of religious education. You have helped to inculturate liturgies to feed the hearts and spirits of Native American, African American and Latino parishioners, among others. You have participated in Healing Soul Pain programs with First Nations people who are carrying generations of wounds at the hands of our Church.

You have followed in the healing ministry of Jesus in other ways, too, giving comfort and care as a physician, nurse and nurse midwife, as psychologists, art therapists, massage and Reiki therapists, hospital chaplains and administrators, as well as through hospice care and AIDS research and treatment. Your gifts of offering comfort and care have been shared also as social workers and marriage counselors.

You have generously served our community in Congregational leadership as Prioress, Provincials, Chapter Prioresses, Secretary of the Congregation, DLC Administrator and Formation Director.

You have advanced Catholic social teachings and our passion for justice through national and local advocacy work on a host of issues, from racial justice and gender equality to climate change and the death penalty. You have engaged in peer motivation with at-risk youth, community development, rural ministry, and in ministry with Hispanics, First Nations People, formerly incarcerated women and men, African-American communities, women and children in need of food and hospitality, and people who are homeless.

You have endeavored to live in right relationship with people and planet. And that has also taken you into the world of community investments for the common good, helping our Congregation break new ground in economic justice some 50 years ago. Some of you have lent your gifts as good financial stewards in our own finance office, as school treasurers, and as bookkeepers.

Sisters, you have made extraordinary use of the gifts of the Spirit, following the call to minister in two dozen states across the nation, from Florida to Washington, Kentucky to Michigan, Massachusetts to Arizona, South Carolina to Montana – and beyond.

You have followed the call to minister in various places in the Philippines, and in South and East Africa, Kenya, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Italy, the Virgin Islands, and in northern and western Canada.

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit. By your extraordinarily generous and faithful lives, you have given witness to the depth of love and the amazing diversity and goodness at the heart of the Spirit that animates us all.

Dearest Jubilarians, your Adrian Dominican Sisters are proud to honor and celebrate you this day. Wisdom’s radiance shines upon you.

 

Liturgy for Deceased Jubilarians 2025
Preaching by Sister Marilyn Winter, OP

Friday, June 20, 2025
2 Corinthians 5:1,6-10
John 17:24-26

Today we gather to celebrate, remember and pray for the sisters from our jubilee groups who are no longer with us in the body. It is a time to pause and reflect on where our journey has taken us, what we have seen and accomplished, with whom we have shared the journey, and where we are going.

Our two Scripture readings are trying to make sense of what it means to die, what comes after death. The theological ideas, the promises of unearthly dwellings and tents not made with hands are human ways of suggesting a difference to come. There are words to comfort us, in that we will be with Jesus and we will see the glory God has given to him. But we also note the transient nature of physical reality and that we need to aspire to lead good lives – to prepare to come before the judgment seat of God.

The words are comforting – as far as our understanding of them takes us. The promises spoken by Jesus give hope and we look forward to the rewards of a good life.

But as we gather at this Mass of Memorial for these Jubilarian Sisters of ours who left us over the years and acknowledge their new life and different sense of presence among us, I, for one, am left with a desire for more.

Perhaps it is a feeling rather than a rational response, a need of being together and supporting one another in this journey of faith we call life. I found a shadow of this longing in the writing of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote:

Once people used to go to our cemeteries on Sundays
and walk between the graves, singing beautiful hymns
and spreading sweet-smelling incense. It set your heart at rest;
it allayed the painful fears of inevitable death.
It was almost as though the dead were smiling
from under their grey mounds: “It’s all right... Don’t be afraid.”

And it struck me that our rituals, religious and otherwise, are a great help to us as we reflect upon mysteries that are beyond us – whether joyful or sad, trivial or great.

A few weeks past I found myself, on Memorial Day, driving up our 25-mile peninsula, from one of the five cemeteries to another, joining in the small gathering that grew into a large one as we advanced from one to another to another.

The color guard hoisted the flags, the chaplain read the opening prayer, the speaker shared words of wisdom and comfort. The flowers were placed at the monument, a final prayer was offered, the gun salute was fired and Taps echoed off the distant hills.

There was quiet, and then the subdued voices of people scattered around and movement as they began lingering among the headstones. Names were being spoken, stories shared – of the veterans we were remembering as well as of the many others also resting under the trees and among the rocks and flowers.

This, then, is from whence comes understanding and hope.

They saw it in the lived witness of those who had gone before them to new life after death. They gained strength to continue their journey from the stories of past lives, not just those who gave the last full measure – their very lives – but in the witness of the mother raising six kids who turned out to be quite fine; the grandfather who labored on fishing boats in the cold hours of predawn, lifting nets that would feed his family and others; the teachers and coaches who mentored them; their own parents, siblings, pastors and friends.

For us today, here in chapel; later, as we walk campus and meander through our cemetery circles.

It is in the stories of our Dominican Sisters, teachers, mentors, housemates and travel companions. And in those who were only known to us by their quiet presence in the kitchens and chapels where they toiled; by co-workers in schools, offices, hospitals, art galleries, in music halls, choir or lectoring at Mass on Sundays; those working puzzles in the sunrooms of Maria and Regina, mowing the grass, cleaning the rooms, tending to the sick.

When we gather in celebration of a Funeral Vigil for a Sister, the Mass of Christian Burial, the welcoming of a new member into the community, the joy of a Jubilee Day, a Chapter Assembly or a Feast day celebration. It is in these times that we grow in our understanding of life’s meaning – and its final destination. This is where we see the Face of God, Where we witness a love that promises eternal life, where we know for certain that there is hope beyond this physical life, we rejoice in the witness and support of others, share our gratitude to our Great Spirit for all we have, knowing it is only a prelude to the happiness that is to come.

So, we re-commit each day to this life we have been given. We relish the time to share with those with whom we live and minister, and we take the time to remember those who shaped us, wore off our rough spots, kept us honest, and supported us through it all. And we value the precious times and spaces we have remaining to forgive injustices, to ask pardon for our failings and offenses, to build new memories, and to leave to others a witness of gratitude and blessing which they may follow.

Karl Rahner, SJ, wrote:

We do not see [our dear dead], but they see us. 
Their eyes radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes.
Though invisible to us, our dead are not absent.
They are living near us transfigured into light, power and love.

As Jesus told St. Catherine, “All the way to heaven is heaven, for I am the way, the truth and the life.”

We meet him in all of them. What a gift!!

 

Easter Sunday 2025
Preaching by Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Happy Easter! It might not feel as happy this year since the majority of our sisters has been in quarantine and so many have been ill. Yet it is still true – Christ is risen. We can say Alleluia!

Even as some are still in isolation watching this liturgy from their rooms, even as those off campus cannot join us in person, even as our country and world are struggling profoundly, we can affirm the promise of life for all in the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.

As I sat down to put words to this preaching, I recalled another season and another story – The Grinch, by Dr. Seuss. Most of you know the tale – The Grinch lives by himself with his longsuffering dog, far up a mountain. He’s a grumpy sort, hence the name – Grinch. He especially hates the joy of the Who people down in Whoville at Christmas as they sing and celebrate, and he mistakenly thinks their joy comes from their material gifts and decorations. But even though he tries to destroy their joy by stealing everything, he hears them singing and realizes:

He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch has a conversion!

We try to celebrate Easter with great joy – coming together in our faith communities, having beautiful music and liturgies, spring flowers, enjoying a special meal with community members or family.

Yet, even when those important elements are taken away – be it by norovirus, family conflict, political divisions, grief – it is still true that we can celebrate the resurrection of Christ 2,000 years ago and seek signs of resurrection, of life, and of hope, all around us.

These things haven't stopped Easter from coming! It came!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

Indeed, as people of faith we are to hunt for hope and bear witness to others around us.

We know that first Easter was a hard one for Jesus’s friends and followers. Even though Jesus prepared them, they just weren’t ready for his terrible death. They were forlorn, confused, and tired. Some felt guilty about how they had not been there when he most needed it. They were living under an oppressive regime that some thought he would help overthrow. It was a time of great discouragement.

Yet, he had still risen. And bit by bit they came to understand and even encounter him.

In the Gospel, John realizes something special has happened when he sees the head cloth rolled up and set aside. He doesn’t fully understand, but he’s starting to believe and hope.

Mary Magdalene, the faithful friend of Jesus, has come to the tomb to mourn. She doesn’t leave. She waits, but she is made temporarily blind and deaf by her grief. She’s so distraught she doesn’t even seem to be amazed that angels are speaking to her. She hears Jesus speaking to her and sees him, but assumes he is the gardener. She sees no signs of life, of resurrection.

But then she hears her name – Mariam, Mary. As Scripture says, “the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” Jesus says, “I know my own and my own know me.“ On hearing Christ speak her name, Mary wakes up from her grief. She has already physically turned toward Jesus, but now she has an inner turning – she realizes Christ is present, is still with us. Everything changes. At that moment she learns to stop expecting Jesus to be as he was and realizes he is present in a new way, and she is sent to announce this good news! She accepts her mission to be the first witness and first preacher of the resurrection!

What about us? Are there ways we are blocked from seeing life and hope?

I know that as I watch the news or scroll through my social media, I can get very discouraged about what is happening in our world. I imagine those in isolation may be getting frustrated. People are worried about their finances in this climate. We carry a lot of anxiety.

All that is real – AND, at the same time, there is another reality that is also present and holds us all: a God who began, sustains, and holds all creation; Jesus Christ who came to Earth to share our experience with us and made us divine siblings, and siblings to all beings and creatures; God’s promise of ultimate meaning and life calling to us from the future.

How do we witness to that reality?

We turn, we listen for the Divine One’s voice calling to us, we open our eyes to see signs of hope and resurrection – co-workers doing double shifts to feed and care for us, family members who continue loving in challenging relationships, a sister who tries to bring joy to those around her, those among us who express gratitude, the many people working for justice and truth in this nation (including us), those generous people who give their lives in service in areas of war and great tragedies…there are so, so many signs of life, hope, and resurrection.

Remember, the resurrection was unexpected and unfathomable. Some of the signs of resurrection we encounter will also be where and how we least expect. We’re called to great attentiveness.

Easter invites to commit anew to open our eyes, ears, and hearts and to find our way to name and be signs of resurrection hope for our world in union with the Risen One.

And, wherever you are, here in the chapel, watching from your room, tuning in via livestream – we can all together proclaim: Christ Is Risen, Alleluia!

 

Easter Vigil 2025
Preaching by Sister Elise García, OP

Saturday, April 19, 2025
Luke 24: 1-12

We have been on quite a journey with Jesus this Holy Week – accompanying him, like the women, all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem – as we also struggle with a norovirus infection here on our campus, deaths and other illnesses, and the dreadful national news we all ingest each day.

On Palm Sunday, our Sister Corinne Sanders reminded us of the fiery love that was at the heart of why so many followed Jesus – and why he was put to death. She gave us an encouraging word for these challenging times. Corinne spoke of our call “as faithful followers of Jesus, awakening each morning tending to the fire of love, sustaining the weary with a word of hope, refusing to allow Love to be extinguished.”

Many of you participated in the beautiful Holy Week retreat that our Sister Patty Harvat offered, entering into the Passion journey through the eyes and heart of Mary. Patty invited us to reflect on what that harrowing experience must have been like for Mary, as a mother losing her beloved son to such savage cruelty. Mary, the woman who from the beginning pondered so many things in her heart. How do we, like Mary, meet the finality of the death of loved ones and the loneliness it evokes in our own lives?

As we entered the Triduum, on Holy Thursday, our Sister Sara Fairbanks invited us into an imaginative journey with Jesus stooping down to wash our feet. Would we not respond as Peter did? “Lord, you wash my feet? You will never wash my feet.” She then invited us to imagine what we would ask Jesus to do, if we could. “Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to …… .”

If you are like me, your imaginings might have expanded as Sara observed, starting by letting Jesus know you need him to restore your health or that of a dear friend – or to rid the Motherhouse of the norovirus infection! You might then have asked him to please restore human kindness and civil discourse in our nation or to end wars and violence around the world or to safeguard our imperiled Earth home.

Sara asked us to then “imagine Jesus kneeling before us with a basin of warm water, tenderly washing our feet and drying them with a towel, as if to say, ‘Welcome home to God’s household of unconditional love.… Savor God’s lifegiving love for you – and pour it out in service to our world.’”

On Good Friday, the solemn day when Jesus was hung on the cross and died, our Sister Fran Nadolny wondered what his followers said to one another that evening when they huddled in fear and anguish? What, Fran asked us, would we say to one another? She then invited us to reflect through the evening and into this morning on what we have learned from our journey as followers of Christ – and on what we might share with one another.

Tomorrow we will hear from our Sister Lorraine Réaume and see what she will invite us to reflect on, as we celebrate Easter Sunday.

Tonight we enter the tomb. We enter the uncovered tomb with the women that Luke names: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James.

These three and the other named and unnamed women – including Mary, the mother of Jesus – who appear in each of the four Gospel narratives of the Passion were present from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee to its horrific end. They were the first to witness new life.

Our Dominican Sister and theologian Barbara Reid, OP, writes, “Luke’s Gospel like all the other Gospel narratives places women as witnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus, as witnesses to the burial of the body in the tomb and as the first to hear of and then to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus.”

And so, Sisters, Associates, and friends, we are now with Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary, peering into the tomb with its rolled away stone. We have brought spices and ointments to tend to the body of Jesus.

But he is not there. Two dazzling angels suddenly appear. We bow our heads, terrified.

As they remind us of words we heard Jesus speak in Galilee, we slowly raise our heads. We remember that he had told us he would be handed over and crucified, and on the third day would rise again. The angels ask: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.”

We leave the tomb with the Gospel women and quickly go to “announce all these things to the eleven and to all the others,” as Luke writes.

After more than 2,000 years of patriarchy, the testimony of women is still questioned. But Sisters and friends, the Good News that those valiant women – our sisters in faith – were the first to proclaim has perdured. Our witness and testimony, then and now, to the cruelty of despots and to the beckoning signs of new life will endure.

Whether mocked or ignored, we will watch and pray. As faithful disciples, we will continue to seek truth – and speak it, in love.

 

Good Friday 2025
Preaching by Sister Fran Nadolny, OP

Friday, April 18, 2025

On this very solemn day, I find it strange that it’s called Good Friday. We are remembering a death—a very horrible death—at the hands of people who were afraid of a new way of being. Remembering anyone’s day of passing is sad.

And yet, there are so many different ways to think about this moment. There is John’s version as we just heard. In the eighteenth century Handel wrote "The Messiah" which was a very poignant, classical music journey through the life of Jesus. And fifty years ago Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote "Jesus Christ Superstar" which was a rock opera of Jesus’ passion as seen through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. Often, there are reflections on the Seven Last Words of Jesus—the words which he spoke as he was dying.

I wonder what his followers said about him that evening after he died? Did they pretend that they would have been more faithful than Peter was? Did they really want to open themselves to the other in love and peace as he did? What were their individual takeaways from Jesus’ years with them?

We know how Jesus’ story ends. But, in this moment on this Good Friday, what takeaways from Jesus will you carry with you into this evening and into the morning dawn tomorrow?

 

Holy Thursday 2025
Preaching by Sister Sara Fairbanks, OP

Thursday, April 17, 2025

“Lord, you wash my feet? You will never wash my feet!” Peter’s words could well voice the frustration of the entire group. “You are the Christ, the Messiah of God! We don’t need you to wash our feet! We need you to defeat our enemies, to liberate us from the tyranny of Rome! You were sent to bring the reign of God on earth! But wash our feet? Never!”

If you are anything like me, you might share the frustrations of Peter and some of those first women and men, who had their feet washed by Jesus. In the Holy Thursday liturgy, the Church invites us to imagine we are sitting with the disciples having our feet washed, how might you express the sentiment of Peter? Take a moment of silence and complete this sentence:  Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to _____________. (Say what comes to your mind.) Jesus, I don’t need you to wash my feet, I need you to ____________.

I need you to restore my health, my well-being, end the quarantine! I need you to heal my sister friend, my dear family member. I need you to defeat the political forces that daily attack our democracy and upend our world in social and economic chaos. I need you to protect us against the devastation of our planet. “But wash my feet? Never.”

Jesus responds to us with a heart full of compassion, “You do not understand what I am doing. I have come not to reveal a God intent on rescuing you from life’s pain, and suffering. I come united in divine love, because LOVE is God’s only genuine power in the world, one that works through self-giving service, and nothing more.”

Jesus used the common practice of foot washing to symbolize God’s lavish hospitality, that welcomes everyone into the household of God. Our shared love-life with God begins with God’s invitation, God’s initiative. As the evangelist reminds us, “We love God, because God first loved us.”

Jesus says to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. Do not resist God’s love. Do not be afraid. Learn to accept God’s love with an open and brave heart. Like the Samaritan woman I met at the well, receive God’s love like a fountain of life within you. Like Mary, who anointed my feet with oil and wiped them with her hair, the fragrance filling the whole house, savor the boundless love of God! When you savor God’s love within, you are ready to pour out that love in self-giving service to the world.” “So,” Jesus says, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet…love one another as I have loved you.”

As the meal progresses, Jesus expands this teaching even further. Sister Mary McGlone writes, “Clearly aware that he was on the brink of suffering, Jesus summarized his mission as he blessed and broke the bread. He equated the bread with his body and the cup with his blood: his entire self. As he had done throughout his mission, he offered his whole self to them.” After they receive his body and blood, Jesus gives them the most challenging commandment of all: “Do this in memory of me.” This command means far more than to enact a ritual with bread and wine. Jesus asserts that communion with him means enfleshing God’s love through service and offering our lives for others, all the way to the cross.

This final command of Jesus, reminds me of our dear Sister, Catherine of Siena, who called Jesus a “gentle lover,” even a “mad lover.” She said, “Jesus ran to his cross like a mad lover. It was not nails but love that kept him on the cross.”

Now that we have contemplated the awesome gift of divine hospitality that Jesus wanted to communicate in the breaking of the bread and the washing of the feet, let’s imagine again Jesus kneeling before us with a basin of warm water, tenderly washing our feet and drying them with a towel, as if to say, “Welcome home to God’s household of unconditional love and connection. Savor God’s lifegiving love for you, and pour it out in service to our world.” As you imagine Jesus washing your feet, hear the concluding verses of Jan Richardson’s poem, “Blessing for the Brokenhearted”: 

“…a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this—
as it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot fathom but will save us nonetheless.”¹

 

¹In The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief by Jan Richarson, Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016

 

Palm Sunday 2025
Preaching by Sister Corinne Sanders, OP

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Jesus was, at the end, as he was his entire life: Loving, self-giving, a teacher, kind, forgiving, and acting justly. And on this day, in his darkest moment, when despair and hopelessness could overtake, he leaned again into the loving embrace of his Abba Father, in whom he trustingly placed his life.

His great gift to love and embrace all which drew so many to love and follow him was also the reason he was scorned and feared by those in power; for them this fiery love must be put out.

Our scripture today ends with Jesus crucified and buried with the women engaged in preparation for the Sabbath. Today is also our day of preparation as we enter the week we call Holy.

We will bring to close our Lenten journey and at week’s end, we will enter into the Triduum.

We do this as faithful followers of Jesus awakening each morning tending to the fire of love, sustaining the weary with a word of hope, refusing to allow Love to be extinguished.