“It is not presumption to have hope and joy
and confidence in God’s grace.”
-Venerable Cornelia Connelly
In October 2024, the American Province launched Graced Moments, where every month, a Holy Child Sister shares a “grace-filled” experience that has influenced her life. The project flows from the Society’s mission “to help others to believe that God lives and acts in them and in our world.”
We thank Elizabeth (Mel) Loomis, a Sister of the Holy Child Jesus for 72 years, for offering her “graced moment.”
Click the audio player to listen to Sister Mel read her two-minute
reflection or see below.
For this question, I went to my own “Composition of Place.”
It’s early Saturday morning, too early, in my opinion.
A few of us young professed are on New York’s subway.
We are headed from 187th Street to downtown to register for Saturday classes at Fordham University.
We are doing our best to arrive first, or at least beat the Cabrini Sisters. They were always first.
The subway is packed with people.
I’m reading a book by writer, poet, and mystic Caryll Houselander on Advent.
In the book, Houselander invites us to see Christ’s presence in everyone.
Looking up from my book, I see a packed jammed subway car. I reflect on the people around me. I see,
Christ the laborer,
Christ the student,
Christ the parent,
Christ the child,
and even Christ the Cabrini Sisters. (Sister Mel laughs).
In my private thoughts, I recall Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words:
“I greet him the days I meet him and bless when I understand.”
This has been a graced moment for me – reflecting on the person of Christ around me.
This has stayed with me all these years.
“I greet him the days I meet him and bless when I understand.”
Thank you, Mel, for reminding me of the Houselander truth, “….Christ’s presence in everyone,” and the line you allude to from the Hopkins poem, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places…” Your words set off a reverse train of thought in me — back, back, back into a dim memory of reading a novel that ended with the words “everything is grace.” What was the novel? When did I read it? With Google as my guide, my memory zeroed in on a book I read sixty years ago as a college student: Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest, which ends with the line, “everything is grace.” And I realized that reading that line at that time in my life was in itself a graced moment, an eye-opener, a call to be on the look-out for the sacramentality of everything. It set me on a seeker’s path to find God in all things, so I celebrate that moment again today. Thank you, Mel.
Sarah Brabant October 8, 2024
Oh Mel, listening to you took me back to those wonderful years at Grand Coteau when you were my spiritual director. Thank you again for your love, your understanding, your patience, and your strong faith in God when I was so troubled. Sarah
Rita Fortner October 8, 2024
I really loved this! especially the competition with the Cabrini Sisters on being on time! I watched the Cabrini movie and I saw the same fire in her that Cornelia had. I also can relate to the subway and all the people on it. I will be going to New York in November and I always look forward to the subway rides and the unique faces of God’s people around me! I like to imagine their stories and what their lives are about. The busy jammed packed subway -rubbing arms and bodies making room for each other is grace to me! thank you.
Lucy Howell October 8, 2024
Dear Mel,
Thank you for your lovely reflection! Very meaningful as Steve and I are surrounded by hundreds of people at the Salt Lake City airport on our way to Paris. Such a variety of folks from many countries – all ages. occupations and reasons for their trips. Every one is filled with God’s Grace!
Much love,
Lucy
Peggy Palm October 8, 2024
I am so fortunate to be alive and well avoiding a disastrous hurricane here in South Florida ( only rain and high winds) I see and hear on the news all those heroic families and workers preparing to face this event knowing that the grace of our Lord is with them.
What a gift this sharing of her graced moment has been for me. I too hope in these last years to “greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand” — and bless even when I don’t understand. . .
Thanks to Mel and to Gods radiant grace at work in her!
Janice Farnham, RJM
Dear Sr. Elizabeth,
I’ve been on 187th St. more than a few times. My sisters and I are St.Elizabeth’s School graduates! We are Barbara Regan ‘62, Joan Regan ‘64 and I’m Virginia Regan ‘73. Encountering Jesus in those we meet along the way, was a notion that the Holy Child Sisters were very good at conveying to us.
Thank you!
Love to all,
Virginia M. Regan Hawkins
sister’s humor, reminding me to see the Lord in all I meet.
I love the practice of seeing Christ in the people we encounter each day, and by naming each one by what she thought their identity was she brings it down to earth. Also Hopkins is a favorite poet for me.