A Cowboy’s Selfie

OUR STORY …

Well, Sr. Linda took it just about as far as it would go. Fr. Mitch was ready for her to be cloistered. It’s a good thing for Sr. Linda that the media nuns aren’t cloistered.

As for the rest of us, we’re glad they’re not cloistered too. The nuns still pray for us — Lord knows we need it! But it’s hard to imagine what we would’ve missed if some of these great personalities (shaped by community living, for sure) weren’t known to us lay folks. What a force of inspiration they are!

IN THE BIBLE …

Most people avoid the wilderness, but the Bible reveals that God often uses the wilderness to change lives and redirect the course of history.

Jesus spent time in the wilderness (Luke 4:1). So did the Jews, John the Baptizer, and most of the prophets and saints. The 10 tribes that rebelled against the way Moses showed the Jews to worship remain scattered in the wilderness even today. Of course, God has promised to bring them home eventually.

Retreats and pilgrimage are ways for the faithful to get away from daily distractions today and enter a spiritual wilderness to meet the Lord.

LIFE GOES ON …

Behind the curtain in this cartoon is the issue of self.

“Selfies” are fun for a lot of people, and we‘re not criticizing. But we are reminding our friends that, to become holy, self must decrease so that the Divine can increase in each of us (John 3:30).