Surprising Grace

On September 21, FCJ sisters and our friends marked the launch of our bicentenary year - a year in which we celebrate 200 years since the founding of what Marie Madeleine - our foundress - called "this little Society". She was convinced that the Society came about by God's grace and would be sustained by it. Two hundred years later, those of us who have been drawn to each other in this Society have lived our life and mission in vastly different ways and contexts. Marie Madeleine and her sisters, who ministered to poor children of cotton pickers in Europe of the 1800s, could scarcely have imagined the Society setting foot in some of the lands we FCJs now come from. As we turn the page into a new chapter for the Society, perhaps it would be interesting for us to ask, "What does it mean to be an FCJ in this time in our history?" Of course, everyone in their particular contexts would have a different answer... though woven through them all perhaps w...

This post was written on Saturday, 15 September 2018. A woman in Baggao, Philippines, where typhoon Mangkhut made landfall with winds of 205 km/h. ( Source ) As I write this, supertyphoon Mangkhut – what they say is the strongest typhoon of the year – is passing to the north of us. We have been expecting it for a while now – the weather these few days has been still, heavy and foreboding – and last night when we were asleep the rains and winds started. While we are not directly in the path of the storm, the power of the winds lashing the trees and houses is still awesome to behold. It also inspires fear. It strips away the illusion we usually have of control, and exposes our fundamental vulnerability before nature. My prayer this morning as I listened to the wind was a very uncomfortable one. I was uncomfortably aware that I was sitting safe and dry in a sturdy house with plenty of provisions to ride out the storm, but that countless other people in the same city were huddled ...