Month: August 2025

The Faithful Dream

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality3 Comments

August 22, 2025

Many of my readers will remember the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the founding of the Sisters of Mercy in Philadelphia.

In October 2010, many of you joined us in the magnificent Kimmel Center for our beautiful program of reflection and music. You will remember Patricia Waldron inviting us to hear the dream of our founding Sisters – to serve God in the poor, sick, and uneducated people of Philadelphia.

Sr. Patricia Waldron
played by our dear late Mimi Connor, RSM

Have you ever noticed how our dreams unfold?
They never happen in the way we first imagined.
Instead, they weave – your dreams and mine —
Among each other in a latticework of grace.
By the way, my name is Anne Waldron.
known in my life as Mother Patricia –
“Reverend Mother” really.
A rather weighty title, don’t you think?
But my own dream of mercy was not weighty.

I was born in Tuam (pronounced “Choom”), County Galway, Ireland.
‘Tis a precious place, a mere 20 miles from the glorious bay to the south,
Where the soft air carries a hint of the sea
And the sweet land holds both a deep promise and a deep scar of famine.

I must seem a long way from you now, after these 150 years –
almost like a shadow on your memories.
And you must think me a particularly courageous part of your history.
After all, you have named buildings after me, I see!
But tonight, I want you to know me in a new way.

I was only 27 when I came here to this strange city.
I walked these same streets as you,
fraught as they are with their dangers and beauties.
Do you know that a century and a half ago
we sisters lived just two miles north of this very spot!
Ah, but the Philadelphia of the 1860s was a far different sight
from what I saw outside tonight.
I see that a million and a half souls live here now!
Oh my! Just a third that number in the city then.
We thought it an amazing number having come mostly from our small villages.

I was young then – like all of you are or were once –
Young and full of dreams.
We all were – I and these my dear companions.

We were not different because of our courage, our spirit of adventure,
our dedication or our generosity—
Although these marked our lives
as we grew deeper into God.

No – what made us who we were was this:
We clearly knew and trusted that the dream in us
Was God’s dream for a wounded world.
In our deepest hearts,
We were Sisters of Mercy!

As you listen to our stories tonight,
Hold this question in your own hearts:
What dream lived in you when you were young?
What dream lives in you now?

Over the next nine days, we will revisit the stories of each of these founding Sisters. As you meet them in your prayer, open your hearts to their inspiration.

For Your Reflection:

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Psalm 100 – improvised by Rev. Christine Robinson

Be Joyful
Gladly serve the good
Rejoice in the gift of life.

Highest above, deepest within
Around us in nature, present in each.
We are yours, You are ours
We enter your presence with Thanksgiving
With chants and songs
With grateful hearts and open hands
And know a flash of eternity.

Lessons of Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality1 Comment

On August 22, 2025, the Sisters of Mercy celebrate
the 164th Anniversary of our arrival in Philadelphia.

August 21, 2025

How Mercy has flourished
in the intervening years!
— countless numbers of students taught,
patients cared for, people given shelter,
prisoners offered justice, hungers fed,
struggling hearts tendered hope and direction.

We rejoice in the thousands
who share the name of Mercy with us
— people like each one of you
who are the face and voice of Mercy
in an inhospitable world.

We remember ten young women,
none even thirty years old –
women an ocean away
from their homes and families;
women who waited days
for donated food to sustain them;
women who believed that God
wants those who are poor and sick
to be cared for with love;
— and so they built a harbor of Mercy
from little but faith and hope.

Sesquicentennial Cross
Designed by
Robert McGovern and
Jude Smith, RSM

There is a lesson for each of us
in these first Mercy stories.
Pray with them
and hear how they speak to you.

They teach that,
though we cannot see faith, hope, and love,
we see their powerful effects.
It is a power rooted in relationship
with the One Who is Mercy,
with the One Who chooses
to live in and through us.

In the Name of God’s Mercy,
we begin to feel, in our heart’s depths,
the profound suffering in the world.
We are moved to give
all that we can to its healing.

Listen for the next ten days
to those early voices, still living in us:
“Thank you for sustaining the dream
to which we gave our lives.
Eternal Mercy, Who called us,
now calls you.
Know that we are with you
as you answer.

(The first voice will be sent today,
and another in each of the next nine successive days – a “novena of Mercy”.

Feast of the Assumption

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality6 Comments

August 15, 2025

Understanding the Assumption: A Maturing in Faith

Many of us grew up in households where we were surrounded by a strong devotional faith. I am happy to be one of those people. These simple, sacramental practices awakened and engaged my young faith and offered me a visible means to respond to its stirrings. These practices also gave my parents and grandparents the tools to teach me to love and trust God, Mary, the Saints, and my Guardian Angel.

I remember with gratitude the many parameters of that deep devotion which accompanied our fundamental practice of a sacramental and liturgical life.
• Our home had a crucifix in every room to remind us of God’s Presence
• Over the main door was the statue of the Infant of Prague and the first Christmas card we had received depicting the Three Kings to bless us on our journeys.
• All year, Dad’s fedora sported a tiny piece of straw tucked into its plaid band. He had plucked it from the parish Christmas crèche, near to St. Joseph who was his trusted friend. At Easter, he added a little piece of palm.
• During a really violent thunderstorm, we might get a sprinkling from Mom’s holy water flask kept for especially taxing situations.

And, maybe because we live not too far from the East Coast, we had one special summer practice. We went into the ocean on the Feast of the Assumption, believing that, through the water, Mary offered us special healing and graces on that day.

I can still picture young boys helping their elderly grandparents into the shallow surf. I remember mothers and fathers marking their children’s brows with a briny Sign of the Cross. There was a humble, human reverence and trust in these actions that blesses me still.

While that August 15th ritual, like similar devotions, might seem superstitious and even hokey to some today, the memory of it remains with me as a testament to the simple faith and deep love of God’s people for our Blessed Mother.

It was just such devotion and faith, expressed over centuries by the faithful, that moved Pius XII to declare the dogma of the Assumption:
“We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”
(MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS 44)

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus (The Most Bountiful God). The world at that time was still healing from the horrors of World War II. The Pope himself, no doubt, was wounded beyond description by what he had witnessed. One can hear his deep pain as he begins his letter by saying:

“Now, just like the present age, our pontificate is weighed down by ever so many cares, anxieties, and troubles, by reason of very severe calamities that have taken place and by reason of the fact that many have strayed away from truth and virtue. Nevertheless, we are greatly consoled to see that, while the Catholic faith is being professed publicly and vigorously, piety toward the Virgin Mother of God is flourishing and daily growing more fervent, and that almost everywhere on earth it is showing indications of a better and holier life.”

This belief is complementary to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854. These two articles of faith embrace the totality of Mary’s life which was uniquely blessed among all humans. Mary gives us, in our humanity, both a model of and a supportive invitation to holiness.

Marie T. Farrell, RSM has written a scholarly and insightful essay on the Assumption. Her work offers a rich understanding of the theological layers within this teaching.
Sister Marie closes her essay with these words:

Mary assumed into heaven and spiritualized in her whole personhood is a prophetic symbol of hope for us all. In his Resurrection-Ascension, Jesus has shown the way to eternal life. In the mystery of Assumption, the Church sees Mary as the first disciple of many to be graced with a future already opened by Christ, one that defies comprehension for ‘…no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him…
(1 Cor 2: 9)

Music: Assumpta Est Maria – Pierluigi de Palestrina

For Your Reflection:

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Luke 2:13-20

There is no reference to the Assumption in the Bible. But I think this passage captures the deep beauty and wisdom of Mary’s spirituality.

Click for Scripture

A Crane in the Desert

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, Creation, dying, healing, peace, spirituality1 Comment

August 6, 2025

Today is the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Dona Nobis Pacem – Yo-Yo Ma and Illia Bondarenko

On a hot August 6th over 40 years ago, I sat quietly in the Nevada desert just outside Las Vegas. Most maps call the place the Nevada Test Site. Established as the Atomic Energy Commission’s on-continent proving ground, the Nevada Test Site has seen multiple decades of nuclear weapons testing.

But to the native peoples, the land is known as Newe Sogobia (Earth Mother), or the Western Shoshone homelands.

I had come to the place with over 200 other peace activists to pray for the end of nuclear wars, bombings and weapons proliferation. As part of our prayer, each one of us found a private spot in that massive desert where we could sit alone to meditate. I rested by a low bush to capture its small shady triangle in the dry, threatening heat even of that early morning.

At first, to the unappreciative eye, the desert seems a monochromatic place. The earth, the few stones, the sparse vegetation all appear to wear a beige garment of anonymity – almost as if they are saying, “Don’t see me. Don’t change me by noticing me.” But after many minutes of peeling away the multiple blindfolds we all carry, I became aware of muted majesty breaking from that desert like tender life from an egg.

A tiny hummingbird, the color of slate and sand, hovered inches from my hand. It drew my eyes to another small white object hidden under the lowest branches of the bush. It was a perfectly executed origami crane, no bigger than my thumb. I learned later of the Japanese activists who had preceded us into the desert, and whose custom it was to leave behind these beautiful “peace cranes” as mute reminders of the horrors of Hiroshima and of the hope for universal peace.

Later that evening, thinking about the cranes, I found myself straddling a confusing range of emotions. In the late 40’s and 50’s, I had grown up in a household that despised Japan. On my mother’s birthday in 1945, her 19 year old brother had been killed at Iwo Jima. It was a scar my mother bore the rest of her life.

But as with many scars we have earned or inherited in life, the years had taught me that there is an inner grace to every pain. Holding one of the delicate cranes, I thought about the innumerable Japanese lives – mostly innocent civilians – that had been lost or disfigured on August 6, 1945. I thought about the fact that life is never served by war – whether that war is global, local or personal. War serves only death.

The quest for peace is a complicated and endless pursuit. I ask myself – and each of you – to renew that quest today by harboring peace in our own lives. Refuse to solve conflicts by aggression. Look beyond the battle to the person. Be an agent of mutuality not of domination. Resist the normalization and glorification of violence and war, and defend their victims.

Eighty years after Hiroshima, we still see abominable inhumanity exploding in Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, Sudan, and the immigrant communities of the Americas. We cannot be silent in the face of what we see. We are called to witness for peace and justice by our words, our attitudes, our votes, and our advocacy.

God knows our world – our streets – need this from us. If we unfold the wings of our own hearts, perhaps the crane of peace can be freed to change the world.

Music: Peace Train – Cat Stevens

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: John 14:23-27

Scripture