Lenten shift: from fasting to feeding your Vincentian soul
A Lenten Shift, metaphorically "shifting gears" in Lent, can be a helpful process. Change what you do. Change what you see, change what you read. We fast so we can feed the deeper parts of ourselves. This is the first of a four week series that invites us to feed our...
Francis: God is Love
Photo By Christoph Wagener - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26614990 Pope Francis addressed the participants of a conference to mark the 10th anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical ‘Deus Caritas Est.’ The...
March 3: Death of Bl. Pierre-René Rogue, C.M., Martyr
Blessed Pierre-René Rogue, C.M. lived a courageous life during the time of the French Revolution, when the clergy was heavily persecuted. It is said that Pierre-René was "vertically challenged" (only 4'10" tall) but as you will see in the presentation below, he had a...
The Spirit bestows charisms @DePaul
The Spirit blows where it will. Sometimes institutions help. Edward Ward's story is a special one. "A young black man lies on the icy floor of a family friend’s first floor apartment. There is no heat, and temperatures in the house are below freezing. He is enrolled...
#IamVincent: Simplicity and Racism
Watch this short video and then we'll talk about the interface of racism and simplicity in the Vincentian tradition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm5DWa2bpbs Can you see? Remember how Vincent talked about simplicity? "He added that simplicity was a virtue that...
Vincentians Serve! #IamVincent @StJohn’s
This past Winter break, January 10-15, students of St. John’s University traveled to Germantown, PA as a part of the university PLUNGE program. One of many service immersion programs offered each year, so named as students “plunge” into a new community and commit to...
A Vincentian View: The Transfiguration
A Vincentian View The Transfiguration “A Sense of Perspective” When one travels on a plane, one sees that there are different kinds of people. I can identify two groups: there are “window people” and there are “aisle people”—I do not think that there is any such...
Do you pray for systemic change?
When was the last time you prayed for the success of systemic change? Do you pray for systemic change? By now we are all familiar with Pope Francis asking people to pray for him from his very first appearance as Pope. He is also encouraging us to pray. A question for...
Repentance: believing and living the Gospel
Our merciful Lord listens to sinners who cry out to him. He takes no pleasure in their death, but in their repentance, so that they may live and bear much fruit. Jesus makes it clear that we are all in need of repentance. He warns that if we do not repent, we will...
Collaboration is… joining efforts to be more effective
At the beginning of 2013/2014 season, a Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid, was worth approximately 571 million euros (520 million US dollars). It corresponded to the total market value of its 23 players. The value of the team rose, however, to nearly 2,500 million...