2025 Lent Appeal: Loving Sacrifice

Lent is upon us, and the idea of sacrifice.

Sacrifice is something we do for our families, for our country, for our friends, for our neighbors, for our faith. In your own life, you are no stranger to it.

As loving people, we often deprive ourselves of resources, ambitions or careers, and at the same time feel right about doing so. Not joyous necessarily, but right. We see that at root sacrificing embodies what Christ wants for us – to love one another.

This is key to so much of ministry, and is why so many of our Sisters who were teachers or principals did not receive pay. It’s why Sisters remained in the classroom Monday after Monday for half a century. It’s why Sisters go without clean water and electricity in the most remote corners of the world. It’s why Sister Dorothy Stang lost her life in the Amazon.

And it’s why our Sisters never really retire.

Love is what they are about. Sacrifice is what they are about.

You can go to a courtroom and see a Sister of Notre Dame advocating before a judge on behalf of people who are marginalized – never mind that this Sister is decades beyond retirement age.

You can see a Sister of Notre Dame similarly well past retirement age but in good health and fully capable of living on her own instead moved into the Mount Notre Dame Health Center, that she can be one with those whose health has failed them.

You can see a Sister of Notre Dame in her 80s ministering to people discharged from hospitals who would otherwise be left upon the street – because there is no home for them to return to.

Long ago each of these Sisters could have ‘retired,’ and many more besides.

But retirement is not what our Sisters are about.

Sacrifice can be thought of as a long-term proposition; our lives as religious women is testimony to that. But sacrifice is granular as well. It so often is defined by choices in the moment to moment. This, to me, is where sacrifice becomes poignant. This, to me, is when I see God at work. It’s the decision to be in court on an early, snowy Monday. It’s the decision to work night after night finding a roof and a bed for a homeless person an insurance company says must go. It’s deciding on a Saturday midnight to remain with a declining Sister who simply wants a hand to hold.

Love, so clearly, is in all these things.

So in this Lenten season, in this season of sacrifice, I hope you will stop a minute to reflect on our Sisters who regardless of age or circumstance put themselves out into the world day after day on behalf others, and that you will consider a gift to help them in their work.

Wishing you all God’s blessings,

Sister Kathleen Harmon, SNDdeN
Provincial

P.S. The Sisters receive no support from any diocese or archdiocese. All we do is made possible by our friends and former students.