Prayer service for the Feast of Marguerite Bourgeoys, 2017
“Go to the peripheries. In a spirit of mutuality and collaboration, respond in hope to the cries of our wounded world.” The second direction of the CND Orientation 2016-2021
Suggested Opening Song: Mission Song (Ave, Kathleen Deignan, CND) you may wish to intersperse verses after each reading
We will gather up the Blood of the Savior,
which is shed by the ignorance of people.
We will gather up the Blood of the Lord.
We will teach the gospel of justice;
we will labor for the kingdom of peace.
We will sow the seeds of the Spirit;
we will harvest the fruit of new life.
We have come to the new land to labor
for the new world promised in Christ.
May there always be written on
our dwellings the great commandment of love.
The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation
We are astounded at times by the new information unfolding about creation, about the world, about the changes that keep moving into our understanding, into our cultural sureness, and into our perception of just about everything. So what about our image of God? In Divine Dance, Richard Rohr writes of the Trinity as relationship. He uses descriptive words like “endless flow of giving and receiving;” of “rhythmic movement” among Father, Son, and Spirit, the kind of movement we experience in dancing. God is a dancer, and God is the dance itself! We are invited to join in. “It all comes to this: do you allow the free-flow or do you stop it by endless forms of resistance, judgment, negativity and fear?” This book is a treasure, a joyful treat that concludes with eighteen pages of ideas of how to practice the “divine dance that animates the cosmos and invites us in.”
Celebrating a History
One of the interesting experiences of living in a community of three congregations as we do here at Providence Mother House, is learning more about one another’s founding stories. On December 13, the Sisters of Providence of Kingston celebrated 155 years since the arrival of the first group of four Sisters who came from Montreal in 1861 at the request of Bishop Horan to begin a new foundation. They were preceded by the CND’s who came in 1841 for the education of girls and the RHSJ’s in 1845, whose mission was to care for the sick by opening a hospital. The Sisters of Providence came to serve the poor and destitute of the city. Their mission involved opening an orphanage, a home for the aged, visiting prisons, and supporting the poorest people of the society of the time. The celebration in honour of the founding Sisters took place in a beautiful prayer service during which the story of the founding days was recounted along with a time of remembrance of the Sisters who had entered the community in the first ten years. During the special meal that followed, Sister Sandra Shannon, General Superior, recognized the contribution of the two communities who had welcomed and supported them in those early days, and who are now living with one another within their Mother House. “It is now as it was in the beginning,” Sister Sandra reflected.
Throughout the meal, conversations continued with sharing other foundation and community stories of each of our communities.
Thank you, Sisters of Providence, for your 155 years of devoted, compassionate service to the people of Kingston and beyond.
