Pauline Vanier sold everything she owned and moved into a small house in Trosly-Breuil. She became “Mamie,” the grandmother of L’Arche.

Despite only recently earning the title, motherhood was not new to me. My body, my mind, my time are not my own.

Mother’s Day is already difficult for women who long to be moms or have lost children in miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of a child after birth. And these women do not make up a small percentage of the women in the pews.

Adding more words will not make Mass “better.” If you cleanly speak the words as they are, if you let them flow through you, the people in the pews may hear the Mass as they have never heard it before. You do not need to do more. It’s not about you.

Fear should not keep us from fulfilling our very purpose to love one another.

I think of pressing a hand or a finger into a wound in order to see, in order to believe.