Time for another mailbag! Sr. Louis Marie, O.P. and Sr. Elizabeth John, O.P. are back with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to answer your questions, pulled at random from the cup and answered on the spot. This round covers a little of everything: how the Sisters take turns cooking for one another in community (and what that says about love in the little things), heartfelt advice for teachers weighed down by stress, and the freeing truth that you can be excellent without being perfect. The conversation even turns to the headlines, as the Sisters share their thoughts on Pope Leo's latest encyclical on artificial intelligence and what the Church has to say about living well in a rapidly changing world. Thank you for sending in such wonderful questions! You can submit more through the Torch app, linked below. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
Dominican Sisters Open Mic
Openlight Media
Episodes
34 episodes available, newest first.
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When life feels like it's changing under your feet, what does it mean to rest in a God who never changes? Sr. Teresa Christi, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to share how meditating on the attributes of God (that He is eternal, unchanging, and utterly good) has quietly transformed her spiritual life. Drawing on years of ministry, including her time as superior of the Sisters' Priory in Georgetown, Texas, Sr. Teresa Christi speaks with warmth and plenty of laughter about trusting Providence in the middle of stress and suffering. Together she and Sr. Miriam explore how our words always fall short of God (as St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, His goodness is only ever analogous to ours), and why that mystery is freeing rather than frightening. This episode is a reminder to keep our eyes on God, take the handrail He offers, and trust that He is good, even when we can't yet see how the story ends. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
Sometimes the friendship your heart is aching for is the very thing you've become unable to give. Sr. Mary Ignatius, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. for a tender, honest conversation about friendship: what we're made for, why it so often feels out of reach, and how Christ heals us into being capable of it again. Sr. Mary Ignatius shares her own story of a season when she'd built a wall no one could get through, and how daily time before the Blessed Sacrament changed everything: "I was in the presence of somebody who loved me." From there, she and Sr. Miriam trace friendship all the way back to its source, unpacking how sin leaves us stuck and how Jesus, the perfect friend, is the one who befriends us so we can befriend others again. Along the way they get practical too, on the trust it takes to lower our guard, the danger of clinging to friendships to fill us, and the virtues that hold a friendship together: honesty, mercy, courage, and the one high schoolers name most of all, loyalty. This conversation is a beautiful reminder that when Christ is our first friend, every other friendship can finally breathe. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
What if the very fact that you exist right now is an act of God's love? Sr. Mary Elizabeth, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to explore one of the most beautiful and overlooked truths of the faith: causality. A Rochester native with a PhD in electrical engineering, Sr. Mary Elizabeth once designed the next generation of cochlear implants at the University of Michigan before Catholic radio and a growing love for the Blessed Sacrament drew her toward religious life (a journey she describes, true to form, as a "sinusoidal function" trending steadily upward). Together she and Sr. Miriam walk through Catechism 301, unpacking how God not only creates us but "at every moment upholds and sustains" us in being, enabling us to act and drawing us to our final end. Along the way they sort the true picture from the false ones (God as distant Watchmaker, as magician, as tinkerer filling the gaps) and arrive at something far more personal: a Creator who holds each of us in existence out of sheer love. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
Two sisters, one family, two vocations. In a first for the podcast, Sr. Miriam, O.P. welcomes not one but two guests: Sr. James Karol, O.P. and Sr. Joseph Lucia, O.P., blood sisters who each found their way to the convent by very different roads. They grew up in a faith-filled home of family rosaries, the Gospel read at the dinner table, and pilgrimages to a nearby shrine, but neither planned to end up here. Sr. James Karol chased something bigger than herself all the way into the Air Force, running a "really long detour" while God ran right alongside her. Sr. Joseph Lucia quietly offered God her yes at her eighth-grade confirmation, never dreaming He'd take her up on it. Along the way there's the sisterly surprise of discovering they were both discerning ("we're a Catholic family, but we're not weird, like two would be a little weird"), and the joy of realizing home was calling them both. Warm, funny, and full of heart, it's a story of one family, two vocations, and a God who calls each of us by name. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
What happens when the good life isn't the best one? Sr. Maria, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to tell a story you won't forget: a Bronx-raised daughter of Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants who set out to make a lot of money, sell a lot of cars, and take care of everyone she loved. And she did. She was living the good life: the lake house in Carmel overlooking the water, a new demo car every three months, Saturday-night parties, and a circle of friends who'd meet her at either the pub or the church, whichever the day called for. So why did God want more for her? With her signature humor and warmth, Sr. Maria traces the winding road from wheeling and dealing to kneeling, and the moment in the motherhouse chapel when she realized home was where her heart was: in the Tabernacle. At the center of it all is a truth she can't stop preaching: God isn't looking for cookie-cutter saints. He's calling each of us to become the saint only we can be. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
What does it mean to be set on fire for souls? Sr. Hyacinth, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to introduce the man at the very heart of the Dominican family: St. Dominic himself. A fellow Canadian who once dreamed of political life before God rewrote her story, Sr. Hyacinth traces Dominic's journey from a canon in Osma to the founder of the Order of Preachers, born in the crucible of the Albigensian crisis. Along the way we meet the famous dream of a torch-bearing hound "set to light the world on fire" (yes, the very image behind the Torch app), Dominic's radical insistence on freedom in the rule, and the gentleness, purity, and joy that made him so magnetic to everyone he met. At its core, this is the Dominican mission in miniature: to preach the truth of Jesus Christ, and to remind a restless world that we were made not for rules, but for happiness, freedom, and the glory of heaven. Download the Torch App Take the Virtue Survey Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
You asked, and the Sisters answered! In the first-ever Open Mic Q&A, Sr. Louis Marie, O.P. and Sr. Elizabeth John, O.P. join Sr. Miriam, O.P. to take on the questions listeners have been sending in, from the theological to the wonderfully everyday. What's the actual difference between a Sister and a nun? How can Catholics pray to Mary and the Saints without worshipping them? And the ones you've always wondered about: are Sisters allowed to stay in bed all day when they're sick, and when in the world do they find time to exercise? With warmth, laughter, and plenty of straight answers, the Sisters open a window into the life behind the habit, and remind us that no question is too big or too small to bring to the conversation. Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
What does it take to run the race? Sr. Josefa, O.P. sits down with Sr. Miriam, O.P. to explore why St. Paul reached for the language of athletics when he wrote about the spiritual life. Sport asks us to show up, to practice, to sacrifice, to let it hurt a little for the sake of something we love, and in that discipline we find a picture of how we give ourselves to God. Sr. Josefa and Sr. Miriam talk about how the field reveals character and forms real virtue, and how the question every athlete faces is the same one the soul faces: how much are you willing to give? Along the way there's a friendly house-divided moment (Sr. Josefa grew up in Ohio, and yes, she's an Ohio State fan) and a memory from Sr. Miriam of watching a young Jared Goff play high school football, when a fellow Sister called his NFL future long before it happened. Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree
Why does beauty move us to tears? And what does a starlit sky have to do with our salvation? Sr. Rene Noel sits down with Sr. Miriam to discuss beauty as the radiance of God's truth and goodness. Raised among the mountains and ponderosa pines of Flagstaff, Arizona, Sr. Rene Noel shares how a childhood immersed in the beauty of creation opened her heart to the Creator Himself. The conversation flows from art to music to holiness, and the episode closes with a special treat: the two Sisters singing together. Join the Openlight Media Community: TikTok Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter/X Website Download the Torch App Teachers Pay Teachers Pinterest Linktree