Posts by Sr. Susan Maria Kusz

A group of women with whom I meet once a month gifted me with a daily devotional entitled Jesus Calling.  This morning I read: “I created you to stay conscious of Me as you go about your daily duties.” For Christians, this is the holiest week of the year as we join to remember Jesus’…

This morning I began to use a little book entitled God Speaks in Many Tongues.  It contains sacred texts from a variety of religious traditions followed by a meditation on a line or two from the text of the day by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister. The words of wisdom for today come from Hildegard of…

I’m “into” the pillars of Benedictine spirituality lately!  This Sunday morning — how appropriate for a Sunday — I reflected on “holy leisure” as one of these pillars.  Joan Chittister, OSB says this:  “Leisure is the Benedictine gift of regular reflection and continual consciousness of the presence of God.  It is the gift of contemplation…

I am a consummate football fan.  I am a devoted Oregon Ducks fan.  Watching them “play their little hearts out” on Thursday night as they raced across the field and exhausted their opponent brought me immense delight.  Keep those Ducks quackin,’ I kept thinking! One of the pillars of Benedictine spirituality is creative work.  I…

And what has been done to our children?  We watched as horror unfolded in Connecticut on Friday.  Little ones … believers in the magic of Christmas … still clinging to the hope that there is a Santa Claus … the innocent ones … whole lives ahead of them … and teachers who lost their lives…

So a red-shirt frosh has captured the Heisman and set a new record for the books.  A winner!  He must be full of happiness at such recognition; Texas A&M must be rejoicing along with him. We have a winner in today’s Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent.  John the Baptist, an odd man by…

“Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths.”   — from Isaiah 2: 1-5, reading for the first Monday of Advent I am no stranger to mountains, having lived in the foothills of the…

Have you ever had the thought:  “I’m the only one working around here!” or “I’m the only one putting in my hours all the way!”  I suspect most of us have thought this at one time or another and then dealt with the feelings that come up around that thought! I’ve been reading the Rule…

“Humility, a little virtue, because it loves the shade and annihilation, blossoms only in great souls.”  (Mgr. L. Giraud)     I was given this quote thirty-five years ago by my novice director and wondered what on Earth she was thinking! I’ve been reading the Rule of Benedict and the other day came to his rather lengthy…

This morning I sat with Psalm 23.  It’s a familiar one to all of us, a psalm of comfort.  “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”  Most of us could recite much of it by heart.  Today what struck me was the line “You prepare a table before me.”  The first tables I…