Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Homily

Stay Awake and Be Ready

by 1 Comment

This week in the U.S. the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) will be convening in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Let us pray for the leaders of women’s communities – and not solely for them – but for all levels of leadership in communities of women religious.  May they be women of faith, alive in hope.  They and all of us must live in hope with the assurance that however things turn out it makes sense in God’s plan.  Our daily stance must be the words of the psalmist: Stay awake and be ready.

Several years ago, Mother Teresa appeared on the Hour of Power television program.  The host, Pastor Robert Schuller, reminded her that the show was being broadcast all over America and in 22 foreign countries, including her native Yugoslavia.  He asked her if there was one message she would like to convey to all those viewers.  Her response was, “Yes, tell them to pray.  And tell them to teach their children to pray.”

Sadly, we live in a generation where there seems to be little hope in our world.  Jesus keeps reminding us to trust God.  He encourages us to let go of our resentments, our doubts and our fears.  He urges us to remember that there is never a storm so tumultuous that He cannot bring us to safety.  There is no night so dark that His light cannot penetrate it.  Nothing is going to happen to us that, with God’s grace, we can’t handle.  When hurricane winds howl, and tornado winds whip around us or flood waters are rising we have to remind ourselves that prayer is our most powerful and most reliable force.

Sometimes it may seem that no one is listening.  Do you recall how four-year-old impish Anna addressed God in Sydney Hopkins book: Mister God, This Is Anna?  She had great conversations with her Mister God.  So introduce yourself to God.  God is listening.  He will answer your prayers in His own time and in His own way.  God said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”  Be on the lookout for God’s touches in your life.  One day Jesus may ask us: “Who touched me? ….  I know someone touched me, power went out of me.”  Be sure that your touches in people’s lives are God-like.  How we get along with each other says a great deal about how we love God and the kind of people we want to be.

You know of many instances when Jesus healed with a touch.  And how often do you say, or hear people say, “That really touched my heart.”  Our words do touch people – our compliments and affirmations but also the barbs, rudeness or hurtful teasing.  Our words leave their mark – will they be angry red scar marks or soft reminders of happy times?  Remember the little girl who was saying her nightly prayers.  (She said,) “Dear God, if you’re there and you hear my prayer, could you please just touch me?”  Just then she felt a touch and got so excited!  She said, “Thank you, God, for touching me.”  Then she looked up, saw her older sister and got a little suspicious.  “Did you just touch me?”  The sister answered, “Yes, I did.”  “What did you do that for?” she asked.  “God told me to” was the reply.

Our big question is: Do we know how to pray as we ought?  Do we merely ask for things, or do we dare ask to be transformed?  When we do so, do we promise to follow the promptings of the Spirit?  We can’t ask God to guide our footsteps if we are not willing to move our feet.

I will close with a portion of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Speech:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, successful, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to make manifest the glory that is within us, it’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

 

Continue Reading

Transfiguration

by 2 Comments

Some thoughts as we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration.

Today, August 6th, is a holy day, but sadly it is also Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb in 1945.  Hiroshima is the absolute opposite of the Transfiguration.  Hiroshima means despair/death – it means things too horrible to remember and too important to forget.  Hiroshima demonstrates for us that action divorced from contemplation, temps us to self-justification regarding the past and numbness or passivity regarding the future.

Transfiguration means life!  Transfiguration means Hope!  Jesus’ faith was tested in fire that transformed the cross into a sign of love that we adore.  Witnessing the Transfiguration gave the disciples strength to go down the mountain and continue Jesus’ mission.

Today, we must WAKE UP!  Remember who God is and who we are!

Today, we must, in the name of humanity – repent, and rededicate ourselves to prayer and action for peace, that the transfigured Jesus, who conquers with love, serves, and whose judgement is mercy, might be seen in us.

PEACE!  Let us be conformed to Christ and mercy’s prophetic way!

                                                                                                                       Sister Mary David Hydro

Continue Reading

What is it that compels us to accumulate rather than dispossess?

by Leave a Comment

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they DO NOT UNDERSTAND, but the passages that bother me the most are those I DO UNDERSTAND.                             Mark Twain

What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?  This is what I shall do: I shall build a larger barn.”   Now, I suspect most people figure that  Jesus was making reference to a barn such as we see on a farm or ranch.   Familiar sights?  But, I wonder, could we also apply the story to the “barns” that we build in our living spaces?

Ever notice how people (not you, of course) cannot leave a counter bare?  Or a closet empty?  Or a room, without using it for storage of some kind?   Some people do not want to leave “green space” in nature or their lives.  We increase storage space instead of disposing of excessive possessions – furniture, clothing, “things.”  What is it that compels us to accumulate rather than dispossess?  Sometimes it is just easier to plunk it down there and not have to deal with how to pass it on to a needy person.  When you hear word of a community yard sale do you wait so long to make a choice of what you could donate that the event passes you by?  Of worse, you attend the sale and find some treasures and bargains that call out to you: “I’m yours.”    Yes, your few pennies may have supported a worthy cause.  But your contribution of items for the sale may have served a dual purpose of supporting the cause AND unburdening your jam-packed closet and some of the clutter in your life.

And, what about the craft or sewing supplies that are gathering dust?  You know the ones you got when you had great plans to make things for the gift shop or for Christmas gifts.  Here is a chance to give them to people who will make items for the hospital gift shop.  Or provide local nursing home residents with an activity to occupy some of the long hours that stretch to their death.  Our small acts of dispossession and charity can send ripples far beyond our four walls.

To further expand the meaning of the Gospel story, consider what we store up in the “barns” of our minds.  We can “store up the treasure” of holy thoughts, of pleasurable memories of people we treasure.  Or, we can store up the memory of unpleasant, negative events or people, of resentments that we have gunny-sacked for years.  Or pack our minds full of the things we need to get done before we go to bed or the sun comes up on tomorrow or before rapidly advancing deadlines.  Did you forget that Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” – the simple souls, the uncluttered minds, the trustful, hopeful people.

Here is a little trick for when you find yourself depressed or emotionally overwrought.  This type of stress is rumbling in the right hemisphere of your brain – the creative, emotional holistic side.  What to do?  Switch to your matter-of-fact left brain by doing math, writing factual material, working a crossword or Sudoku puzzle; organizing your desk, dresser or closet.  The emotional right brain will calm down.  [Adapted from Jane Cole-Hamilton, Wellspring Seminars]

However, if you feel time-stressed, over-burdened, burned out, that’s the left hemisphere of your brain pulling rank on you.  So switch to your right brain by playing a sport, singing, listening to music or with abandon play a musical instrument; take a leisurely walk, sit on the outdoor swing, breathe in deeply and enjoy nature.

When you enter into your annual retreat (or a day of reflection), start with a prayer that you can settle into the true spirit of “retreat.”   “Retreat” does not mean what I thought it did when I had to write spelling sentences in fifth grade.  I thought it meant re-treat (do it again or repeat a medical treatment). So, in my paragraph using the weekly spelling words I had the Army re-treating over multiple times (not a bad idea) but then I portrayed them withdrawing from the scene.  Talk about running in place!

Retreat can also mean to give ground.  We give ground from whatever is keeping us from relaxing in the spirit.  Relax – to lax again; like rehab for frozen stiff muscles and joints.  We squeeze our mental, spiritual muscles and then let go.  We squeeze ourselves to take a good look at what we are becoming, what we may need to get rid of, or pass on to another cause.    We want to re-lax even when that may mean hard spiritual work to de-clutter the “stuff” from our mind-heart barns.  We want to divest ourselves in order to make more “green space” in the environment of our lives.

As one of our elderly Sisters told me many years ago from her hospital bed:  “You just never know when this may be your last retreat.”  God said it, too: “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
Continue Reading

Her “Habit” Was Like No Other

by 1 Comment

You couldn’t miss her little red motor scooter as she jotted around the campus of Saint Leo University to and from Holy Name Monastery.  Sister Mildred Gelis, OSB, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Florida, passed into eternal life on July 26, 2019.  Born to Lodo Ann and Jean Gelis on June 28, 1925, Sister grew-up in Slidell, LA.  Predeceased by her three siblings, Sister Mildred is survived by her Benedictine Sisters community and several nieces and nephews, including Michael and Cynthia Lewis.

Sister Mildred attended public school and when Our Lady of Lourdes School opened, the Gelis children were enrolled.  Staffed by the Benedictine Sisters from Holy Name in Florida, Sister, though very young, became convinced she wanted to become a nun.  And so it was that after her high school graduation in June of 1942, she left home to respond to the call from God.  She received her training as a Sister in the Order of St. Benedict at Holy Name in St. Leo, Florida and then attended Mount St. Scholastica College, Atchison, Kansas.  Her undergraduate degree was from Loyola University, New Orleans and a graduate degree in Theology from St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

Education was always Sister Mildred’s life’s blood.  She taught in parochial schools in Ocala, Jacksonville Beach, and Sarasota.  But it would be a little rural public school in St. Joseph, Florida that would prove to be the most challenging with first, second, third, and fourth grades combined.  After 31 years of teaching and leadership positions, retirement in 1981 would not last long.  Sister Mildred decided on another career and went back to school to learn printing.  She joined the staff at Saint Leo University and eventually ran their Copy Center with duties that included copy machines, offset press, typesetting, making negatives and plates.  She loved the work, but said, “the pressure of meeting deadlines could get hectic at times.”  Sister was delighted to travel with friends in 1990-1991 in Europe and Japan.

Interviewed in 1997 by the Pasco Times at the age of 72 and still riding her scooter, Sister said, “I’m just very energetic.  I can still outwork people 20 or 30 years of age.  I like getting my hands dirty – as long as I can get them clean again!”

A wiz at machinery of all kinds, it was fun to watch Sister “fix” the motor scooter she rode back and forth to work.  An easy-going soul, Sister Mildred also enjoyed working on cars which was helpful in keeping car maintenance costs at a minimum for the community.  Other service to Holy Name included Scholastic Mistress, sub-prioress, and councilor.  Sister also volunteered for a number of years on the St. Leo town commission.  For sure, though, it was her skills with computers and technology that were outstanding contributions to the Sisters, saving the community untold financial expense.

Vigil Prayer Service will be held Friday, August 2nd at 7:00 pm, Holy Name Monastery (12138 Wichers Road, St. Leo, FL).  Mass of the Resurrection will be celebrated at Holy Name Monastery on Saturday, August 3rd at 10 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, kindly direct donations in Sister Mildred’s memory to Benedictine Sisters of Florida, PO Box 2450, St. Leo, FL 33574;  www.benedictinesistersoffl.org.

Continue Reading

Celebrating the Gift of Friendship

by Leave a Comment

The two sections in this gospel – the prayer of Jesus and the reminder that when we seek we shall find, and that our knock and will open the door –   each is a comforting promise of God’s personal gift of friendship.  So I’d like to share with you a story of friendship – imaginary but nonetheless one that I trust will touch your heart.

 

TALE of TWO HORSES

[Author unknown – adapted]

If you listen for my bell, I promise I will listen for yours

 

Just down the road from our monastery is a field with two horses in it.  From a distance, each looks like any other horse.  But, if you stop your car, or are working or walking nearby, you will notice something quite amazing.  Looking into the eyes of one horse will disclose that he is blind.  His owner has chosen not to have him put down, but has made a good home for him.  This alone is amazing.

When you are nearby, and you are really listening, you will hear the sound of a bell.  Looking around for the source of the sound, you will see that it comes from the smaller horse in the field.  Attached to her halter is a small bell.  It lets her blind friend know where she is, so he can follow her.

As you stand and watch these two friends, you’ll see how she is always checking on him, and that he will listen for her bell and then slowly walk toward where she is, trusting that she will not lead him astray.  When she returns to the shelter of the barn each evening, she stops occasionally and looks back, making sure her friend isn’t too far behind to hear the bell.

Like the owner of these two horses, God does not throw us away just because we are not perfect or because we have problems or challenges.  God watches over us and even brings others into our lives to help us when we are in need.  Sometimes we are the blind horse being guided by the little ringing bell of those who God places in our lives.  Other times we are the guide horse, helping others see.

Good friends are like this …  You don’t always see them, but you know they are always there.

If you listen for my bell, I promise I will listen for yours.

 

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
July 28 – Celebrating the Gift of Friendship

 

Continue Reading

I don’t have to do it all…

by Leave a Comment

In the Gospel we hear: “as Jesus entered a certain village a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home…. Mary sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.”  In tomorrow’s first reading from Genesis we have the story of Sarah slaving in the kitchen and Abraham entertaining their three guests: bowing in greeting, sending them to wash up while he scurries about getting a choice steer and giving Sarah orders on what and how to prepare the meal which he alone hosts for his new buddies.

Both Scripture readings (it seems to me) concern more than the contrast between the activists – Martha behind the scene and Abraham busy arranging the details – and the more reticent ladies, Mary and Sarah.  The incidents illustrate more than hostesses each doing what they do best to make an evening delightful.  There is a bit of all these characters in each of us – one or the other prevails from day to day, and situation to situation.

Jesus’ response to Martha’s “don’t you even care that I am stuck in the kitchen?” reminds us “only one thing is necessary.”  It causes us to realize that I, as an individual, do not have to do it all.  This is evident in our practice of taking only one role in at a time in the dining room or in a single liturgy – we acknowledge (for instance) that liturgy is a communal act where all present are on the same level: differing in gifts but equal in importance.  Everything needs to get done, there are plenty of roles to share: leaders and readers, cooks and servers, singers and keyboardists, prayer leaders and bell ringers, gift bearers and petitioners, Eucharistic ministers and the celebrant.  At times our ranks may be slim, especially when members are away or illness prohibits or limits our participation, but we strive to engage everyone in the communal roles.

This is the attitude we strive to express also in the distribution of daily chores.  No single person needs to do it all – choices have to be made.  Self-importance can creep in the way if I am not careful to realize the impression I make if I try single-handedly to assume the burden of chores failing to ask for assistance.  There are times, certainly, when we have to double up on duties but we need to be conscious of enabling others to offer service and to give them the respect of recognizing their capabilities.

The Gospel also gives us a glimpse of Jesus as a gracious guest: the object of Mary’s attentions and the recipient of Martha’s service.  Jesus knew his role as servant and the one being served – the contrast between serving and resting gently and securely in the role of being a servant or a guest.

To paraphrase some thoughts from Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline:

    There is a difference between choosing to serve and choosing to be a servant (with emphasis on the word CHOOSING).  When we chose to serve, we are still in charge.  We decide whom we will serve and where we will serve and when we will serve.  And if we are in charge, we will worry a great deal about anyone stepping on us, that is taking charge over us.

     But when we choose to be a servant, we give up the right to be in charge.  There is a great freedom in this.  When we choose to be a servant, we surrender the right to decide who and where and when we will serve.  We become available and vulnerable.

We pray, then, for the grace to have a balance in our lives of being servant (a server) and of being open, receptive, gracious when others render us service – thus enabling them to achieve their God-given calling to serve.  We pray that God grant us the grace to be:

  • Humble when helpless
  • Patient when infirmed
  • Gracious when a guest
  • Comfortable when the object of service and attention, affection and praise from others
~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

Genesis 18:1-10   Colossians 1:24-28   Luke 10:38-42
Continue Reading