Category: Community

Rules That Free Us

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, Courage, Discipleship, Faith, holiness, spirituality4 Comments

Memorial of St. Benedict
July 11, 2026

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia — a man who lived nearly fifteen centuries ago, yet whose wisdom still challenges the confusion of modern life. 

Benedict’s enduring gift to the world is a slender text known as The Rule of St. Benedict, written around 530 A.D. for monks living together in community. Though simple in structure, the Rule offers a balanced vision of human fulfillment: a life grounded in prayer, meaningful work, lifelong learning, and mutual responsibility.

St. Benedict delivering rule to monks

What Benedict created for monasteries ultimately became much more than a guide for monks. Across centuries, his wisdom has influenced education, leadership, hospitality, peacemaking, and the very idea that a good life requires both inner discipline and communal care.

Recently, while reading online, I encountered two unfamiliar terms: “looksmaxxing” and “incels.” Curious, I searched for their meaning.

Looksmaxxing (or looksmaxing) refers to the practice of maximizing one’s physical attractiveness. Originating in online forums and popularized on platforms like TikTok, it ranges from benign self-care like skincare routines to extreme, potentially dangerous cosmetic procedures.

The phrase “incel”, meaning “involuntary celibate”, was originally coined in the late 1990s by a Canadian student known as “Alana” as an inclusive, supportive space for anyone of any gender who was lonely or struggling to find a relationship. However, over the 2000s and 2010s, the term was heavily co-opted by online communities and transformed into a specific, male-dominated subculture characterized by misogyny and entitlement.

What I discovered was troubling — because so many young people are searching for identity and belonging in places that deepen anxiety rather than heal it.

Social media has amplified movements built upon appearance, resentment, isolation, and comparison. In many ways, these trends seem to reject the very foundations Benedict considered essential for a meaningful life: prayer that grounds us, work that dignifies us, learning that enlarges us, and community that humanizes us.

The sadness beneath these movements points to something deeper: a profound spiritual hunger.

Benedict matters even today, and perhaps more than ever.

His Rule invites us away from obsession with self and toward a deeper freedom rooted in humility, balance, and love. Benedict outlined what he called the “Twelve Degrees of Humility,” a spiritual path intended to loosen the grip of self-absorption and open the heart to God and others.

Because some of Benedict’s original language reflects the harshness of his historical era, I have taken the liberty of expressing these tenets in more contemporary and life-giving terms while preserving their essential wisdom.

Benedict’s Original EmphasisA Contemporary Spiritual Reading
Fear of GodAwe before God: delighting in the beauty of Creation
Restraint of Self-willFlexibility: meeting life with generosity and openness
ObedienceWisdom-seeking: learning from the insight of others
Patient enduranceCourageous Trust: Knowing that God abides with us always
Confession of faultsRepentance: Honest and positive change
Contentment with littleLiving from abundance rather than endless desire or greed
Self-abasementHumility: recognizing the equal dignity of every person
Observance of the RuleDiscipline: commitment to healthy spiritual routine
SilenceSerenity: allowing peace to shape our interactions
Avoiding frivolityMaturity: growing in depth, honesty, and joy
Gentle speechReverence: Using words to bless rather than diminish
Physical humilitySimplicity: recognizing that authenticity surpasses display

In the end, Benedict’s wisdom is not about becoming less human, but more fully human. His Rule reminds us that meaning is rarely found in self-obsession, status, or performance. Rather, it emerges slowly through prayer, purposeful work, humility, simplicity, and life shared with others.

In an age marked by loneliness, noise, and relentless comparison, Benedict still offers a quiet but compelling invitation: live deliberately, live gently, and live together in love

Poem: The Neophyte by Alice Meynell

(I love this poem for what it expresses about the early commitment to a disciplined spiritual life, intended to bless us by making us blessedly human.)

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
Give one repose to pain I know not now,
One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.
Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

Music: Ora Et Labora:

Suggested Scripture: Proverbs 2:1-9

Click for Scripture

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?

A Sabbatical of Hope

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Hope, Mercy, justice, Community, spirituality, Creation, inclusivity, Courage, Prayer2 Comments

Independence Day
July 4, 2026

On this glorious Independence Day, the United States marks its 250th birthday. Such an anniversary invites celebration, certainly — fireworks, parades, songs, patriotic speeches, and a good old-fashioned baseball game. 

But the celebration also invites a question: What birthday gift could we possibly offer our country to foster its future blessings and to ensure its deserved endurance?

Most of us are familiar with the word “sabbatical” which comes from the Hebrew shabbāth: to cease, or to pause. A sabbatical is a time to rest after long contribution, to replenish oneself for the continuing journey. It is a time to herald all that has succeeded, and to find the courage for all that must change. Our 250th anniversary prompts us to consider such a powerful and reflective pause and to act on its fruits.

For a country, as well as for each citizen, complexity and demand can accumulate over time, draining both our physical and spiritual resources. Sabbatical is a time of rediscovery, remembering, and renovation. In many ways, it is also a time of repentance. Might a 250th sabbatical move us to acknowledge the damaging self-interests, to quiet the divisive rhetoric, and to reclaim mutual trust based on respectful honesty and compassionate justice?

We, the people, are capable of such courage. We inherited it from the patriots who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” in 1776. We have seen it in generations of immigrants who arrived with hope stronger than fear; in pioneers and laborers who built difficult lives from nothing but their dreams. We have been inspired to it by self-sacrificing parents, caring communities, and altruistic peace-seekers.

And we have been held to its account by Native Peoples and formerly enslaved persons who would not excuse America’s failures nor allow it to rest comfortably inside its contradictions.

Sitting Bull was known for embodying the Lakota virtues of bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. He remains an enduring figure of pride, honored for his defense of Indigenous rights and his efforts to maintain a traditional way of life. (Wiki)

Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women’s rights. MissTruth was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. (Wiki)

Perhaps the gift we can give America and ourselves is a time to step back from who we have become – to examine and measure ourselves against who we first wanted to be – to bless all that has been good – to reclaim all that has wandered from our first hope.

Where shall we find the inspiration for such renewal?

Recently, Pope Leo XIV referred to the Blessed Virgin Mary as “an icon of hope.” Under the title of the Immaculate Conception, Mary has long been patroness of the United States, a designation formally entrusted by the American bishops in 1846. Mary is indeed the icon who shows us the compelling power of a heart centered on truth, humility, trust, courage, and mercy.

As people of faith and hope, we are being called again to place this nation consciously within her care.

America’s first centuries have been marked by striving, expansion, and increasing geopolitical influence. This Semiquincentennial calls us to a deeper, humbler appreciation of our responsibility to actualize these words for all our sisters and brothers:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, 
that all Men are created equal, 
that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable Rights,
 that among these are 
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…

On this auspicious Independence Day, let us commit to prayer for our beloved country and for the rededication of its strength, integrity, and moral witness within the world community.

(For my dear readers from countries other than the United States, please keep us in your prayers.)

Music: The Sound of a Nation

Suggested Scripture: Proverbs 14:25-35

Click for Scripture

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?

Juneteenth

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, Courage, Faith, Hope, inclusivity, justice, spiritualityLeave a comment

June 19, 2026

Like me, some of you may have thought that the Emancipation Proclamation was a “one-and-done” event. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Like its companions in American history ( the Constitution,the Bill of Rights), the document – and its dynamism – is a complex living reality that, even now, continues to unfold among us.

The Emancipation Declaration was first issued on January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved African Americans in the Confederate States. There were many states, notably some in the North, to which the new law did not immediately apply (border states of Delaware and Kentucky). However, the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865, made slavery universally unconstitutional throughout the United States.

During the intervening time period, enforcement of the new law rolled out slowly through the post-Confederate South, especially in far western regions like Galveston, Texas. It was not until June 19th, two years later, that freedom reached that resistant enclave:

On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free. (Wikipedia)

Wanting to learn more about the Juneteenth holiday, I purchased a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free. I wanted to share it with my grand-nephews and niece when they visit because this history belongs to all of us. We all need to learn from it.

Ms. Lee, who is approaching her 100th birthday in October, has suffered personally from racist terrorists. She grew up in Texas, where her family’s home was burned down by white rioters when she was twelve years old. Resilient and brave, she eventually pursued an extensive education and became a teacher, community leader, and activist. She lobbied particularly for the recognition of Juneteenth as a Holiday, believing it was crucial to the story of African American freedom.

President Joe Biden talks with Opal Lee after signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Bill, Thursday, June 17, 2021, in the East Room of the White House.
(Official White House Photo by Chandler West)

In June 2021, at the age of 94, her efforts succeeded as a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. She was an honored guest at the bill signing ceremony, receiving the first of many pens the President used to sign the document. As she sat in the front row, she received a standing ovation, and President Biden got down on one knee to greet her. (Wikipedia)

Music: Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Black National Anthem) – sung by Wintley Phipps

Suggested Scripture: Galatians 3:23-29

Click for Scripture

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?

Body of Christ

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Creation, Faith, spiritualityLeave a comment

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
(Corpus Christi)
June 7, 2026

Piety is a virtue that can get a bad rap. It is sometimes associated with a “better than thou” attitude ostentatiously demonstrated by sanctimonious practices and gestures.

A profound sense of the true meaning of piety captured me when I saw the sculpture “Pietà” in Rome. I had seen a hundred photos of this treasure in previous years, but none touched the beauty and pathos embodied in the marble itself. I was tearful, speechless, and prayerfully united with Mary as she held the broken body of her precious son. What I felt was intense piety, an indescribable oneness with the Holy.

That holy, broken, but resurrected Body of Christ abides with us today in the Church and in the Creation. The redemptive energy of the Trinity, fired in us through the Incarnation, continues in time through Love. Redemption perdures through the love with which we bring the world to God, and God to the world. We are the Body of Christ living in our time.

Over the centuries, many brilliant theologians have approached the mystery of the Body of Christ, each contributing their own insights to help the rest of us grow in faith. For me. Pierre de Chardin, rare combination of scientist and mystic, expressed some of the most beautiful and expansive language about this mystery:

Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe your life into it; I pray you, lay on us those your hands — powerful, considerate, omnipresent, those hands which do not (like our human hands) touch now here, now there, but which plunge into the depths and the totality, present and past, of things so as to reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.

May the might of those invincible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which I have gathered into my heart and now offer you in its entirety. Remold it, rectify it, recast it down to the depths from whence it springs. You know how your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.

Do you now therefore, speaking through my lips, pronounce over this earthly travail your twofold efficacious word: the word without which all that our wisdom and our experience have built up must totter and crumble — the word through which all our most far-reaching speculations and our encounter with the universe are come together into a unity. Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood.

The Mass On The World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, S.J

A century before De Chardin, the grace-filled poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins also experienced the Body of Christ in the glory of Creation. Both of these writers foreshadowed the cosmic wisdom of our beloved Pope Francis who authored the spiritual masterpiece, Laudato Si’.

The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.

Laudatory Si’ (100)

Poetry: The Windhover – Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

” This poem is focused not on feelings or individuality, but on wording Christ. The kenosis of the Son into matter is the heart of all beauty and it is only in Christ that beauty is to be found and it is to Christ that beauty leads.”

Michael Rennier, written and visual artist

Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade
(to learn more about the inspiring artist Carolyn McDade: http://www.carolynmcdademusic.com/index.htm )

Suggested Scripture: John 6:51-58

Click for Scripture

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?

Guardians of Peace

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, Courage, Faith, justice, peace, spirituality5 Comments

Memorial Day
May 25, 2026

Memorial Day!

In the Northern Hemisphere, many await the day with parched longing for sun-kissed skin, salt water, and cook-outs.

In the swirl of that longing, we may forget the real meaning of the day, a day to honor and mourn lives given in military service. Originally titled “Decoration Day”, the memorial included the practice of strewing flowers, or “decorating”, the graves of fallen soldiers.

Immediately after the tragedy of the Civil War, there was an abundance of American graves to be so decorated, and a nation deeply wounded by its internal rivalries. A striking example is the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, a quiet town of about 2000 residents in the late 1800s. But in November 1864, in the farmers’ fallow fields, 10,000 Americans were wounded by one another, and 2300 died. Even if every resident buried a soldier, there would not have been enough grave diggers!

Confederate soldiers killed in the Battle of Franklin were buried on a two-acre plot of land at the Carnton Plantation donated by the McGavock family. “Widow of the South” Carrie McGavock cared for the cemetery for the rest of her life. Photograph courtesy of the Battle of Franklin Trust

Practical healing was sorely needed. In that hope, Memorial Day was formalized by an order issued by Grand Army of the Republic Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan in 1868. It has been observed ever since to honor those sacrificed to our continuing obsession with war.

Despite the happiness of approaching summer, I find Memorial Day heartbreaking. How profoundly sad that men, women, and children die, even now, in the wreckage of war when the human mind is capable of designing peace.

Each evening, somewhere between the Nightly News and Jeopardy, ads pop up for organizations like Wounded Warriors or Second Chance. The images of young men and women – their broken bodies, minds, and dreams – overwhelm me with a turbulent mix of pity and anger.

Ask yourself: Where do they get the guns?

The human family can change this! To do so would be a truly reverent way to honor our fallen and wounded heroes. World leaders could initiate the dismantling of systems that feed war, and reinforce efforts to establish global agreements for sustained peace. It is each of our responsibilities to demand this of our leaders and of ourselves.

To begin, we must ask ourselves these questions, determining where we fit in the answers:

  • Who benefits from war?
  • Who enriches themselves by its machinery?
  • Who retains power and wealth by appeasing warmongers?
  • Who pays the greatest price for war, and why are we willing to dehumanize and sacrifice them?
  • How does the rhetoric of force, retribution, and domination feed the avaricious fears of tyrants and their sycophants? How does such language affect me?
  • How do my own language, advocacy, and voting patterns reflect my understanding of war and commitment to peace?

Each Memorial Day, each Veterans Day, I do indeed honor our heroes. There are beloved members of my family and friends among them who have been willing to stand in harm’s way for my sake. Still, at a deeper level, I pray that war may recede to an ancient memory and not another name be added to its lamentable honor rolls.

On this sacred day, let us pray with the encouragement offered by Pope Leo on the 2026 World Day of Peace:

Dear brothers and sisters, whether we have the gift of faith or feel we lack it, let us open ourselves to peace! Let us welcome it and recognize it, rather than believing it to be impossible and beyond our reach. Peace is more than just a goal; it is a presence and a journey. Even when it is endangered within us and around us, like a small flame threatened by a storm, we must protect it, never forgetting the names and stories of those who have borne witness to it. Peace is a principle that guides and defines our choices. Even in places where only rubble remains, and despair seems inevitable, we still find people who have not forgotten peace. Just as on the evening of Easter Jesus entered the place where his disciples were gathered in fear and discouragement, so too the peace of the risen Christ continues to pass through doors and barriers in the voices and faces of his witnesses. This gift enables us to remember goodness, to recognize it as victorious, to choose it again, and to do so together.

Music: Where Have All the Flowers Gone – Peter, Paul, and Mary

Suggested Reading: Isaiah 2:1-6

Click for Scripture

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?

International Workers’ Day

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Creation, holiness, justice, Love, spiritualityLeave a comment

May 1, 2026

The virtue of diligence opposes the deadly sin of
sloth, which is a deep spiritual sorrow or disinclination
to embrace the divine good and God’s Will.

On a late April day several years ago, I sat in my office, gathering thoughts for a reflection on the value of work. A sense of early summer teased me from the other side of my window. In my imagination, it reawakened thoughts that I had often tried to stifle — things like, “Be a beachcomber. Retire early. Live in the woods like Thoreau.” (Remember him? He wrote Walden Pond.) In other words, is it just me, or does everybody have a hard time working as summer approaches?!

Which brings me to my more serious message, as you might have guessed. How do we stay in touch with the dignity of our work despite whatever distractions tempt us? Throughout our lives, how do we grow in diligence, and in the understanding that all work is an invitation to holiness?

Our work, in its essence, is a share in the creative act of God. It is our opportunity to add our unique touch to the masterpiece of Creation. How do we maintain that focus while navigating the often-frustrating demands of our daily responsibilities?

I was fortunate to learn a hard lesson early in my worklife. I loved the actual work that I did, but I had a boss who seemed neither to like me nor appreciate my efforts (maybe for good reason, who knows!)

She stifled my creativity, compromised my efforts, and underestimated my contributions. For many months, I left the office drained, angry, and dispirited.

Surprisingly, she turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me in my young professional life. Because of her, I had to ask myself some challenging questions, and discern answers so deep that they really had nothing to do with her.

Where does the dignity of my work reside? Like the work of the Creator, the dignity of work lies in the love and care with which it is performed. It rests in my own truth, and not how anyone else defines me — neither positive nor negative. It lies in my ability to produce results inspirited with care for the community I serve.

Productive and satisfying work is dependent on only one thing — the love with which it is performed.

  • I must always work for love — not for the love of work itself but for love of those whom my work affects.
  • I must work because of love — not because of a boss, pay, or recognition. When there is no love in my work, I simply have a job.
  • I must work with love — because what I create reflects the value I place on myself and on those affected by my work. You can tell when something is done with love, whether it is an apple pie or a telephone response. You can also clearly tell when a product is the end result of a bitter, resentful, or careless effort.
  • I must work toward love — to work in any other way is self-destructive. My work must create positive opportunities for myself and others to be our best selves. If my work is grudging, resentful, selfish, or irresponsible, it will surely harm others, but I will be the one most seriously diminished.

Now, in my “retirement”, I understand more fully that we always have “work” – something we wish to create, offer, build, or encourage so that we may contribute to the well-being of our various communities. To be able to work is a gift and a responsibility. It is the composition by which our lives will be defined and remembered.

Just as we pursue meaningful work for ourselves, we are called to help others have access to purposeful work and just wages. Work alienated from the common good is self-destructive conceit.

Work, of course, is not always physical. Nor does it always produce visible results. Sometimes in the quiet of the chapel, as I watch a well-worn rosary slip along our sisters’ fingers, I am confident that there is no greater work than that of selfless prayer for the sake of others.

Hopefully, by God’s grace, we can discern “what is ours to do” at each phase of our lives. Today, we pray for that grace for ourselves and all our human family.

Music: The Prayer – Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli

Suggested Scripture: Colossians 3: 23-24

Click for Scripture

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?

Thanksgiving for Life and Friendship

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Faith, friendship, Hope, spirituality1 Comment

April 19, 2026

As in the prayer of petition, every event and need can become an offering of thanksgiving. The letters of St. Paul often begin and end with thanksgiving, and the Lord Jesus is always present in it: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”; “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”
~ from The Catechism of the Catholic church

In the 1980s, when we worked together at Misericordia Hospital, my friend Jude and I had an annual custom that we practiced for a few years. On each of our birthdays, we accompanied the other to the Free Library of Philadelphia, a magnificent Beaux-Arts building on Logan Circle, reminiscent of Place de Concorde in Paris. Both our birthdays occur in the early spring, so the trip was particularly lovely on the beautifully landscaped Ben Franklin Parkway.

Inside the vast building, we climbed the impressive marble staircase to the newspapers and microfiche center that used to be tucked in a balcony upstairs. Our objective was to find the newspaper of the celebrant’s actual birth day, and to marvel at the world in which our lives began.

I have often reflected on that delightful ritual and the multidimensional meaning it held for me.

  • It allowed me to see myself as a particular part of history – to recognize a past beginning, a present reality, and a future hope for my existence.
  • It gave me an awareness of the world my mother carried with her to the maternity ward, and into which she hopefully and protectively welcomed me.
  • It allowed me to honor time as an energy that offers not only unsolicited change, but the opportunity for chosen growth and depth.
  • It reinforced the mutuality Jude and I shared in being grateful for one another’s birth and friendship.

Of course, a birthday requires a bit more frivolity in celebration, so there was a second essential part to our annual outing.  We finished up the day by going “all-Philly” at the renowned Reading Terminal Market with a stop at some of our favorite vendors: Pearl’s Oyster Bar, Bassett’s Ice Cream, Termini’s Bakery, or a Pennsylvania Dutch pretzel and a Yuengling beer.

One’s birthday is a sacred juncture in the long unfolding of time. It is the moment when God imagined us and the power of our lives into being – the moment when God’s hope was given our face, our soul. It is a miracle that summons humble awe and reflective gratitude.

Psalm 139 offers an apt thanksgiving on any morning, but especially on one’s birthday. These verses capture the essence of that prayer. (BTW, I turned 81 today. A birthday prayer would be greatly appreciated.)

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

Music: For the Beauty of the Earth – John Rutter, performed by Gracias Choir

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?

FDR

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, spirituality1 Comment

April 12, 2026

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945

In 1952, Mr. Farina had a little barber shop near the corner of 2nd and Columbia in Olde Kensington. Like many Philly barbershops today, back then it was a gathering spot for neighborhood men, even if they weren’t getting a haircut or shave. Sometimes, I was sent to retrieve my Grandpop for lunch after he had spent the morning overseeing barbershop politics. Grandpop was the Republican ward leader, and I was his seven-year-old assistant.

As I waited for “The Duke” (grandpop’s nickname) to sum up his morning arguments, I loved to watch Mr. Farina lather up a face for a shave, then lift that heavy strap from the chair’s arm. He would repeatedly slash his long razor on its already sharp edge, as I waited wide-eyed to see if the bearded patron survived the first slice!


On election day, Farina’s Barbershop became the district polling place. It was an exciting transformation. On the wide windows, red, white, and blue bunting had blossomed overnight. Balloons were tied to lawn chairs crowding the pavement. And kids like me scrambled to collect campaign buttons. The prize in 1952 was “I Like Ike”!

My family then were staunch Republicans. It seemed to my seven-year-old self that it might actually be a sin for someone to vote Democrat (a sin I have been committing all my adult life. Sorry, Grandpop!) I asked my Mom about it once, and she told me that we only voted for a Democrat in one circumstance – Franklin Roosevelt. She almost genuflected when she said his name.

Franklin Roosevelt died exactly one week before I was born. I sometimes wonder if we passed each other on our ways to and from heaven and earth, because I am so deeply fascinated and inspired by him and his inestimable contribution to history.
If you’d like to learn more about FDR and the times in which he served, I recommend these two books:

  • Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham
  • No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

You may also enjoy the movie classic, “Sunrise at Campobello”, available for free on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/sunrise-at-campobello-1960

While this essay is not really a “reflection”, my intention is to celebrate FDR’s life while inviting readers to think about their own place, history, and contribution in civic society. Certainly, our sense of patriotism will suggest some standards. But more importantly, in these conflicted political times, our Gospel inspired-faith must inspire our participation in a global community seeking human rights and dignity for all people. As President Roosevelt put it:

“We have faith that future generations will know here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when those of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.”

FDR: February 12, 1943

Music: Going Home – from the film “Eleanor and Franklin”

Suggested Scripture: 1 Timothy 2:1-4

Click for Scripture

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?

Love’s Balance

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Conversion, Courage, Creation, Faith, justice, Love, spirituality1 Comment

March 1, 2026
Second Sunday of Lent

What does it mean to hunger and thirst for justice? The Greek word translated here as “justice” is dikaiosune, a term that refers to personal righteousness as well as to social justice. Those who hunger and thirst for dikaiosune have a deep yearning for things to be right in their individual lives and in society. This will happen when God’s kingdom comes completely and creation is restored to God’s original intention.
~ from the website theologyofwork.org

In our readings during this second week of Lent, we are encouraged to let go of guilt, to “remember not the things of the past”. We hear the story of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers, only to “redeem” them by his forgiveness. We are challenged to change the “season” of our hearts and embrace the full life of the Paschal Mystery. Our hunger for justice is truly the deep desire, not for any kind of reprisal, but for right balance in our lives with God and with all Creation, as seen in this story.

“Can you let this not be about you?” the chaplain asked, as Jane tried to explain her resistance and guilt. Evening darkened the small office just outside the tumultuous ER. There had been a building collapse, and Jane’s mother had been nearly crushed. Jane was the only relative, a long-alienated daughter. “But I’ve wanted to be reconciled”, she wept. “I just never had the courage to face her. Now it may be too late.”

Over several hours, the chaplain patiently encouraged Jane along a path of self-awareness, helping her realize that it was herself she needed to face. Her mother’s situation, while tragic, offered Jane a catalyst to confront the years of excuses and denials that had paralyzed her. Slowly, the hope of reconciliation washed over her.

When her mother finally stabilized, Jane leaned close to her battered face. Her mother summoned the strength to whisper, “I have never stopped loving you.” That forgiving whisper breathed a vital courage into both women. Each would survive a particular kind of death that day.

Despite our best hopes and intentions, life can collapse around us. Broken promises, unfulfilled dreams and soured relationships can litter our landscapes. We may even lose God in the rubble. This week, Isaiah offers us God’s forgiving invitation, “Come now, let us set things right”, says the Lord. “Though your sins be like scarlet, they will become white as snow.”

God will never stop loving us. God longs to embrace our repentant hearts. Let us listen to and believe God’s whisper.

Music: Remember Not the Things of the Past – Bob Hurd

Suggested Reading: Psalm 33:4-22

Click for Scripture

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?

Fun=Joy in Action

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, friendship, inclusivity, joy, Love, spirituality2 Comments

February 7, 2026

Today’s news is full of impending competition – (even outside Washington 😂). Who will prevail, be the best, break the record, win the trophy?

But the opening of the Olympic Games and the start of Super Bowl weekend have me thinking about other kinds of games – the ones we play for fun, not to gain advantage.

Photo by Jim De Ramos on Pexels.com


Long ago, an older friend complained to me, “I have forgotten how to have fun!” The declaration startled me and left me speechless. If there was a formula, “young me” didn’t have it. However, over the decades of my own aging, I have pondered that remark, often examining my own life for signs of “fun diminishment”.

Those signs do seem to increase as responsibility grows or as energy wanes. What came naturally to us as children requires a little attention as we mature. As kids, we simply ran outside into the sunshine or rain, found somebody or something that absolutely entranced us, and magic happened.

I remember sitting on the front step with my friend Harry. We were both nine years old. I had just gotten a plastic camera in the mail with a quarter and a coupon from a cereal box. For an hour or so, we took pictures of pigeons perched on the telephone wires and garbage cans. We imagined ourselves expert artists creating a legacy for generations. It was easy then to forget that we were serious fourth-graders with unfinished homework, impending report cards, and a few chores before bedtime. It was also easy to forget that there was no film in the camera!

Later in life, that kind of beneficial forgetting is not so easy. We must unleash ourselves from a chain of “to dos” and “be carefuls”. We know better now. We don’t go out in the sun without screening, nor into the rain without an umbrella. We mostly try to avoid pigeons and garbage cans. Our potential “playgrounds” become much more constrained, sometimes inhibited by a false requirement of excessive money, planning, or chemical relaxation.

Examining my fun levels today, I realize how blessed I am.

My nieces, nephews, and grands live hundreds of miles away from me. Yet they provide me with invaluable links to pure fun. Every morning, a few of us play Wordl, Connections, or Crossplay together. I know they may be checking to see if I’m still alive, but the main purpose is fun – and the precious assurance of mutual care.

The younger kids delight me with photos of themselves doing modern imitations of Harry and me with the pigeons.
In our convent community rooms, I may find a game of pinochle, Hand and Foot, chess, bingo, or gin rummy. Even more precious, there always awaits a conversation with memories of good times, funny stories, and the generous abandon of enjoying one another.

So, if I came up with a fun formula today, it would include these essentials:

  • Fun is any “playground” where we find and give joy.
  • To have real fun, we don’t focus on the score.
  • We need time to have fun, just like we need time to eat, sleep, work, and pray.
  • We need to know what fun is – that it makes us laugh, appreciate the other, relax, and surrender self-importance
  • Fun is essentially spontaneous, but we can expose ourselves to its influence by not taking ourselves too seriously.
  • Fun always requires getting “outside” – even if it means only from our self-centeredness.
  • We can have fun alone with a game or movie, but it helps to have someone to have fun with, (and as Pope Leo said, someone not created by AI.)

Music: We All Stand Together – Paul McCartney

Let yourself be delighted by the thought of FUN!

Suggested Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:9-13

Click for Scripture

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?