Scanning Our Reality

Moon rising over Vilano Beach in St.Johns County

“A dream is the bearer of a new possibility,

the enlarged horizon, the great hope.”

-Howard Thurman

As a small diocesan congregation in northeast Florida, scanning our horizon is like watching a beach sunrise on a foggy day.

As a new leadership team in 2018, we scanned the dark reality of demographics and geographical isolation from other congregations and realized the fog was there. To implement chapter directives, we began a discernment process accompanied by lay administrators to explore possibilities for creating a new ministry. We hoped this ministry would respond to an unmet local need, provide suitable ministry opportunities for retired sisters, and be a sustainable legacy project.

After several months discerning and negotiating, the vision of St. Joseph Neighborhood Center for young, single working mothers with children came into focus. With a more than 150-year history in Florida, the congregation has the capacity to network with agencies and businesses. Retired sisters have already become involved.

Sister Stephanie Flynn (left) with Bishop Erik Pohlmeier and members of first cohort of St. Joseph Neighborhood Center at January blessing of St. Benedict School renovations. 

Through this experience, I have felt God’s love and light pouring over us like ocean waves. With more challenges on the horizon, I need to focus on the journey itself - which is a life well-lived and experienced fully with others who share gospel values and our congregational charism of self-emptying, unifying love.

(This reflection originally appeared in “Embracing a Traveler’s Heart,” the 2023 Reflective Journal published and copyrighted by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and is used with their permission.)

Atlantic Ocean at Vilano Beach, Florida.