An excerpt from an essay by Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM in the upcoming book Leaders of Hope, a collection of 13 essays from participants at the January 2024 Hope-Esperanza event held in Chicago for Catholic sisters under 65. The book will be released February 14, 2025.
I enter these reflections as an 83-year-old Caucasian woman who has lived life for 65 years with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a U.S. apostolic community of women religious. My voice here among younger Catholic sisters issues from the gift I was given to participate as a “wisdom elder” in Hope Esperanza…
I sit at tables amid Hope Esperanza. Guided by the question, “What do I need to be fully alive in religious life today,” the gathering finds its form and flow. As I lean in and listen attentively to the living answers in younger generations, I experience hints of emergent newness in our global sisterhood.
I experience women radiating hospitality of heart. The words that greet us in the gathering booklet for our first evening are: “In love, we welcome each other.” There is a spontaneous kinship of spirit that the women count on and seem to take for granted. They approach each other with unfettered generosity ready to embrace the other without exception expecting they will be welcomed into the space of the other. Across continents, wearing the dress of their culture or community tradition, speaking and listening in their own language, the women seek connections...
I sit at table on the Bridge of Hope, the symbolic centerpiece of Hope Esperanza… I sit on this bridge at a table newly inscribed with the spirit of our emergent future: Set tables wherever you go as integral to family of any kind; live in right relationship by being true to yourself even when counter to long-standing tradition; do not be afraid to love until it hurts; admit that nothing can be done alone; follow the lead of your soul.
These longings rising from our younger members around tables in Hope Esperanza awaken, evoke, and echo the longings moving in me at every table from my kitchen table forward. I feel the solidarity of resonance with their yearnings. In their commitment to proclaim these intentions with boldness and live them out loud with their lives, I feel the emergence of latent newness. A new thing is, indeed, springing up and I do perceive it. I feel hope; I feel joy.
The complete essay will be available beginning February 14, 2025.
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