Sister Regina is a fictitious Handmaid who appears almost every week on this site, on our Facebook page, and in our Twitter feed. She gives those outside the cloister an idea of what life within the monastery can be like. Click any cartoon to see a larger image.
Sister Regina the cartoon is not published during the seasons of Advent, the Christmas Octave, Lent, or the Easter Octave to not only allow the Handmaids to more deeply enter into those times of more intense prayer, but also to encourage others to do so as well.
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.
#sisterreginacomicstrip
People can often, even unconsciously, live as though their peace was relative to themselves alone. If only they got this or that, then they would be at peace. But that’s chasing after an unobtainable, worldly illusion of peace. Even if a semblance of ‘peace’ is achieved, it will be short-lived.
"Choosing" a path of life, a misnomer already, can also be fraught with this error. Too often the Self acts as master of the universe as it examines “What will make ME happy?” Vocational discernment can’t be placed in that box of Self. What it should seek to discern, to discover, and not decide arbitrarily, is what God wants for that soul. Is grace present for that call? The decision point, maybe more properly thought of as a line, a solid line through the whole of life, is “Will I decide to accept and use that grace to do exactly what God wants? To live and to do what he made me for?"
Here’s the bonus! When a person does discern that call and recognizes the grace available to live it, and cooperates with that grace so that it bears fruit, then there is God`s peace, joy, and fulfillment even amid a tempest of trials and tribulations, even if they last a lifetime.
#sisterreginacomicstrip
Corpus Christi: If it’s really the Body of Christ, then how should we feel about it?
Catholics have much to be proud of in our Faith. While we can list many facets of the Church worthy of inspiration and emulation, be it in Church history or the lives of the Saints, the item that could arguably take first place calling for our pride in it, is the one that actually challenges our humility the most. And it’s not an ‘it’ or a ‘one’ or an ‘item’ at all. It’s Someone. It’s Jesus.
We’re speaking of the Source and Summit of our Faith: the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist: the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a reality we must celebrate with our whole being involving all our senses because, in the Incarnation, Jesus Christ came fully in the flesh, with the same senses we have, and he desired to remain with his Church for all time…physically. To give us the gift of the Eucharist, he gave us the Priesthood to make him truly and really present to us.
This should be mind blowing, jaw dropping, awe-inspiring…but so very few even care to appreciate what it means to have the Eucharist. Let alone the opportunity to receive Our Lord. Think of the humility of God! He abases himself to become the food of his proud, little children in order to demonstrate his yearning to be one with us.
If man invented a god, that god would demand humans be brought up to his own level of perfection by human sacrifice before they could communicate. But God, who created man, condescends to lower himself down to our fallen level through his sacrifice just for the chance we might acknowledge him to be who he claims to be. Our God and our All!
This Corpus Christi make it a point to thank God for coming to us so meekly yet so mightily. We will never be worthy of his sacrifice but he still desires to share his life with us. It’s easier than we think. As one of our dear Chaplains used to pray, “Dear Lord, give me real eyes that I may realize where the Real lies.” Acknowledge we are not God, acknowledge that God is God and he has a right to our repentance conversion contrition reparation and adoration.
#SisterReginaComicStrip
OK...we all know what is happening this week and we are all praying about it. Of course, we mean All Souls Day! Our nation undeniably needs unity and healing but without prayer and sacrifice, elections alone will not solve the deeper problems in our society. So let us entrust all our elected leaders to the intercession of the Saints and the Holy Souls as Saint Paul advises us. While it is easy to point far up the ladder to blame whoever is at the top, it is easy to forget that true conversion starts with the self. And harder still to do it. We need to be faithful Catholics. That will enable us to flourish as good citizens as well. PRAY AND SACRIFICE for them, whether or not you agree with them. Their salvation, and yours, may very well depend on it.
#sisterreginacomicstrip
Vocations News: Coping with COVID-19 and Come and Sees
Yes, 2020 has been quite a year. We managed to get in a couple visits with inquiring women before COVID became a byword and seeming harbinger of all that could go wrong with the year 2020. By lockdown in March it was hoped a few weeks would be sufficient to dispel the plague of 2020. Now, as fall approaches with lifts and more lock downs and Advent promises to arrive quickly, many wouldn’t be blamed for thinking things will never get back to ‘normal’. Even the phrase ‘new normal’ really can’t fit this strange culture of permanent distancing and sanitization. And yet...who really defines normal?
Take the normal process of discerning a vocation to the religious life. Correspondence, a building relationship, an in person visit or visits (Come and See) to experience a little bit of the life, further education and learning, entrance....etc. All the predictable steps that were standard now have a virus template to adapt to. And with our limited capacity to communicate via the internet in our neck of the woods, video meetings over a computer wouldn’t be just another strange hurdle to learn, they would be cost prohibitive given our data caps. You would think with this new COVID-19 ’normal’ that, between social distancing and communications obstacles, we would have to forego welcoming inquirers, candidates, and aspirants. But who really defines normal? God. He can work around EVERYTHING.
So this fall and God willing, into the new year as well, we’ve scheduled women for Come and See experiences, suitably adapted to the precautions of coronavirus. We plan on sharing lots of information and communication in both directions....just not any germs or viruses! It demands creativity, flexibility, and ingenuity. Perhaps we can add the live video stuff someday but for now, God’s providing! #sisterreginacomicstrip
Website note: September 2020 – We switched to posting Sister Regina’s Comic Strips on Instagram, but you can still enjoy her past comics in the archive below.
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- Humor helps. A cartoon from the not so distant past.
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- Excerpt from a summer cartoon about bats
