August - September 2013

Opening Ourselves to Conversion

by Pat Farrell, OSF - LCWR Past President

As I write my last presidential letter, my own words from last summer’s assembly come back to me, contextualized differently: “They can crush a few flowers but they can’t hold back the springtime.”  So what about that springtime now in 2013?  There are some who would call the moment we are experiencing “a Catholic spring.”  None of us could have imagined a year ago a Pope Francis, bringing fresh air to an ecclesiastical environment gone stale.  Church reform movements are proliferating, networking, flourishing.  Clearly there is observable movement.  Could it be that spring is upon us?  Perhaps.  There are some signs.  But spring comes slowly, by fits and starts. Think March. Think mud and wind and the messy in-between stage of the late-winter, early- spring time of year.  Spring is heralded by great turbulence and fluctuating temperatures.  It storms its way forward, groaning and labored.  But it does come.  Always.   (Read more by downloading newsletter below.) 

 

Publication Type: