Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY, 1725 Brentwood Road, Brentwood, NY (2026)

06/18/2026

Reflection

Relationship with Christ results in a relationship with one another. All racial, economic and gender barriers and any other inequalities are removed. The equality and unity of all in Christ are the essence of the gospel not an optional application. They are the basis of Christian social ethics. A Christian community that does not witness to this equality and unity in Christ is not faithful to the gospel. There is no racial, social or gender hierarchy or any other meaningless distinction that can be attributed to the teaching of Jesus. Those who espouse them are indulging in mere moral posturing. They may profess their Christianity but it is not alive in them.

Prayer

God is love; and they that dwell in love dwell in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:16

Action

Where do you see overt inequalities practiced by civic and religious groups who claim to base their behavior in the gospel? Does this exist in your life? Do you really believe the words of Paul to the Galatians?

Suggested Reading

Brothers and sisters:
Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free person,
there is not male and female;
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-29

Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
Acts10:34-35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
John13:34

We are called to offer God’s love to all, so that unity may be realized—a unity that does not erase differences but values each person’s history and the social and religious culture of every people.
Pope Leo

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
Will Rogers

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.
Sai Baba

Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs von Balthasar

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”
Kofi Annan

06/17/2026

Reflection

The prophetic understanding of authentic holiness stresses the necessary connection between inner acceptance of God and external religious expression. The performance of rituals is meaningless even perverse if it does not express an inward response to God’s love and a personal commitment to fulfilling God’s will. For the prophet God’s will was not some kind of nebulous theory. Rather, it was simple and clear-cut. There is only one way to live out one’s love of God and that is in love of one’s neighbor. This love is made manifest by practicing justice, by liberating the oppressed and by caring for the poor and needy. Only then will one’s light “shine like the dawn” and one’s wound “be quickly healed over.”
William P. Roberts

Prayer

Oh, that all God’s people might be prophets!
Numbers 11:19

Action

Consider what a prophetic understanding of genuine holiness would mean in the sphere of your own life.

Suggested Reading

With what gifts shall I come into God’s presence
and bow down before God on high?
Shall I come with holocausts?
Will God be pleased with rams by the thousands?
Must I give my firstborn?

What is good has been explained to you;
this is what God asks of you,
only this:
To act justly
to love tenderly
and to walk humbly before your God.
Micah 6:6 -8

Is this not the sort of fast that pleases me
-it is Yahweh who speaks-
to break unjust fetters
and undo the thongs of the yoke
to let the oppressed go free
and break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry
and shelter the homeless poor.
To clothe the one you see naked
and not turn from your own kin?
Isaiah 58: 1-12

But now—it is Yahweh who speaks–
come back to me with all your heart,
Fasting, weeping, mourning
Let your hearts be broken not your garments torn.
Joel 2:12-14

I hate, I spurn your feasts,
I take no pleasure in your solemnities,
Your offerings I will not accept…
Away with your noisy songs…
But if you would offer me holocausts,
then let your justice surge like the water
and your goodness like an unfailing stream.
Amos 5:21 – 24

He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.
Thomas Fuller

Go put your creed into your deed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live truth instead of professing it.
Elbert Hubbard

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Thomas Jefferson

06/16/2026

Reflection

It is too often that we do not see the gifts that are innate to us. We look at what others have and see only where we are lacking. Our vision is becomes distorted and our hearts are narrowed. We need to try to recognize and value the gifts each of us has and to rejoice in our remarkable diversity. Our gifts enrich humanity and enable us to make our unique contribution to the whole. God’s prolific creativity revealed through us is unlimited. So should be our respect for and delight in it.As channels of this creative love we are called to offer our giftedness to all people.

Prayer

God of compassion and solidarity, help me to embrace all people with an inclusive love. Enable me to recognize my own gifts and limitations as well as those of others. Empower me to use my gifts to bring your love to the world.

Action

Today I will try to recognize in myself at least one gift I have to offer.

Suggested Reading

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
Marie Curie

Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons for he was the son of his old age, and he had a coat with long sleeves made for him. But his brothers, seeing how his father loved him, came to hate him so much that they could not say a civil word to him.
Genesis 37:3 – 4

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
Josh Billings

Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
Jean Vanier

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.
Ethel Waters

The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
Anais Nin

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him.
Cicero

06/15/2026

Reflection

Leaven is a powerful agent of change. It works unseen and causes a transformation from within. We can also be that leaven causing a transformation from within. If we believe the words of Jesus, “The kingdom of God is within you”, we can realize how it is possible that individually and collectively we can constantly contribute to the development of our Universe with our thoughts and the emotional content behind them. Our inner fields of consciousness can resonate with those of others with similar desires. Slowly, the influence can spread. Those who join to receive the new life which Jesus Christ offers are transformed by God. Our lives are not insignificant. Who we are, what we believe, how we live in resonance to Jesus’s vision spreads and the world can be transformed by the Spirit visible in us.

Prayer

Make us leaven in the world.

Action

Reflect on the power of your life to affect the balance of good in the world. How can you do this with your inner as well as outer actions.

Suggested Reading

He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
Luke 13:18-21

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
Matthew 5:13

When each of us vibrates love and compassion, our energy mysteriously unites with the energy of love and compassion all over the planet, augmenting the field of compassion, making its resonance, manifestation, and influence a very powerful force for transformation and healing. . . . Could there be any greater cause for hope in the community of life?
Judy Cannato

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
Henry Ward Beecher

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
Jackie Robinson

You are here to make a difference, to either improve the world or worsen it. And whether or not you consciously choose to, you will accomplish one or the other.”
Richelle E. Goodrich

06/14/2026

Reflection

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be children of God in heaven.
Matthew 5:44

Jesus offered the radical invitation to love one another without condition – to love those who are different from ourselves. He gave the startling instruction for us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to trust in the way of peace, and to be especially concerned for those most in need. In a world with so many examples of hatred, violence, war, and unnecessary death, this seems unrealistic at best. It makes no sense. Yet, Jesus proclaimed a radical message about God’s love for all of us. Can we, as followers of Jesus today, be faithful to this call, or will the vision of active loving nonviolence get lost and forgotten even by people who call themselves Christian?
Adapted from Education for Justice

Prayer

May I learn the way of nonviolence.

Action

What does the Christian vision of active nonviolence say to you? In the efforts to limit gun violence? In the work of peace organizations? in the desire to welcome immigrants? In efforts to slow climate change? Is this practical and realistic? Do you believe it should be our response? What “spirituality” will make it possible to live this way?

Suggested Reading

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your God who is in heaven. For God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your relatives what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Matthew 5:38-48

Nonviolence, as a method and a style, must distinguish our decisions, our relationships, our actions.
Pope Leo

Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.
Pope Francis

It is to be hoped that hatred and violence will not triumph in people’s hearts, especially among those who are struggling for justice, and that all people will grow in the spirit of peace and forgiveness.
Pope John Paul II

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
Mahatma Gandhi

That’s all nonviolence is – organized love.
Joan Baez

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.
Daniel Berrigan

The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.
Dorothy Day

Lest my way of life sounds puritanical or austere, I always emphasize that in the long run one can’t satisfactorily say no to war, violence, and injustice unless one is simultaneously saying yes to life, love and laughter.
David Dellinger

The person who turns an enemy into a friend has accomplished the work of God.
Abbot d’Rabbi Nathan

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his “right mind.
Thomas Merton

06/13/2026

Reflection

When situations became blatantly contrary to his values, Jesus expressed his outrage. He called the religious leaders “whited sepulchers” and Herod a “fox”. He threw the buyers and sellers out of the temple. In the face of clear injustices, he did not remain passive or continue to live comfortably. And then, there are we who claim to believe in his values. Daily we are inundated with situations which get their momentary interest on news channels and then are absorbed with a sigh …another shooting … another industrial cause of climate change…another violent conflict on the world scene …another corrupt self-interested politician… and so on. When will we get beyond our own comfort, become involved and use our power to to make changes? The question arises: Where is the outrage?
Prayer
Give us knowledge, understanding and courage to act justly.

Action

Reflect on the questions: Why is there no force of outrage? What about me?

Suggested Reading

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, "My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a 'den of robbers".
Matthew 21:13

aced with injustice, inequality, where human dignity is trampled underfoot, where the fragile are silenced: take a stand. To hope is to take a stand.
Pope Leo

Our faith sends us out from our churches and places of comfort to accompcisany those who are forgotten and oppressed.
Pope Fran

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
Frederick Douglass

It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.
Carl T. Rowan

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
Charles Bukowski

It is not a persuasive argument that an evil should continue because it has existed in the past.
William Hastie

The underlying sickness of human life is an unwillingness to look with open eyes at the condition of the world.
Hu Shih

06/12/2026

HAPPENING NOW: Sisters of St. Joseph and Concern Housing are being honored at the Vision Long Island Smart Growth Awards for an affordable housing project that will bring 176 units to Brentwood

Special shout out to St. Joseph's University, New York and Gail Lamberta for the nomination!! 💙

06/12/2026

Reflection

In the depths of the soul we are loved by God. This is the deepest secret of being human, the bond of love that is at the core of our being and belongs to all that exists. And the more we live this love, the more we give ourself to this mystery that is both human and divine, the more fully we participate in life as it really is, in its wonder and moment by moment revelation. Love and care—care for each other, care for the Earth—are the simplest and most valuable human qualities. And love belongs to oneness. We know this in our human relationships, how love draws us closer. It can also awaken us to the awareness that we are one human family, even as our rulers become more authoritarian, our politics more divisive. And on the deepest level, love can reconnect us with our essential unity with all of life, with the Earth herself.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Prayer

That all may be one.

Action

Reflect on the passage above. When do you become aware of this unity? How can you reflect it and foster it in your daily interactions?

Suggested Readings

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
Psalm 133:1

We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13

The Holy Spirit loves to shape unity from the most beautiful and harmonious diversity.
Pope Francis

Love will remind us that we are a part of life—that we belong to each other and to this living, suffering planet.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless…beyond speech…beyond concept.
Thomas Merton

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.
Gwendolyn Brooks

No doubt, unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed by mere declarations.
Theodore Bikel

There is beauty and power in unity. We must be united in heart and mind. One world, one people.
Lailah Gifty Akit

Empowered by God’s love, rooted in the Gospel of Jesus, faithful to the vision of one sacred Earth community, we live and work to bring all into union with God and one another.
Sisters of St. Joseph

We all are so deeply interconnected; we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for any one and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the Universe.”
Amit Ray

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
Swami Vivekananda

We are all one question and the best answer seems to be love
a connection between things.
Mary Ruefle

Science in its attempt to unravel the mysteries of the Universe,
Has discovered the ultimate reality that we are all One.
Gian Kuma

06/12/2026

The Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY operate several environmentally friendly programs on and near Long Island — it's earned them a new award aimed at promoting sustainability.

06/11/2026

Reflection

To be spiritual is to have an abiding respect for the great mysteries of life — the profound distinctiveness of other souls, the strange beauty of nature and the animal world, the ineffable complexity of our inner selves, the unfathomable depths of the Inexplicable One. The first step in the practice of mystery is to cherish the baffling, curious, hidden, and inscrutable dimensions of your existence and the world around you. It is an affront to the modern need have answers to every question and our tendency to create tidy systems with a cubbyhole for every problem and aspiration.
The antidote to these reductionist approaches is to rest in the riddle of not knowing.
Spirituality and Practice

Prayer

Blessed is the Creator of the Universe who lives in mystery.

Action

Take time to really see what is right in front of you.

Suggested Reading

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how inscrutable God’s ways! “For who has known the mind of God, or who has been God’s counselor?
Romans 11:33-36

“Spirituality is to be awake, to drop your illusions… Spirituality is to have discovered those diamond mines inside of you.
Anthony de Mello

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
Anne Lamott

Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.
Jalaluddin Rumi

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
Annie Dillard

To love God is to follow the mystery, to be led by its showing and withdrawing.
John S. Dunne

Paradox is in fact a hallmark of western spirituality, an ongoing reminder that mystery is the heart, the atmosphere and completion of our spiritual quest, that the ultimately untouchable is forever at our fingertips.
John Kirvan

Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY

06/18/2026

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