Sisters across the province share sources of reflection for Lent

With several weeks of Lent remaining, sisters from across the province are sharing a few of their favorite poems and writings as resources for inspiration during this special season. We invite you to utilize these written words, as well as the sister’s own reflection on their meaning, to help prepare for the upcoming celebration of Easter.

Sister Barb Linke, West Allis, Wisconsin

As a practice in the evening after I have attended the Holy Thursday liturgy, I go back and read the section in St. John’s Gospel of Jesus’ discourse at the Last Supper. A section that sums up the message of Jesus so clearly to me is His commandment of love. In his last time with his disciples, as he prepares to move on to his passion, death and resurrection, he gives them and all of us the basis of everything we are called to do as his followers. We are called to Love. I continue to ponder this as I move through Good Friday, Holy Saturday and the Easter Celebration.

As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This I command you: love one another.

Sister Danielle Witt, St. Louis, Missouri

I think of Lent as a six-week retreat that challenges me to look more deeply at my own response to God’s love. A poem that I have gone back to many times over the years is Antonio Machado’s “The Wind, One Brilliant Day.” God has been so good to me and gifted me with gifts to share with others. This poem asks the hard questions: How completely have I given my life to God and for others? Where have I held back or squandered the gifts I’ve been given? What have I done with the garden entrusted to me?

The Wind, One Brilliant Day
By Antonio Machado

The Wind, one brilliant day called to my soul

With the fragrance of Jasmine.

The Wind said:

“In the return for the fragrance of my jasmine

I’d like all the fragrance of your roses.”

My soul replied,

“I have no roses—

All the flowers in my garden are dead.”

“Well then,” said the wind,

“I’ll take the withered petals

And the yellow leaves

And all the waters of the fountain.”

And with them, the wind left.

And I wept.

And I said to myself:

“What have you done with the garden

That was entrusted to you?”

Sister Adaire Lassonde, St. Paul, Minnesota

Easter is the feast of hope. This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty.
By Richard Rohr, OFM

Many, many times I have thought about this paragraph I read last year on Easter. Easter is the highest feast day of our Church, the one that holds all hope. It is certainly good that God has the last word, because I am looking for life and beauty every day of my life. The world today does not offer much hope, but I know I must find it. I wish the daily news would make its duty to offer hope, I look for the priest at the pulpit to offer hope, I look to my colleagues and friends to speak hope, and I grab books that I wish would give me hope. So, my job is to look for hope in the life and beauty that is given to me by a God all merciful and compassionate. As a Christian I have the duty to follow Jesus, to live a life that mirrors his, so that my life shouts hope!

Sister Joan Penzenstadler, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

This poem invites us to awaken to the bold energy that filled our SSND foundress, Mother Theresa. It speaks to me especially during the Lenten/springtime season, because, in our hemisphere, death and darkness are breaking open to new life and light all around us. God’s energy lives in the seed at the core of our being. Daring to enter the unplowed ground, the darkness that daunts us, grace can transform us into the seed we thought we could not be.

Our Journey as Daughters of Blessed Theresa
By Sister Lois Wickenhauser

Restless seed plunged into soil

surrenders to the energy of darkness.

Transformed, it emerges to bathing light

fragile

bewildered

firm in resolve to embrace new life.

Liberating light nags

furrows to widen for seedlings

to become seed we thought we could not be.

Transforming God, lavish us with passion

to seek You in unplowed ground.

Make bold our questioning.

Wrestle us from comfort.

Shatter our seed.

Grace us into the daring that intoxicated her.

Sister Carol Marie Hemish, Shakopee, Minnesota

From Book of Hours
By Thomas Merton

Make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning,

Uttering the new name of your exultation

Deep in the vitals of your soul.

Make ready for the Christ, Whose smile like lightning

Sets free the song of everlasting glory

That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.

This is my reflection on those words from Thomas Merton.

This is a reminder for the morning:
Make ready . . . for lightning will come.
The dark morning sky is moving
in pinks and lavenders and yellows.
only to return to the gentle blue that surrounds the light.

Thank you, Giver of Light, for moving deep in my being,
and doing it in song, in song!
Then I will not only hear but feel your glory within,
and I can’t miss the dynamite when it comes.

How can this powerful glory sleep in my paper flesh?
It is lightning: It is the Christ.

Sister Pat Bauer and Sister Pat Dooley, St. Louis, Missouri

The Merciful Trinity icon by Caritas Mueller, OP has drawn us into prayer and brings us into our Lenten 2025 poem reflection.

And God Weeps
By Sister Pat Bauer and Sister Pat Dooley

Taking a long loving look at what is real, we see

People who are hungry and homeless

People suffering loss due to war and natural disasters

People aging, and lonely without care

And God weeps