Reflection on the DSIC Assembly 2025 theme: sr. Petra Kakucs, OP
Reflection offered by sr. Petra Kakucs, OP, Prioress of the Dominican Sisters of St. Margaret of Hungary
And because the midwives feared God, he built them houses Ex 1,21
It takes great courage to defy the King’s orders… At the same time, the Scripture refers to the midwives as “fearing God” (Ex 1,21). How does fear and courage fit together in the same person? Doesn’t it lead to a certain inner disharmony?
Fear of God made the midwives brave and creative. It creates a positive space of tension, it gives them energy and impetus, it makes them creative: they snapped themselves out of the king’s questioning and became righteous in the eyes of God.
The soul of the contemporary sister is no stranger to this tension of fear of God and of courage. It is a question of what it brings to the person: impetus, a will to do, creativity, or apathy, a depressive fog, the abandonment of hope. Because if she considers only the circumstances, the possibilities, the human calculating perspective, then there is an inner urge to lament for the glorious(?) past and let go of the possibility of the future – that is, to dress in mourning. But this situation cannot be pleasing to the Lord, for He is the living God, the Lord of life, who can create sons and daughters from stones.
I think here is the key for choosing: you cannot follow the living God by mourning the future. The living God gives us strength and hope, a will to do, and ideas for continuing. The living God has no problem raising offspring, neither old age nor barrenness is an obstacle for Him. He finds the offspring in the midst of the desert, even in a context where there is no sign of any faith in God. (One of our sisters asked her atheist parents at the age of 12 to be baptized, to go to catechesis, and afterwards to attend Holy mass. For her, a helpless catechist or the group of her pagan friends wasn’t an obstacle. She simply knew that there was Someone within the walls of the church who was waiting for her.)
Vocations ministry is not just the responsibility to care for the future of a community. It also means the responsibility to help find the way for the seeker who is urged by the voice of God’s call. Is this not part of the corporal/spiritual acts of mercy?
