I never thought of  17,000 Daughters making an international “wave” until I read Sr. Amanda Kerns recent post on Drink Deeply, My daughter. Nor did I realize that on average there are 208 Daughters in some 80 plus countries on five continents! Thanks Amanda!

Today, all over the world, about 19,000 women who have pledged their lives as Daughters of Charity renew their vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service of the poor. On the feast of the Annunciation, the feast of Mary’s “yes”, women are saying their own “yes” to God’s call.

It’s almost as if it’s a wave – starting with our sisters in Australia, in Asia (Cambodia, Jordan, China, Kazakhstan, Eastern Russia, Korea, India, Laos, Lebanon, Indonesia, Philippines, Iran, Syria, Israel, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam), in Europe (Albania, Poland, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Portugal, Croatia, France, Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine and the Netherlands)  in Africa (Algeria, Kenya, Angola, Libya, Burundi, Madagascar, Cameroon, Mauritania, Chad, Morocco, Congo, Mozambique, Egypt, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eritrea, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Tunisia and Ghana), in Latin America(Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico), and then in the United States. (By the way, that’s an average of 208 Sisters per country!)

Sr. Denise LaRock, the vocations director for the Daughters of Charity, wrote a beautiful blog post about the renewal of vows today. You can find it here –http://srdenisedc.blogspot.com/2012/03/feast-of-annunciation-and-renewal-of.html. Definitely worth the read!