Sister Denise Wilkinson

This thankful and thoughtful blog is being highlighted for Thanksgiving 2019 because it is as appropriate today as it was when it was first written. I just sat down to write this Thanksgiving reflection and every word that immediately popped into my head begins with the letter f — family, feast, football, friends, forgotten. The…

In thinking about All Souls Day, I came upon this. In 988 CE, the abbot Odilo of the Cluny monastery in France wrote of November 2’s feast: “[keep] with joyous affection the memory of all the faithful departed who have lived from the beginning of the world until the end.” However, when I first read…

When the General Councilors and I planned this liturgy, we quickly chose as its theme the Mother Theodore quotation that appears on the cover of your worship aid: “Perfect abandonment of ourselves in all things for the future requires great courage, but we ought to aspire to it.” — Saint Mother Theodore Guerin. For the…

Some days ago I received a request from a local newspaper reporter who was preparing an article about the 10th anniversary of the catastrophic events here in the U.S. on 9/11/01. She asked me if I thought people tended to turn to prayer at times of tragedy or turmoil. If so, why did I think…

Our General Chapter ended just about four weeks ago. The past weeks have given me the opportunity to reflect on the experience and outcomes of our time together and what I’d like to share with all of you, our partners in mission. All of my reflections center on a deep sense of gratitude, i.e., thankfulness…

Working out in my garden yesterday, I inadvertently witnessed/eavesdropped on a lovely father-child series of moments – aka father-love-in-action. A van pulled up at the fountain standing at the end of the Avenue, our “main street” if you will. A family piled out — grandparents, mom and dad — but not the toddler who was…

As we enter the final week of Lent, the deep, deep purple of Lenten liturgical environments gives way first to the blazing red of Passion Sunday and Passion week, then briefly breaks into the startling white of Holy Thursday, then back to the blazing red of Good Friday and, finally, to the gentle pastels and…

Good old Lent! Here you are again — staring me in the face … daring me to find something good about the experience — in spite of my many years of getting to Easter and thinking, “Well, another Lent when I didn’t do what I said I would.” Lent, for me, is the Catholic equivalent…

My cousin’s son and his wife have a son, Jack Alfred. (At family gatherings, use of his middle name is required to distinguish him from his cousin Jack Louis.) In my lamentably too few encounters with Jack Alfred, I find him a wonderful blend of serious and effervescent, inquisitive and definite. What I often observe…