By Sister Mary Garascia
More than 15 years ago around this time of year, I got a call from a priest pastor. He implored me to speak at Mass on the weekend of the December special collection for retired Religious. His reason—”because, Sister,” he said, “we are a relatively new parish, and we have never had any Sisters here, so some people have never seen one!”
By Sr. Mary Garascia, Ph.D.
Perhaps you have seen the commercial that goes something like this: An apple appears on the screen. The voice-over says, “This is an apple. Some people say it’s a banana, but it really is an apple. That’s a fact.” Well, it is not so simple as that, is it, when it is not the facts themselves but the interpretation of facts that so polarizes us?
By Sr. Mary Garascia, C.P.P.S.
Some unknown friend must have used expiring airline miles to gift our house with a Wall Street Journal subscription recently! Thus, I happened to read editor Gerald Baker’s column (Ap 20, 2019, C2) about the fire in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Baker lamented that conversations about restoration sounded like a museum was being restored instead of a Cathedral.
By Sr. Mary Garascia
While visiting patients as a volunteer hospital chaplain, a man told me he used to be Catholic but he was not anymore, because the Church had all this money and was all about money. And, outraged, he gave me the example of seeing two nuns sitting in the best front row seats at an NBA game. Fortunately, I had not identified myself as a nun!
Sr. Mary Garascia, C.P.P.S.
Is a rose a flower? It is difficult to answer “yes” about this beauty, this representative of human love on Valentine’s Day and on coffin displays, this adornment of floats and race horses, whose petals are strewn before brides, whose fragrance is perhaps the world’s oldest perfume, this religious symbol and gift to Juan Diego. “Flower” is too simple a term. It doesn’t capture the rose-ness of roses!
