Posts by Sr. Mary Valerie Schneider

There are two parts to Advent, the final part beginning on December 17 and ending on Christmas. On these days the antiphon for the Magnificat in Evening Prayer addresses Christ with the seven Messianic titles. Sometimes this second part of Advent is called the “Golden Nights.” The O Antiphons have been around since the fourth…

Today’s Second Reading tells us that the “peace of God . . . will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Guarding?  Isn’t that for soldiers and police? But peace guarding our hearts? In another place in Scripture we read that Christ is our peace (Micah 5:4 and Eph. 2:14). Yes, Christ guards our…

There’s a prayer tucked into today’s Second Reading at Mass for this Second Sunday of Advent:  “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and insight.” We all know persons who are difficult to love. They live in our own houses, among our coworkers, in our communities. We…

            Let’s make Advent an Advent-ure by becoming more aware of God’s coming. One way is to consider the three M’s of Advent. The first M stands for Memory. In the four weeks of Advent we pull out the Church’s scrapbook and look at the many persons and events leading up to the coming of…

“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love” is the prayer of today’s Second Reading. What does boundless love look like? Do you see a small child running to a grandparent to encircle legs in a hug? Or an adult son or daughter caring day after day for an elderly parent shriveled with…

  On this feast of Saint Andrew we hear Jesus inviting him, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” If we are fishers of people, what is our bait and hook? What do we do and say to attract persons to Christ? I feel the answer is simply bearing the mystery…

As a kid, I liked to climb a mountain of snow and yell “I’m king!” But when no one was around to hear my yell, was I really a king?  What makes Jesus a king?  We do. After all, you can’t be a king if you don’t have followers. We just celebrated the solemnity of…

          In 1776 we took a big chance and won our independence. Not long after we took another big risk. We wrote a Constitution assuring every citizen freedom and rights the world had never seen. In the 1880s and early 1900s our nation abolished slavery and gave everyone the right to…

            Are our national policies based on the WIIFM principle—What’s in it for me? Maturity is determined by how much we grow out of self-centeredness and how far we can attend to the other. Though the most powerful nation on earth, we are childish in practice. Does it always have to be “my way”? To…

I recently watched the video made by Bo Landin titled “Toxic Puzzle.” Toxins are everywhere: in the air, in water, in the ground. The movie showed that toxins are causing ALS, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and other neurological disorders. The culprit is BMAA, which is present in every algae bloom. Only very specialized equipment can detect…