Could we imagine a more powerful mandate for this group than the Word offered in these readings tonight? The Word offered to US, who have just chosen the five who will lead us lovingly and boldly into an unknown future. The Word offered to US, the 651 of us who hardly know one another and yet have resolved to cast our lot with one another in the outrageous belief that – despite our age and diminishment, despite our far-flung distances and diverse cultures – in the outrageous belief that God can make something useful of us for the preaching that THIS world so desperately longs to hear.

The human global context in which we Dominicans of Peace are called to preach is clear enough: rampant greed, addictive consumerism, widespread corruption, lack of access to basic human needs, widespread use of violence to resolve conflict on every level. More alarming even than the catastrophes in our human systems is the peril in which our species has placed the planetary systems on which all life depends: the air, the oceans, the soils and forests, the wildlife, and even the complexity of the climate system itself. It is no
exaggeration to say at this moment in history that everything we used to count on for stability seems to be falling apart. Either something new is on the verge of being born, or we are on the brink of massive devastation. This is the context in which the mystery of the Word speaks to our communal longing for meaning, for direction, for purpose.

But it is not enough for preachers to recognize the context in which they are called to preach. Preachers must also be able to recognize who they are as well. In other words, we will only be able to discover our mission as Dominicans of Peace if we do two things well: identify clearly the pressing needs of our times, and identify who we are and what we have to offer in response to these needs.

With a median age of 75, the reality is that we are a community of old women blessed with the gift of a few younger ones among us. Some of my friends hate to hear me say this. They think it’s a put-down. I say it’s a compliment. At 67 I’m still one of “the young sisters” in Kentucky, but where I live, many women of 67 are great-grandmothers. So, what if we were to start by identifying ourselves proudly as a group whose gift to the world is that we are old women? We can’t do what we used to do on a daily basis:
    our legs don’t work as well,
        we don’t hear or see as well,
            and we don’t have the energy to work 24/7 like we used to.

But the truth is that the worker-bee lifestyle isn’t what this century needs anyway. What this world needs is wisdom. What this world needs is compassion. What this world needs is reflective and disciplined habits of learning that lead to knowledge and understanding. What this world needs is balance, humor, faith, hope, and love – lots of love. I submit to you, my sisters, that by virtue of our long decades of intense communal commitment, a group of old women like us has plenty of gifts to offer, a goldmine of gifts to offer, to the pressing needs of today’s world. We just have to figure out how to connect ourselves in so that our unique gifts can become accessible to those who need them – and so that we too will keep growing through the gift of mutuality.

At a conference I attended last fall, I landed in a small group with one of Louisville’s most dynamic Catholic leaders, a wealthy woman who is full of creative energy and powerful ideas. Her burning question to me in our discussion was this: “The women’s religious orders in Kentucky are way ahead of the rest of this state on sustainability issues. How can we get access to your sisters’ energy and commitment?”

I did not know how to answer her. I still don’t. We have not yet figured out effective ways to interface with the public world. Perhaps we’ve been frightened by our aging and diminishment into believing that we crones don’t have much to offer any more, so we have inadvertently hidden away our treasures in motherhouses and apartment houses where few have access to us – at the very time when our world most needs what we have to offer.

Context of the preaching… Identity of the preachers… The outlines are forming. But there is a third key question: WHAT are we to preach? This is where the serendipity of tonight’s Word comes in.

Remember years ago when we began this journey with the gift of knapsacks? Tonight’s Scriptures offer important substance to fill those Dominican knapsacks as we step out together in the footsteps of our joyful friar onto the unknown road ahead.

“The community of believers was of one heart and mind and… they had everything in common.” Seek the common good. In my Dominican upbringing, I thought I learned a lot about seeking the common good. I took it seriously. But in my mind the common good was the good of my Dominican community.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve begun to realize how narrow was the scope of my perception. In a global world, seeking the common good of the congregation is not nearly a wide enough tent. Seeking the common good is the mission of the whole world. Preaching the common good means learning to hear and include the needs of all the people, the ones we like and the ones we don’t, the ones considered important and the ones thrown by the wayside, the virtuous and the unvirtuous. But even more, preaching the common good means learning to include the needs and voices of all who live here. Not only the people, but all the
beings, huge or microscopic, living or non-living, who make up the planetary community.

The first gift for our knapsacks tonight is:
        “Seek the common good.” Your very life depends upon it.

The second gift for our knapsacks is related to the first: Make peace. “Peace be with you, my peace I give you.” Not once, but three times! Many of us were puzzled when we first heard “the name that gave itself to us,” as Connie Schoen said so well at the leadership discernment. Dominican Sisters of Peace. What is peace? Is it, as Brian Swimme once asked, simply “bovine placidity,” the mindless tranquility of cows while munching on grass? Swimme concludes that peace is the way sun and earth hold each other at the maximum degree of tension that produces creativity. Comedian Bill Maher says something similar: “You cannot claim you’re for peace – if you’re not willing to disturb it.” The Earth Charter observes that
humanity can have a viable future only through integrating ecological integrity, socio- economic justice, and peace. Perhaps most interesting is the word for peace of the people of the Great Lakes region of southcentral Africa: kindoki. These people conceive peace as a harmonious balance between human beings, the rest of the natural world, and the cosmos. Kindoki is a broader vision of peace than the absence of war or the presence of justice among people. Dare we imagine ourselves as Dominican Sisters of Kindoki?

    “Make peace” is the second gift for our preachers’ knapsacks tonight.

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands… I will not believe.” The third gift for our knapsacks is this: Don’t be afraid of your doubts. Thomas Didymus, the Apostle we hear most about in tonight’s Gospel, has been given a bad rap among commentators over the centuries. He’s called an unbeliever, a loner, a pessimist. Thomas is criticized because he didn’t accept his friends’ word about the resurrection. But I like to think of Thomas as a realist. Dead is dead, isn’t it? Thomas knew more surely than anything that Jesus, his source of life and hope, was dead. Everybody knew it. Everybody had seen him die.

Everybody was horrified by what had happened. No one was talking of anything else that week. So why would anyone in their right mind believe the folks who said that Jesus was alive? Thomas could only believe it if he saw it. What I love most about Thomas is his response when he did see. First Thomas makes the greatest confession of faith recorded anywhere in the Bible: “My Lord AND my God!” Then Thomas gives the rest of his life to preaching the faith farther and wider than any other of the Twelve.

He traveled through what is now Iraq, Iran, Syria, Malabar, and up and down both coasts of India, to the extent that in the early 1600’s when the Portuguese landed in India, they discovered a group of Christians whose faith had been established a millennium and a half before through the preaching of “doubting Thomas.” “Don’t be afraid of your doubts.” They can lead to much deeper faith.

And finally, the fourth gift for our knapsacks: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Dare to believe that you are in this time who Jesus was in his. I learned some interesting things while pondering this 20th chapter of John. It seems that the Johannine community was one of three strong groups that evolved after the death of Jesus along with the Jewish community and the Petrine community. And – surprise! – there was competition and dissension among these groups. The Johannine community seems to have begun among followers of John the Baptist who became convinced that Jesus, not John, was the expected
messiah, and expanded to include other traditional Jews. Somehow these folks attracted a group of Samaritans to join them. Now the Samaritans were partly Jews and partly gentiles. Because their ideas were different from the mainline, the assimilation of the Samaritans influenced how the Johannine community came to understand Jesus. Apparently through meditating on his miracles, the Johannine community was led to daring new interpretations of who Jesus was. They came to see his miracles not just as signs of God’s work, but as God’s work. In the faith of the Johannine community, Jesus was God at work in the world.

According to biblical scholars, this view was so radical that it created tension between the Johannine community and the others. Both Matthew and Luke include commissioning of the disciples in their resurrection stories, but neither of them commissions the disciples to take up the work of Jesus himself. Only in the Gospel of John does the community understand itself as standing in the place of Jesus, being the continuation of his presence in the world.

Will we Dominicans of Peace dare to join the Johannine community and stake our lives literally on so radical a commission: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you?”

• Seek the common good.

• Make peace

• Don’t be afraid of your doubts

• Dare to believe that you are in this time who Jesus was in his

Context, Identity, Content. With all that is at stake in this century, 651 spiritually itinerant and accessible old women unwrapping these powerful gifts from their preaching knapsacks day in and day out could make a huge difference – maybe even enough difference that young women and associates will come to join in!

It’s a journey in faith, and the story continues…

‐ Claire McGowan OP