“We Are Pilgrims Once Again” – Spring 2021 OutWORD Now Available

SLW’s Spring 2021 OutWORD, “We Are Pilgrims Once Again” is now available electronically. Click here to access the publication as downloadable PDF.

Please note that in being sensitive to the delayed postal times currently being experienced in Illinois, we are sharing the issue electronically while the print copy is also on its way to your mailboxes. 

Inside this OutWORD Issue: A Message from Leadership

I greet you during this Easter season, those 50 days after Easter Sunday and before Pentecost, which will be celebrated this year on May 23rd. It is a time characterized by the joy of the glorified life and the victory over death expressed most fully in the great resounding cry of ALLELUIA.

One of the most important stories in the scriptures during Easter Season is known as the Walk to Emmaus (Lk. 24). We are given the image of two disciples leaving Jerusalem after the death of Jesus. All their hopes are dashed and they are wondering: now what? As they journey, Christ who is hidden from their recognition accompanies them, and recounts the story of all that has happened. As it turns dark, they welcome the stranger to stay with them. At supper, their eyes are opened to recognize Christ in the breaking of the bread. He vanishes from their sight, but their hope is rekindled and they joyfully return to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples what they have seen and heard.

This pandemic has illumined the dark places, opened our eyes to see differently and in many ways brought an awareness of what we most value: our faith and each other. Sometimes we must leave the familiar, be a pilgrim on a journey (metaphorically or actually) to realize what is lost or hidden.

As Sisters of the Living Word our greatest joy is to accompany others on their faith journey, to “see” the Living Word present in all of life’s joys and sorrow. A quote I recently read seems to speak to this time for all of us. We are called “to see with Easter eyes … able to perceive in death, life; in guilt, forgiveness; in separation, unity … in the human, God; in God, the human, and in the ‘I’ the ‘you’.“ — Bishop Klaus Hemmerle, co-founder of Focolare.

May each of our journeys be faith-filled and awake as we accompany one another today and always!

Kristine Vorenkamp, SLW
SLW Congregational Leadership