Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, closed one of her letters to the community with the exclamation: “Dance every evening!”  From whence this playful spirit?  Was it to keep warm on the cold winter nights?  Or perhaps her creative imagination inviting her sisters to step out from under the lingering heaviness of the day’s burdens and be caught up in the joyful rhythms of the dance.

Catherine knew the bittersweet of “joys and sorrows mingled in human existence, one following upon the other.”  She was no stranger to the cross. In prayer she cried out to God, “Take from my heart all painful anxiety” … and then pleaded, “teach me to cast myself entirely into the arms of Thy Providence with the most lively unlimited confidence.”

During this evening together we will glean from Catherine’s stories and our own experience the contours of joy erupting in the juggernauts of life.  When have movements of transcendent grace interrupted our downward spiral and surprised us with laughter?