OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
The Renewable Resource of Hope
As we face the grand ecological crisis of our time, our most important renewable resource is hope. We simply must put it on with our shoes each morning.
-Barbara Kingsolver
We Learn of God through Creation
If the soul could have known God without the world, the world would never have been created.
– Meister Eckhart
With What Am I Willing to Struggle in 2016?
When we ask ourselves what kind of world we want to leave behind, we think in the first place of its general direction, its meaning and its values. Unless we struggle with these deeper issues, I do not believe that our concern for ecology will produce significant results.
– Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ 160
Christmas Greetings
May the gifts of Peace, Hope, and Joy be yours this Christmas and throughout the year.
And may Christ on our streets or at our borders find a home -and may an angel or a simple shepherd open our eyes.
A Christian Earth-Conscious Spirituality
All the delegates have gone home from the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris. And our Earth and all her inhabitants await our action.
I am interested in how such a [Christian] spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world.
– Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ 216
What Meaning in Lola’s Face?
The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.”
– Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ 233
Creation – A Reflection of God’s Love
The entire material universe speaks of God’s love…boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.
– Pope Francis, Laudato Si‘ 84
We Are There
As Christians, we are also called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbors on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human met in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet. (Laudato Si’, 9)
Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you know that there is a gathering in Paris right now – a most important Climate Summit. I preparation for this Summit, the Dominican Sisters Conference launched a year of study and prayer which we entitled, Paris 2015 and Counting . . . We also created a website to share our study with others.
Certainly the countdown for the Summit is past, for COP21 has begun, and four of our Dominican Sisters are there representing civil society. They are Sisters Margaret Mayce, OP (Amityville Dominican who is our NGO representative at the U.N.), Patricia Daly, OP (Caldwell Dominican), Patricia Siemen, OP (Adrian Dominican), and Elise Garcia, OP (Adrian Dominican who is going as a journalist for the Global Sisters Report – a project of National Catholic Reporter).
The wait for the Summit may be over, but not the wait for Climate Justice. Please join the Dominican Sisters in prayer for our world leaders – that they may do the right thing for Earth and for all the people and creatures that share this beautiful home with us.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be sharing quotes from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’.
The Fragrance of Gratitude
Gratitude is the sweet fragrance of an opening heart.
– Aine Belton
Grateful Glimpses
In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.
– David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
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