This week we are praying in a special way for the priests of the Diocese of Owensboro, KY. Each week we will pray for 4 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us! #priestchalkboard ...

This week we’ll be praying in a special way for the priests of the @phoenixdiocese . Each week we will pray for 6 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us! @BishopOlmsted
@bishopnevares ...

This week we are praying in a special way for the priests of the Diocese of Owensboro, KY. Each week we will pray for 4 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us! #priestchalkboard ...

This week we are praying in a special way for the priests of the Diocese of Phoenix. Each week we will pray for 6 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us!

Learn more about our priest chalkboard here: https://nunsforpriests.org/our-priest-chalkboard/

#priestchalkboard ...

This week we are praying in a special way for the priests of the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio. Each week we will pray for 6 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us!

Learn more about our priest chalkboard here:
https://nunsforpriests.org/our-priest-chalkboard/

#PriestChalkboard ...

This week we are praying in a special way for the priests of the Diocese of Phoenix. Each week we will pray for 6 specific priests until we have prayed for all of the priests in the diocese. Please join us!
Learn more about our priest chalkboard here: https://nunsforpriests.org/our-priest-chalkboard/ #priestchalkboard ...

In this cartoon, we explore the inevitable failures of devices, such as the one we make the cartoons with. Technology is no panacea. It can be a dangerous distraction from God. Using technology wisely and prudently is a demanding art of balancing the prayerful and the practical. If a duty requires some kind of computer, we aim, within our means, to obtain the most reliable we can afford because we are going to get every millisecond of its lifespan and often far beyond it. The doodling stylus literally crumbled after giving it's life (and its spare nibs) for the sake of some humorous cartoon-evangelization about our religious life and our mission in the Church to sanctify priests.

During this maintenance issue, we had the chance to muse on living a life where all mistakes were recorded and could never be fully erased. Pause and think about that. What would life be like without the Mercy of God? Life without Confession? Life with no chance of reconciliation? It would be uglier than a messy cartoon. Conversely, just as the UNDO feature returns the digital canvas to its pristine condition for fresh creativity, so also the Sacrament of Reconciliation returns the soul to fruitful and peaceful friendship with God. He is the Great Panacea...and frankly, the only one we really need.
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All God’s Creatures Got a Place In The Choir

Do you remember singing, “All God’s Creatures Got A Place In The Choir?” Yes, everything and every little thing was indeed made by God for a purpose even when we can’t know precisely why that is. In Heaven, adoring God in the Beatific vision, it’s unlikely that we will feel the need to ask, “Lord, why did you create the lady bugs that bite and stink and aren’t so lady like?” But we can practice now being grateful for them. After all, they do eat aphids and are fairly cute.

Being grateful even for things we can’t understand, or even like, is wonderful preparation. Preparation for what? Growing in holiness. Joyful gratitude is the hallmark of the Saints. So next time you want to complain about those little bugs, thank God for them instead.

#SisterReginaComicStrip ...

Eucharistic Revival
The USCCB is organizing a multiyear effort to revive the experience of the Eucharist in the life of the Catholic Church in America. Note the word "experience". It's crucial. While there must necessarily be a complete re-education on the Source and Summit of our Faith, knowing about the Eucharist won't be enough. Lived CONTACT with the Real Presence will cement the facts that we learn with our brains into fully formed Faith and formed consciences in the soul.

Arguments and wasteful fights about who deserves to receive Communion ought to fall by the wayside as each Catholic, in experiencing Christ truly present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, recognizes that none of us are worthy. But his Mercy allows us to repent, amend our ways, and reverently approach to receive the Gift that is never to be viewed as a "right". If anything, a successful revival will deeply inculcate in disciples that it is God's rights that matter most. Can anyone claim we haven't been trampling on those rights?

We must experience the Eucharist. Take a page out of Blessed Charles de Foucauld's prayer book. Oh, how his life changed when he entered a Church long after losing his childhood faith and prayed, "Dear God, if you exist make me know you!" God answered in spades! We go, kneel, look, expose our souls to Our Lord exposed in the monstrance and pray, "Dear Jesus, if you are truly present here, make me know you!" We expect nothing but allow him to flood our entire being with his loving gaze. And we keep doing this regularly. Calloused knees can be good for the soul. Time 'wasted' with Jesus bears only good fruit EVERYWHERE else as it gently draws us closer to him in all the other Sacraments, especially Confession.

This revival is not about numbers, Church attendance, or tithing. It is about relearning the truth of Jesus' Real Presence and our response in all aspects of our lives.

#SisterReginaComicStrip ...

t’s not rare that some may think the cloistered life is boring and monotonous, or very easy since, "All you do is pray. Not work." But both of these ideas are monastic myths. We do both: ora et labora [pray and work]. And, in truth, all of it is prayer and only possible by prayer.

The Prayer: Seven times a day we pray the Divine Office [the Liturgy of the Hours]. We are blessed to have Benediction and Mass, individual holy hours of Eucharistic adoration, spiritual reading, lectio divina, study, and nocturnal hours of Eucharistic adoration. And that's not also counting the conferences, chapters, and ongoing formation. Depending on a day's schedule the sum total of actual time this can sanctify is between six and seven hours a day or more. It is after and around all these foundational elements of prayer (without which our existence is impossible) that we tuck in the work, sometimes in fits and starts.

The Work: This can range from chores like laundry, ironing, cooking, cleaning, sacristy, gardening, maintenance, repairs, to the entire host of office tasks falling into administration, website work, apostolic venues, vocations, prayer requests, correspondence, medical, bookkeeping, fundraising and the other sundry tasks that must be done to keep a monastery up and running.

The Great Adventure: As many of us came to the monastic life from a culture of "get things done!", the adventure has been to transition from a day of 'to-do' lists to days of constant contact with Our Lord in prayer, whether it be in Chapel or at work. It’s a challenge to let the work not drive the day, but rather to allow the prayer to drive the work. When we find God present with his ample grace to get needful tasks accomplished with peace and prayer, we discover we are right in the middle of God's Great Adventure: living together in his Presence, close to his heart in everything we do.
#sisterreginacomicstrip ...

Make a plan and God laughs, right? There is a converse rule of thumb too. Make a plan that is NOT God's and be miserable. Despite appearances to the contrary among the elite, celebrities, and the lives of the rich and famous, have you ever personally met someone who got "everything they ever wanted" apart from God to be truly joyful, content, peaceful and satisfied?

What a blessing it is that WITH JESUS we already have everything we can want or need - even amid the trials, difficulties, persecutions, poverty etc., that may never have been part of "our" plans! God's plans for us are always the best. ...

What’s in a name? Everything. For our purposes, we will say that names count for everything. They tell us, among other things, precisely who we are praying for. A quick glance at the Bible indicates that God takes names very seriously. Think of Isaiah 43:1 "I have called you by name; you are mine." or Is 43:6 ff "Bring back my sons from afar...everyone who is named as mine, who I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." Apply these words to priests and see the link between naming and possessing: being called and possessed by God! We are named because we are God's. So too with priests. When we install a name plaque in the Mary, Mother of Priests, Tribute Garden we aren't so much honoring individual men; we are honoring God, who called each of them to be his special possession, his anointed ones as priests.

Each name plaque, each name, each life, each vocation, each man is unique and different yet infinitely, personally precious in God's eyes as his co-workers in his vineyard. Each name mounted is, as it were, a permanent prayer request "Remember me in your prayers, I beg you!" This "me" has a name. His name matters. Names count. The extra burdens priests carry in their lifelong imitation of Christ Crucified for the sake of others, demand our faithful and continuous prayer support.

Names count. The individual name can be unique, but his Cross is universally fashioned to follow the footsteps of the High Priest.

If you would like to pay tribute to a special priest you are grateful to God for; consider making a donation and submitting his name to the Mary, Mother of Priests, Garden. To learn more, visit this link.

PS Even if you are unable to donate, we will still pray for that priest. They all deserve our prayers!
https://nunsforpriests.org/mary-mother-of-priests-garden/
#sisterreginacomicstrip #tributegarden ...