RELIGIOUS LIFE
ANNIE WOROBETZ. COURTESY OF SCHOOL SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME.
What is charism?
SISTER THERESE DelGenio, S.S.N.D. expresses her community’s charism through her work at Cincinnati’s Our Daily Bread, an organization that calls itself a “ministry of hospitality.”
by Cathy O’Connell-Cahill
Cathy O’ConnellCahill is a writer and editor who lives in Chicago.
Charism is the inspirational purpose that starts communities and keeps them going. It is community mission and spirit. It gives communities distinctive personalities and imbues their daily practice with meaning.
M
Y FRIEND SHERYL is a Cistercian. She set off with some other nuns from the United States and Europe to refound a monastery on an island in the middle of Norway, where Cistercians had lived for three centuries during the Middle Ages. She speaks Norwegian now. Sheryl and the other sisters sing the Liturgy of the Hours together in their chapel seven times each day. They work not at outside jobs but inside the monastery, making herbal soaps and skin cream to support themselves. The Cistercian day is a balance of prayer (both private and choral), work, and spiritual reading. The sisters spend much of the day in silence. Another friend of mine, Thérèse, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, opened a homeless shelter with one of her fellow sisters on the South Side of Chicago,
30 | VISION 2018 | VocationNetwork.org
