April 17 is the anniversary date of Blessed Kateri Tékakwitha, who will soon be canonized a saint. How can a young Native American woman, born in 1656, be relevant for our times?

Kateri was born in a small Mohawk village in what is now New York state to an Algonquin Catholic convert and a Mohawk chief. She first learnt about Jesus as a child from her mother. When very young, most of her family died in a smallpox epidemic. She herself survived the disease, but her skin became very scarred as a result.

After the death of her parents, Kateri was looked after by relatives and no longer heard about Jesus until the arrival of Jesuit missionaries. She was baptized at the age of twenty. As a result of her becoming a Christian, life was made difficult for  her as she did not wish to marry. If you want more details about her life click here.

Kateri had to face great challenges in becoming a Christian. She no longer believed in the gods of her ancestors and was often pressured to change her ways.

When I hear of people who want to follow their hearts by believing in God and living a life of faith, they often face the same kind of challenges that Kateri did. I hear of young people who tell me that they are made fun of if they speak about going to church.

It is always difficult to go against the current of society and to live by the values that are different from the main stream. Kateri can be a model of hope and courage  for those struggling with the pressure of family and friends who have difficulty accepting that they are people of faith.

Has it ever happened to you to believe in a truth that is hard for others to accept? Let me know what you think about this blog and the story of Kateri.

Easter comes at a time when everything outside seems to be coming alive. The grass is getting greener, the trees are beginning to bud and there is a smell of freshness in the air. Even the days are getting longer so we see more sunshine and less darkness. Winter is slowly letting go of its grip.

For the church, Lent is now  over and we have just passed through the more somber days of Holy Week to emerge into Easter. The daily mass readings are all about hope and the appearances of Jesus to his disciples. They are surprised and overjoyed to see him again after his death, and yet,  Jesus is somehow different. He carries his wounds, but the wounds no longer have mastery over him.

How about us? How can we experience the resurrection of Jesus this Easter? Are there any moments of hope or joy similar to what the disciples enjoyed when they saw Jesus?

One way to become aware of how Jesus has been present to us is to  look back and see if we can see the hand of God through an event or person. When Jesus reappeared to his disciples, I would imagine him saying to them, “Remember when this and this happened?” And they would remember those moments of fraternity together.

Where may we have seen God working during this past Lent.? Were there any moments of joy, particular insight or awareness of who we are as a child of God?

Naming those graced moments helps to give thanks for them. Where can God be leading you through these blessed moments? 

We can begin to experience a hint of the resurrection when we take the time to name and give thanks for what God has given us. These are the lilies blooming from the cross.

Wishing you a very Happy Easter! 

Sometimes I think of Lent as a pilgrimage into the unknown. Why do I see it as a pilgrimage?

The pilgrims of old often left on a journey, with nothing on their backs except the bare necessities and a specific place or destination. Some of the typical Catholic pilgrimage sites are the Compostella de Santiago in Spain or, in Quebec the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre. It is the journey that is important because you take the time to reflect and think about where God is in your life. Without the distractions of everyday living, you can often see more clearly where God is or who God is for us.

In a walking pilgrimage, we get the sense of participating in a journey without a map, without predeterminded signposts, without a weather report and in some cases, without a guide. The pilgrim must rely on God and sometimes is surprised by what happens in the process. The only known factor is the destination.

The forty day period of Lent can be like that. We start on Ash Wednesday with possible plans to try and improve our spiritual life, make some improvements in our life style, give something up. But then life happens and events occur that we did not expect. The signposts we thought were there, are gone. We have to rely on God in the hope that we arrive at the proper destination all in one piece.

Can we be pilgrim people, walking towards a destination of promise and hope? What can we learn about ourselves along the way?

Let me know if you have ever been on a pilgrimage. I would like to hear from you. If you are interested, a great movie called The Way with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevan shows what a pilgrimage can be like today.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our new Archbishop Lepine on his recent nomination as Archbishop of Montreal. Let us keep him in prayer as he takes on a very challenging task.

March 17 is the feast of Saint Patrick and the city of Montreal celebrates with a parade and lots of festivities in the Irish pubs.

But what about Patrick the person? Who was he and what can we learn about our faith from him?

To begin with, he was not of Irish heritage. Patrick was born in Roman Britain of wealthy parents. As a teenager, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold as a slave to an Irish patron. After six years in captivity, he managed to escape and return to Britain.

This is where the story takes an unusual turn, Patrick feels called to become a priest and is compelled to return to Ireland, the land of his captors. His love and respect for the land and the people of Ireland had created a desire to bring the Gospel message to them.

Knowing the rituals and symbols of the Irish, he was able to connect the Gospel message with their culture. For example, he knew their love of the sun, so he superimposed the sun and the cross to create what we today know as a Celtic cross.

Patrick was able to see the qualities and strengths of the people and draw out the seeds of goodness and love in them. He looked at the people as Christ looks at them.

Saint Patrick’s ability to see Christ in all is reflected in this prayer attributed to him entitled  “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”. Following is an excerpt of that prayer:

Christ shield me today against wounding, Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today through the mighty strength of the Lord of creation.

To hear a musical rendition of this prayer, click here .

May Christ be present to you today and every day. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

The Christian season of Lent, which began last week, is a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Lent lasts 40 days and reminds us of the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry.

The desert is a dry place, often devoid of all that is nourishing to the body. The most common  images of the desert have lots of sand, rock and cacti, not a pleasant place to be. And yet each year before Easter, we are given the opportunity to enter this desert experience.

I use the term, opportunity, because sometimes I have let Lent pass by me by without noticing. In better times I allow this season  to be a period of change or “conversion”.

The Christian tradition has three suggestions to assist us in this conversion process. The first one is called fasting. When I was a little girl, fasting during Lent meant giving up sweets and that was made easy because for the most part, we were not given sweets either by our parents, our teachers nor our Catholic neighbors.

But can we look at fasting in another way? How can it bring us closer to God, and strengthen our connection with his eternal love? This youtube link  offers some explanations.

Fr. Tom Ryan from the Paulist Evangelization Ministries explains that when we fast for God, we are affirming to God that He is central to our life and that his love is what is most important to us. We are invited to put our life in perspective and show what is really important to us. Fasting helps us to move beyond ourselves and is a form of self-discipline. To read Fr. Tom’s article, click here 

Have you ever tried fasting?  What did you learn about yourself, your relationship to food, well-being and to God?

The feast of Ash Wednesday is this February 22nd and marks the beginning of Lent, a period of self-reflection and self-sacrifice celebrated by several Christian denominations, including Roman Catholics. When I was young, it usually meant giving up candy or chocolate. Now, as an adult and looking at Ash Wednesday from a perspective of  faith, I’ve begun to discover how this feast can bring meaning to my life.

I like Ash Wednesday and the ritual that goes with it. The symbolism of the ashes is a throwback to the ancient days of Israel. When a person wished to repent, they would pour ashes on themselves and pray in the marketplace for forgiveness from God. One line in the psalm 51 of the Ash Wednesday liturgy says it all, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. Ash Wednesday is a wake-up call compelling me to stop and take notice of my prayer-life and my relationships with others. We all need that kind of reminding sometimes. The ritual of the ashes concretizes that awareness and calls me to some form of action.

We can begin to ask ourselves some of the following questions. What needs to change in my life? Is there a relationship that needs mending? Do I need to find more time for  myself, my family, for God. Is there a lifestyle or behavioral change that needs to happen? Ash Wednesday is a day for beginning to make a change in the right direction.

Following are some ideas for making a Lenten retreat on your own.

The American Jesuits have a number of resources  to pick from. Click Here  You can pray a Lenten retreat on line or print out the material.  

For a more creative approach and one that I want to try out this year is a new video series called 40 the series

Busted Halo has Lenten activities and a daily column with comments and questions.

Maybe you will just want to take extra time to walk outside in silence and be present to God and yourself. But, whatever you decide to do, take this as an opportunity to look at your relationship with God and see where you can strengthen those bonds of love and peace.

We are four days away from Valentine’s Day and all the stores are decorated in red and pink hearts, children in schools are making and exchanging Valentine cards for their teachers, classmates and parents and lovers, spouses and children are looking for just the right card to express their feelings to the person they love.

Valentine’s Day is that special day of the year when we are reminded to think about the feeling and virtue of love, a value that we as Christians are called to live out each day.

The Bible passage on love that most stands out for me are the lines from the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians,

” Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. it bears all things, believes in all things, hopes in all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

This passage is often read  out at weddings, but I think that it can speak to us in our relationships with our families, our coworkers, friends, etc. nonetheless,  it does present us with many challenges. We can all think of circumstances when it was hard to be patient, kind, and remain hopeful and enduring as the passage states. To love is not always easy.

A  friend of mine who has studied the Bible extensively told me that one of the biblical meaings of love is that we are to wish that which is best for the people we are in relationship with.

That is a liberating understanding of love. Many of us struggle with thinking that we should have these warm and fuzzy feelings for people that have hurt us or somehow rub us the wrong way.   Wishing the best for someone is a lot healthier and gives us the ability to respect our own reality. To choose to love is to free ourselves as well as the one we love. We can then express our love not only on Valentine’s Day, but every day of the year.

Happy Valentine’s Day and especially Happy Loving!

Joy is that state of being that helps us to take delight in what we see or experience. Like happiness, it brings us a sense of well being that comes from inside of us. In the Bible, there are many references to joy and St. Paul calls it one of the fruits or signs of the Holy Spirit.  

How do we identify a joyful person? Do they have the good fortune to have adequate material needs or are they in a good family or have good relationships? For most of the joyful people that I know, that is not the case.

From what I have seen, joy is something that we can choose to be or an outlook that we can decide to have. We see this in action when we people who live the same event and yet somehow react differently to it. Even painful situations can bring meaning and become eventually a source of joy because there is hope. One can see God or goodness in the event.

How can we do that? What does it take to find that sense of joy? One way is to reflect back and to see where God may have brought something positive in the situation. The reflecting back and looking for the positive is our choice. It is an attitude we bring. We can despair and give up, or we can hold onto hope. This brings joy.

Is it the kind of joy where we jump up and down in excitement as if we have just won the lottery? No. But it is the joy in knowing that all is not lost. We are still human and can have some control over who we are and how we act.

But, there are days or periods in our lives where it is harder to live from a heart of joy. Cultivating the practice of finding joy in the good moments, can help us to live in joy through the difficult times.

Do you know a joyfilled person? What is their secret?  Coming to know them better may help us to find out.

We are still in the first month of the year and many of us are still trying to keep some of the resolutions that were made a few weeks ago. When we don’t always succeed as we would like,  this often leads to a sort of disillusionment. The silver lining is that we may have learnt something about what we value. These values often indicate some of the places  we look for happiness.

 Joan Chittister’s book entitled Happiness implies that the more we search for happiness as an entity in itself, the less we will find it. What a paradox! But, my own experience has shown this to be mostly true.

The happiest people that I know are not necessarily people who look for happiness, but people who have found a deeper meaning in their life, a sense that they are part of a bigger picture and that they contribute to the world as a whole. Almost like being a puzzle piece in a puzzle. Until that piece is sought out and placed in the picture, it is not complete.

For Catholics, being part of the puzzle means being part of a church that is universal and strives to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ as best as it can. Being in relationship with Jesus helps to bring meaning and purpose to life. It does not solve all the problems, but it helps us to make some sense of it all.

A Chinese proverb states:

If you want happiness for an hour- take a nap.                                                                  If you want happiness for a day – go fishing.                                                                        If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune.                                                           If  you want happiness for a lifetime – help someone else.

My personal addition would be,    

If you want happiness for eternity – discover and grow in friendship with Jesus Christ.