Sister Joan Chittister, OSB

Dear God, creator of women in your own image,
born of a woman in the midst of a world half women,
carried by women to mission fields around the globe, made known by women to all the children of the earth,
give to the women of our...

Excerpted from "Journey Into Light: Lent 2012"

Today, at an empty tomb full of light, begins the gathering of the community, of a small and fragile assembly of believers left to their own devices, of disciples whose faith has been shaken by the dashing of the dream....

Please join the HuffPost community in "A Lenten Journey" for reflections throughout Lent, and join our online Lenten community here.

The following is excerpted from "Journey Into Light"

Sometimes, it is only in darkness that we can really see clearly. I look up at...

Please join the HuffPost community in "A Lenten Journey" for reflections throughout Lent, and join our online Lenten community here.

The following is excerpted from "Journey Into Light"

Light and dark are the colors of life. No life is ever all of one or...

Where does this notion of the Divine Feminine come from? Is the question of the Divine Feminine simply a current fad? A silly notion of even sillier feminists? Or could it possibly have deep and ineradicable roots in the tradition itself?

However much we mock the idea, the truth is,...

Editor's Note: Buddhist monks from Tibet who spend their lives going from place to place, from occasion to occasion, making sand mandalas, sacred cosmograms, that originated in India over 2,500 years ago, are coming to Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania this week. A few years ago, after witnessing the mandala...

In the midst of a university conference on US Foreign Policy and International Relations, I got three cell phone calls dolling out the news: First, the World Trade Tower had been hit by a plane. Then, the second tower, too, had been struck. Finally, the country might be under attack....

The Holy Spirit embodies the life force of the universe, the power of God, the animating energy present in all things and captured by none. On this great feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit of God, I invite you to pray with me:

May the Gifts of the...

"Your way of acting should be different from the world's way."

The search for God is a very intimate enterprise. It is at the core of every longing in the human heart. It is the search for ultimate love, for total belonging, for the meaningful life.

It is our attempt...

Monday: Holy Week is the church's great celebration of life in all its dimensions: communion with others in the Spirit, the call to suffer if necessary for the sake of the gospel, the sometimes loneliness of total commitment and the glory of living in the Christ, whatever the cost. It...

"Turn away from evil and do good; let peace be your quest and aim."

Over the archway of medieval monasteries were commonly carved the wordsPax Intrantibus, "Peace to those who enter here."

These words were both a hope and a promise.

Benedict's vision of the peaceable kingdom was...

There is one thing Benedict teaches us before all other possible insights about the spiritual life and that is this: God is with us. It is as simple as that. God does not need to be earned. God cannot be merited. God is not persuaded by human behavior to attend...

Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of that season of the church year that is most commonly associated with penance. But there is a danger lurking in that definition. If penance is all that Lent is about, the season, if not almost useless, is at least somewhat trivial. It makes the...

When Pope John XXIII talked about "the signs of the times" -- poverty, nuclearism, sexism -- I began to read these new signs with a new conscience and with a new sense of religious life in mind. Most of all, I began to read the scriptures through another lens. Who...

Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus....

The waiting time for Christmas is almost over. But so what? After all, there is nothing special about waiting. It's what we're waiting for that matters.

One of my favorite Christmas scripture readings takes place when John is in prison. It is a gospel that confronts us with the need...

Gratitude is not only the posture of praise. It is also the basic element of real belief in God.

When we bow our heads in gratitude, we acknowledge that the works of God are good. We recognize that we cannot, of ourselves, save ourselves. We proclaim that our existence...

The fact is that all the great spiritual models of the ages before us found themselves, at one point or another, plunged into doubt, into darkness, into the certainty of uncertainty: Augustine, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, John the Baptist, Thomas, Peter, one after another of...

Finding role models to live by in Scripture, if you are a woman, is slim picking. I spent a fair amount of my young life looking for them, in fact. I heard a great deal in church and school about the kings, Solomon and David. They taught us about the...

"Work," the Persian poet Gibran writes, "is love made visible."

A spirituality of work is based on a heightened sense of sacramentality, of the idea that everything that is, is holy and that our hands consecrate it to the service of God. When we grow radishes in a small container...