The Catholic Daughters of the Americas – Court Kavanaugh #54 invite all women to a Lenten Morning of Recollection on Saturday, February 29, from 8:30 am to 12:00 pm.
Presentations will be given on women Doctors of the Church, Saint Hildegard of Bingen and Saint Catherine of Siena, by Dr. Sara Pecknold and Sister Mary Sheila Maksim.
The morning will begin with Mass at 8:30 am in the Basilica. A continental breakfast and the talks will follow in the Lyceum.
Free will donations will be accepted to help cover the costs of the event.
RSVPs are strongly encouraged, so the Catholic Daughters know how much food to prepare. RSVP by contacting Bertha Braddock at 703-212-9339 or [email protected].
Sister Mary Sheila Maksim, O.P.
Sister Mary Sheila is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia of Nashville, Tennessee. The Dominican Sisters are a contemplative-active community serving in about 40 schools around the country and in a few small, international missions.
Born in California, Sister Mary Sheila met the Dominican Sisters during her freshman year of college at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. Sister heard Christ’s call and entered the convent that year, completed a teaching degree at Aquinas College in Nashville, and later an administrative degree at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Sister is presently a student of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. where she is working on a thesis about the Joy of Christ for a degree in Thomistic Studies.
Sister has taught in Denver, Colorado and Providence, Rhode Island and has served as principal of schools in Cincinnati, Ohio; New Orleans, Louisiana; Greenville, South Carolina; and Cottleville, Missouri.
Sister Mary Sheila is serving now as principal of Aquinas in Woodbridge, where she aims to inspire students every day to experience the Joy of Christ and to become saints.
Dr. Sara Pecknold
Dr. Sara Pecknold holds a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology with a minor in Vocal Performance from The Catholic University of America, where she currently serves as a lecturer in the History of Sacred Music. While pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Pecknold discovered her great love for sacred music composed by women in religious orders; St. Hildegard of Bingen is counted the first—and perhaps the greatest—within this impressive lineage of consecrated women composers.
Dr. Pecknold has presented at numerous conferences and institutions, including the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (2012), the Annual Conference of the American Musicological Society (2016), the International Institute for Culture (2017), Seton Hall University’s Monsignor Cafone Lecture (2019), and Princeton University’s “Strozzi Day,” which celebrated the fourth centennial of the birth of the prolific seventeenth-century composer, Barbara Strozzi (2019). In March of 2016, Dr. Pecknold appeared on BBC Three’s Composer of the Week series on the life and music of Barbara Strozzi. Her articles have appeared in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion and New Blackfriars. Dr. Pecknold’s current research concerns devotion to the Most Precious Blood of Christ in early modern Venice and music in early modern mystical theology—especially in the writings of St. Francis de Sales.
At Catholic University, Dr. Pecknold founded and continues to direct the Concerts Spirituels, a sacred music concert series honoring the liturgical calendar. (This spring, the Schola Cantorum of the Basilica of St. Mary will appear in the Concerts Spirituels to celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19). Also a professional soprano, Dr. Pecknold has often served as a cantor at the Basilica, which is her home parish.
She lives in Alexandria with her husband and three children.