My daughter spent the past week with the Children of Mary on a sprawling farm in the Midwest. The sisters run a week-long retreat for girls in the rolling hills, under fan-shaped trees in lush, rural Ohio. She’d met the sisters at another retreat that they’d hosted up in Maine. This week-long summer event has been on our calendar ever since.
It can be challenging for Catholic teenagers to find faith-centered opportunities that manage to take both their faith and their burgeoning independence seriously. Too often teen gatherings either treat the faith or their participants flippantly. But this retreat was serious and fun – real and reflective, playful and freeing. When I picked up my daughter, she had a deeper sense of confidence than when I left her a week ago.
The Children of Mary
I dropped her off last Sunday – she knew no one, but was ready to share a tent with three other girls for a little over five days. The sisters were everything I’d hoped for – kind and welcoming, enthusiastic, joyful – but most especially they radiated a deep tenderness. The sisters have vowed their lives to pray for priests, and to “pray and work to quench the thirst of Jesus to be loved in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”
This community began in hopes and plans in 2002 – infants in the history of the Church – and received approval from their bishop in 2016. They’re a young, vibrant, and growing order. A daughter of a friend has recently professed her final vows with the Children of Mary, along with many others, she’s inspired by the Sisters’ joyful hospitality.
Their mission is “a response to the lament of the Sacred Heart that Love is not loved. We give our lives in love to Him, and work to draw souls to recognize His love for them in order that they may respond with their own love and adoration.” And they’re doing so by pouring their love into Christ and their fellow men. This retreat is only one example of the generosity of these sisters. They refer to themselves as “semi-apostolic contemplatives” and consistent time with Christ in the Eucharist is paired with active work among the poor, the elderly, and the dying.
Driving Delights
Driving from Maine to Central Ohio takes a long time, especially if you drive like I do – missing exits and getting distracted by stops along the way. We visited the Shrine of St. Kateri in Upstate New York – a lovely spot – built near the original site of the village where St. Kateri spent most of her life. There are walking trails, outdoor Stations of the Cross, a votive chapel, and a little church.
We stopped to eat our lunch, and walked the trail to the blessed spring. The spring has been re-blessed this spring for Kateri’s 350th baptismal anniversary. On the trail, we saw the Kateri-oak tree, wide and tall and ancient. The tree is as old as St. Kateri herself.
After leaving the Shrine, we meandered our way down to my Alma Mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville. I have friends still living there – some of whom I haven’t seen in over a decade. We pulled into the homestead of friends and spent a few hours updating each other while our kids renewed their friendships as well.
Then we drove down into town to connect with another family. The next day, after dropping off my daughter at her retreat, we headed north to see my dad. Detroit is the home of the Solanus Casey Center – where Blessed Solanus Casey spent the end of his life. The Center offers confession six days a week, provides work for formerly incarcerated people, and offers a place of quiet and prayer in the bustle of downtown Detroit.
Travel Masses
It can be difficult to find a great Mass on the road. There’s timing to work around, distance, and all sorts of communication confusions. On our first Sunday, we passed through Steubenville, which has an abundance of Sunday Masses both on and off campus. But on the way home, we were less sure of ourselves.
We ended up stopping for a late, Saturday Mass at a sweet little parish with kind people and a disappointing liturgy. In many ways, the Mass was a blessing though. Not only did it fit well into our travel schedule, it gave us an opportunity to see the beauty and kindness in a parish so unlike our own. In our community, we’re fortunate enough to be surrounded by good liturgy – and it’s helpful to step outside that happy world to meet people who quite obviously love Christ, but struggle with reverence at Mass. I spent a lot of the drive listening to NPR – and one caller stood out to me: “Everything is a fight for [Americans],” she said … “it’s always one side against another.” She’s right, and often it’s because we don’t meet a variety of people – we interact too often in specially curated spaces, both online and in reality. Traveling can give us the opportunity to be uncomfortable, and to welcome and be welcomed.
People are the greatest delight in traveling. The people who share our values, the people who couldn’t be more different. The sweet hotel clerks, the coffee-shop guy having a rough morning, the parish priest who’d rather be at a baseball game … they are all people who enrich our little journeys. Too often, we spend too much time dismissing the people we don’t know and the people we disagree with. If we let it, travel opens us up to knowing and loving our fellow men again.
