Please subscribe to “Life’s Joyful Mystery”! We publish every Friday!

How to get in touch:

Questions? Ideas? Contributions?

Would you like us to publish a picture of your dog?

Send me an email!

[email protected]

Hello! Happy Friday!

Thank you for joining us!, Oh, has this week been cold! The wind chill has been way, way below zero for several days in a row now! I hope you have been able to stay warm in these bone-chilling temperatures!

Personally, I’ve had a lot of fun putting together this week’s newsletter.

I am excited to introduce you to another stellar member of the Our Lady of the Fields Camp staff - Melissa Marter. Melissa is the Director of Youth Formation and Events at OLF. She is sharing her favorite scripture verse with us in this issue. I have always been inspired by Melissa’s amazing faith in and love for the Lord. I see it reflected in everything she does for the kids at our camp. Please be sure to read her reflection below! Thank you, Melissa!

I am also fired up to introduce another new feature this week called, “In the Spotlight: Catholic Online Influencers”. I’m starting with one of my personal favorites: “Manners Mondays”. We will have a lot of fun with this regular article.

And, in our feature “Why Do Catholics Do That?!”, I explore the reasons why some nuns choose to take male names. I’ve always wondered about that. Now, I’ve got some answers.

I hope you enjoy this week’s issue of Life’s Joyful Mystery!

And, don’t forget to PLEASE SHARE this with all your loved ones and ask them to SUBSCRIBE! It really helps us build our fledgling community!

Thank you and God bless all of you!

In Christ,

Jim Berigan

[email protected]

Double Dog Dare of the Week: Volunteer Roulette

One of the Bible stories that really connects with me is the story about Gideon and the fleece from the book of Judges (6:36 – 40)

It’s all about testing God and then testing Him again. I do understand that continual testing of God isn’t really a good thing, but it sure is fun to watch Him work in such an obvious way. (This, coming from a guy who, as a child, thought the sign of the cross was God’s phone number! I’m very literal.)

Once you believe that God is directly involved in your life and that He listens to your prayers, all sorts of possibilities open up.

As you know by now, “The Double Dog Dare of the Week” is a challenge for you to do something out of your comfort zone that will bring glory to the Lord.

This week, I’d like you to tell God that you want to volunteer at your local parish, your diocese office or other Catholic organization. Really put it out there in prayer.

BUT! There’s a catch!

I’d like you to then call your parish, diocese, or other Catholic organization and ask them to put you to work in ANY capacity they need. Let them choose what you do. Even if you are a master gardener, for instance, don’t specifically request to tend their flower beds. This exercise is about giving God the chance to do His work. Make yourself available to whatever the need is and then throw all of yourself into whatever task is given. Do it with gratitude, joy, and love in your heart.

Once you do this, you’ll be able to sit back and watch what God does through you. I promise it will be amazing!

I call this “Volunteer Roulette”. On the surface, it may seem random, but it most certainly is not. God has a plan, and He just wants you to stand up and take action.

Catholic Vocab Word of the Week: Sodality

The word "sodality" comes from the Latin word sodalis, which means "companion". In the Catholic Church, a sodality is a voluntary organization of the faithful who seek to work together with like-minded people for the strengthening of their own religious commitment and advancing the Kingdom of Christ to others.

• Sodalities aim to increase the personal holiness of their members.

• Sodalities train their members in charitable work for others.

• Sodalities aim to spread the faith by loving Jesus and His Blessed Mother, and by loving their neighbors.

• Sodalities can include people of all ages, including lay people, priests, nuns, cardinals, and bishops.

Membership can be open to people with similar ideals, such as professionals, seniors, or young people.

All sodalities, pious associations, and confraternities may be divided into three classes, although those classes are not absolutely distinct from one another.

1. The first class, A, includes the confraternities, which seek mainly to attain piety, devotion, and the increase of love of God by special veneration of God, of the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and the saints.

2. The second class, B, consists of those sodalities which are founded chiefly to promote the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

3. The third class, C, may be considered to include those associations of the Church the main object of which is the well-being and improvement of a definite class of persons.

Examples

• Sodality of Our Lady: Founded in 1563 by Jesuit Priest Jean Leunis, this sodality aims to increase the personal holiness of its members and train them in charitable work.

• The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin was founded in Rome (1563) by Rev. John Leunis, S.J., for the students at the Roman College. At the time of its quadricentennial, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin was established in more than one hundred countries. During the first four centuries of its existence, it had deeply influenced the lives of several million persons, through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Devotion to Mary, and the active apostolate in the world.

• Many canonized saints had been Sodalists, including St. Francis de Sales, whose Introduction to the Devout Life for the laity is a practical expression of the Sodality way of life. In 1971 the Sodality became a new organization, the Christian Life Communities.

For a more recent and “local” example, I found the following online from a Catholic parish in Massachusetts. Many of the recent activities run by their Sodality will be very familiar to anyone involved with modern-day parish life.

From their website:

To learn more about how “Sodalities” are used in today’s Church, please click here!

Why Do Catholics Do THAT?!

Why do Some Catholic Nuns Take Male Names?

The wide-world of Catholicism is full of many wonderful (Joyful?) mysteries. Fortunately, there are a lot of answers out there if you care to do some digging.

If you are reading this newsletter, there is a good chance you are at least acquainted with a nun or a sister or two. Female clergy are an absolute treasure in our Church, but for many people (myself included) not much is known about their daily lives.

As I was researching a different article for this newsletter, I read about a nun named Sister Peter Thomas. Clearly, this sister is female, and presumably, her parents didn’t name her Pete when she was born, so how and why did she get that name? I was curious.

So, I started poking around. I tried calling Pope Francis directly - you know, get it straight from the horse’s mouth - but he hasn’t been returning my calls lately, so I settled for the internet.

In only a few minutes, I found the following examples of nuns with male names. Some of them elected to have two male names, while others mixed a male and a female name. Here is what I found:

• Sister Mary Michael

• Sister Robert Joseph

• Sister Catherine Dominick

• Sister Kevin John

• Sister Mary Roger

• Sister Paul James

(Bonus: I even found a nun online with the name Sister George Michael, but she is a fictional character from a TV show, so I don’t know if I should really count that!) “You Gotta Have Faith, Faith, Faith”!

To read the rest of the story, please click here!

My Favorite Scripture Verse

By Melissa Marter

Melissa Marter here, Director of Youth Formation and Events at Our Lady of the Fields.

If you’ve booked a retreat with us recently, you’ve probably already talked to me on the phone, and if your child has attended one of our retreats during the school year, they might know me as the “horse lady.”

One of my favorite scripture verses came to me as the theme of my missionary year with Hard as Nails Ministries back in 2018. The scripture verse for my missionary team was Psalm 37:4

 “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will grant you the desires of your heart.”

This verse doesn’t mean that living for God is easy, and that if you serve him you’ll automatically get every material thing you want in life. Serving the Lord as a missionary, I experienced many added hardships that come from working in ministry. I was keenly aware of the sacrifices that I made daily to keep the mission moving forward. Serving others all day, everyday, I was tired, and in those moments it was easy to get self-focused. It’s too easy to get into a transactional mindset. If I’m working for God, shouldn’t I automatically be happy? That's what everyone really wants in their heart of hearts. Happiness. And while I had the right intentions, I had the wrong prepositions, which is actually pretty significant.

Msgr. James Shea said it best “We are not called to live FOR God, He has need of nothing. Rather, we are called to live FROM God, since it is in Christ alone we find our hope, our joy, and our sustenance.”

The core of life as a Hard as Nails Missionary is founded on a daily holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament- not because God needs my time, but because I NEED Him. He is Love Itself, He’s so much better at loving His kids than I am. I started looking at my daily holy hour not as a check-the-box chore, but as my delight, my quality time with the Lover of my Soul. Receiving His love for me in my holy hour became the source of my energy and strength that carried me through each day. The more time I spent with Him and knowing His heart, the more opportunity He had to change my heart to be like His. 

It wasn’t an overnight change. It was the strengthening of our relationship that brought peace and joy into my life, trusting that He wants the absolute best for me. So if things don’t go according to my plan, even if I think it’s a great plan, I know it’s for the best in the end.

 As life has continued past my missionary year, I have found that whenever I’m not satisfied with my life, it’s usually because I’m not prioritizing my quality time with God. Just as we desire to spend time with our loved ones, and we want to see them succeed in good things close to their hearts, so too does God desire to spend time with us and see us succeed in the things that matter to us, so long as they are good for us.

How is your quality time with the Lord? Do you believe that He wants to spend time with you and wants what is best for you?

In the Spotlight: Catholic Online Influencers

“Manners Mondays” with Sr. Peter Thomas and Sr. Mercedes

We all know that in the last several years, much of our lives and our attention has shifted online. Activities such as online shopping, renewing our license plates, buying movie tickets, and researching ominous symptoms until we’re convinced we’re going to die, all have moved to within a click of our computer mouse.

While there are many pitfalls attached to the online life, there is also an abundance of treasures. For example, a number of absolute stars in the Catholic Cyberworld are just waiting for you to log on. So much so, that this newsletter is going to start highlighting some of the best.

This week, I’d like to start with an “oldie, but a goodie”. (In internet-terms, an “oldie’ is anything that happened before last week.)

Back in the early 2020s, two nuns from The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, started a YouTube channel called “Manners Mondays”. Their videos are published by OpenLight Media. The two sisters who host the program are Sr. Peter Thomas, OP, and Sr. Mercedes, OP (pictured above).

I was fortunate enough to come across an article about this video podcast very early on in their first season. I was quite curious to read about a couple of young nuns who were quickly becoming “YouTube famous.” So I checked them out.

As mentioned, the name of their series is “Manners Monday.” Each Monday, these habit-wearing sisters post a pithy – around 2 minutes – video that focuses on one particular behavior that is commonly accepted to be “good manners.”

Each video, which has a very catchy music track by the way, is funny, charming, and direct.

I was surprised at first that there was no overt theological message. Instead, the sisters take a definitive stand on the practical ways people should treat each other in their daily interactions.

Here is a lit of some of their topics so far:

• Don’t Interrupt

• Including Another in a Conversation

• Airplane Etiquette

• When to Bring a Gift

• Apologies

• Receiving Difficult Feedback

• Dealing with Rude People

• Reading Body Language

• Driving Etiquette

• Movie Theater Courtesy

• Expressing Gratitude

• Being on Time

As you can see from this sample of episodes, these sisters are out there in the real world and have witnessed ALL KINDS of behaviors – both good and bad.

In particular, I love Sr. Peter Thomas’ quirky sense of humor. For instance, in the video about “Airplane Etiquette”, she asks Sr. Mercedes if she thinks her jokes are going to “fly”. As a dad who loves dad jokes, I give her an A+!

I really like that these two women are using the moral authority of their position to remind us to expect more from ourselves and from each other. Historically, nuns have a reputation for being ultra-strict. Sr. Peter Thomas and Sr. Mercedes may have a similar message from past generations, but they communicate it in a fun, playful tone that definitely succeeds in catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I highly recommend you check out all of their videos!

It looks like “Manners Mondays” just wrapped up their second season of videos in December (2024). I haven’t seen if there will be a season 3 yet, but with over 30,000 subscribers, I like their chances!

If you’d like to read more about “Manners Mondays”, please visit this article in the Detroit Catholic for a great background piece!

Is there a particular online Catholic influencer that you really like? Please share it with us! Send me an email at [email protected].

Suggested Links You Might Enjoy:

Fruits from the Fields video podcast on YouTube, which is also produced by Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center and features great Catholic content.

Song of Mary - a new music ministry that some folks at OLF have recently started. Song of Mary has just published a Christmas “Album” called “A Savior is Born”. Please listen to it HERE!

If you like what you see at either one of these sites, I encourage you to please subscribe to their YouTube channels, so you can see all of the new videos!

To learn more about the mission and the needs of Our Lady of the Fields Camp & Retreat Center, please click the link below.

www.GiveSendGo.com/OurLadyoftheFieldsCamp

See you next week!

If you enjoyed this first issue, please make sure to subscribe to “Life’s Joyful Mystery - A Catholic Retreat in Your Inbox” by clicking the button below.

We also ask you to forward this newsletter to your friends and family!