Guest Column
By Sister Constance Veit, lsp
Early in our community’s history, a group of townspeople who witnessed the Sisters’ humble charity toward the elderly dubbed them the “Little” Sisters of the Poor. The name stuck. Recently, however, we have become known to some as “the HHS Sisters” due to our lawsuit against the federal government over the Contraceptive Mandate. This issue has been pursuing us for over three years – pushing us out of our quiet, hidden lives into the unwelcome glare of the public eye – and there is no end in sight as our case now heads to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Why us? When will this journey end? I recently wondered as I prepared for yet another media interview about the case. But then a prayer attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred in El Salvador, came to mind: “It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view … We lay foundations that will need further development … It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
Stepping back to take the long view helped me to answer the question, “Why us?” Perhaps, among religious communities serving in the United States, we are uniquely qualified to face our nation’s current threats to religious liberty. Our foundress, Saint Jeanne Jugan, was born at the height of the radically anti-Christian French Revolution and established our congregation in its tumultuous aftermath, with virtually no resources. By the time her earthly journey ended, her young community had grown to over 2.000 Little Sisters serving the elderly in nearly a dozen countries. Today we are present in 31 nations. Saint Jeanne Jugan was undoubtedly the prophet of a future not her own.
Based on our humble beginnings, we might say that the will to persevere in serving the poor and bearing witness to the Joy of the Gospel despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles has been written into the DNA of our Congregation. Generations of Little Sisters have soldiered on through two World Wars, civil wars and government persecution of religion in numerous countries around the globe, disregarding their own personal safety in order to stand by their Residents. Others have weathered earthquakes, tsunamis and natural disasters of all sorts. By God’s grace, they faithfully remained with the elderly regardless of dangers or harsh conditions.
Looking back over our long history, I realize that I stand on the shoulders of humble giants. The witness of Saint Jeanne Jugan and the thousands of Little Sisters who have gone before me gives me the courage to do one more interview – and to trust that tomorrow will take care of itself. As Saint Jeanne Jugan often said when faced with challenges, “Give us the house; if God fills it, God will not abandon it … If God is with us, it will be accomplished.”
Taking the long view I’ve come to a new appreciation of the power of God’s Providence. He has never abandoned us and I am confident that he will not leave us orphans in this challenging moment of our history.
Could it be that God is taking our HHS journey all the way to the Supreme Court to give us the opportunity to witness to our absolute confidence in his loving Providence? Could it be that God chose us for this struggle in order to underline the dignity of every human being created in his image and likeness?
God’s modus operandi is to use the weak of this world to confound the learned and the strong. What weaker or more unlikely prophets could he have chosen to confuse the great and powerful of our contemporary culture than Saint Jeanne Jugan, her Little Sisters of the Poor and the needy elderly? God’s mercy is from age to age on those who fear him; the Almighty will do great things for us – I’m sure of it!
(Sister Constance Veit is communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor.)

Millennial reflections
Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem
Climate change has been on the front burner for a long time. Year after year the extremes in weather patterns have people saying, “See! There is climate change.” The deniers keep up their drum beat. Congress does nothing. Massive hurricanes tear up our seacoasts. Typhoons devastate Taiwan and the coast of China. Wildfires each year are more terrible than the last, and burn up the West. A plant springs a leak of toxic chemicals, and rivers for miles are polluted, wreaking havoc all over. Mississippi is having the worst heat wave in history. Much hullabaloo. But the deniers  soothe people and its back to the usual.
Then there is the recycle movement. Reduce landfills. Push for biodegradable materials. Do we really want people five hundred years from now doing dissertations on our plastic bottles in landfills?
Some of this may sound silly. People make jokes, but it is all very serious. The scientific consensus is in. We  are putting the future of our planet at serious risk.
Pope Francis takes this very seriously. In fact he has made this a centerpiece of his papacy.
Bernie Sanders writes: “Climate change is an unprecedented planetary emergency. If we don’t act aggressively now to combat it, there will be major and painful consequences in store later: rising oceans that inundate coastal areas, bigger super storms like Hurricane Sandy, worsening droughts, out-of-control wildfires, historic floods that come year after year, rising food prices, and millions of people displaced by climate disasters.”
Pope Francis, and this encyclical are making a powerful progressive impact across the world. The Atlantic Magazine reported:
In his Encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis rattles off fact after fact about the pitiful state of the earth: Pesticides have contaminated farmers soil. Air pollution has poisoned cities. Man-made waste checkers landscapes. There is not enough clean water for people to drink or tropical forests to regulate carbon in the atmosphere. Whole species of animals are dying out. In one place he says we are turning the planet into a filthy dump, but this planet is our home, all we got.
It is the poorest nations in the developing world that face the brunt of these conditions.
This encyclical is addressed to everyone on our planet, to remind us that there is such a thing as the common good, that all share and have a right to. Ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion.” He says “politics and technology have failed to save the earth.” Pope Francis criticizes “greed capitalism,” profit at all cost.
I want to focus on the interior conversion part, the spirituality part. To really change the situation involves an interior change. A spiritual renewal has to be built on the interdependence we have on the world and all nature. We are custodians, not dominating rulers.
A Catholic  source reports:
The Encyclical Laudato si’ (Praised Be You) is developed around the concept of integral ecology, as a paradigm able to articulate the fundamental relationships of the person: with God, with one’s self, with other human beings, with creation. As the Pope himself explains in n. 15, this movement starts (ch. I) by listening spiritually to the results of the best scientific research on environmental matters available today, “letting them touch us deeply and provide a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.” Science is the best tool by which we can listen to the cry of the earth.
Pope Francis, true to his patron, says again and again that we have a relationship with the earth, all its creatures. We are called to protect this patrimony and hand it on to future generations. We are not to exploit it. He analyses Genesis correctly by saying we are not to dominate but to nurture and care for it.
Again and again he blasts those who would simply strip the earth of resources for profit only. Unbridled capitalism is a sin, and he is clear on that.
So the attitude must be one of reverence for God’s handiwork. Like St. Francis we must see the creative power of God at work and assist it by preserving its resources.
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)