Precious Blood Renewal Center update October 2025
Seven girls from Girl Scout Troop 5674 from Gladstone, Missouri, held their bridging ceremony, marking their advancement from Daisies to Brownies at the Renewal Center on Sept. 13. Daisies are in kindergarten and first grade; Brownies are second and third graders. This was the second group of Scouts troop leader Alyson Baker has brought to the Precious Blood Renewal Center. “The girls love it here,” Baker says. “We’re used to doing things in a church basement, so being outside and with a physical bridge, it makes things very special.”
Baker said her Scouts “belong to all different faith backgrounds and no-faith backgrounds” so it’s important to find a place that is sensitive to that. “I love how ecumenical and accepting Precious Blood Renewal Center is,” she says.
Baker also leads a group of older girls who did their bridging ceremony at the Renewal Center about two years ago. Last year, this group came to learn about the center’s Reconciliation Labyrinth. “The girls thought that was amazing,” Baker says. “They really want to come back here when they bridge to Junior Scouts.”
Kathy Keary, well known to many C.PP.S. members and Companions, is the featured speaker in the October installment of our Teach Us to Pray series. Kathy will be demonstrating lectio divina, a meditative way of praying with Scripture. “This ancient practice opens our hearts to a deeper awareness of God’s presence and action in our lives,” Kathy says. Kathy’s presentation, available in person and by Zoom, will be on Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m. central time.
The Teach Us to Pray series runs until next August. On the first Thursday of each month, practitioners of a variety of prayer styles, mostly from the Catholic tradition but also from other traditions, demonstrate prayers in their particular styles. On Nov. 6, we’ll learn about meditation from a Buddhist lama, and on Dec. 4, a young theologian from the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, will help us read scripture with Our Lady of Guadalupe.
To mark the winding down of the Jubilee Year of Hope, Fr. Ron Will is offering a series of lectio divina and visio divina meditations based on the 16 bronze panels of the Holy Door on the north side of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is open only during Holy Years. We’ll meet in person and by Zoom for four consecutive Tuesday evenings beginning Oct. 28 and read the book “Opening the Holy Door: Hope-Filled Scripture Reflections from St. Peter’s Basilica” by Joan Watson.
For details about all these programs and more, visit www.pbrenewalcenter.org/events.