From Season to Season

My paternal grandparents grew up in southeast Missouri in the decades before Great Depression (my grandfather in St. Francois County and my grandmother in Iron County). Although I don't know anything about my grandfather's early education, my grandmother was always proud that she and her siblings had been educated by the Ursuline Sisters " of the Roman Union " at the Ursuline Academy in their hometown of Arcadia. When I was a child, I had a chance to visit the old academy with my grandparents and Great-aunt Helen. I remember meeting a few of the sisters who were still in residence, working in the preschool - all that remained of the once thriving boarding and day school.  Along with the old spring house and the Lourdes grotto, I also got to see the remarkably grand St. Joseph's Chapel in which my grandparents had been married in 1946. It would be nearly two decades before my experience of the Ursulines grew beyond those childhood...

There have been moments in the history of faith, which is at the heart of the human story, in which women, men, and even children, have made decisions about the course or orientation of their lives that have changed history itself. Like that “ shot heard ‘round the world ” of April 19, 1775, marking the first military action of the American Revolution, certain acts have opened up new pathways and modes of faith that have forever shaped the lives of countless believers through the ages.    The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio   Some of these might seem quite simple, perhaps because we know the stories so well: Mary’s fiat ( Luke 1:26-38 ), Saint Peter and Saint Andrew's decision to get out of their boat to follow the wandering Rabbi ( Matthew 4:18-20 ), and Saint Matthew leaving his tax collecting post (cf. Matthew 9:9-13 ). Others seem, somehow, far away and remote to us: Saint Lawrence presenting the poor, the Church’s true treasure, ...