Looking beyond Loretto: Bringing our work for justice and acting for peace to the wider world

In a recent Midweek Mission Message, longtime Loretto Co-member Martha Alderson acknowledged, “Sometimes we underestimate the value of reaching out beyond ourselves, whether on a personal level or on a community level. We like the comfort of an intimate space where we know where we stand and on whom we can rely.”

She noted there are multiple opportunities at Loretto Motherhouse and within the broader Loretto Community for widening Loretto’s experiences and influence. At the Motherhouse, for example, Loretto welcomes local community residents onto its campus, to fish, to join Loretto as guests at the excellent concerts in the church, to occasionally have families and friends who come for meals, for golf cart rides or other ways of experiencing our campus. Martha pointed out that these kinds of outside-the-Community interactions “help to expand our world into the community and into different ways of thinking.” 

Expanding to the outside is important to Loretto. For example, the Community values the work of the Loretto Justice Fellows, who bring Loretto with them as they serve their communities, especially El Paso at this time. The work of the United Nations calls Loretto to participate in the tasks of peacemaking. To this day, Loretto members serve on numerous boards and are active in multiple outside organizations throughout the U.S. and beyond.  

This week on Loretto’s Facebook page we will highlight just a few of the many  opportunities Loretto members take to work outside of the Community, to step outside themselves and to accept the consequences, positive or otherwise. Again quoting Martha, who puts it best, “We take our attitudes of working for justice and acting for peace to the wider world — and work and act within places that help us to look beyond ourselves.” In doing so, Loretto is “willing to risk both exposing our real identities and our affection for our heritage by continuing to expand our world.