SPIRITUALITY
From Our Spiritual Moderator
Sr. Joanne Donovan, DC
Beginning Anew
Here it is January/February and a new year with HOPE and letting go of the old and welcoming the new. The beginning of a new year always merits some reflection. It’s not so much a time of making resolutions, though that’s not a bad idea, but rather a time to ponder life and review our personal growth. It’s a good time and opportunity to reflect on what guides our thoughts and decisions, to look at the person we are and whom we’d like to become.
The new year provides us with the opportunity to look for what allows our life to receive meaning and what resists it. This year of 2025 and 2026 is a jubilee year of HOPE and it encourages us to ponder how and why hope has presented itself and recall what gives us strength and where enthusiasm ripened or died on the vine. If it died on the vine, what can we do to rejuvenate the enthusiasm? We need to look for the graced moments when God whispered (if we listened) in our ears, “Don’t forget you are in my heart.”
As we journey through life, we face both fears and joys, anxiety and anticipation. Life is unfolding, it is not stagnating; sometimes it is a painful search and sometimes a wonderful discovery. We can’t allow ourselves to sink into painful regrets but to keep our minds and hearts open to the gifts that God sends each day. We need to leave behind what brings us down and reach for that which gives us HOPE. Expectation, anticipation, enthusiasm and courage rise in us when we are open to God's ways.
In our journey, we need a strong conviction about the goodness of life within all those we encounter whether it is our family, friends or the poor we serve. We need a vision of HOPE that endures pain and struggle and a thread of love that weaves through our dreams and actions.
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St. Vincent wrote in his Conference of July 5, 1640:
“You must do what the Son of God did when on earth. After submitting His will…
He labored for his neighbor, visiting and healing the sick and instructing the
ignorant into their own salvation … you have the happiness to be called to this
holy work.”
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And we pray with letters of St. Louise, L.217, Spiritual Writings 0f Louise, pg.260:​
“God our creator, fill us with holiness so that our work will be useful to you. May we realize that it is not enough to visit the poor and provide for their needs, but our heart must be free of all self-interest. May we have continually before us the model, Jesus Christ. As a member of the Church, we are called to be disciples; as a member of a Vincentian group, may we specially imitate Jesus whose constant attention was on those who were poor. I ask this through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.”
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