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

09/16/2026

Reflection

We exist by gratuitous gift. It has never been about what we deserve. We had no choice, nor did we do anything to earn our life or talents. We have no claim to a sense of entitlement. In gratitude we love as best we can as long as we can, preserving this earth, giving without expecting anything in return. We recognize the gifts of others and respect them. We acknowledge their rights as consistent with our own. We honor the common good. Our giving is not measured in time spent but in the generosity with which we respond to the opportunities we have to heal this earth and help it to nurture all life. We are part of the whole.

Prayer

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

Action

Be willing to share, to give time, energy, and resources for the benefit and welfare of others. Recognize and be glad in the gifts of others. Do not put your own presumed rights against the rights of others. Work in any way you can for the common good.

Suggested Reading

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from God with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:14-17

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.
1 Thessalonians 1:2

Together we can rejoice in the longing for unity which the Lord has awakened in our hearts, and which makes us look with hope to the future.
Pope Francis

Because we all share this planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity.
Dalai Lama

To be rich in admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others, to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence or unkindness – these are the gifts which money cannot buy.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.
Harold Coffin

True generosity is an offering; given freely and out of pure love. No strings attached. No expectations. Time and love are the most valuable possession you can share.
uze Orman

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Albert Pike

The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi

Fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
Rumi

Giving is a miracle that can transform the heaviest of hearts. Two people, who moments before lived in separate worlds of private concerns, suddenly meet each other over a simple act of sharing. The world expands, a moment of goodness is created, and something new comes into being where before there was nothing. . . . But true giving is not an economic exchange; it is a generative act. It does not subtract from what we have; it multiples the effect we can have in the world.
Kent Nerburn

Generosity is about giving without a guaranteed return — it is about the ‘giveaway.’ I believe that the true moral path of the twenty-first century will be very different from the path of the modern era because it will be marked by generosity.
Matthew Fox

Make extravagant generosity your greatest vice and become God-like.
Edward Hays

09/15/2026

Congratulations Sister Jean Amore!

09/15/2026

Reflection

Violence anywhere wounds us everywhere. We feel its impact in our hearts and bones because we cannot escape our fundamental unity. Feeling helpless against violence, however, we risk becoming violent ourselves—frustrated, angry, volatile. Thus, violence can breed violence in an escalating cycle. While spirituality offers an antidote to violence, we need an intermediate step: learning to grieve. We must weep for innocent lives lost, for possibilities destroyed, for the breakdown of community. Our culture mistakes grief for weakness, but this rejection of mourning leaves us spiritually impoverished. Mourning binds communities together in the midst of tragedy. In our violent age, the essential question becomes: How can we love more and better in the face of violence. Perhaps our modern culture cannot get beyond violence because we have not yet sufficiently grieved. The way forward is inward.

Ilia Delio, Beyond Violence: The Path through Grief to Spiritual Evolution

Prayer

God is near to the broken-hearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18

Action

How are you affected by the violence of the present times? Are you sensitive to and able to grieve wars, senseless shootings, the sufferings of immigrants, the hunger of children, the many violent and angry acts that surround us? Can you choose and spread the power of love beyond the superficial? How?

Suggested Reading

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted
Matthew 5:4

Openness to God makes us open towards the marginalized of this world, and gives us the courage to leave the confines of our own security and comfort to become bruised, hurting and dirty as we joyfully approach the suffering other in a spirit of solidarity.
Pope Francis

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.
Parker Palmer

Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.
Francis Weller

Grief is the shadow love casts in the light of loss.
Emily Dickinson

Deposits of unfinished grief reside in more American hearts that I ever imagined. Until these pockets are opened and their contents aired openly, they block unimagined amounts of human growth and potential. They can give rise to bizarre and unexplained behavior which causes untold internal stress. –
Robert Kavanaugh

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble
Moliere.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King

09/14/2026

30 years of the Sisters of St. Joseph Golf Classic, and what magnificent years they’ve been! Thanks to everyone who came out today to celebrate with us, congratulate our honorees, and help move our mission forward!

⛳️

09/14/2026

Reflection

“Where does revelation come from these days? Not burning bushes. Not voices in the sky…Revelation comes quietly in times of stillness when one ponders how to be of use. Revelations comes in the interaction of compassion and the daily news. Revelation rises up in the response to injustice—as it rose up in Moses, in Jesus, in Harriet Tubman, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and the ones who have stood up and spoken out for the benefit of others. Revelation is in the air we breathe. It has never changed, It never will. It is always the same .”Take care of each other. I am with you and in you.”
Jan Phillips

Prayer

Speak, O God, your servant is listening
1 Samuel:3:10

Action

Reflect on the sentence ”Revelation comes in the interaction of compassion and the daily news.”

Suggested Reading

For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it.
Job 33:14

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:35

We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving

The highest revelation is that God is in everyone.Ralph Waldo Emerson

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
Eudora Welty

Faith in God’s revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.
Karl Barth

Sometimes we are limited more by attitude than by opportunities.
Anonymous

09/13/2026

Reflection

“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me?
As often as seven times?” Jesus answered, “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.”
Matthew 18:21-22

The concept of forgiveness is often misused to mean that we would let bad things be done to us or to expect others to forgive us when we continue to harm them. So it is important to remember that forgiveness is not pardoning, condoning, excusing, forgetting, denying, or even reconciling. It does not condone violence, abuse, or injustice. It does not release others from the consequences of their behavior. Forgiveness is essentially a unilateral, private choice, a necessary first step in freeing oneself from carrying the heavy burden of resentment over past hurts. It sets the stage for such future possibilities as reconciliation and restoring broken relationships. Forgiveness is a force, an energy that comes from the heart. Forgiveness is more a process than a onetime decision. The process of forgiveness helps us to open ourselves to transformation from needing to be perfect or to make our circumstances perfect to knowing our inner goodness that comes from the divine presence in our hearts.
Rev. Dr. Roula Alkhouri

Prayer

May I understand the meaning of forgiveness.

Action

Consider what you carry within you that needs forgiveness. How can you free yourself from this? Take one practical step.

Suggested Reading

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Colossians 3:13

Forgiveness is the essence of the love which can understand mistakes and mend them.
Pope Francis

Forgiveness is an attitude of forgiving reality for being what it is, forgiving an imperfect world…. It’s in your struggle with the wound that you move from unconsciousness to consciousness.
Richard Rohr

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
Corrie Ten Boom

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.’
Maya Angelou

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.
Roberto Assagioli

We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
Sir. Francis Bacon

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
Marianne Williamson

09/12/2026

Reflection

There is a healing power hidden within woodlands. Walking in the woods, time ceases to have any meaning. We are separated from the outer world and life takes on a calming simplicity. It is quiet except for the birdsongs and the sounds of crunching underfoot. We fall into this rhythm as we look at the trees. Each tree is a world of its own supporting a community of life. How old are they? Their buds ready to open or their new green say that they are ready to live for another season. What is their life history? We stop walking and the crunching stops. Listening we can hear nature singing in its own language. Birdcalls and the rustle of small animals in the brush tell us we are not alone. There is harmony and life is in constant renewal. We leave and for some time we are part of it.

Prayer

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Psalm 96:12

Action

Take time to observe trees wherever you are. It may not be possible to walk among them at this time, but plan for a future walk. Observe a tree and its community of life. Think of the vast destruction of forests on this planet. Plant a tree or support organizations that do.

Suggested Reading

The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.
Thich Nhat Hanh

There is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its shoots will not die.
8 If its roots grow old in the ground
and its stump starts to die in the soil,
9 the scent of water makes it thrive
and produce twigs like a sapling.
Job 14:7-9

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
George Washington Carver

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
Henry David Thoreau

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
John Muir

In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.
Paulo Coelho

If you cut down a forest, it doesn’t matter how many sawmills you have if there are no more trees.
Susan George

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
John Burroughs

09/11/2026

Reflection

On this anniversary of that tragic day, we remember how we were united in shock and pain. There were no divisions then. We did not ask what race, what religion, what political party, or what country of origin were the dead. We did not withhold our compassion for their husbands, wives, partners or children. Americans had been attacked; Americans had died; America was in mourning and rightly so. Today, we still remember them; we still honor them; we still mourn.

Yet, painfully, we have changed since then. We mourn now over the divisions, the violence, the hatreds that have surfaced since that day of national unity and are wringing the life out of us. Even as we commemorate this sad anniversary, the lines between “us” and “them” are harsher blurring our national identity.
As we commemorate this painful anniversary let us also mourn for this nation which has become unmoored from truth and reality and seems numbed out of its humanity. Let us mourn because the fragile democracy which we cherish is being frayed by self-interest and exclusive power. May the memory of those who died because of hate free us from our own hatreds. May our tears not be wasted on separation and anger but become our balm of healing.

Prayer

God of wisdom and compassion create newness out of evil. Make us instruments and agents of creation as we strive to turn challenges into opportunities and blessings for others and ourselves.

Action

Reflect on the united mourning of a nation after 9/11. Think of our response now. Where is our united public mourning for all that has happened and is happening?Where is our clarity on what is trying to destroy us? How can we each become agents of healing?Do our children and grandchildren whomwere not yet born know about and understand what happened and what we felt that day?

Suggested Reading

A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.
Jeremiah 31:15

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
Matthew 12:25

Leave behind the self-interest that hardens your heart, overcome the indifference that makes your heart insensitive towards others, conquer your deadly reasoning, and open yourself to dialogue and reconciliation. When man thinks only of himself, his own interests and places himself in the center, when he permits himself to be captivated by the idols of dominion and power, when he puts himself in God’s place, then all relationships are broken and everything is ruined. Then the door opens to violence, indifference and conflict. Can we get out of this spiral of sorrow and death? Can we learn once again to walk and live in the ways of peace?
Pope Francis

As glass shattered, cement crumbled and steel melted in the inferno of senseless cruelty, the heart of humanity screamed in anguish. September 11, 2001 — a day when the evil potential of misguided ego was again exposed. While our landmarks collapsed in a cloud of smoke and debris, beneath a surge of shock and rage, something awakened in our hearts: compassion. Suddenly, our worldly obsessions faded away as we cried for the plight of others. In memory of this tragic day, let us join hands and pray for God’s grace to heal, unite and empower us to serve with love.
Unknown

No matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family… as we honor the memory of those we have lost, let us summon that spirit once more. Let us renew our sense of common purpose. And let us reaffirm the bond we share as a people: that out of many, we are one.
Barack Obama

The pictures stay with us — the fires and falling debris, and, most hauntingly, the faces. Look how young so many of them were, people who thought there would be much more time, a lot of ‘later’ when they could do all the things they really wanted to do. I grieve for their families — especially for those, like me, who haven’t found any trace of the people they loved. But I grieve even more for the people who died that day. They couldn’t know what we know now about the precious gift of time.
Cokie Roberts

If you don’t breathe the spirit of the nation, if you don’t have a fierce sense of belonging to each other, you’re not going to sacrifice for the common good.
David Brooks

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
Clarence Darrow

If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.
Sandy Dahl

Remember the hours after Sept. 11 when we came together as one! It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
John Kerry

On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know.

At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know.

At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know.

At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know.

This is not mere nostalgia; it is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been — and what we can be again.
― George W. Bush

For this milestone anniversary, some quiet contemplation in our ever-noisy world seems essential to continue processing the attacks and their aftermath, but also as a starting point to consider how we can advocate for peace in our world.
NCR Editorial Staff

09/10/2026

Reflection

There is a profound Mystery at work in the natural world. The living, pulsing community of this living planet is constantly speaking its message. If we pause, and look, and listen, the Sacred is being revealed always and everywhere. No cathedral of stone has the same ability to reflect Holy Mystery. No choir sings God’s praise like the sounds of Earth. This is holy ground. The signs are everywhere.

Prayer

May I always respect Earth as holy ground.

Action

Attune yourself to notice and listen to Earth. Try to find some quiet space where you can reflect. Let yourself experience what it means to be a part of our natural world. Be part of the community of those who work to save our planet.

Suggested Reading

How varied are your works, O God!!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
Psalm 104:24

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
Job 12:7-10

The world is charged with the grandeur of God

It will flame like shining from shook foil.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nature is the art of God.
Dante Alghieri

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.
Wendell Berry

In every walk in with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir

The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.
Albert Einstein

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson

The earth has music for those who listen.
William Shakespeare

The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see.
Charlotte Eriksson

09/10/2026

Reflection

There is a profound Mystery at work in the natural world. The living, pulsing community of this living planet is constantly speaking its message. If we pause, and look, and listen, the Sacred is being revealed always and everywhere. No cathedral of stone has the same ability to reflect Holy Mystery. No choir sings God’s praise like the sounds of Earth. This is holy ground. The signs are everywhere.

Prayer

May I always respect Earth as holy ground.

Action

Attune yourself to notice and listen to Earth. Try to find some quiet space where you can reflect. Let yourself experience what it means to be a part of our natural world. Be part of the community of those who work to save our planet.

Suggested Reading

How varied are your works, O God!!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
Psalm 104:24

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
Job 12:7-10

The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame like shining from shook foil.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nature is the art of God.
Dante Alghieri

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.
Wendell Berry

In every walk in with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir

The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.
Albert Einstein

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson

The earth has music for those who listen.
William Shakespeare

The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see.
Charlotte Eriksson

Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY

09/16/2026

09/15/2026

09/15/2026

09/14/2026

09/14/2026

09/13/2026

09/12/2026

09/11/2026

09/10/2026

09/10/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Place Of Worship

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request