Weekly Reflections

Weekly Reflections on Justice are written by the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach staff, volunteers, interns, and visiting Columban Missionaries. We hope these reflections help to guide you on your own spiritual journey working toward justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.

  • Dreams Do Come True

    I first encountered Tien in Tokyo. He had traveled there from Australia, while I had come from Ireland. Both of us were Columban seminarians who had come to Japan in order to study the language and learn about missionary life. Both of us were twenty-seven years old. During the next few years as I came to know Tien, I realized that while both of us had similar dreams for the future, his past had uniquely prepared him to become a Columban missionary. One of thirteen children, Tien grew up in Vietnam as communism...

  • Were Not Our Hearts Burning Within Us

    This week marks the end of the Easter season and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Spring is fast giving way to summer, although the change of seasons is more and more marked by the disruptions in our climate. More and more people in the world are on the move, crossing borders in search of refuge. The present is filled with anxiety and the future with uncertainty. In times such as these, we look to the past for wisdom, and ask: How did previous generations deal with crisis? We live somewhere...

  • The Joy of Welcoming the Stranger

    Parishioners at St. Catherine of Alexandria Church in Kapaa on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii are known for their tradition of warmly greeting visitors and their outreach to those in need. At each liturgy, a parishioner with a big smile encounters a visitor and warmly says, “Aloha.” Then, each visitor receives beautiful hand-knit lei from the parish. When my spouse and I received our leis, a parishioner told us that each lei represents joining St. Catherine of Alexandria Church with each visitor’s home parish to make one community...

  • The Mysterious Journey

    As a teenager I browsed whatever reading materials were left around my home: Sunday newspapers that my father enjoyed; novels that my older brother and sisters considered worthwhile; and religious magazines that my mother read at the end of her busy days. These materials expanded the horizons of my world and beckoned me to explore the strange but fascinating world that adults inhabited. Stories about missionaries in far-off lands that I occasionally read in the religious magazines...

  • The Seeds of Mother’s Day: A Proclamation for Peace

    More than 130 years ago, noted American activist Julia Ward Howe first proposed the concept of Mother’s Day. Howe was a prominent abolitionist who served as one of the catalysts promoting emancipation of slaves and, later, women’s suffrage. A woman of deep religious conviction, Howe became increasingly convinced that war was an inappropriate means for furthering her social justice ideals and believed that these issues, which she cared deeply about, should instead be pursued nonviolently.

  • A Long-Distance Phone Call on Mother’s Day

    On this Mother’s Day, I will be sure to call my mom. Even across the world from her, I will remember the second Sunday of May, a day on which I always tell my mother how grateful I am to be her son. But on this Mother’s Day, May 14, I will challenge myself anew to acknowledge and express gratitude to the many other supporters of their families whom I encounter, even those who don’t lead their families in exactly the same way as my mother leads mine. Mariel has seen her 16-year-old son only a handful of times...

  • Walking Through Many Lives, Some of Them Not My Own

    I’ll be painfully honest right up front – I have no special ability when it comes to writing reflections, prayers and the like. What I can promise is that I will speak from my heart and in the process probably “bare a bit of my soul.” Surely God will bestow countless grace and blessings on you for enduring my ramblings! As I began to gather my thoughts for this reflection, I soon realized that this past Lenten Season somehow felt different to me...

  • Proclaiming Resurrection from the Foot of the Cross

    In the readings for the Easter Season, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene, early in the morning, then to his disciples gathered in the upper room, later in the evening, and he offers them a greeting of peace: “Peace be with you!” We live in a world that is torn apart by violence and strife, yearning for peace. There are wars – real wars in Syria and the Middle East – and rumors of wars – in the Korean peninsula and Asia Pacific. Where is the peace that Jesus promises to his disciples? Where is the power of the resurrection?

  • Gods Mercy Never Ceases

    My Nana told her young grandchildren very little about her hard life before coming to the United States. We also did not know about the cousin’s family that had paid for her passage, employed her as their maid, and treated her cruelly. On April 15, 2013, I was waiting near the finish line of the Boston Marathon to see my daughter finish the race. My family called me to let me know that she had finished earlier and that I should go to our meeting point. While we were driving to where we were staying, two bombs...

  • Words Transform Us

    Pope Francis suggests that tears can be an important element for growth in compassion and a lens for helping us to see the need for justice in the world. This transformation is not vague or sentimental or fleeting, instead it leads to new freedom. Events can change our lives, words transform us....

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