AUGUST 2021
VOL. XXVI, NO. 1
www.ursulinesmsj.org
associates.msj@maplemount.org
Associates and Sisters Day focus is importance of laity By Dan Heckel, OSUA
U
rsuline Associate Phyllis Troutman, with a big smile on her face as she walked through the door of the gymnasium in Maple Mount, summed up the overriding feeling of the 2021 Associates and Sisters Day – “This is home.” It was homecoming day on June 26 for many Associates who had not been to Maple Mount since the last Associates and Sisters Day was held in June 2019. Reacclimating to the post-Covid-19 world has been difficult, but the hugs that have always come freely on this special day were prevalent again. It was a shorter day than in the past, but evaluations showed that most of the more than 50 people in attendance preferred that. When the uncertainty of the pandemic gave way to reopening the Mount on June 11, Associates and Sisters Day became the first public event at the Mount since the early spring of
Sister Larraine Lauter, left, began her keynote presentation by joining with Sister Nancy Liddy to sing “Love is the Boat for the Journey,” by Ian Callanan.
2020. Several Associates in Kansas and others watched via Zoom. After a welcome from Sister Amelia Stenger, congregational leader, and the opening prayer by Sister Betsy Moyer, the morning discussion was led by Sister Larraine Lauter, executive director of Water With Blessings. She offered some eyeopening information with her talk, “Reclaiming Our Identity: Contemplatives in an Active World.” “We live in a society that has become so keenly attuned to division that conflict seems to be our chief characteristic. The cries of suffering people bear in upon us, louder and louder ... and whatever we try to do in response seems like a drop in a leaking bucket. A great pandemic has swept over us, and we are still struggling to find our footing together, now that we are beginning to emerge from its battering waves. “Our faith tells us that Christ is as real, as present as we are in these realities … that Christ is present because we are present. In Christ, we find our hope; in Christ in one
More than 50 Ursuline Sisters and Associates gathered in the gym for Associates & Sisters Day on June 26, while others watched on Zoom.
another, we find courage, strength, wisdom for the day. We can be sure of this: that Christ does not abandon us.” Sister Larraine reminded those present that lay people have long played an important role in the Catholic Church – much longer than since Vatican II. We may think that until Saint Angela came along, the only known form of religious or consecrated life was strictly enclosed monasticism, but this isn’t true, she said. Historians are finding evidence of multiple forms of communal, spirited life in the Gospel, including many that look like what we call apostolic religious life today. They were complemented by a great number of lay movements. Following the violence toward reformers of the Church, it was lay people – the “merely baptized” – who sought to restore the Church to embody the Gospel of Jesus, Sister Larraine said.
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