Prayer for Sister Simone Campbell, SSS

We gather today, as a community, a network of former and current Board members to share our blessing of gratitude for you, Simone, the legacy you leave with NETWORK, and our times with you as Boards and as individuals.

We are grateful for the family, friends and community who shaped Simone’s early years. They planted seeds that continue to bear fruit today.

We are grateful for your entry into the Sisters of Social Service, women like yourself, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, who advocate Peace and Justice for the Common Good in light of the Social Mission of the Church.

We are grateful that as Spirit breathed Vatican II into being, windows opened to reveal new paths for living the Gospel of Christ by responding to calls for justice and peace. This was a repeated call for liberation that all of God’s children have their human dignity respected. 

We are grateful for the women religious, who forged one of these uncharted paths by founding NETWORK to educate, organize, and lobby for economic and social transformation in this nation of abundance.

We are grateful for the Spirit guiding Sister Simone from her beloved west coast to our nation’s Capiol to serve as NETWORK’s executive director.

We are grateful that for more than 16 years Sister Simone used your voice and your platform to demand economic justice, a fair wage, access to healthcare, immigration and tax reform, a faithful budget and other needs of those on the margins.

We are grateful for your journeys to the margins, from south to north and east to west by bus and by plane, for holy encounters with our sisters and brothers across and throughout this land.

We are grateful that time and again, they entrusted you to receive and carry their sacred stories to Capitol Hill. In these simple yet profound acts, you facilitated the mending of gaps to which we are so often unaware. 

We are grateful for your delivering the voices of the 100% to our legislators thereby allowing NETWORK to influence federal policies serving the Common Good on the long and arduous path to economic and social transformation. 

We bless you Sister Simone for your service to NETWORK and your commitment to living the Gospel of Christ.

Knowing that your work is not done, we trust Our Loving and Merciful God of Surprises to light the path on which you are to embark. It is not a new path, but merely the continuation of your life’s journey. 

May compassion continue to be your hands, 

May wisdom continue to be your feet, 

and may love continue to be your eyes. 

With gratitude as the beat of our hearts, 

we pray this in all the Holy Names of God.

And the people say, Amen.