October 30, 2017 | Author: Anonymous | Category: N/A
in the editing of Catherine Doherty's early works, he Father Robert Wild Journey to the Heart of Christ ......
Father Robert Wild’s classic trilogy on the “Little Mandate” of Jesus Christ given to Catherine Doherty — now published in one volume, including: • Journey to the Lonely Christ • Love, Love, Love • Journey in the Risen Christ
“A most profitable examination of this part of Catherine’s spirituality.... a marvelous book.... unique and attractive.” — The Priest In this extensive work, Father Wild has compiled a simple, straightforward introduction to the spirituality of the Servant of God Catherine Doherty as synthesized in what she liked to call her “Little Mandate” — a personal message to her from the Lord during the course of her lifetime. By making use of Catherine’s own words and by quoting extensively from her published and unpublished works, he brings us right to the heart of her unique and life-changing gospel vision.
ISBN 0-921440-83-9 $19.95 U.S. $24.95 Cdn
Arise—go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me. Little—be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me. Love... love... love, never counting the cost. Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fears into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always. I will be your rest.
Robert Wild
Father Robert Wild is a priest of Madonna House. He lives as a poustinik, spending much of the week in prayer, writing and spiritual direction. Besides helping in the editing of Catherine Doherty’s early works, he has published a number of successful books himself. Ordained a priest in the Diocese of Buffalo in 1967, he had experience both as a Trappist and as a Carthusian before ordination.
The Little Mandate
Father Robert Wild His three classic books now presented in one comprehensive volume
Father Robert Wild’s classic trilogy on the “Little Mandate” of Jesus Christ given to Catherine Doherty — now published in one volume, including: • Journey to the Lonely Christ • Love, Love, Love • Journey in the Risen Christ
“A most profitable examination of this part of Catherine’s spirituality.... a marvelous book.... unique and attractive.” — The Priest In this extensive work, Father Wild has compiled a simple, straightforward introduction to the spirituality of the Servant of God Catherine Doherty as synthesized in what she liked to call her “Little Mandate” — a personal message to her from the Lord during the course of her lifetime. By making use of Catherine’s own words and by quoting extensively from her published and unpublished works, he brings us right to the heart of her unique and life-changing gospel vision.
ISBN 0-921440-83-9 $19.95 U.S. $24.95 Cdn
Arise—go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me. Little—be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me. Love... love... love, never counting the cost. Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fears into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always. I will be your rest.
Robert Wild
Father Robert Wild is a priest of Madonna House. He lives as a poustinik, spending much of the week in prayer, writing and spiritual direction. Besides helping in the editing of Catherine Doherty’s early works, he has published a number of successful books himself. Ordained a priest in the Diocese of Buffalo in 1967, he had experience both as a Trappist and as a Carthusian before ordination.
The Little Mandate
Father Robert Wild His three classic books now presented in one comprehensive volume
“Using material from Catherine Doherty’s many writings and talks, Father Wild demonstrates why many consider the founder of the Madonna House Apostolate as a prophetic voice for our times and one of the authentic teachers of the gospel.” — Spiritual Book News (review for Love, Love, Love) “A most profitable examination of this part of Catherine’s spirituality.... Father Wild really lets Catherine Doherty speak for herself by using her works, both published and unpublished, so extensively that you will feel that you have met her by the time you finish this marvelous book.... It is unique and attractive.” — The Priest (review for Journey to the Lonely Christ) “At last, thank God, a good spiritual book for parishioners, ordinary Catholics.... Catherine in her spiritual writings has both feet on the ground, she lives in the real world, she has uncommon common sense.... Yes, here is a book for the ‘common garden variety’ of Catholics.” — Homiletic & Pastoral Review (review for Journey in the Risen Christ) “Father Wild, a priest who has spent years at Madonna House and has taught a course on the Little Mandate for several years, is preeminently qualified to present Doherty’s vision.... Those who have devoured Doherty’s own books and still hunger for more will welcome this one.” — Sisters Today (review for Journey to the Lonely Christ)
Journey
to the Heart of Christ The Little Mandate of God to Catherine Doherty
Father Robert Wild
Madonna House Publications Combermere, Ontario, Canada
Madonna House Publications ® 2888 Dafoe Rd Combermere ON K0J 1L0 www.madonnahouse.org/publications Journey to the Heart of Christ by Father Robert Wild © 2002 Madonna House Publications. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without express written permission. The Our Lady of Combermere colophon is a registered trademark of Madonna House Publications. First Combined Edition First printing, August 15, 2002 — feast of the Assumption Printed in Canada Originally published in three volumes by Alba House (Society of St. Paul, New York) in 1987, 1989 and 1992. Cover design by Rob Huston. Icon on cover (from St. Mary’s Chapel at Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario) is copyright Father Theodore Koufos, and used with permission.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Wild, Robert Journey to the heart of Christ : the little mandate of God to Catherine Doherty / Father Robert Wild. Previously published separately in 3 vols. under the titles: Journey to the lonely Christ, Love, Love, Love, and Journey in the risen Christ. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-921440-83-9 1. Doherty, Catherine de Hueck, 1896–1985. 2. Spirituality—Catholic Church—History of doctrines—20th century. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines—History—20th century. I. Title. BX4705.D56W554 2002
248’.092
C2002-904241-0
Book I:
Journey to the Lonely Christ Book II:
Love, Love, Love
Book III:
Journey in the Risen Christ
This edition presents these three volumes as they were originally printed, with page numbering intact.
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Table of Contents Document Information.................................................................................................................... 1 Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ 6 Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER ONE Foundations .................................................................................................... 13 The Nature of the Mandate ....................................................................................................... 13 Communal, Ecclesial Words..................................................................................................... 16 The Trinity ................................................................................................................................ 16 Nazareth and the Church........................................................................................................... 17 The Church................................................................................................................................ 18 Mary.......................................................................................................................................... 19 The Beatitudes .......................................................................................................................... 21 Faith .......................................................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER TWO Arise! Go! ..................................................................................................... 23 Adventure.................................................................................................................................. 27 Holy Restlessness...................................................................................................................... 27 Journey to Nazareth .................................................................................................................. 28 CHAPTER THREE Poverty ....................................................................................................... 35 Beggars for the Lord ................................................................................................................. 35 A Way to the Poor Man ............................................................................................................ 38 Lady Poverty............................................................................................................................. 41 Kenosis...................................................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER FOUR The Cross ..................................................................................................... 46 The Cross .................................................................................................................................. 46 15 pictures. See hard Copy ........................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER FIVE Identification.................................................................................................. 52 With Christ in Pain.................................................................................................................... 52 Christ in Pain............................................................................................................................. 55 “The Pain Of Christ”................................................................................................................. 58 An Easter Meditation ................................................................................................................ 58 CHAPTER SIX Assuaging the Loneliness Of Christ................................................................. 60 Why Loneliness?....................................................................................................................... 63 The Theology of Christ’s Ongoing Pain................................................................................... 64 CHAPTER SEVEN Childlikeness.............................................................................................. 67 Little Be Always Little Childlike.................................................................................... 67 Bethlehem ................................................................................................................................. 67 The Passion of The Infant Christ .............................................................................................. 70 Childlike Virtues....................................................................................................................... 72 Running To Abba...................................................................................................................... 73 Trust .......................................................................................................................................... 73 Openness and Defenselessness ................................................................................................. 73 Sense of Wonder and Celebration............................................................................................. 74 Little Be Always Little......................................................................................................... 74 Chosen....................................................................................................................................... 75 Insignificant .............................................................................................................................. 75
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Unimportant, Unpretentious ..................................................................................................... 76 Five Smooth Stones and God............................................................................................... 77 Small Is Beautiful ..................................................................................................................... 77 Entering Hearts ......................................................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER EIGHT Simplicity.................................................................................................... 79 …Simple…Poor….................................................................................................................... 79 Simplicity, Nazareth, Ordinariness ........................................................................................... 80 Simplicity and the Preaching Of the Gospel............................................................................. 81 Simplicity as a Remedy for “Serious Virtue” ........................................................................... 82 Simplicity as the Essence of Madonna House .......................................................................... 83 …Poor… ................................................................................................................................... 84 APPENDIX The Spirit Of The Madonna House Apostolate........................................................ 88 Key to Cited Works ...................................................................................................................... 97 Background Bibliography........................................................................................................... 102
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Introduction Catherine de Hueck Doherty died December 14, 1985, 5:30 A.M., the feast of St. John of the Cross, in her cabin in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. A few minutes after her death her bed was surrounded by her spiritual children of Madonna House. Her life and teaching influenced millions of people. It is safe to say that she was one of the great women of our century, perhaps of all time. History will decide. Who was she? She would have answered, “I am a woman in love with God and with the poor.” This tells all. But people in love with God assume many forms. In this introduction to a study of her spirituality I would like to develop briefly the biblical figure of the prophet, and say that Catherine Doherty was a prophet, a prophet seized and slain by certain words of God, overpowered by them, even (in the strong words of Jeremiah) “seduced” by them. Her life and teaching was the living expression of these words. What words? She often told us. She called them her “Little Mandate,” which is the subject of the present book. “Little,” because she saw herself as of no account or consequence; “Mandate,” because she really experienced them as coming from God, as being mandated by him. She had an extraordinary sense of having been called to some special mission by God himself. We cannot speak of her spirituality without reference to these words. I quote them here in full: Arise—go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me. Little—be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. Do little things exceedingly well for love of me. Love…love…love, never counting the cost. Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fears into the depths of men's hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always. I will be your rest. Now a prophet is a totally contemporary person, that is, he or she sees the present with the eyes of God. The words they have received can never be totally understood or explained in terms of their life experiences; still, their life experiences form the prism through which the words they have received mature, are understood by them, and are expressed. Therefore, we must look briefly at her life (especially if the present reader is unfamiliar with it). Her life spanned almost the whole of the 20th century (1896-1985), and she was involved in its dramas as very few people have been. Born in Nigni-Novgorod (now Gorki), she experienced the relative luxury and wholeness of life in pre-revolutionary Russia. She was a nurse in the First World War and was decorated for
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bravery. She stood in the crowd in front of the Smolensky Institute as Lenin, in 1917, presented his dark plan for the new earthly paradise. She experienced the confiscation of all her possessions and the loss of many of her relatives. She had to flee the country, and thus knew the condition of a refugee what it was to be driven from one’s beloved country. She knew what it was to be without a country, and then to be taken in by a friendly nation (Canada). She experienced the bottom of the social ladder, and then, through her lecturing, wealth in the land of opportunity. She knew marriage, the birth and raising of a child, and the tragic dissolution of a marriage. Believing in the power of love, she dared to fall in love again, and marry again. She knew how to sway audiences in her public addresses on Russia and on social conditions in North America. She knew how to chit-chat with the poor as she handed out clothes and food in the slums of the New World. She knew the terror of fighting racial prejudice in both the Church and society. She was the foundress of Friendship Houses across America, and, before her death, missions of Madonna House across the world. She was friends with Cardinal Cushing in Boston, Jacques Maritain in France, and Julia Mayhew, her neighbor across the street in Combermere. Through these and countless other experiences the words of the Little Mandate grew and deepened in her heart, and expressed themselves ever more concretely in her life and teaching. She had left an immense body of teaching, most of which has not yet been published. When it is published, what will be its significance? It will be seen as a totally contemporary gospel spirituality which goes to the essence of our ancient faith while avoiding the aberrations of the modern world. We will not be able to say that she was “unaware” of this or that facet of our contemporary situation. As a true prophet, she was aware. Orthodox and Roman; Russian and North American; Old World and New World; pre-modern and post-modern; pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II; lone apostle and foundress of a community; criss-crossing the world, speaking, ministering to the poor, challenging people to love the GodMan whose love has been rejected of all people of our times, Catherine Doherty was aware, totally present in our world. The fundamental question her life and teaching will pose is this: Can we accept her total vision, or will we pick and choose what we want? Like her, can we be both in the poustina and in the marketplace? Can we love the Church as the Spouse of Christ, and weep over its failings? Can we love the suffering Christ in everyone, rich and poor alike? Can we live and preach the whole Gospel without watering it down to what people like to hear? Can we use the full capacity of our minds and hearts but always subjecting them to the light of faith? Can we face realistically the tragedies of the world which are immense at this time without losing the joy of the risen Christ? At a time in history when, to many people, “Russia” means the “evil empire,” God sent us a woman from Holy Russia who, as well as anyone in our times, taught and incarnated the “empire of love.” If she truly was a prophet sent from God, will we have the courage to follow her? One evening towards the end of 1982, I was visiting Catherine in her cabin. We were talking about Madonna House and her publications. I told her that I had envisioned in ten years or so
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putting together into a book my course on the Little Mandate. (I had been teaching this course for the past few years to those aspiring to join our religious family.) She said: “Now’s the time.” Presenting the Gospel vision of this great woman is a formidable task because of the richness and extensiveness of her writings. But after that conversation with her, and after consultation here with those responsible, it seemed the Lord’s will to try and articulate, in some limited way, her spirituality. First, what am I attempting? Secondly, what are the limitations or boundaries of this presentation? In several volumes, of which this is the first, I am attempting a simple, straight-forward presentation of the spirituality of the Little Mandate, the Lord’s words to her which I have quoted above. Catherine considers these words to be the heart and essence of her own personal vocation. Her whole teaching can be considered as a further elaboration of these words. Already people are beginning to write dissertations and theses on her spirituality. The material available for these studies is very limited. I consider the Staff Letters (SL) she has written to her spiritual family over the years as the most important part of her teaching, and none of these has yet been published. I thought it would be helpful to present, from Madonna House itself, and using many of our primary sources, a vision of the heart of her spirituality which might then serve as some kind of guideline for people’s study and reflection. I will try mostly to present her doctrine using her own words and not mine. Some commentary will be unavoidable; the selection of material is already a kind of commentary. But my real intention is to allow you to listen to Catherine herself, to hear the music of her new song flowing from her own great mind and heart. I will be making some comments about the origins of her spirituality, but this is not a major consideration; I will be saying a few things about the biblical roots of her doctrine, but neither is this a primary focus. It’s her own words I’d like you to hear. A further clarification is necessary: Catherine’s teaching is very extensive. I do not intend to touch on every aspect of it. There is this core which she calls the Little Mandate. It is the deep fountain out of which her whole spirituality flows. I think I have personally arrived at the point where I see how all the major themes of this Mandate fit together. This is the vision I wish to present. I teach another course here at Madonna House which concerns our Constitution or Way of Life. This includes both spirituality and its practical application to our daily life. In the present book you will not find much practical application. I’m interested in the spiritual fountain out of which all the applications flow. There are certain dangers in doing it this way. One aspect of her genius is precisely not having doctrine separate from application to daily life. She often says that all real spirituality must be incarnate. So this book must be seen as part of a larger presentation, which will grow and expand as more of her works are published. I offer here only a modest beginning, nothing more. I have read almost all of her writings. This should give the reader confidence that the present work flows from familiarity with these primary sources. A few years ago the Catholic University of America put out a series called The Catholic Tradition. The stated purpose of the series was to “select from the Catholic Tradition the 200 greatest writers of all time.” In Volume 14, the second of two volumes on spirituality, Catherine
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is listed along with Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, Cardinal Newman and others. This means that already Catherine is considered, at least by some, as one of the greatest teachers of the Gospel of all time. The exerpts in Volume 14 are from Poustinia, which is truly a great book but the best is yet to come! It is a great privilege to help propagate her vision. It can truthfully be said that already her writings are giving life to millions of people. I believe this is only the beginning. History will decide. I really think, though, that her influence will be greater than anyone now realizes or appreciates. This book is a small tribute to a great woman. I wish with all my heart it were better than it is. Compiling it is an act of personal love for her as well as a way of saying thank you to the Lord. May it serve, in some modest way, to help others understand a vision of life which is truly one of the most remarkable ever inspired by the Holy Spirit. When I told Catherine the title I had selected, she said, “That’s a wonderful title. That’s what I have been trying to do from the beginning” (that is, journey to the lonely Christ.)
Journey to the Lonely Christ
Robert Wild
The Little Mandate of Catherine de Hueck Doherty
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CHAPTER ONE Foundations The Nature of the Mandate One of the most fundamental documents we have from Catherine is a tape she made on April 27, 1968, which is entitled simply, “Little Mandate” (LM). We often refer to it as the tape on “How the Little Mandate Came To Be.” The first few paragraphs of this tape give an important insight into the nature of the Mandate: It is a spring day, gray, but with a little bit of sunshine. I am trying to gather my thoughts to make a tape on the background of the Little Mandate. I said to myself, I’d better give a background to the Mandate because, in its present form, it may seem that one blessed day some angel, or God, or our Blessed Mother, in some miraculous way dictated this thing to me and it all came out in one piece, like a Hail Mary. Well, it is far from being the case. And it is because it is so far from being the case I thought I’d better give that background. Now, I confess, it is not an easy thing to do. It means turning my spiritual footsteps backwards into the past. I can’t say it’s an unpainful past; I would be a liar. All through my life I have had a modicum of peace, God’s peace, and it grew with the years. Added to that, I had the strange joy of God which very quietly lay in the cradle of pain. How big the joy, how big the peace, only God knows. But my mother’s words (spoken) at birth “You are born under the shadow of the Cross” have come to pass. Probably she meant giving birth to me in a Pullman car, which must have been a great cross to her. But that is what she told me when I was older, and I remember that now. Slowly, personally, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute as I grew older, the meaning of those words grow deeper and deeper and deeper. (HMCB) There is an idea in these paragraphs which is a key to an understanding of the nature of the Little Mandate: The words of the Mandate did not drop ready-made from heaven, but grew in her mind and heart over the years. When God wishes to accomplish something in the world, he speaks to somebody, puts words of life into his or her heart, which continue to grow and become clearer. I think each of us has a little Mandate, words that came to us in prayer, or through experience, or through reading, which sort of form the foundation of our lives. These are the words we revert to in times of decisions; these are the words which give our lives meaning and direction at the deepest level. A full understanding of the Little Mandate of Catherine would entail a full understanding of her life, and especially the circumstances which fostered these particular words. As I mentioned, brief indications will be given to those events in this book, though I will not go into her life very much. The more you know about Catherine’s life, however, the better you will understand the Little Mandate. In this connection, I refer you to her autobiography, Fragments of My Life (FML), as one companion volume to the present work. In one sense, Catherine’s spiritual life can be seen as the “deeper and deeper” understanding and living out of the meaning of these words of the Mandate spoken by the Lord to her in the depth
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of her being. My own study of the Mandate has convinced me that these are not “rationally thought out words,” but real intuitions of the Spirit. I hope this will become apparent as I present the innumerable ways these same themes are woven together into ever increasing beauty and intricacy. These words are simply “in her,” and she does not need to “think them up” each time she wishes to speak. They are in her like the very air she breathes. When she speaks, breath comes out of her mouth. So when she speaks about her spirituality, the words of the Mandate come out of her heart. They are her very life. Here at the very beginning, in a sort of bird’s-eye view of the book, I wish to state these themes, and briefly show how the other lines expand upon them. Arise! Go! Sell all you possess… give it directly, personally, to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me going to the poor being poor being one with them one with Me. This first paragraph of the Mandate is its heart; all the other lines are expansion and commentary on the spirituality of these themes. Life is a journey, a pilgrimage. It is a pilgrimage to union with Christ who is found in the poor. That is, in everyone. In some mysterious way he continues his passion in them. Because of sin and the condition in which we find ourselves, this journey is painful. It necessitates becoming poor, an emptying (kenosis) of the false self, in order to be filled with Christ. Christ emptied himself, became poor for love of us. We can only become united with him now by an inward journey of self-stripping. Thus do we become joined to him in love, which is the goal of human existence. In the later years of her life Catherine has written whole books on each of these themes. Strannik (St) [pilgrim] treats of the journey dimension of human existence. Urodivoi (U) [fools for God] deals with divine foolishness, the kenotic aspect of the following of Christ. Her book on poverty is still in manuscript form, but will eventually be published. As we shall see, poverty is not simply one of the virtues for Catherine. It is a way of life, the form which love now must take in our present condition. Finally, Sobornost (So) [unity] treats of the total unity of mind and heart with one another which results when Christians empty themselves for the love of the Poor Man. The essential ingredient in all these aspects of the spiritual life an ingredient which is also a way is the Cross: without the Cross it is not possible to journey in poverty towards union with the poor Christ. Little be always little…simple Poor childlike, Catherine is insistent on calling us to “being before doing.” This line concerns the deep characteristics of our being before God. The heart of this line is childlikeness, the call to return to the image of the Divine Child, Jesus. Littleness, simplicity, and total dependence on the Father (spiritual poverty) are the characteristics of the child. These are the states of being without which we cannot unite with the Christ who became poor for love of us. She says that this line is the most difficult of all. Preach the Gospel WITH YOUR LIFE
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WITHOUT COMPROMISE listen to the Spirit He will lead you. What are we to do on our journey? Preach the Gospel, that is, Jesus! We are to manifest, by our lives, the presence of the risen Christ. The Gospel is a call to the total gift of self without compromise, since Jesus gave himself totally for us. “Your Life” means with the totality of the self, using all the gifts and talents the Lord has given us. It is the Holy Spirit who will teach us how to do this. Do little things exceedingly well For love of Me. Life is made up of a multitude of little things. Our pride propels us to make our journey by great leaps and bounds. No. We are to walk one step at a time, doing everything, especially the small things, out of great love for Christ. Love love love, never counting the cost. Love is the great commandment of the Lord. It occurs in the center of the seven explanatory lines of the Mandate to show that it is the center of the Gospel and life. Love of its nature does not calculate its efforts. Love simply loves. Go into the market place and stay with Me…pray…fast… pray always…fast. The market place is the human heart, where all the buying and selling takes place. This is a further clarification also of the “poor”: the poor of the first line are not simply the materially poor, but every human being. We are all poor in different ways. The pilgrimage is a journey into the human heart to enrich hearts with the presence of the risen Christ. Prayer and fasting, as Jesus says in the Gospel, are the two great spiritual weapons needed to cast the demons out of the market place of the heart. Pray always. I WILL BE YOUR REST. If we pray always, as the Lord commanded us, we will have the strength to keep walking on our pilgrimage. In a paradoxical way we will know the strength which comes from resting in his arms as we journey. Not only will we rest in God, but in some mysterious fashion Christ will find rest and consolation in us as well. Catherine is from Russia. Her thought-patterns are circular rather than linear. Hers is not a step by step progression of thought. She is not illogical but alogical, if one may put it that way. Thus in one paragraph, she may express the whole of the Mandate. She is a weaver; the threads of her tapestry are the lines of the Mandate. She does not simply treat one theme and then pass on to another. All the themes are present to her all the time. The present book will reflect something of this thinking. In the West we tend to sort everything out and make a neat, logical package of a person’s life and thought. Even though I’m trying to accomplish something of this, it really is not wholly possible. Her thought is too compact, too intricate. She seeks, by playing the themes over and over again in a variety of ways, to have them seep into a person’s consciousness and heart. Again, music is a good analogy: the same lines in a
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cantata are sung in many different ways. Likewise, all the themes of the opera may be in the overture. Catherine can put the whole Mandate in one staff letter, and sometimes in a short paragraph. Like a good teacher she repeats her lesson constantly until its message is absorbed. Thus, there will be this over-lapping of themes. I hope it will sound in your ears like the music it truly is.
Communal, Ecclesial Words Perhaps another way to specify the limitations of this book within the total context of Catherine’s teaching is to make a distinction between personal, and communal or ecclesial, words. Communal words are the truths of revelation given to us all. The Church is the divinised community in which we experience them. Catherine’s personal spirituality is profoundly and deeply rooted in the truths of the Gospel, and in the dogmas and sacramental life of the Church. The Little Mandate concerns her personal words, and this book concerns her own spirituality, which by definition is a particular way of living out the Gospel and the communal life of the Church. But lest anyone misunderstand, and, not knowing Catherine, think of the Little Mandate as some esoteric doctrine cut off from the life of the Church, it may be well here to emphasize briefly but strongly these ecclesial words which form the context for her life and thought. They are always to be presumed as the basis of her personal life.
The Trinity In our “Way of Life,” or “Constitution,” Catherine writes: I would like to bring to the family that God has designed to establish through me the very essence of my spirituality … the Trinity … which takes its root, of course, from Eastern Spirituality. To me (the Trinity) is a reality of faith. The Trinity is fire, flame, movement. The Trinity dwells within me, I am Its temple. The tips of the wings of the Spirit, in this movement, in this fire, touch the tip of my heart. I appear to be standing in the eye of this fantastic creative movement and fire. Because this glimpse of the Trinity has been given to me, I know that I am walking on the way that is Christ into the heart of the Father; that I have constant recourse to the Holy Spirit who reminds me of the words of my Brother Jesus Christ, but who also shows me the turns of his way. I know also that when an hour of temptation comes, the mantle of her infinite silence descends upon me and I am confronted by Our Lady of the Trinity. (WL) The doctrine of the Trinity is the heart of the Christian understanding of life, and thus the essence and starting point of Catherine’s. The Ultimate Mystery is a Trinity of Persons. We have come forth from the Trinity, and we shall return. “We have come forth from the Mind of God, and are returning to the Heart of God,” is one of her favorite sayings. We are walking the Way (Christ) back into the heart of the Father. It is the Holy Spirit who shows us Jesus the Way and helps us understand his words and life. The Eternal Community is the Trinity. It has existed eternally, having no beginning and no end. The Community of Love: God the Father loving the Son, and this love bringing forth the Holy Spirit. (GWC, 55) Here, Catherine points to the Trinity as the model for human existence; we are to become a community of love just as the Trinity is a community of love:
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Yes, this is the very essence of being brought together by the Lord, of being a community moved by Christian love: the incarnation of this gentle, powerful, overwhelming law of God’s love into daily loving, into the fabric of our hearts and of our daily lives. In my estimation, then, the primary work of the apostolate is that we love one another. If we implement this law of love, clothe it with flesh, then we shall become Icons of Christ, because people will want from us just the sight of our loving God, ourselves, and one another. (WL) In order to form a community of love, man must make contact with the Trinity first. Then and only then can he make a community with his fellowmen. (GWC, 55) The unity of mind and heart to which Jesus calls us has its source and foundation in the Trinitarian life: The Triune God bade us to love. Yes, from the Trinity springs everything that exists, including our hearts that reflect, or rather should reflect, theirs. (St. 39)
Nazareth and the Church Catherine has a wonderful teaching about this community of love which Madonna House, the Church, and the whole human race should be modelled on, viz. the Trinitarian life. But how can we know what the Trinitarian life is? Her answer to this is the holy family of Nazareth: It is wonderful to think about the Trinity. It is as if the House of Nazareth opened before our eyes and there was Mary and Joseph and Jesus…for these three were also of the same mind and heart. (S, 39) I said above that we were dealing here with communal words, the doctrine of the Church which is the context for Catherine’s Little Mandate. But I must make an exception for Nazareth: Nazareth is more of a personal word for Catherine. God often attracts founders and foundresses to some specific mystery of the faith, but often one mystery becomes for them a kind of “divine milieu” which pervades, to an unusual degree, their whole life and work. Nazareth is such a mystery for Catherine. No study of her work is complete without it. It is the spiritual atmosphere in which the Little Mandate is lived out. I will treat Nazareth later on. It is from the holy community of Nazareth that Catherine draws her basic model for life together, viz. family: “Madonna House is the spirit of Nazareth…the spirit of a family, the family of Nazareth, the community of perfect charity and love. “ (SL #183, 1965) In the following passage she reveals how the family should be the model for all communities: For what I am talking about is a deep and beautiful thing. I am not talking only of the best family spirit that could possibly exist in a real blood family, or even amongst ourselves in the natural order (that I desire too), but I am talking about the family spirit that should be amongst us because we belong to the family of God. Consider: God is our Father, Christ our Brother, and the Holy Ghost our Advocate. The Triune God gives us Divine Life and we are truly part of the Divine
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Family, with Our Lady as our Mother and all the saints as part of the family too. This oneness with the Divine Family, with the Church Triumphant, with Our Lady, should be reflected in each one of us. We should love one another as God the Father loves His Son, so that from our love for one another the Holy Spirit would also become visible to those around us. (SL #119, 1962) The Divine Family here is the Church. Our Lady is its Mother. It is divine because it is filled with the divine life of the Holy Spirit. And just as the Spirit is the love of Father and Son, so our love for one another should be so intense that the Spirit is almost palpable to those around us.
The Church After the section on the Trinity in our “Way of Life,” there follows the section on the Church: We are family within the great family of God which is Christ’s Holy Catholic Church. We rejoice in our membership in the Church, and cherish our communion with the Pope and all the bishops, especially our own, wherever we may be, and with all our brethren in the faith, of every nation and age. We proclaim no other Gospel than that which all these faithful witnesses of Christ and His Church believe and teach. (WL) Catherine’s love, understanding, and devotion to the Church is extraordinary, and no superlatives would do it justice. From her Eastern Tradition she received the understanding that the Church is even now the Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ, the community divinised by the Spirit. We tend, especially in modern times, to emphasize the “not yet” aspect of the Church, its humanness, its “unlikeness” to God, rather than its deep nature of already being now the Spotless Bride. As Catherine’s life proceeded, she was led deeper and deeper into this realization: As I grew up I began to understand the Christian idea of the Church. At some point, somewhere along the line, I realized who and what the Church was. I was young. I was in England, and I read something. Suddenly, like a flash, I realized that She was the Spotless Bride of Christ. I saw her clad in the King’s robes, beautiful and glorious. This vision stayed in my heart like a warm, consoling thought: the Church was the Bride of Christ, spotless, without blemish, shining, radiant. As scripture says, “The King’s robes; in many colored robes she is led to the King” (Ps45:13-14). Yes, my imagination was working overtime. I know that she wasn’t clad with just anything. She was something so holy, so precious, something you should die for. This is the Church. Yes, I understood. I understood the Mystical notion of the nuptials of the Christian with his God. I cannot explain it. It’s beyond explanation. But because I entered into the mystery of love which is God, I entered into the mystery of His Church which is His beloved; and I still live in this mystery. When such things happen to people, then the Church as a mystery, the Church as the Bride, the Church as the People of God, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, becomes a reality of faith, for we are in the realm of faith. (CI)
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Catherine’s intense love for the Church is revealed in the following prophetic cry against those who lack faith in the Church’s deep, inner reality and sanctity as the Bride of Christ. Catherine often read this poem to us: Howl, my soul, howl, Cry to the Lord for His Church, Howl, my soul, howl. Look! See how she is torn asunder! How her members mock and ridicule her, Laughing their hellish laughter As they trample her into the mire of their twisted souls! Howl, my soul, howl before the Lord, As tortured men howled on medieval racks! For those who are Thy people Are trying to make a harlot of Thy Bride! Howl, my soul, howl, For the Church is in pain. Look, she lies in the dust of a thousand roads. No one stops; the Good Samaritan is not seen At the bend of those roads yet! (JI, I) Catherine will often use the image of the Good Samaritan. Here, the Christian is called to lift the whole Church, as well as individuals, out of the ditch, and pour the oil of love and the wine of compassion on her wounds. The Church and her sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, is where we receive the love to restore the icon of the Trinity in our own hearts and in every family: Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave us the Church. He wouldn’t leave us orphans. At that time he also gave to men another mystery, the mystery that keeps the Church alive. It is the mystery of the Eucharist. The simplest thing that a man could give is bread and wine. He made them a vehicle of his love, a vehicle of his strength, the strength of a Christian to live his law of love. It is there, in the mystery of the Eucharist, that we get the strength to live the law of love. (CI)
Mary The Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the Ultimate Mystery, and the Church is the earthly manifestation of the Community of the Divine Life. Next in importance for Catherine is the person who, after Church, was the most perfect manifestation of the restoration of the divine image among us, viz. Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God. The importance and significance of Mary is constantly woven throughout all of Catherine’s teachings. You will recall that in her remarks above on the Trinity, Our Lady of the Trinity was also present. Mary is all-pervasive in Catherine’s thinking and life. I cite here a passage from one of our most treasured documents, a talk Catherine gave in 1956 on the “Spirit of the Madonna House Apostolate.” It sums up perfectly what, for lack of space, cannot be elaborated more fully: To me it is self-evident that he who seeks Christ without Mary seeks him in vain. All the things that I have just spoken to you presuppose the Way to the Father
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(who is Christ, for he said, “I am the Way”), but the gate to the Way is Mary. And we are Domus Dominae, the home of Mary, Madonna House. Should one have to mention the self-evident? All the things I spoke about will happen to you, if you go to Jesus through Mary. She possesses the secret of prayer, the secret of wisdom, for she is the Mother of God. Who else can teach you to burn with the fire of love except the Mother of fair love? Who else can teach you to pray, except the woman of prayer? Who else can teach you to go through the silence of deserts and nights, the silence of pain and sorrow, the silence of joy and gladness, except the woman rapt in silence? Who can span the bridge between the ‘old you’ and the ‘new you,’ you the undedicated one, and you the dedicated one? Only Mary! She is the bridge between the Old Testament and the New, the Jewish girl who brought forth the Messiah, the Son of the Almighty. Sometimes it is difficult to speak of the self-evident. Without Mary, how can one speak of God the Father who was so well-pleased with her that he made her the mother of his son? How can one speak of Christ who was her son, begotten by the Holy Spirit, without speaking of Mary, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit? Our Lady of the Trinity, Our Lady of Madonna House, are one and the same. All of us are consecrated to her. That’s why we are free. That is why we can dedicate ourselves so utterly to her Son, because she will show us the way. (SMHA)∗ This devotion to Mary is not, for Catherine, some optional pious practice. Mary’s all-pervasive presence is deeply rooted in the Church’s understanding of the Mystery of Redemption. As Mother of Christ, Mother of God, Mother of the Church, she is the Mother of all Christians. Devotion to her is not optional for the true Christian. And there can be no complete Spirit of Nazareth without her presence. What would a home, a family, be, without the presence of a mother? Thus, from the doctrine of the Trinity, Catherine derives her understanding of Church and community. And community derives its nature from the home of Nazareth, which is the basic model for all Christians, for the whole human race, the best earthly icon of the trinity. Nicolas Zernov, in The Russians and Their Church, describes this movement in the Russian spirit towards community and family thus: Russia’s special genius was the art of Christian living, the application of Christianity to the corporate daily life of the people. And here her contribution was of the first importance. Her ideal was that of a Christian State living as one family, in which every person, from the Sovereign down to the poorest and least educated of its members, could have his full share of spiritual benefits and joys. The sense of being one community experienced by the Russians was spontaneous and organic. It arose not from obedience to authority, nor from the idea of duty, ∗
The complete talk is given in the Appendix. In my opinion it is the most prophetic statement Catherine ever made on the inner spirit of Madonna House. 2 – Journey to the Lonely Christ
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nor from intellectual agreement: it was due to a pattern of life, a rhythm of existence which was lovingly designed, built and followed by the entire population. Innumerable Church customs and home traditions provided the content of that ritual of daily life which was the most distinctive mark of Russian culture.
The Beatitudes The Beatitudes are quoted in full in our “Way of Life.” This is because Catherine sees the Beatitudes as a summary of the Gospel; in several places she also equates her Little Mandate with the Beatitudes. On a piece of yellow paper I had typed what we call today our Mandate. I read it again and again. I looked at it with eyes touched, in a manner of speaking, by the finger of God. It was if I were a blind man and he was restoring my sight! It seemed to me that he was leading me by the hand to the very essence of his Heart. And right next to the yellow paper on which I had typed the Mandate…I kept reading the Beatitudes. (She quotes them). In a sense, the Mandate and the Beatitudes came so close together in my heart that they blended into one another. (SLFF #80, 1977) I think it’s true to say that the Beatitudes are the biblical locus for Catherine’s spirituality. The Mandate is her personally inspired way of living out this new way of life described by Jesus: “So in the end I knew what I had to do. I had to sell all I possessed, give it to the poor, and be poor for their sake, for his sake. The first paragraph of our Mandate is, in a sense, the Beatitudes.: (SLFF #80)
Faith There is no virtue which Catherine emphasizes as much as faith. Without it there can be no love: “Faith is the cradle of hope and love.” Dorothy Day said of Catherine that “she has the gift of a great and joyous faith and of making life an adventure, a pilgrimage.” St. Paul speaks of the charism of faith. This is not simply the gift of faith of the ordinary believer. It is the possession of an overwhelming faith which is capable of inspiring faith in others. Catherine has this gift to a remarkable degree. She never ceases to call people to deeper faith as the foundation of the whole Christian life. Of the countless passages I could quote from her works, the following will lead us naturally into the first line of the Mandate. Here she speaks of faith as a pilgrimage: Faith is a pilgrimage towards the Absolute. Faith gives every Christian sandals and a pilgrim’s staff and bids him to arise and go in search of him whom every Christian longs for God. Faith appears to be blind sometimes but in reality it sees very deeply. It alone can walk in utter darkness. It alone can fold the wings of the intellect when necessary and open them when it needs to. Chasms, abysses, steep mountains present no problems or difficulty to faith. On the contrary, all of life the pains, sorrows, joys, symbolized by these chasms becomes its food and its nourishment. Faith grows until it leaves all darkness behind and walks like a child bathed in the light of God’s love. (GWC, 128)
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This is a perfect introduction to the Mandate. We are about to follow Catherine as she describes the journey to the lonely Christ. Faith is our guide on this journey. We walk as children bathed in God’s love. Let us begin.
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CHAPTER TWO Arise! Go! In an early presentation of the Little Mandate to the community, Catherine quotes the first paragraph of the Mandate, and then she says: This is the original message that pursued me through several years. ‘Pursued’ is the word. It would not leave me alone! Accompanying it was a deep, inner unshakable conviction that this arising, this going, this journey, was a journey to Bethlehem, but that my life would be spent in Nazareth … I’m trying to simply render here the few ideas, graces, words, that I consider are God’s Words to me. Next, when God’s will seemed to lead me from the obscurity of Nazareth into the market place, I did not understand, I just went. (SL #204, 1966) She called this letter “The Mandate of God to Catherine.” “It doesn’t occupy much space on a piece of paper, but that’s all I have to give you, that’s all God gave me personally, and that is what I have lived for. That is, to me, all that matters, for it is to me the soul, the heart, of the Apostolate.” (SL #204) “Bethlehem” is Catherine’s symbol for spiritual childhood, the restoration of the divine image. We shall take it up in the second line of the Mandate. We are interested here in the journey aspect of her thinking: “I just went.” At a community meeting in 1969 she said: This “arise and go” is something in us at every moment. It is something so deep, so profound, so constantly challenging. It is a Voice calling to us, the Voice of God. We can plug our ears; we can plead sickness; we can plead ignorance; we can plead anything and everything because unconsciously we’re afraid to go. Like Abraham we don’t know where we are going and we don’t want to know! That’s really the essence of the words ‘arise and go!’ The Voice doesn’t say where we are going, but we are going to the poor, that is, the whole earth. (Unpublished Talk) “The Mandate of God to Catherine” implies a call, a vocation. This is the first element in Catherine’s thinking about “arise and go.” It is like Abraham’s call in that he did not know where he was going. He was simply told to break camp and travel west. The Abraham cycle from Genesis 12 is the earliest strata of the Old Testament. One of the deepest and most ancient of words of God to his people is, therefore, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from you father’s house to a land that I will show you.” (Gn 12:1) It is typical of authentic words of God that they are not fully explained. God tells people to do something and to trust that he will be with them. He doesn’t spell out all the details. He does not explain everything that is going to happen. He does not tell you where you are going or what it is going to cost. Implicit in the command is the assurance of his presence, help, and guidance. Only by moving and journeying will these latter become a reality, not before. Catherine had “some” word from God where she was going: she was going to the poor, that is, to everyone, into human hearts.
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So that is the first dimension of “Arise! Go!” It is the Voice of God calling us to participate in his plan of salvation history. The second dimension is pilgrimage, that life itself is a journey, movement. You will recall that, for Catherine, the life of the Trinity is fire and movement, a movement towards God. Her favorite words for this are journey and pilgrimage. She entitled her whole collection of privately published poetry Journey Inward. For the Introduction she wrote: Our journey of life…should be a journey inward, to meet the God who dwells within us. It is a long journey, not in time, perhaps, but in effort. It is a journey of death, yet of life…a journey of strife that leads to peace, of pain that leads to healing, of sorrow that turns into joy. (JI, I) Human existence is a journey inward undertaken out of a passionate desire to make Christ known and loved, and to become one with the indwelling Trinity. Faith seeks to rip apart the curtains separating one from the Beloved. Strannik is her most comprehensive elaboration of “Arise! Go!” The “Arise! Go!” within us is a nostalgia for paradise: I wonder what happened to Adam and Eve when they left the garden? They didn’t know it but they had been given another paradise. Adam and Eve embarked on a pilgrimage with a nostalgia for what has been. The audible, visible presence of God, his friendship, was like a fire…in the hearts of Adam and Eve. They were the first pilgrims of the Absolute…because they had known the Absolute…and this knowledge passed into the hearts of all their children.(St 9, 10) In one of her poems Catherine calls herself a pilgrim of the Absolute since she is a child of Adam and Eve: I am a pilgrim of the Absolute A strange, unnoticed pilgrim Who walks, yet always somehow stands still. (JI, 1) Christ Is The Supreme Pilgrim: Christ was the total pilgrim, the man who pilgrimaged from the bosom of his Father to the hearts of men. (St 13) Yes, Christ was the Supreme Pilgrim, the incredible Pilgrim who descended from heaven to earth and returned from earth to heaven, thereby making us free. (St 14) Christ The Pilgrim I seem to be a pilgrim on this earth! A pilgrim poor who has nowhere to lay his head. And has to beg for his crust of bread. A beggar whose voice is low, unheard by many. (JI, 1)
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Christ, as a Beggar of love who roams the world seeking love, is one of Catherine’s favorite themes. The Russians have a legend that Christ anonymously wanders throughout Russia seeking love. Catherine also is a beggar walking with the Beggar of Love: The Song Of A Pilgrim I am a lonely pilgrim with empty hands, I beg my way from land to land. I am a beggar of the Lord. I cannot rest because I must show the face of God from place to place and witness to him to all I meet. The Lord has given me the grace of restless feet and a hungry heart. I cannot rest because I must follow my Love as he walks the earth, a Beggar of Love. I am the pilgrim who walks with him. (JI, 1) Jesus came to set us free, to give us the freedom to walk on a pilgrimage of love toward the Father: Free to undertake a pilgrimage of love. There is no denying that every Christian must take a pilgrimage of love. He enters into the pilgrimage of love to the Father, to God. He has to walk that long road inward, take that journey, that pilgrimage inward, that alone will make him touch Christ who dwells within. (St14) We are on a pilgrimage into the Trinity, into the poor, into the marketplace, and the marketplace is the hearts of men. Such a journey will of necessity be painful: When I read and re-read the Little Mandate…I suddenly knew why my feet were bloody: I was going into the depths of men’s hearts. That is a precipitous pilgrimage. The depths are stony and they wound your feet. It is a precipitous descent because men’s hearts are deep; it is taking the pain of men upon yourself. It was the carrying of another man’s cross. Such a pilgrimage can be undertaken only with love, and not with any ordinary love. Human love does not want precipitous descents into men’s hearts. (St 51-52) One of Catherine’s key ideas reflected in the above is identification, (which we shall treat later): God identified himself with us in the Incarnation. Our pilgrimage is also a journey into identification with others, and thus with God: He has to enter the hearts of men, and the only way to enter, the only key that allows men to enter the hearts of others, is identifying oneself with the other. This identification is excruciating. It takes faith to identify oneself with the other. The next step does not happen to many. It happens to a few, for the Lord is merciful. Now the pilgrim faces a very simple thing, for God speaks to him of a total identification with Himself. He presents him with the sight of a cross on which he will have to lie, and on which he will have to be crucified. This is, as far as the pilgrim knows, the goal to which he is led. (St 64-65)
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Pilgrims “pray all the time” and finally come to rest in the heart of God: So the pilgrim comes to a point where he has to rest, not in the depths of men’s heart, but in the heart of God. He has to listen to the heartbeats of God. The Lord in his immense goodness and mercy lifts a little corner of his own mystery so that the pilgrim can really preach him in the marketplace, so that he can really become a Gospel, so that he can really become fire and flame and light! (St 80) Strannik is a marvellous example of the explication of the whole Mandate in terms of one of its themes. In the few quotations I have presented we have the whole tapestry of the Mandate: We are on a journey into God, into Christ, into the hearts of men. It is painful. The way is identification with them, which demands a stripping of all that is not God. We pray as we go until we reach our own crucifixion. Then we become walking Gospels, incarnations of the light and flame and fire of the Trinity. The final stage is “becoming the friend of God”: He stands in the market place radiating more and more fire, but he does not know it. He is steeped in joy, humility of heart, and docility. He becomes a child. He belongs to Bethlehem and Nazareth. The impact of his life is fantastic. He constantly reproduces in his life the Incarnation, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of the Lord. (St 83-84) The spirit of pilgrimage is deeply ingrained in the soul of the Russian people. The first chapter in Arseniev’s Russian Piety is entitled, “Nostalgia for Space.” The immensity of their land has a counter-part in an experience of inner immensity, the vastness of interior space: Sometimes buffeted to extremes, full of burning faith, the troubled soul would find in these places (of pilgrimage) the peace and spiritual comfort which it needed. In this way a kind of aesthetic of pilgrimage evolved: the joyous transformation of nature and the wandering life through a spiritual experience…and a certain spirit of adventure. (18) “Aesthetic of pilgrimage” is a pointer to a profound dimension of Catherine’s spirituality. We saw above that one aspect of the Russian genius is the application of the Gospel to every dimension of life. The pilgrimage into the hearts of our brothers and sisters is simultaneously a beatification of the world: the image of God now shines through the face of people as they use all created things to glorify the Creator. As the pilgrim travels he creates beauty: They were profoundly convinced that this world, notwithstanding its imperfection, was intended to become the glorious temple of the Holy Spirit, and that man was empowered by God to be the chief agent in the process of transfiguration. Man, through his love and free obedience to the Incarnate Lord, could revive and restore the shining beauty of the Divine Image within himself and restore harmony and peace in the world around him. (107) When Catherine was a young girl she desired to make a pilgrimage: I was a very mischievous child and always in hot water of some kind. One day I read a story of a young woman going on a pilgrimage; I decided to go on a pilgrimage myself. So I collected a long black skirt some place, a big black shawl, and an icon, and off I went through the streets of Petrograd. I must have looked funny, for quite a few people turned around and looked at me. I reached the outskirts of Petrograd and was on my way to a country road when the police
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found me. I must have been conspicuous. Anyhow, I was returned to my parents. Nobody upbraided me or anything, but father said: “Well, number one, you should have asked permission mother’s and mine; or at least you should have had the charity to leave a little note as to where you were going.” And that ended the episode. But in my mind it remained as unfinished business. In my early twenties this picture kept coming back to mind, and I entitled it, “Unfinished Pilgrimage.” (HMCB)
Adventure The spirit behind this early pilgrimage is nothing as heavy or profound as a “journey into the hearts of men.” Rather, it was the spirit of adventure, of exploration into God and the vastness of God’s world. Never think that Catherine’s journey is all pain and seriousness! The following poem (which she loved but which was not written by her) is an insight into this adventurous, almost playful, aspect of her pilgrimaging heart: Against Peace Ask for danger Ask for glory the fear and the fun And life like a story In the wind and the sun. Send us now A sudden waking A royal row A thorough shaking Pray you Lord, At the end of writing, Send us a sword And a little fighting. Send us danger, Send us glory the fear and the fun And death like a story In the wind and the sun. (JI, 1)
Holy Restlessness There is a holy restlessness about Catherine which is connected to her pilgrim spirit. She is never satisfied either with herself or others! We can always love God more, and restore his world more completely to him: Arise, arise, stop being sleepy! Stop being blah, blah, blah! Stop it! In the dark of the night, in the reality of everyday living, God says, “Arise! Enough sleeping!” Listen carefully to the whisper of the wind, the Word of the Lord: “Arise, arise, come! Come up higher,” says Christ. Arise contains the notion of movement. You cannot stand still. The word “Arise” wakes you up.(LDM, 1980) One of Catherine’s most frequently quoted sayings from the Gospel is, “Friend, come up higher.” We of Madonna House heard her say that hundreds of times. It is Christ calling his
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friends to the adventure of love, the pilgrimage towards the Absolute, the journey into the hearts of ourselves and others.
Journey to Nazareth I introduced the theme of Nazareth above, and I said that it is the mystery of the life of Christ which has a very special personal significance for Catherine and those called to her community. I wish now to develop this most important aspect of her spirituality. The journey that she is on is, in a most special way, a journey to Nazareth: Nazareth And I At Mass all fell away from me as if it never was. I stood before myself beholding the ragged clothing of my life. I could not understand why I wasn’t naked, but I was not. No, I was clothed as I had been once before in rough gray linen tied at the waist with a simple string. Across my shoulder was a linen bag; in it was black bread and salt. Across the other shoulder a gourd filled with clear water hung easily. In my hand some sort of sturdy stick. A voice said clearly: “Arise again and go, a healing, consoling, blessing, loving, without many knowing or realizing. For you are entering the hiddenness of Nazareth. You see, your passion has already ended. Now you begin again.” (JI, II, 1970) I give the date of this poem because I am going to take you on a little journey of Catherine’s growing awareness of the significance of Nazareth. And as I speak of the great significance of this mystery for her, I am not trying to arrange it in any theological order of importance with the other mysteries. The Spirit can and often does attract founders and foundresses to one particular mystery which becomes the doorway to Christ, the motivating force behind their other virtues, the spiritual atmosphere in which their lives are lived out. It is the mystery which gives a characteristic stamp to their whole thought and being. Nazareth is such a mystery for Catherine, and I believe this can be easily shown from her writings. What I wish to do here, then, is emphasizes the centrality and importance of Nazareth. What it means will be shown as we go through the Mandate. Nazareth is one of the major harmonies which flows through the music of her whole life. The overwhelming significance of Nazareth for Catherine is revealed in the very first lines of our “Way of Life.” This is the major document Catherine has left her community as a guide for the future. It begins thus: God works in strange ways! When I first put together on a piece of paper what we today call the ‘Little Mandate,’ which begins with the words, “Arise! Go! Sell all you possess …” upon reading it over again and again, I thought that God was calling me to Nazareth. To me, Nazareth was the Little Mandate and the Little Mandate was Nazareth. (WL) Catherine equates the Mandate with no other mystery of Christ’s life. To repeat: it is not a question of importance in a theological scale of values, but of a mystery which the Holy Spirit wishes to be the “divine milieu” of her vocation.
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Catherine has written several volumes called The History of the Apostolate. In the first volume she describes what the Holy Spirit was doing in her heart prior to her going to the slums to live with the poor: During the year preceding my visit to the Ordinary of Toronto, I made a pilgrimage of priests, as you know. At the same time, I was tremendously drawn to the reading of the Scriptures, especially the New Testament; and my mind constantly dwelt with Nazareth. (18) I thought of the slums as Nazareth. (20) And Nazareth meant to me a School of Love to which I had to go, if I were to do what my heart seemingly wanted so much to do, namely, restore the world to Christ. (21) I could not think of any better school of love or charity, than to dwell in Nazareth. (22) My meditations on Nazareth lasted for ten years…In the early days of Friendship House all my writings reflected this attraction to Nazareth. (22) My vocation was to love, and I had to go to Nazareth to learn to love. (23) In her extraordinary tape on the origins of the Mandate she says: I understood that by going to my Bethlehem, my Nazareth, by identifying myself with the poor, by living their life, by living the Gospel without compromise, by loving always, by remaining little, I would be hidden as Christ was hidden in Nazareth. And I considered Nazareth at the same time, as the be-all and center of my vocation. (HMCB) You see the magnitude of the mystery of Nazareth in her eyes: it was the “be-all, end-all center of my vocation”! It is not just another mystery. In some of her early writings she often puts Bethlehem and Nazareth together in such phrases as “let us enter the school of Bethlehem and Nazareth . . . making our home in Bethlehem and Nazareth.” But I believe it’s clear that Bethlehem has much less significance for her as a way of life. Bethlehem is her symbol for a state of being, and especially spiritual childhood. But Nazareth is a whole way of life, affecting how we express the divine life. There is a sense, however, in which Bethlehem is in a deeper sense the goal of the pilgrimage, whereas Nazareth is more the way. Consider one of Catherine’s most profound statements about our Madonna House way of life: For us to live in Nazareth we must, strange as it may seem, begin with Golgotha and the tomb! Then, resurrected in him, by his grace, we shall journey to Bethlehem with the knowledge of the resurrected Christ, and live in Nazareth in expectation of the parousia. (SL #183) This was written in 1965. My interpretation of this profound passage is that we are on a kind of reverse pilgrimage from that of the Lord. Through faith and baptism we, by grace, immediately share the resurrected life. But for that life to restore fully the shattered image and likeness of God in us, we must travel backwards through all the mysteries of the Christ-life. Born from the tomb and Calvary, we travel through the public life transfiguration and healings and struggles back to Nazareth and on to Bethlehem. Personally for Catherine and her spiritual children, Nazareth is much more the over-riding mystery.
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But Nazareth is not the goal. The goal is spiritual re-birth into the fullness of our divine childhood. This is Bethlehem. For just as we were born from the side of Christ on the cross, so the cross, for Christ, becomes his Bethlehem, the place where, as the Father’s perfect Child, he made his greatest earthly act of acceptance of the Father’s will: The Fourteenth Station Of The Cross The Tomb became Manger again, birthplace of life. When it received the Lord of life, Lifeless, dead! (SC) It would take us too far afield to explore the Russian background of Catherine’s vision of the slums as Nazareth. It will be sufficient to point out here that her own mother often went, accompanied by Catherine, “to the people,” a rich person going to the poor to minister to them in the name of Christ. This is a characteristic of Russian spirituality: There were cases of the renunciation of high social rank, family, fortune; but without entrance into the monastic life, for this (later) was the rejection of all forms of life accepted and venerated by the world. There were then cases of total renunciation, where the holder of an honoured position would descend to the bottom of the social scale (so clearly stratified in Russia) and mix with the simple people, with the poor among the non-privileged classes, and would become one of them, even poorer than they, having no home, no means, no family, no position, however modes. (Russian Piety, 107-108) In 1825 Czar Alexander I disappeared from this throne. In 1864, in Siberia, a certain Fedor Kuzmich, past the age of eighty, died. He was an extremely cultured man who lived such a life among the peasants. Scholars still cannot agree on whether it was the Czar or not, but many Russian people believed that he was. Also, in the latter part of the 19th century, there was the whole “populist movement” in Russia where thousands of people literally left their cultured existence and went to live among the poor. Many of these were of the “intelligentsia.” They may not have been motivated by conscious gospel values, but they were following some deep instinct in the Russian psyche. We have a collection of letters which Catherine wrote to her spiritual director, Fr. Paul Furfey, while she was in Harlem. In 1941 she wrote: I think much lately of Christ’s hidden life. There is within it, hidden somewhere deeply out of my sight, a pattern for our Lay Apostolate. Again and again my thoughts come back to that strange unknown time of his. One thought especially fascinates me: Identification with the poor. I am like a moth around a candle. Within that word “identification” I sense a whole way of life. At times I catch something of it, and then the veil falls down again. (FL) We shall treat of identification shortly. The growing awareness here is that Nazareth is beginning to assume the importance of “a pattern for the Lay Apostolate,” “a whole way of life.” I believe Combermere is the full flowering of what was, in 1941, a dim vision on her spiritual horizon. I have mentioned several fundamental documents from Catherine which express the very foundations of our life: our “Way of life,” a tape on “The Spirit of Madonna House,” another
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tape on “How the Little Mandate Came to Be,” and several others. But if I was asked what is the most important Staff Letter she ever wrote, my choice would be May 18, 1965, #183. She went into the poustinia from May 10 to May 15, precisely to ask for a “further clarification of GOD’S MANDATE TO ME.” Thus the letter flows out of an intense period of prayer and reflection, after which she articulated what she saw as the essence of Madonna House and the way of the Spirit had inspired her to follow. I’ve decided to quote practically the entire letter. It is the best short summary of the Mandate in terms of the Mandate’s most central theme, Nazareth. I will also then be able to refer back to this letter as we continue our journey: I was now, this May, 1965, in the poustinia, praying to the Lord to further clarify this Mandate to me so that I could, in turn, try to clarify it to you, as so many of you desire me to do. So with a prayer to the Holy Spirit, I will now try to do so. MADONNA HOUSE IS THE SPIRIT OF NAZARETH. MADONNA HOUSE SPIRIT IS THAT OF A FAMILY. MADONNA HOUSE SPIRIT IS THAT OF A FAMILY THE FAMILY OF NAZARETH WHICH WAS ‘A COMMUNITY OF PERFECT CHARITY AND LOVE.’ These three points go together. Let us see. The spirit of Nazareth? Of course, first and foremost, it is charity. Even before Christ’s birth there existed between Joseph and Mary a great and sublime love. These two were already a “community of charity.” Moreover, I believe God arranged that Madonna House the child of Friendship House would be a replica of this type of love, this community of charity. For, contrary to all the existing norms of the day, and almost from the first day of our formation and foundation of Friendship House, he brought men and women, Mary and Joseph. They loved each other perfectly, and in many ways. As the years go by we must pray over, meditate upon, and understand better and better this beautiful facet of the mystery of Nazareth. Another facet, in connection with the above, that comes to me often when I meditate on God’s Mandate to me is the pregnancy of Mary. She was already pregnant with God before the family, the community of love between her and Joseph, was established. Each person who comes to the Madonna House is, in a manner of speaking or should be “pregnant with God.” Those who are not do not have a vocation to Madonna House. This “pregnancy” is a grace from God himself. He gives them a desire for himself. This becomes a “seed” within them, leading them to Mary and
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Joseph’s Nazareth Madonna House there to dwell in hiddenness, humility, hard work at little, daily tasks (which, if performed with great love would truly preach the Gospel loudly!) There are many places he could have led them: the vast deserts of the contemplative Orders, the rocky but beautiful, steep road of married life, the heights of priestly life, or that of the active religious Orders. And maybe each one called to these various vocations would have to go to Nazareth but not in the way of the Madonna House Mandate. For our Apostolate, Nazareth seems to be a very permanent place, spiritually speaking. Even Eddie and I have been led very mysteriously to live there like Mary and Joseph. So, pregnant with Christ, chosen by him, led by him, people are brought to the Nazareth of Madonna House to give birth to him and to allow him to grow to his full stature. They live with the Holy Family, as Jesus lived with Mary and Joseph for many years. The next point that came to me in my meditation was the extent of the Holy Family’s identification with the villagers. The Holy Family formed part and parcel of the familiar landscape. They spoke the same language. They had the same status, or, perhaps even a lower one than some of the other villagers, for didn’t they say, “Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son?” This too is in the Mandate of God to us that we blend and identify ourselves with those we serve, as much as it is humanly possible. Especially with the poor. If, as may happen, on rare occasion, we are called to serve “the rich poor,” then even moreso we bring to them Nazareth and everything it stands for: the community of love, poverty, simplicity, hard work, joy. There is no denying that Mary, God’s Mother, was a contemplative. First and foremost she was always before God. She lived in the presence of God the Father, God the Holy Spirit who overshadowed her, and God the Son who was bodily within her! Yet she worked for the Lord too, serving the needs of Joseph and Jesus, and I am certain, of many, many, of the villagers, and of the pilgrims and strangers passing by. Maybe she served just by listening and gently advising those in trouble and sorrow; by sharing her food; by general hospitality; by many other simple and direct ways which today we call the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Joseph likewise was a contemplative. How could he be anything else? He lived with God and God’s Mother. He was a silent man, a man evidently of deep prayer. Yet, we feel sure that he too “worked for the Lord,” first by being a provider for his own family, and then by assisting his neighbors. He probably not only did things for them but counselled them also at the gates with the elders.
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Here, in these two, Mary and Joseph, I see so clearly the spirit and techniques of Madonna House. As for Christ himself, being before his Father was his very life, its essence. God the Father chose for Christ his earthly parents, and Christ accepted them lovingly all his life, from the cave of Bethlehem, through many years of manual labor in the hidden life, throughout his whole ministry, passion, death, and resurrection. In all things he hastened to do the will of his father. Our Madonna House life should be like that. For us, the will of the Father is revealed by the needs of the Apostolate at every given moment of our day. It seems so simple! How do we preach the Gospel with our lives? Again, we look at the Holy Family. They lived the law without compromise, for Christ came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. But he gave us a new law in the New Alliance, and it is that new law that we have to live without compromise, just as the Holy Family lived the will of the Father in the Old Law without compromise. Our poverty should be the poverty of Nazareth and the Holy Family. They were artisans. They had enough to keep body and soul together. They lived simple, uncomplicated lives. They were not destitute, but obviously they had none of the luxuries of the day. (In fact they probably would have been eligible for government aid as being below the poverty level.) But their poverty was luminous, because they were utterly detached from their wills and attached to the will of God the Father. It was utterly complete! There is an endless wealth of meditation here; and parallels for our Madonna House life and spirit abound! Nazareth is our model, our spiritual home. It is a community of love, of caritas, poor, detached from self and self-will, totally attached to God’s will. We are engaged in an ordinary life, seemingly simple, unadventurous, monotonous, a life of daily tasks done with great love for God and neighbor! In this way we become witnesses to God. It has been said that to be a witness of God does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means “to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” That is what I mean when I say that the Spirit of Madonna House and its Apostolate is one of witnessing to God before men. We must be preachers of the Gospel with our lives with our words also, when required but especially with our lives, without compromise, in the market places of the world. Madonna House, therefore, is a group of people called by God himself to give him birth in this particular Nazareth of our modern market place. There we must show him to those who dwell around us by our lives!
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All this is simple, but not easy! It presupposes death to self, kenosis, violence to oneself, for “heaven is taken by violence!” It’s a loving, gentle violence to one’s self for the love of God with whom we desire to spend both this life and eternity. Yes, this is the proviso to all I have written above. The Lord showed it to me from the very beginning of the Apostolate. He showed it to me gently but vividly, showed it to me not only for myself, but for all those whom he has called to Madonna House, to give him birth, and to allow him to grow to his full stature. This is the proviso, the special accent, the way, the means: for us to live in Nazareth we must begin with Golgotha and the tomb! Then, resurrected in him, and by his grace, we shall journey to Bethlehem with the knowledge of the resurrected Christ, and live in Nazareth in expectation of the parousia. Possessing this grace, we shall understand how to do God’s will perfectly. These are the thoughts that came to me in the great silence of God in the poustinia at Marian Meadows in May, 1965. Humbly and lovingly I share them with you in the hope that our Lady of Nazareth and of Combermere will explain these thoughts in all their fullness. (SL #183, 1965) The Whole Mandate is here love, poverty, identification with the poor, hiddenness, kenosis, prayer, preaching the Gospel with one’s life, doing simple, humble tasks for others, the cross. We shall treat each of these themes more extensively in the other lines of the Mandate. As I develop these themes I hope to show how Catherine relates them all to Nazareth, since this is the permanent spiritual place where the Mandate is lived out.
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CHAPTER THREE Poverty Sell all you possess… give it directly, personally, to the poor… going to the poor… being poor… Having treated the theme of pilgrimage we proceed to Catherine’s teaching on poverty and the poor. The supreme goal of Catherine’s pilgrimage is to meet the suffering Christ in the poor, there to pour ointment on his wounds, dry his tears, and console him in his loneliness. The command to “be poor” appears also in the second line of the Mandate. Catherine comments: “So, at this point, two ideas of poverty were working themselves out in my soul: one physical and geographical; the other transcendent and difficult to grasp.” (HMCB) By this she means that “poor” in the first line really refers to physical poverty,, the actual giving away of all one possesses. It is the only phrase of the Mandate which does not have universal application but applies specifically to Catherine and to those in the community she has founded (or to anyone else who may be led by the Spirit along this path). “Sell all you possess” can, of course, be interpreted in a spiritual sense, and Catherine herself will often speak of it in this way. But it should be clear that its primary meaning in the first line refers to physical-material poverty. Since this is so, I am not going to develop too extensively her teaching on material poverty; much of it would only apply to those called to live on the providence of God in some radical way. I will begin this section on poverty with a brief treatment of (1) begging, which is the spiritual rational behind Catherine’s radical approach to material goods; (2) Lady Poverty, Catherine’s personification of this spirit; (3) kenosis, the scriptural word for the self-emptying of Christ. I will treat other aspects of spiritual poverty when I come to the second line of the Mandate, “be poor.”
Beggars for the Lord The pilgrimage of Catherine is a pilgrimage into the mystery of poverty, which is really the mystery of the Poor Man, Christ. Christ became poor for love of us; he is especially found in the poor; pilgrims must become perfectly detached in order to travel and reach him. She said once that if anyone writes her biography it should be called By Poverty Possessed. And she has asked that the cross on her grave be inscribed with the words, “She loved the poor.” The very first word she received from the Lord about poverty was to give up all she possessed. Here is how she has articulated this word in our “Way of Life”; “Like all pilgrims the members travel in poverty to find security only in Christ.” I like that. First I like the idea that we are pilgrims because that is what we are Pilgrims of the Absolute.
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Pilgrimage to me is a way of life because it is a totality of surrender. Such pilgrims whose life goal is the Absolute have no earthly abode. They have a place to live, a roof over their heads, but they are inwardly, always and totally, free and unattached, willing at a moment’s notice to arise and go where the Lord and the Apostolate needs them. A person whose way of life is pilgrimage does not take much on that pilgrimage, for in him the absence of the need to have becomes the need not to have. At first it may be that he really was indifferent to the few belongings that he took on his pilgrimage; but as he goes on, as his prayer deepens, he begins to experience and understand the passionate need not to have. It is one thing not to wish to possess, to be indifferent to possession, even to shed many possessions. But it is an entirely different experience to be shaken like a tree by a mighty wind with the desire not to have anything. This passionate desire to be hollow, to be empty, as well as empty-handed, transforms poverty into that beautiful companion that Saint Francis always talked about. A heart once permeated with a passionate desire for total poverty “not having” begins to empty itself until it becomes a hollow for a naked Child to sleep in, until it becomes a tree for a Naked Man to die on. At this point I approach the question of poverty in Madonna House on my knees, begging the Lord to give each of its present and future members that gift of this passionate desire “of the need not to have.” Generosity will draw us all to total dispossession. I think Our Lady is praying quietly that, slowly but surely, all will divest themselves of all possessions. A further aspect of poverty is intensely dear to my heart, and not only to mine: I am fully convinced that it is intensely dear to God’s heart! With an unshakable faith I believe that the Lord has raised us to be beggars! Because the majority of the earth’s inhabitants were beggars, someone had to enter than no-man’s land that everyone seems to forget about or to enter, not with their lives, but only through their money. Some Christians have to be beggars, that is, voluntary fools for Christ’s sake. I think God called us to this Apostolate to be such individual and collective beggars. As you know, we beg everything that we can, everywhere in our Apostolate. True, we do have to buy some goods, but we beg whenever possible and feasible. I hope that we will do this always until the parousia. In fact, I want to say directly and simply, that if we stop begging we shall disappear from the mind of God, even though we might seemingly be very successful on the face of the earth. (WL) Why do we actually, literally, give up everything? Because pilgrims of the Apostolate must depend absolutely on God. Pilgrims cannot be weighed down with many possessions. The interior emptiness created in the pilgrim’s heart will them be a cradle for the Child, a bed for the Man of Sorrows. Such a practice of poverty is foolishness, but it is what we are called to live out. Most of the people in the world live with only the bare necessities of life. We are called by God
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to enter than no-man’s land actually, and not just by prayer or financial assistance. It is thus we identify with the poor: We are beggars for the Lord. Alleluia! We are beggars for the Lord, first for the poor we serve everywhere, and secondly for ourselves. This has been God’s desire, his mandate to me when I first started way back in 1930 in the slums of Toronto. I knew well than and very clearly (as I know well now and very clearly) that we must remain beggars poor men always. Even though some of us might earn a salary or be engaged in getting money through our Madonna House Mission Shop, nevertheless, beggars we shall remain, fundamentally and always, for it would be against the Spirit of Madonna House to stop begging, that spirit that has been given to me as a Foundress. (PTW, 29) A few other quotations will show you how Catherine expands on the above themes: I beg we of the apostolate beg because we are in love with a Beggar who is God. Love does such things; it cannot help itself. Those of us who fall in love with God passionately, utterly feel impelled by faith, reason, and love, to imitate him, to be poor like him, depending, in our day to day existence, on utter trust in our Beloved and his words. (SL #115, 1962) Begging kills pride, teaches simplicity, makes faith grow, and love prosper. It also identifies us with all the poor beggars of the world who personally and collectively are Christ. When begging is done not only for oneself but for others, then the fear of hell recedes. One feeds and clothes and nurses and gives drink to the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, the sick not only out of one’s bounty: We beg for thousands, and, as you know, thousands are fed with the goods of this world. But what is more, they are also fed spiritual food because we voluntarily and totally identified ourselves with them, and therefore brought God to them, crying the Gospel with our lives and bringing the hopeless hope. (SL #94, 1962) Begging brings along with it a host of virtues. The first amongst them is humility, the fact that we are indeed poor before God, and all that we have is from him. In a small way, it brings to bear the ingenuity that the poor have to exercise to keep body and soul together. This is a very small way that we in our person and in our body realize how the poor feel, and this brings us closer to God’s beloved ones, the really poor. (SL #98, 1962) One final reason for begging is what I call Catherine’s “new economics of love.” All her life she tried to get people to share their earthly goods. There is enough for all if we share: Do you know what the song of poverty is? Sharing. Christ was given money by many, I imagine, since Judas kept a purse. Christ wanted to share everything all of the time. I visualize his poverty as sharing. Somehow I sense, and I dare to say that I know, that unless we begin to live the Gospel in its purity, we shall perish. To live the Gospel we must share. (Pov) Begging is a way of stimulating and creating a new economics in regards to material goods:
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Another reason and a most excellent one is to give other people the opportunity to acquire great merit. For graces are poured on those who pour out their money or their time or their talents in acts of charity. If nobody begged, how many would give? If nobody gave, how much saddened the world would be and how much more the God of Charity would grieve! Remember the words of St. Paul: “God loves a cheerful giver!” Maybe her loves a cheerful beggar too, for it is the beggar who creates the giver! (SL #115, 1962 In our day, if the new economics of love took hold, literally millions of people could be fed and clothed and supported. The food bank is a modern expression of this. Surplus food is taken to a main depot where it is distributed to those in need. This is exactly what our concept of begging accomplishes. People know that we do not simply beg for ourselves, but mostly for others. We take what we need, but most of what is given to us goes to others. What is the mechanism behind all this? Love. Sharing. The surplus is there. People must be prompted to give. Then there must be people willing to donate their time and buildings and energy to distribute the goods. More charity. That’s all it takes, really. And in our world today, this could be applied not only to goods of all kinds, but services as well. Could we not exchange services with one another the barter system of the old days instead of selling everything all the time? The new economics of love this is what our begging seeks to foster. During his life on earth Jesus lived both ways of poverty. During his time in Nazareth he worked and received payment and lived like everybody else. But when he left Nazareth and began his public ministry, he chose to stop working and depend totally upon his Father’s providence for food, clothing, and housing. (It seems he didn’t even always have the latter during his ministry: “The foxes have dens, the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”) Catherine has been led by God to choose this latter way for the reasons given above. Jesus said that a laborer is worthy of his hire, and that if you try to live and share the Gospel with others, you may depend on the Father to take care of you. St. Paul acknowledges the legitimacy of this way (1 Cor 9:14). Catherine knows very well all the sophisticated reasons why in today’s world one should not beg: there are enough poor already; “Why don’t you work for a living like every one else?”; begging is demeaning for the human person; it pulls the rug out from under one’s dignity as a self-supporting, self-sufficient human being, etc. We know all these reasons and we struggle with them. But begging is not a rational, sophisticated approach to material support. It is a foolish, Gospel way of faith, and it requires faith to understand and live it. It is meant to be a sign of the kingdom, a living proof of the providence of the Father of Jesus. It is not that we are not working! But our chief work (as the Lord said) is to believe, to live the Gospel. If we are trying to live the Gospel, trying to share the truth and love of the Gospel with others, then Jesus said we could depend on his Father. This is the way Catherine chose, guided by the Spirit.
A Way to the Poor Man Catherine has written and spoke about poverty perhaps even more than about love. Poverty, for her, however, is much more than one of the virtues. She writes: “Poverty is not only a virtue to practice. Poverty is also a state, a way of life.” (SL #148, 1963)
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Fedotov (The Russian Religious Mind) in writing about St. Theodosius, the saint who became the prototype for all subsequent Russian sanctity, says: “Poverty, humility, and love…with Theodosius are not ascetic means for shaping Christian personality. They are rather an end in themselves, expressing different sides of the same personality: the incarnate Christ…” (129) Because of sin and our disorientation from God we have acquired an enormous amount of interior and exterior baggage. Poverty is not the form which love must take: it is without the stripping, the getting rid of, the emptying (kenosis) of the false accruements of sin which “cling so easily.” If we desire to trust God more, we must let go of false self-assurance. If we wish to love others more, we must let go of our selfish ways. And so on with all the other movements of love. Each movement has a reverse “poverty” dimension, and so the pilgrimage to Christ takes the form of love/poverty. Someone asked once why love is not mentioned in this first paragraph of the Mandate if it’s the most important virtue. The essence of love in our present condition is described there: Love is the journey to meet Christ in the poor through a complete stripping of the self. Why is Catherine “by poverty possessed”? Why does her spirituality take on this particular coloration? The ultimate answer is lost in the mystery and election of God, how he wishes to attract people with his grace. But her life affords some explanations as to how this grace was communicated and nurtured. The Russian spiritual tradition is very strong on seeing Christ in the poor and being awed by his kenosis, his identification with us. This same Theodosius, as a young man, used to go into the fields and work with the peasants. His mother was scandalized. He simply answered” Listen, Mother, I implore. Our Lord and God Jesus Christ, became poor and humiliated himself, giving us the example that we also should humiliate ourselves for his sake. Catherine saw her parents themselves go to serve Christ in the poor when beggars came to the door of their home. Her mother, as was mentioned, used to go to serve the poor. Catherine often went along: I always knew about the poor, as my mother had taught me so well about poverty. I remember my youth when my mother would say, “Well, Catherine, let’s get this knapsack together. I’m going to fill it with what is needed for the safe deliverance of so and so’s baby.” Mother did a bit of nursing, especially in regards to midwifery. And so we walked ten miles. The knapsack was heavy. She would say, “No, it’s no heavier than the Cross that Christ carried. You think about that Cross, and you think about poverty, because Christ was very poor. In fact he was totally poor for you. He died naked on the cross.” (Pov) St. Francis of Assisi is one of Catherine’s greatest loves and inspirations among the saints perhaps the greatest. Their love affair began when she was a child going to school in Egypt. Francis was another powerful vehicle for the communication of the grace of poverty. She describes it in terms of a fragmentary scene from her childhood: I was a very small child in kindergarten. Egypt, palms, a nun belonging to the Order of Our Lady of Zion, and a big school at Ramleh, which was what you would call a suburb of Alexandria. The statue of St. Francis in some kind of
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shrine, surrounded by bouganville or some vivid red flowers. This is how it comes to me. And the little young Sister with rosy cheeks in a white religious garb, surrounded by us kindergarten kids, telling us the story of St. Francis, and my running out and clapping my hands at St. Francis saying, “I will be like you. I will go and be very poor and the birds will eat out of my hands, and if anybody gives me bread, I will share it with the first poor child that I ever see on the road.” The picture fades. (HMCB) The circumstances of Catherine’s life were also powerful media for the grace of poverty. Born into a fairly wealthy family, she lost literally everything due to the revolution. At the point of starvation in Finland, she promised God that if he allowed her to live she would give him her life. She did live and came to the “new world.” Though starting at the bottom of the social ladder as all immigrants do, she eventually became fairly well off again. This experience of wealth/poverty/wealth made her ask the radical question: “What does it all really mean?” She often opened the Scriptures for a passage, and she invariably opened to Matthew 19:21, “If you would be perfect, go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.” This was the text the great St. Anthony heard, the text St. Francis heard, and so many others down through the ages. Fedotov says that the Russians do not think so much of imitating Christ as following him. Perhaps “imitate” is too abstract for the Russian incarnation mind. “Follow him,” “Do what he did,” makes more sense. In the following passage Catherine had arrived at the point in her life where a radical decision is being asked of her. Several threads of her life came together: To follow Christ one must begin where he began, in Bethlehem; Bethlehem was a cave; the cave today is with the poor in the slums; Christ is there. The vision of St. Francis and his total dispossession returns: I was praying about the deep sense of these words, these strange, haunting words, “Follow me … going to the poor … being poor… being one with them … one with Me.” Perhaps I was asking God to give me a clear answer, but he very seldom does, because he demands faith. But his mercy is so great that occasionally shafts of light came through. I thought to myself: “OK, if I have to go back to the state of poverty in which I was when I first landed on this North American continent, then it means that I have to live the way I lived then. I have only one alternative to start at Bethlehem and allow this vocation to be born there.” Now, what was Bethlehem in the context of this travail of my soul? It meant a cave…it meant the slums, plain and simple…to become one with the poor, and hence with Christ, by living exactly like them. The little girl who clapped her hands before St. Francis and wanted to be poor like him… (HMCB) I think at this juncture of her spiritual life was born her deep understanding of the “following of Christ.” For her, it is not simply carrying one’s cross. It is attempting, both inwardly and outwardly, to take the same journey in our world, out of love for Jesus, that Jesus took out of love for us. Thus, as she ponders how to begin her following of Christ, she asks the question, “How did Jesus begin, and where?” He began in a cave, amidst the poor. “Where is the poorest spot in my environment?” In the slums. “Right. That’s where I must go.”
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The following of Christ is the inner identification with the mysteries of his life. Then, because of her deep incarnationalism, Catherine sought to actually live as Christ lived. Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Public Life, living on the providence of God, Golgotha, Resurrection she not only seeks inner participation in these mysteries but seeks to incarnate them in a life-style in keeping with the actual life of Christ. Thus, Catherine’s deepest insights about poverty concern her following of the Poor Christ not acquiring the “virtue” of poverty, not simply being poor as a “witness” or fostering “sharing.” These too. But primarily what drives her is a desire to identify with her Beloved who was rich and became poor for love of her. On a Final Promises Day here one year, Catherine, in a poem, contrasted the lovely surroundings of Madonna House with the poor circumstances of her own Final Promises Day in the slums. It is one of her (and our) favorite poems. The concluding lines reveal that her Beloved is above all the Poor One: The room became immense, and a thousand voices sang my wedding to the King. I know his Mother was there, whose name I bear. The rest I could not see, blinded as I was with ecstasy. Yes, I would not exchange my wedding day to God, in that gray, shabby room, on that gray October day, for any other day anywhere! I praise his name. My heart sings gratitude, even as angels sing before his throne unceasingly. For behold, the Pauper who wedded me in the slums, in a dilapidated house, a shabby room, was a great King, Christ the Lord, and I became that day a queen, his spouse. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! (JI, 1) And to the community she writes: Being the bride of a Poor Man, the Pauper, who during his public life had nowhere to lay his head and died naked on the cross, one wonders why even a shadow of a temptation should penetrate into the mind of any staff worker against this holy, joyous poverty. (SL #69, 1961) Besides seeing the goal of the journey as a wedding with the Pauper Christ, Catherine interprets the whole life of the Lord in terms of poverty. We have already touched upon Bethlehem and Nazareth. The leaving of Nazareth was poverty: It must have been tremendously difficult for him to leave his mother, even if he knew that some relatives would take care of her; he loved her deeply and profoundly, it must have been a tremendous act of poverty. He really gave all he possessed. (Pov)
Lady Poverty In the first chapter of Catherine’s book on poverty (which I have just quoted) she spoke of it as a virtue. The second chapter begins: Yes in the first chapter I explained how I fell in love with poverty. But I did not know, I never dreamed that poverty would take over.
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She would appear somewhere in the corner of my heart. There she was, just as I dreamt she might have been. I would say she is kind and gentle, and she whispered softly also little ideas about my giving up this, and my giving up that. (Pov) Then, throughout perhaps a third of the manuscript, she speaks of Lady Poverty. No doubt the name “Lady Poverty” comes from St. Francis, though the core imagery for Catherine is different. “Yes, poverty just won’t let me be. I remembered St. Francis who used to call poverty his Lady Fair. But to me poverty is more like a sister, a twin sister, who walks where I walk, eats where I eat, sleeps where I sleep.” St. Francis loved poverty as a medieval knight loved and served his Lady Fair. Catherine says that she thinks of her more as a sister. But it is more profound than that. I wish to share with you some remarkable texts concerning this personification of poverty; then I have some interpretations of my own. Toward the end of her life Catherine gave the following interpretation of how Lady Poverty was born. It is extremely beautiful and rich in meaning. The first “she” in this passage is Mary: She watched. And then she stood under his cross. Blood dripped from his wounds, for he had been flagellated before he was crucified. She probably could hear each drop fall. Poverty was by her side. Poverty knew that very soon she and Mary would be one. And so it was. He died. They took him from the cross and laid him naked upon her lap. Yes, naked he came from her womb, and naked he was laid on her knees. The Romans and Jews did not pay attention to nakedness the way we do. She held him with her two hands, and at that moment two poverties met Christ leaving Mary, and Mary offering Christ to the Father. Did they blend? Did Poverty feel that she had reached the apex of her life, the summit of all things that she could ever think about? I think she did. I think this was the moment she could really be called Lady Poverty of the shimmering garment which St. Francis dressed her with. She must have lifted her arms and covered her face with them, because what she saw was so mysterious, so profound, so immense, that it allowed her to have within her heart the meeting of two poverties. It was very strange, because it was really one poverty; and yet it was two the poverty of his going, and the poverty of his coming. He left her (Lady Poverty) to proclaim his love to the world. He came to her to proclaim his love to the world. He came to her because now anyone could touch love in his very body. (Pov) Isn’t this a profoundly moving passage? Out of the two deepest poverties the world has ever known Mary’s loss of her son and Jesus laying down his life Lady Poverty is born. Now, in traditional theology, who is poured forth upon the world at this moment? The Holy Spirit. I believe that for Catherine, Lady Poverty is a personification of the Holy Spirit. Catherine comes close to saying this herself:
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I listen to Lady Poverty very carefully, for, in a sense, she is the voice of God. You must therefore listen to her, for God valued her so very much. She is not only your love, but she is the love of God. (Pov) When we come to the line, “Listen to the Spirit, He will lead you,” we shall see that, for Catherine, the Spirit is primarily he who explains to us the words of Christ, as Jesus said he would. We might say that as the Spirit teaches us about love, so also the Spirit (Lady Poverty) teaches us about poverty, which, as I said, is now the necessary component of all loving. Not everything Catherine has said about Lady Poverty fits in perfectly with this interpretation, but I believe it’s the one which best accounts for how Lady Poverty personally functions in her life. (It may also be akin to the Russian Sophia, to which it has many similarities.) However, this Lady Poverty is a very mysterious Lady! Just as poverty is not simply one of the virtues for Catherine, but a way equal to love, so to say that Lady Poverty is simply the virtue of poverty personified would be a very minimal view. She does say that Lady Poverty is the “humblest of all the virtues” (68), but then, in what may be her last word on the nature of Lady Poverty, she has this to say: I saw Lady Poverty bedecked in beautiful garments. She was sitting at the right hand of the Lord. There was joy on her countenance, and gladness, that he was dying. She turned towards me and she said, “Catherine, you see me here with the Lord. That is because of my tremendous love for him.” She beckoned, and from somewhere, Love came and sat by her side; hope came from the other side. The Lord smiled and said, “Hope, love, and faith is what you are made of, my dear friend, Lady Poverty. “Now, kneel down!” They all knelt down, but especially Lady Poverty, who put her face in his lap. He put his hand over her head and smiled as he did so. He said: “Go forth! Faith, Hope and Love will be with you, but what you must do is change the hearts of men. I will give you one word to take wherever you go amongst them…The words is ‘share.’ Tell them if they do not share their possessions, I will take them away.” (Pov) These are the closing words of the manuscript. Here Lady Poverty clearly is not the Holy Spirit, but on the other hand, she is made up of the three greatest virtues. Whatever her nature (multiple, no doubt) in Catherine’s mind, she is an exalted symbol. I like her as a personification of the Spirit because Catherine often says we should fall in love with her, and how can you fall in love with a virtue? “Lady Poverty the beautiful one whom we should desire above all things, because she is God’s Beloved!” (WLIGI 52) She also is to be sought within: “…she is not easy to find. We have to make a pilgrimage to find her, and that pilgrimage is within ourselves.” (Pov) Whatever her nature, it is she who conducts us through the mysteries of the Poor Man: Do I wish to take the hand of the Lady Poverty and go to see the Christ Child born? Am I ready to go with Lady Poverty to Golgotha and beyond? If I am ready to be crucified in nakedness on the other side of the cross, with Lady Poverty smiling at me from below, then I shall possess the kingdom of God. But above all,
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I shall possess him, and by his grace and her help, I can give him to others. (Pov) If we should fall in love with her, how simple and glorious our lives would become. (WLIGI)
Kenosis Another dimension of the mystery of the Poor Christ is described by the Greek word “Kenosis” (empty) and comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:6-8): Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave. Being born in the likeness of man he was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross. This mystery of the kenosis of Christ is another way in which Catherine expresses the essence of poverty: “The kenosis we must undergo, the emptying of self so as to be filled with Christ.” (SL #109) As far as possible, Christ stripped himself of his divine prerogatives for love of us. The circumstances of his birth, his hidden life in Nazareth, his suffering of rejection and misunderstanding, and finally, even allowing himself to experience an abandonment by the Father such were the earthly forms of his kenosis. The journey inward is thus a journey into the mystery of kenosis where we are purified of fear, human respect, anxieties, the distortions of the mind, etc. It is a kind of death which we can undergo only because of Christ’s own kenosis: “We meet, Beloved! Your descent is my ascent.” (“Last Days of Advent,” JI, I). Fedotov says that “kenoticism is the most original creation of the Russian religious spirit.” And Evdokimov states (Le Christ Dans La Pensee Russe): “The religious ideal of a people is formed partly from its very personal vision of God, partly from the artistic, iconographic image it forms of Christ. There is also a Russian Christ who exhibits the essential gospel characteristic of kenosis of the humble Brother, of the humiliated, of he who is always with the poor, the sick, the suffering” (41). The Russians, at the dawn of their evangelization, could read the Gospel in their own language. And from the very beginning they were awed by the self-humiliation of God. Catherine writes: Kenosis, you might say, is the basic core idea of Russian spirituality. For the poustinik, the most powerful of all his thoughts and prayers should be to empty himself as Christ emptied himself by his Incarnation. (P, 139) Why enter into this kenosis? “In order,” says St. Paul, “to make up for what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church.” In order to share in the sufferings of Christ. This is the whole aim and goal of kenosis. This is where it leads. (P, 143) As far as I know, Catherine never uses the Greek word opposite to kenosis which is plerosis (fullness), but she very often does speak of this fullness: self-emptying is only so as to be filled with Christ; that he might achieve his full stature in us; that we might be filled with light, etc.
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With our prideful, sinful eyes, when we look upon Christ living in Nazareth, washing the disciples’ feet, and dying on the cross, we name these actions “self-emptying.” For us they would be self-emptying. Positively, we can say that this his how divine life acts when in our world. In Christ, kenosis and plerosis are one and the same. We, as sinners, need to first empty ourselves so that the divine life can manifest itself in us. “He (the poustinik) has become so empty that he is simply one who carries God” (P, 134). Catherine’s is certainly a “kenosis Christology,” an ever-deepening identification with Christ the Humble One so as to manifest the divine life in the world.
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CHAPTER FOUR The Cross Take up My Cross (their cross) being one with them one with Me. So we are on a journey into the heart of the Trinity, into the home of Nazareth, into the womb of the Church, into the heart of Mary, guided by faith and the spirit of the beatitudes. We are pilgrimaging at every moment, driven on by the nostalgia for paradise, drawn by the love of the Great Pilgrim, Christ. It is an exciting, restless adventure into the poor, into the mystery of Lady Poverty, following Christ into the depths of his kenosis. Kenosis and poverty are almost identical in Catherine’s mind: because of sin, we have made ourselves rich in the wrong way, Jesus, who was God full of the richness of the divine life came and made himself poor for our sakes. He did not lose, of course, anything pertaining to his divinity; nor was his coming “beneath his dignity.” Rather, by humbling himself and hiding his divinity among us, he revealed another dimension of the divine love. In this chapter we are concerned with three final themes at the heart of the Mandate: the cross, identification, and the ongoing passion of Christ in his Body on earth.
The Cross The way of self-emptying, of kenosis, of poverty, is necessarily painful because of the condition in which we find ourselves. Hence, the cross is an essential characteristic of the pilgrim’s journey. Also, the theme of identification (with others and especially with Christ) means that we are not alone in our sufferings. One of the most painful aspects of suffering is that it tends to isolate us. We say “misery loves company.” Company helps us to carry our misery. It is much easier to suffer something with others than to suffer alone. So, identification means that there is solidarity in our suffering. Our cross is the cross of Jesus and of others. We are not on a lonely walk. Many events of Catherine’s life brought home to her the lesson that suffering was unavoidable, and that to embrace it was the height of wisdom. She was driven from her native land; almost starved to death in Finland; became a refugee in a strange land; went through the break-up of her apostolate at least twice (in Toronto and Harlem). After she came up to Combermere in 1947, in a letter to Fr. Furfey her spiritual director, she reflected upon this lesson of the cross she was being taught: The way of the night became something familiar. Yet I did not see quite the why and the wherefore of it all, but now I see. And if God grants me a certain length of days, I want to write my third and last book. It is there, already in my mind and heart. It has to come out, for somehow or other I think it holds an answer to the problem of the Lay Apostolate. Its content, rather simple. The theme is worn, threadbare, and as old as Christianity itself. The only new thing is the accent of its rediscovery by the individual. The tumbleweed of God that I seem to be can only do that: Give the old theme a personalized accent.
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The ideas are old: to die to self, to follow the naked Christ; and charity as the only real foundation of all works of God. Detachment, utter, absolute poverty of spirit. Trite words, yet burning like a fire within my heart. Because I think I touched, at this late hour, the very essence, their heart. I see it all now. I see the apostolate at the foot of Golgotha, see the need for hearts so burning with love that, firmly and simply, they will ascend the Hill, and having reached the summit look at themselves. With calm, strong hands they will remove all shreds of any garments that may yet cling to them. With a love unknown to them they will move the hearts of men beyond any words or deeds done in the past. They will lay down with arms outstretched on the cross that has awaited their voluntary coming since the dawn of days. Lie there they must, of their own free will, without fear, without haste. Lie down for no other reason than that their love for God is so great that alone this cruciform death will assuage its burning wounds, its incredible, ever-consuming hunger. The feel of nails being driven in will then become for them the song of songs: “My Beloved to me and I to him.” It will be the end of the greatest loneliness the souls of men know. It will be the final gift of the apostle to the apostolate, the gift supreme that will produce undreamed of results. For they will be God’s results, born in utter surrender and love of his creature. That is the soul of the apostolate, that death to self. Oh, Father, how tragic it is that it took me years to get here! How silly that I did not see that so little mattered except that inner path. I have always loved God, always known that love is pain and sacrifice. But Combermere showed me that love is death, and death is life. Old words repeated ad nauseam in spiritual writings. Words, read and re-read and re-read commented on, even by me, in the pride of foolish, human wisdom. I thought I knew what they meant. But the Journey Inward has been long; the end is not far. Only now do I understand and see. It took the last convention∗ to batter down that silly pride of mine. It took its blows to crush me to the earth. It took its sharp cutting to make me bleed, and bleeding see the wounds are but part of the surrender. I had to be slapped around to come to my senses. Amen! Alleluia! God be blessed for the pain of last January, and for the bitterness it brought me. Alleluia! For now I am free. The last detachment is a thing of the past. Before God, I am detached from Friendship House. In the right sense, I mean. Detached from the desire and the shadow of authority and power, of motherhood and of all the rights of foundress and what have you. I know now what will help Friendship House and what I must give it. I must lift it up, wrap it up, along with the gift I have to give him whom I loved so long and so much and so imperfectly. I have to walk up the Holy Hill. I have to, finally and completely, strip myself and lay down on that ∗
The Friendship House Convention in Chicago where most of the members voted to take a direction different from what Catherine believed was her original spirit.
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cross he had prepared for me from the dawn of days. Only then will my restless soul be at peace. Only then will the tumbleweed of God find a mooring place. To die to self so that Friendship House may live. To die to self so that God may live in me utterly, completely. That is the end of this Journey Inward. That is the only answer that will make the lay apostolate secure and firm. That is the theme of the book that I must write. Pray for me. (FL) This extraordinary passage contains the heart of her teachings about the cross: the following of Christ demands the absolute stripping of self, a becoming naked with the crucified Christ on the Cross. This is the source of all real fruitfulness in the kingdom. Before Catherine left Harlem she wrote a series of articles for Friendship House News entitled: “It All Goes Together.” They were meditations on the nature of the Lay Apostolate. She chose one of these articles for the first issue of her Madonna House, Combermere, newspaper, RESTORATION. After describing the various stages of the life of Christ which the lay apostle must traverse, she wrote: And now the Pasch, Gethsemande, Holy Thursday, Herod, Pilate, the Way of the Cross…on fire with love of God the lay apostle will faithfully follow Christ to the end. He must, for unless he does his apostolate will be but a pious dream without substance a humanitarian endeavor that cannot be lifted up to the Man of Sorrows. No, it is all or nothing. A true lay apostle will take the path to the Holy Hill. This Journey Inward, this school of love will lead to death to self, and to a resurrection in love. (Dec., 1947) And in her instruction to the community over the years, the necessity and centrality of the cross is a constant theme: I have been thinking much lately about the spirit of the Institute and what its outstanding features are. We all know that the Spirit of our Institute is expressed in the cross we wear, with the words ‘pax-caritas’ inscribed on it. It is not easy to reach that cross, this immense cross of Christ, to lay on it and be stretched unto infinity in charity. To arrive at this immense stretching out presupposes fidelity and perseverance, and a growth of vision within the members of the Institute. Wounded and tired, exhausted even, they must drag themselves painfully up to the skull of the hill, their bruised knees and elbows moving inch by inch along the ground towards that desired goal, the cross. Without fidelity, without perseverance, without the growing vision, they might not reach the cross. They might give in to tiredness and exhaustion and to the darkness of the night. There will come a time then of stretching, to fulfill the first word written on this beautiful cross of ours caritas. Yes, then will come the stretching. What is needed for that stretching, what weapons, what tools of the Spirit? What are needed are human beings who empty themselves so as to be filled with the immense Christ. Christ alone fills completely his immense cross. It is obvious that we will not be able to be crucified on his cross unless we are close to his side. Stop and think for a moment of the immense gift that God has given us by his
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Incarnation. To be one with him. To be sharers of his divine life. To be one in love. To die in this way requires knowledge, prayer, generosity, courage, which men will call foolhardy. They will call it stupidity. In a word, it will require us to become fools for Christ’s sake. For the foolishness of the saints is wisdom before the face of God. (SL #9, 1957) Where can we go where there is no cross? How foolish, pitiful, our attempts to escape, when once knowing the will of God for us in our vocation we try to run away from it. And all we do is add to the cross that God has given to each of us. Our own cross of frustration, guilt, and a thousand other things will slowly, like weeds, clutter up our lives. We are deciding, then, to live a life according to our own rules, not his. The temptation to descend from the cross of God’s choosing, to leave him alone there to escape the pain that is natural. But we are Christians. We have a supernatural destiny. So think of Christ on the cross when temptation comes. Think of Gethsemane. What would have happened to you and me if he had given in to the temptation of Gethsemane and not gone to crucifixion? An impossible thought you say; and yet, one that comes to mind! (SL #88, 1961) I cannot visualize a love story with God without a cross. To me the cross is the thing. I desire it, I accept it. I ask for the grace never to fear it, because, at the end, I shall finally know its joy. Of course the cross is there. When I talked about the cross I think you misunderstood what I meant. For me the cross is the key to him whom my heart loves. Without the cross there is no Easter. Unless I die on the cross I cannot see him in heaven. I must lie on the cross that he made for me. It is certainly not the one I am making for myself. God embraced the cross for us because he wanted to. For this he was born. For this we are born also: To lie on it with him. I mean these words literally, but I think you don’t understand me, and that is the problem. Think of your vocation as the glory of the cross, what he has done for us. (SL #104, 1962) We have a transcript of a talk given by Catherine in 1956. We call it “The Spirit of Madonna House Apostolate.” We consider it to be one of the best descriptions Catherine ever gave of our way of life. In it she said: You have heard the plan of God outlined for you. The miracle of that plan is that God invites you and me to participate in it. To put it perhaps a bit more simply, the plan is this: Behold the crucifixion! A simple cross and a Man upon it who thirsts: “Sitio.” Does he thirst for water, for wine? Maybe. But he thirsts primarily for souls. Our vocation is so utterly simple that it is impossible to describe it. It is to burn, to do the will of God in the duty of the moment. To die to self. To live in obedience, poverty, love, and chastity. To live in the present moment. To have no one who belongs to you, and you belonging to no one but God. To be ready to
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be crucified, in the mystical sense, on the cross of the will of God. To be ready to be crucified by men. You will be. “He was obedient unto death.” Crosses are not fashionable in the 20th century. It is simply death, but, oh, how profound! How strange and mysterious. It is a death which carries within itself the very seeds of life. It is the simple, profound, complete death to self which opens all doors. When the “I” has been completely surrendered then the hallways of the Kingdom of Heaven have opened upon the earth. Greater love has no man than to die for his fellow man. Our vocation is to die that we may live and give life to others. To the extent that I die, to that extent my neighbor lives, to that extent I bring the light of Christ. (SL #140, 1963) It is an old message; nothing new here. “Take up your cross every day and follow Me.” There is no other way to be united with Christ. Because of sin, because of the condition of the world, pain is unavoidable. The cross is the painful part of poverty, which is inseparable from loving. The cross is not fashionable today. There are many currents in spirituality and psychology seeking a way around the cross, seeking some way “out of it.” The only way out is to lie on it. One of the most authentic aspects of Catherine’s spirituality is this absolute necessity and centrality of the cross. As we go through the Mandate you will see it connected with every attempt at real loving. She sees her vocation as leading people to Golgotha so they can learn there how to love: I know one thing I cannot rest. I see the pain of Christ so vividly, I see the tears of Christ so clearly. I hear always the cry of Christ. Sleeping or waking, it seems in my ears I hear the word, “Sitio,” “I thirst.” And then I see Christ waiting, waiting, waiting, a Beggar for our hearts. He is a waiting Beggar, a waiting Pauper at the crossroads of the endless everywheres of the earth. It seems to me that I am a runner, called by God to bring souls to Golgotha. They are young, loving souls, on a journey of his most Holy Will. I have to teach them a little bit how to love him. But my real job is to bring them to Golgotha at twelvethirty on Good Friday. And to me, every day is Good Friday. I let them look at him, dying there for love of them. Then I let him teach them how to love. (SL #56, 1960) Now, simply embracing pain and suffering for their own sake is not life-giving. Suffering and pain in themselves are not goods to be embraced. It is not a matter of desiring suffering in some masochistic sense. For Christians, the cross is always a matter of embracing someone either ourselves, another person, or Christ. The deepest aspect of the mystery we are now going to enter in this: true Christian love is the simultaneous embracing of Christ, self, and others. For a person with faith in Christ, we are never simply embracing a bloody cross with no one on it. Our hearts embrace the feet of our Beloved, and the hurting members of ourselves and others. This is the mystery we would like to investigate now.
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CHAPTER FIVE Identification With Christ in Pain The first step of the journey into pain’s transformation is described by Catherine in a wonderful mythological story entitled, “How Lady Pain Became So Beautiful.” From the dawn of time Lady Pain was Queen of an immense domain. “Few escaped her. At one time or another, in every man’s life, she would come and visit him. She would bend down and, taking the person in her arms, hold him tight. When he was quite dead she would let him go” (NWP, 185). It wasn’t until she met Christ on the cross that her nature was radically changed: She looked up and saw that he was dead. Slowly she walked away. She sat down by the side of a lake to rest. She saw her face reflected on the calm surface of the water. She did not like to see herself most of the time. But what was this! Somehow her eyes had been purified and she saw beyond her ugliness to her beauty within. And that is why, ever since, men who are able to see more deeply know that Love wedded himself to Lady Pain, and that Love can make her beautiful as beautiful as she saw herself on that day of Love’s death. (NWP, 185) This is a very accurate account, in symbolic terms, of how pain begins to be transformed: by meeting Love on the Cross. To the eyes of faith, Christ is present in all pain, because he has come and suffered all our pains. For us, the universe is personal, and every one of our acts is ultimately joined to a Person if we have faith. Further, our cross is also the cross of the poor, that is, every person. There is a solidarity in suffering. The only way we can fruitfully complete our pilgrimage is to carry our own cross, which is the cross of one another, which is the Cross of Christ. A sky aflame is pale before a soul in love with God. The pain of all mankind is but a scratch before the pain of Christ’s love. To burn, to love, to share the pain. That is my life, my only song, and its refrain. (JI, II) To share the pain, the pain of all mankind, which is Christ’s pain. This is Catherine’s life, her song. There are basically two aspects of Catherine’s understanding of identification, and both flow profoundly from the mystery of the Incarnation. The eternal Son of God really became Man, that is, identified himself with us as much as it was possible for him to do so. It was precisely by this identification that he saved us. His divine Personality entered into every area of our beings, and so rescued them from futility and death. His life, therefore, must penetrate every human person. It is the sublime vocation of the Christian to participate with Christ in the mystery of his continuing identification with the human race. There are two movements: 1. Christ identifies himself with each person; 2. we are instruments of his Presence by our identification with others.
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It is not a matter of losing our identity. Rather, we discover our identity by emptying ourselves of selfishness so that we can empathize and be compassionate toward every human being. The following poem/meditation expresses one of the graces propelling Catherine on her pilgrimage. It is the grace “To be Everyone,” which is the title she gave this reflection: What am I? And who am I? One who dies a thousand deaths yet stays alive. One who hangs upon a cross not made of wood, but of days and nights that merge and dance their endless dance of pain and delight. One who walks in silence like a shroud, yet speaks for those who cannot speak, in an endless sea of words that storms, pleads, and batters away at hearts of stone that send my words back to me, fiery wounding darts of painful ecstasy. One who is torn apart by all the pain of the ones who hunger and who thirst, whose shelter is the dusty streets of tropics, or the searing white wastes of snowy deserts. I am the millions who seek him and yet I found him. How can that be? Why must I live as if I were all others? It seems to me that I am torn apart, and that each piece of me is someone else in search of him whom I possess. And I must go, walk to my God, for he is the Way, which means I walk upon Love itself. Note that he walks that way still. But how can one walk on feet that are nailed and hands made fast to beam and cross? The mystery is great. I walk and yet I am crucified. I am silent yet I shout. I am filled yet hungry, sheltered yet shelterless, warm yet cold, cold yet hot. What am I? Who am I? I know I am everyone, because I love him, my Lord. I am everyone whom he loves, that is my agony. That is my ecstasy. That is who and what I am. To be everyone for love of him is to participate in the fullness of his passion. (JI, I) Christ’s desire is to penetrate everyone with his divine life. By becoming Man he has “become everyone” in seed. It is by our identification with the other that his mission is completed. Catherine’s hunger is to “be everyone” so that everyone might be filled with Christ. The following passage is one of Catherine’s best descriptions of this mystery of identification. Because of sin, we have separated ourselves from God and from one another. Sin is a refusal of our creaturehood. The journey into poverty is a journey into the reality of our creaturehood, thus making us approachable to one another and able to mediate the love of Christ: Poverty is not only a virtue. Poverty is a state, a way of life. And this is your first gift to those you come to serve. You can equal their poverty by acknowledging your general poverty as a creature, totally dependent on God. The acceptance of this truth will truly make you free. The more completely you do this in a mysterious fashion you will truly identify yourself with those poor. And what is
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more, by this identification, perhaps unnoticed by everyone, you will heal those very poor you have come to serve. And so above all he wants you to enter the very heart of poverty because then you will make your poverty a healing, beautiful tool of the apostolate. You will be able to reach beyond the dreams of mankind, and you will enrich Pakistan and the Church’s apostolate. You will enrich the Mystical Body in a mysterious and holy fashion. The Crucified, the Naked One, knows his own. He cannot resist the ones who strip themselves naked inwardly for him, who immolate themselves on his own crucifix for love of him and of the souls he died for. Poverty, nakedness, the stripping of self as Jesus did on the Cross. Stripped in this fashion, dying to self, crucified through poverty and obedience, walking in humility, you will be able to feel what the poor feel. You will heal, console, and bring multitudes to God. For you will truly be poor in the full sense of that glorious word, and hence, truly rich. (SL #148, 1963) Identification is the key to the opening of our hearts to others: Our role is identification with everybody because soon everybody will be knocking at the Madonna House door. We will be an oasis for them. If we lose this original spirit of Madonna House we will lose the key to God’s heart. God’s heart is the only true resting place for all of us, the real oasis to which God calls us. But the key to his heart is identification with himself and with all those he calls his little ones. Don’t you see how simple it is! (Feb., 1977, Unpublished Talk) It is love, ultimately, which mediates the presence of Christ, Identification, rightly understood, is the essence of love: Love means an interior and spiritual identification with one’s brother, so that he is not regarded as an object to which one does good. Good done to another as an object is of little or no spiritual value. In fact, it is a tragedy which destroys him who does that sort of thing. Love takes on one’s neighbor as one’s other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion and reserve and reverence without which no one can presume to enter into the sanctuary of another. From such love, all authoritarianism, brutality, all exploitation, domineering, condescension, must necessarily be absent. The full difficulty and magnitude of the task of loving others should be recognized and never minimized. It is hard to really love others, if love is taken in the full sense of the word. I have often spoken of identification with the poor. It is an identification that only love can achieve by complete forgetfulness of self and total concern for the other person. It is an identification so deep, so complete, that it becomes part of oneself, like breathing. It is a way of loving. (FML, 159) Catherine has been given an unusual empathy with the pain of the world”
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God of mercy, hear my cry, even though there is no sound. It seems to me the agony of all in agony is mine. It seems to me the pain of all in pain is sounding through my veins. It seems to me I am the lost, the halt, the blind. As if I have left myself behind and become them. God of mercy, hear my cry. Even though it is beyond all human sounds, just as I am beyond all human bounds. (R, Mar., 1962) If the whole human race is in pain, how does one alleviate it, how does one help release the love of Christ which alone can heal? The answer is: we do what Christ did. We become the other just as he became Man. In her approach to mission she says exactly that: Love identifies itself with those it serves. The whole process is gentle, never violent, never coming from one who thinks himself “better” than the one he teaches or serves. Incarnation is our first step, which is another name for identification, but a more powerful word, one that can shake the foundation of the world, change it, restore it to the Christ whose Incarnation is the motivation of ours. The process is long, tedious, and painful, but we must change, in a way, into the Hindu we serve, into the African we serve, inasmuch and as far as love will enable us to do so, without any compromise with Christian principles. THIS IS A DEEP INCARNATION AND IT WILL REQUIRE MUCH PRAYER, FASTING, MEDITATION, CONTEMPLATION, AND SILENCE, AS WELL AS WORK AND DYING TO SELF. But if we succeed in this painful and joyful process…the feast of the Transfiguration will enter our life because we have transfigured ourselves as far as it was in our power to do. We have done it out of Love. And because of that love, because of the Incarnation, we have been able, by the grace of God, to truly preach the Gospel. I feel sure that he will allow us, then, to be transformed, even as he was transformed. He will allow his light to shine through us as it did through him on Mt. Tabor. (SL #117, 1962) We arrive here at a turning point in our study. The above quotation expresses the mystical goal of the spiritual life as Catherine understands it. The goal is love, understood as the total emptying of the false self so that one can completely identify with all others. When the emptying is complete, one is then transparent, allowing the transfigured light of Christ to shine through into the lives of others. The whole rest of the Mandate, and all of Catherine’s teaching, is how to do that. She mentions prayer and fasting and silence, but what she is really saying is that everything else is a means to this goal. When you are purified of the false self, you will be able to mediate the presence of the risen, transfigured Christ, who alone can heal the wounds of mankind.
Christ in Pain And now, we arrive at what I believe is the heart of Catherine’s personal spirituality; this book gets its title from this center. For Catherine, the chief means, motivation, reason, passion for the incarnation/identification with others is this: Christ himself continues to really suffer in his
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members. Her passionate love derives not from a “love for mankind” only, or from a desire for “perfection” or “holiness.” That too. But the predominant motivating force in her life is a mystical insight that Christ her Beloved continues to suffer in his members. First, I will demonstrate this from her writings; secondly, I will give a brief theological basis for this truth: You see, for me, night and day, is the face of Christ, the waiting Christ, the lonely Christ, Christ in pain. God knows the world makes him wait. The world leaves him alone in his loneliness. The world forever crucifies him and inflicts on him endless pain. That is killing for me to see. (SL #105, 1962) Is this just poetry, the imaginative outpourings of a pious soul? It is true? Or is it just her “way” which helps her love other people? For Catherine it is literally true, and, if you keep this belief in mind as you read her writings, you will possess the key to them all. Catherine is not simply doing “social work,” not simply “helping others along the path of sanctity.” She has an acute sense of Christ now being in pain, of Christ now being lonely and rejected. Somewhere along her spiritual journey she read Pascal’s words which she said were the truest words ever spoken: “Christ is in agony until the end of time.” These words illuminated an intuition that God had placed in her heart: Christ is in agony until the end of the world. But Christ is in you and me. And what is more important, in the other fellow. What about them being in agony, my brothers and sisters? That, my friend, is what Madonna House is all about. Open your hearts; you have the key to do it. The Lord has given it to you in baptism. Open your heart and let him in. Stop thinking about yourself and begin honestly, truthfully, totally thinking of others. What does it matter that you and I may become martyrs! That is the crown of faith and Christianity. I doubt if anyone of us, including myself, will have earned it. There is no question of bloody martyrdom. The martyrdom of listening. The martyrdom of consoling. The martyrdom of loving. The martyrdom of hoping, for oneself and for others. The martyrdom of total surrender to God through the other, whoever he or she might be. Prepare yourselves to serve God in totality. (Family Letter, May, 1980) All the pain of the world is, in some real sense, also the pain of Christ: We have to emerge from ourselves. We have to concentrate on the things of the Spirit. We will only be as strong as our life in the Spirit. The time has come for all of us who have been in the apostolate to face the reality of Christ’s pain. Behold, that pain is immense. Think of Christ in the world today. Think of him! Meditate on him! Soak yourself in the sight of that pain. Behold, he is the poor, the forgotten, the neglected, the hungry, the cold, the homeless. He is in the thin children with big, old eyes. He is in the restless youth. He is in the alcoholic, the psychopath, the neurotic. You are familiar with this picture of him; you know his pain in these people.
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But do you see the pain of Christ in the priests, in the bishops, who spend themselves over and over above all human prudence in trying to assuage that pain of Christ in those who have been crucified? Look with the eyes of your soul. See how he needs you. There is no time to spend on the self that should die so completely so as to make room for him. Have you seen his pain in the hungry heart of mankind? Have you seen his pain in the rich/poor. Have you seen his pain in the intellectuals of the universities and the schools? Have you seen the pain of Christ in government? Do you feel the horror of the United Nations who are divided because they have not allowed Christ to sit in their councils? Stop, look, behold the pain of Christ! A searing pain that should set your heart on fire, that you might share his pain and become a flame that lights and warms the world. He has allowed you to assuage his pain daily in hundreds of people. (SL #8, 1956) I have been thinking about the pain of Christ. Perhaps because Lent is approaching, my mind is turning naturally to the passion of Christ. This same passion continues daily in his Mystical Body. This means in us. Yes, in you and me and in every living human being. And the question rises in my heart: “How do we, children of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of his mother, how do we bear share his passion in our own minds, bodies, hearts, and souls?” Sharing is the first fruits of his passion; and the second is to assuage, to heal his pain in others. To share the passion of Christ! To be ready to bear its marks, searing and consuming. Are we ready? Are we ready to die to self so as to forget ourselves? Are we ready to be flagellated, if not with the cat-o-nine-tails, then with whips of evil tongues, uncharitable and thoughtless words! Are we ready to be persecuted by personalities that rub the wounds of our minds and hearts! Are we ready to spend our nights with him in Gethsemane, go with him into the desert, leave father and mother! Are we ready to be stripped naked of self, not caring that we are exposed to the gaze of multitudes who either do not understand us, at best ridicule us, and finally crucify us! Yes, that is what “sharing Christ’s passion” means. Let us answer these questions in the affirmative. Unless we do, unless we really steep ourselves in Christ’s passion, identify ourselves with it lovingly, joyously, whole-heartedly, completely, we cannot go forth into the by-ways and alley-ways of the world and seek out the suffering Christ in our brothers. For we will not understand his pain. Without understanding his pain there is no love, without love there is no healing, no assuaging, no making whole. (SL #10, 1957) Quotations on this theme could be multiplied hundreds of times. As Catherine says, there are two aspects, or fruits, of this mystery of the ongoing passion of Christ: sharing of his pain; then the assuaging (which is also the healing) of his pain in others and in oneself. The intuition and living out of this mystery is the foundation of Catherine’s life. It is to be presumed in all her writings. It is always present in her heart even though she may not always express it: I know that I must pierce my own heart, and die of love. For drop by drop, then, my blood will mingle with his, and this mingling will be the only balm he will take to heal his wounds. (SL #10, 1957)
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It is even more pervasive in her poetic meditations: He asked me once, long ago, if I would love him as he loved me. And young and gay and joyous I answered, “Yes indeed!” And then he smiled and instead of a wedding ring he gave me his pain. Since then I have not slept; my soul refused all rest. It was on fire with one desire to heal his pain. I have become an outcast of love on fire. My desire urges me on. I wonder as I wander: Where shall I find oils and bonds to heal his pain? (JI, I) You see the profound faith intuition here? As we enter our own kenosis and suffering, our pain mingles with the pain of Christ. This “mingled suffering” heals both us and the members of the Body; it also comforts Christ in his ongoing agony. Here are sections of a poem called:
“The Pain Of Christ” Have you, beloved friends, felt the pain of Christ which is all around you? It covers me, encompasses me. I cannot rest, cannot be silent before this immense, overwhelming pain of Christ in our brethren. I have looked on it for the many years of my lifetime. I have realized too that each year my eyes have seen deeper into that pain, recognized it faster, wept over it longer, and desired with an ever-growing desire to assuage it sooner. Yes, I have touched, seen, heard, and slept with the pain of Christ for almost as many years as I have lived. There was a time when I had something to give to assuage this intolerable pain of my God and yours. I had a life to give to it, for it. But now, today, I myself am poor. Behold my poverty. My life I have given, and with it myself, my waking and sleeping hours. But, Lord of love, it is so little to give, and I stand before you as I am, bereft of any gifts to give while the sea of thy pain rises, rises around me, even higher. I look to see if there is anything left to give, and I stand before you as I am. Yes, I know I must use it, live it, give it, to bring your pain before the eyes of man. And so, beloved, friends, here I am, lifting my voice for you to hear asking, imploring, beseeching for the wherewithal to assuage the pain of Christ in our brethren. (JI, I)
An Easter Meditation RABBONI…I see You, Gardener of my soul, in splendor clad…and yet my heart is heavy…for I behold Your beauty unsurpassed in a thousand angry faces…and I have EMPTY HANDS! RABBONI… The Alleluias of my joy make jonquil carpets for your pierced feet…and yet my heart weeps before the thousand wounds that cover You in the cold and naked who stand so silently before…MY EMPTY HANDS!
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RABBONI…My eyes are dazzled by Your resurrected glory…LUMEN CHRISTI…and yet my heart beholds the black night of your loneliness in the forsaken who wait for help from…MY EMPTY HANDS! RABBONI…The fragrance of Your unguents brings ecstasy to me…yet the bitter-sour smell of Your poverty is wafted to me from the endless line of the pinched, gray faces of the poor. They cry to me from many places, without words. My answer to them is just a display of…EMPTY HANDS! RABBONI…Exultant is my soul with songs of gratitude and joy at the conquest of death by You, Lord…Yet I see Your blood-stained face so still in Mary’s hands…in the poor dead! How can I be Your Nicodemus and bury them with EMPTY HANDS! RABBONI…WILL YOU ONCE MORE ENTER THROUGH THE CLOSED DOOR OF HUMAN HEARTS…AND SHOW THEM YOUR WOUNDS? YOUR PIERCED AND LOVING HEART? AND MAKE THEM SEE THEY STILL MUST BELIEVE YOUR WORDS…AND YOU? FOR YOU HAVE SAID…THAT ALL THAT IS DONE TO THE LEAST OF YOUR BRETHREN IS DONE TO YOU! THEN…PERHAPS…THEY WILL OPEN THEIR HEARTS AND PURSES…AND FILL MY EMPTY HANDS…WITH SILVER AND GOLD THAT WILL ALLOW US TO FEED THE HUNGRY…CLOTHE THE NAKED…HOUSE THE FORSAKEN…BURY THE DEAD.
RABBONI…PLEASE? (JI,I) Identification with Christ in Pain Oh, Christ Oh Christ of the forgotten, the sick, the halt, the blind. Oh Christ of the lonely missions and the jungle of city street. Behold me weeping before your need in them! Oh Jesus, Son of Mary, give me your grace abundantly. Make my small voice heard, proclaiming to all who love you, your urgent need of them. Oh divine Beggar, give me the strength to beg for you until the very end. For Christ of the forgotten, I need silver and gold to purchase the wine and oil of charity supreme. The charity that alone will fill your needs in all the poor, sick, lame, halt, blind, and forgotten, and still your pain in them. (JI,I) This desire to share and assuage the pain of Christ in his members is, without a doubt, the central inspiration behind Catherine’s passionate love for Christ.
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CHAPTER SIX Assuaging the Loneliness Of Christ Of all the various kinds of sufferings undergone by Christ in his members physical pain, rejection, ingratitude there is one kind of pain more central for Catherine than all the others: loneliness. I will demonstrate this from her writings, and then try to answer the question why this should be so. On the first page of “Our Way of Life” Catherine quotes the following poem (not her own) which spoke deeply to her heart from the first time she read it. The fact that she included it in our Constitution, and put it on the very first page, signifies its importance for her and her spirituality: I said, ‘Let me work in the fields.’ Christ said, ‘No, work in the town.’ I said, ‘There are no flowers there.’ He said, ‘No flowers, but a crown.’ I said, ‘But the sky is dark, and there is nothing but noise and din.’ Christ wept as he answered back, ‘There is more, there is sin.’ I said, ‘I shall miss the lights, and friends will miss me, they say.’ Christ answered, ‘Choose tonight, if I shall miss you, or they.’ (WL) Often during spiritual readings after lunch, Catherine would ask for her book of poems. I think the poem she read to us most frequently is the following. It really expresses the very heart of the Little Mandate: O lonely Christ of Charing Cross, Rue de la Paix, Boulevard Anspach, O lonely Christ of a thousand celebrated thoroughfares and foreign-sounding streets. Why is it that I have to met you here, so far from home, Where I have seen you lonely, too, in Harlem and Fifth Avenue? In Edmonton, Yukon, Portland Oregon, Chicago, San Francisco, Kalamazoo You were lonely too. O lonely Christ of everywhere, Why stand there…and here… So still, so sad, looking at the hurrying crowds pass you by? Why? Why are your eyes so full of hunger, longing, pity and compassion? Why do you lift your nail-torn hand, and then let it fall again, With so much sadness…as if you were a beggar about to beg, alas! As well as wild and distant places? Your answer nothing: you just look. O Christ of Charing Cross, so lonely. You weep because the multitudes are hungry for your love and know it not. And because you hunger to be loved by those who know You not. Give me the key, Beloved, so that I may open your loneliness And…entering…share its weight. Behold my heart that you have wounded with your love. Make it a door for all to come to you. Give me your voice and words of fire That I may show them you! (JI, I)
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If I were asked to choose a few brief lines from Catherine’s writings which express the heart of her personal spiritual life, I would pick the last few lines of this poem. First, she asks for the grace to enter Christ’s own heart to share his loneliness. Then, wounded by that immense love for her, she asks that she might in turn become an open door through which people pass to discover that same love. She asks Christ for words of fire to invite them to his banquet of love. The rest of the Mandate concerns how to accomplish this openness of heart so others may be comforted; as they are comforted, Christ in his loneliness is comforted also. In December, 1957, Catherine wrote a Christmas letter to her spiritual family. She said: “You remember my little letter poem, ‘The Lonely Christ of Charing Cross?’ Well, this is Chapter Two of that poem.” The letter is not to long. I’m going to quote it in its entirety, because this theme really is for Catherine the heart of her heart, the soul of her soul: Before my eyes all through this Advent and poignantly now, as his birthday approaches is a strange picture of Christ’s loneliness. In a few days we can well imagine that he will be born again in Bethlehem, in all the endless Bethlehems in all our towns, villages, and hamlets. The angels will be singing there, but somehow I do not see the shepherds! Millions and millions of people will not raise their voices to God for him to hear, nor make the cold of the season warm, nor decorate a “stable” with their love. Millions and millions either do not know he is being born, or knowing, do not care; and lastly, the tragic thought: knowing-hate. How intense must be the loneliness of Christ in Bethlehem in the year 1957! And it goes on. The flight into Egypt. The members of the Holy Family were the first refugees of the Christian era. Was there anyone to care, to help, to console? Probably at the time there was, but what about today? How many thousands of Christs are forgotten in the refugee camps? How many more thousands have been exiled, have taken the same flight into Egypt and have found it desert because we do not love them enough! How lonely is the exiled Christ, Christ the Refugee, in our day! And then, my spirit falters before the loneliness of Nazareth. The Creator subject to his creature. God the ineffable, the Incomprehensible, out of loving imprisoning himself in our human flesh, working with his hands. He whose word could build a universe, whose thought could produce a tree or a forest, painstakingly shaves a board with a plane. The fluttering of the wood shavings on the floor must have been a lonely sound to him even then. And how about now? I feel the loneliness of all the lonely ones in the world. It might not be the fluttering sound of wood shavings on the floor. It might be the sound of laughter on the street, overheard in some room in a boarding house. It might be the sound of a kiss outside the window, the kiss of a woman wondering about the love of her husband. There are so many sounds heard everywhere by the lonely Christ in so many lonely hearts, souls, minds, the world over. I shiver a little as I think of it. Don’t you? And the loneliness of his public life, when perhaps only the spring and summer breeze caught his holy words. These words carried his words across the face of the earth.
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How many millions hear his words today and do nothing about them, letting them fall flat, fallow, dead, before they do anything about them! How many have ears and hear not? How lonely must be the Christ of our day as he continues his public ministry and sees the shrinking crowds and the shrinking priestly vocations. The loneliness of Gethsemane, with its terrific mental suffering, its agony of mind and heart and soul. It affected him so much that sweaty drops of blood came forth. How many thousands are in Gethsemane now. The alcoholics, the psychotics, the neurotics, each spelling in their lonely lives laboriously, agonizingly, painfully each letter of the word “GETHSEMANE”! And finally, the loneliness of the Crucified upon the Cross. The loneliness of Golgotha. From how many Golgothas does Christ look down upon the world today? The crucified ones behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains. Those crucified in our very midst among the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping and preparations. The poor, the sick, the suffering! And then the crowning of loneliness the tomb! Alone, cold, with a heavy stone rolled in front of its emptiness. The lonely ones in prison. Perhaps they have suffered all the loneliness that I have tried so poorly to describe. One could go on and on, entering the infinite depths of Christ’s loneliness in his Mystical Body in our day. But what would be the reason for entering those depths, unless they brought us to the heights of Christmas, its joy and love? We must remember, in our apostolate, that its essence is TO SMASH THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST, TO ASSUAGE IT, TO SHARE IT. In a few days we shall kneel at the Crib. Let our hands be filled with the desire to do so, that is, assuage the loneliness of Christ. And let us pray to this Little Christmas Infant before whom we kneel to give us the grace to implement this desire into the reality of our daily life. Lovingly yours in the Lonely Christ, CATHERINE (SL #15, 1957) Christ continues to suffer his passion of loneliness in all the suffering people of our day. When Catherine says it’s the essence of our apostolate to smash, assuage, and share the loneliness of Christ, she is saying that it is also the heart of her own life. Her poem, “I Bleed For Love”: I love the souls of men so much that if it were needed I would go back again and die. But I am condemned, it seems, by the free will of men. Me, condemned to loneliness. I am a Beggar not for any of the goods of this world but a Beggar for you love. (JI, I) Nor is this theme confined to “an early stage” of Catherine’s life. In 1979, she wrote: I want this year of 1979 to be a year of consolation of our Lord by Madonna House staff. Let us forget the word “I.” Let us forget our difficulties. Let us remember…that we are third. God is first, our neighbor is second. I want this year to be the year of the Lord. Let us remember him. Let us think of him. He will need consolation in us, dearly beloved, he will need consolation in us. Always
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pray! Serve by listening. Serve by consoling. Serve by wiping the tears of children, men and women. This is really to console Christ in Gethsemane. When you serve each other the poor in any way, shape or form you are wiping his face, you are carrying his cross, you are in Gethsemane, consoling him! (SL #109, 1962) In a series of articles written in 1980 entitled, “Madonna House, what Is It?” she wrote, in the prophetic voice: It was not easy for me to be rejected by men whom I had come to serve. I was lonely. Even my apostles did not understand very well. It is because I want Madonna House to follow in my Footsteps that I allow them to share in my loneliness. Direct them to my loneliness. (MHWII) Many more examples could be cited. As I go through her writings on the Mandate, notice how often the ultimate goal of her heart’s intention is to comfort Christ, to become a crib wherein he may rest, to assuage his pain by her pain, experienced in the multiple forms of human existence. Catherine is always relating directly to Christ in every one of her actions. This is the great key to her passionate life of love.
Why Loneliness? Why the loneliness of Christ? Why not his rejection, his physical pain, his frustration? Besides the ever-mysterious grace of the Holy Spirit (which is the final explanation), I offer several brief reasons which have certainly contributed to Catherine’s seeing Christ par excellence as the Lonely One. Arseniev begins the summary of his book, Russian Piety, with the words: “The Russians are a very lonely people.” He goes on to describe how isolated Russians have been from the rest of the world. Is there a deep sense of loneliness in their national religious psyche? Secondly, Catherine’s own life experiences would be more than enough to explain this emphasis. Practically overnight she lost her country forever; she never returned to Russia. Exiled from her homeland (and remember how sacred and dear the Land, Mother Russia, is to a true Russian), a refugee and “foreigner” in the new world, it is no wonder she often described herself as a “stranger in a strange land.” Thirdly, I believe the depth of a person’s life with God increases the sense of aloneness. Compounded with that is Catherine’s clearly prophetic vocation. Prophets often must stand alone, as she often did on the major issues of the day. Finally, I think it is a valid theological thesis that loneliness just may be the deepest wound of our disorientation from God. If we were made for union, then non-union, isolation, separation, would be the deepest pain. Isn’t it true that suffering in communion with others is more bearable than suffering alone? But when aloneness is the suffering, the darkness can be unfathomable. Jesus’ cry on the Cross was a cry of abandonment and loneliness: “Father, where are you?” It is the ongoing depths of this loneliness of Christ on the Cross that Catherine seeks to assuage by her love.
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Loneliness Loneliness like a beast is tearing at my heart and succeeding in tearing it apart. How can I love, O Lord of the pierced Heart, when all I have is bleeding morsels for a heart? Loneliness, like some obscene old woman who prostituted her youth for shillings, pence, rupees, cents, cackles night and day into my ears until my mind weeps silently and hopelessly its bloody tears. Loneliness comes to me like a ghostly thing, like a skeleton from a thousand graves, embracing me like lovers do in the dark night. Loneliness sings to me its ghastly lullabies that keep all sleep from me night after night until the sound of it, the sight of it, drives me into surrealistic, frightening dreams without sleep! (JI,I)
The Theology of Christ’s Ongoing Pain Because of the importance of this theme of Catherine’s spirituality, I want to pause here and give a brief theological explanation of Christ’s ongoing suffering in his members. This is not Catherine’s explanation, but my own. She does not, herself, go into the theological foundations of her thought. She reads theology, and is a very sound theologian, I believe. But she would leave to others the elaboration of the deeper theological foundations of her thought. “Christ is in pain until the end of time.” Is this good theology, or mere pious thoughts to motivate our love for Christ? Christ is in heaven, isn’t he? How can he be in any real pain? Pius XII, in his great encyclical, On the Mystical Body, wrote: He (Christ) is the Head of the Body of the Church (Col 1:18). And the unbroken tradition of the Fathers from the earliest times teaches that the Divine Redeemer and the Society which is his Body form but one mystical Body, that is to say, to quote St. Augustine, the whole Christ. Our Savior Himself in his sacerdotal prayer did not hesitate to liken this union to that wonderful unity by which the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son. (#67) In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him, and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself. (#75) Let those weighty words of Our immortal predecessor Leo the Great by deeply engraven upon our minds, that by “Baptism we are made the flesh of the Crucified.” (#108) I don’t think anyone has any difficulty with an interpretation of this mystery of the suffering of Christ in his members which has been made in hundreds of spiritual books throughout the ages, namely, that when Jesus was suffering in the Garden and on Calvary, he foresaw both the sins of the whole world and the love of people for him. Our sins added to his sufferings, and our love consoled and comforted him. I think this is one approach to the question. But I think the theological truth is even deeper than this. Pius XII speaks of our union with Christ now in his unending glory with the Father. Emile Mersch, in his great classic study, The Theology of the Mystical Body, writes:
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Jesus often speaks of His ‘body’ as though it were a suffering and dying organism (Mt 25:31), and the only words He uttered on the subject after His ascension…disclose that the body will always suffer the same persecutions as He himself: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” (p. 395) In The Ascension in the Works of St. Augustine, Father Marrevee writes: Even if the Head is in heaven, his unity with the members means that He is still persecuted Himself. Augustine finds this unity in tribulations most clearly expressed in the words to Saul on his way to Damascus: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and in Christ’s words, “I tell you, in so far as you did it to one of the humblest of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.” “And when he said, ‘Saul, Saul…’ the head is crying out for the members. He does not say, ‘Why are you persecuting my members,’ but ‘Why are you persecuting me.’” (In Ps 39) “Christ indeed ascended on high, and is sitting at the right of the Father, but unless he were also not right here on earth he could not have cried, ‘Saul, Saul, Saul…’ When, therefore, he says the same thing, ‘What you do to one of my little ones you do to me,’ can we doubt he accepts into his members the gift his members accept?” (In Ps 67) When, therefore, he insists, on the one hand, that there is a clear distinction between the present situation that there is a clear distinction between them grounds for ascribing exaltation and suffering to both the Head and the Body. The fact that Christ is exalted does not mean that He remains unmoved as Head by the troubles which His Body in exile must endure. “The Head about to ascend into heaven commended to us His members on earth and departed. Thenceforth you do not find Christ speaking on earth; you find him speaking from Heaven. Why? Because his members on earth were trodden upon. For to the persecutor Saul he said, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am ascended into heaven, but still lie on earth; here I sit at the right hand of the Father, but there I yet hunger, thirst, and am a stranger!’” (In Ep. John) And this from the Roman Breviary from a sermon of St. Augustine on the Ascension: For just as he remained with us after his Ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies. Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And when he said, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” While in heaven he is also with us, and we, while on earth, are with him. These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. Out of compassion for us he ascended to heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. The body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.
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These statements by one of the greatest doctors of the Church seem to me to be very clear and unambiguous. What we probably need to revise is our concept of heaven and the state of the blessed. Allow me to quote one brief passage from the Eastern tradition on this aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation. It is from Maximus the Confessor. It is a perfect statement of the heart of Catherine’s spirituality. Note the reference both to the ongoing passion of Christ and to our own “becoming God” by curing the sufferings of others through Christ’s power: If, as He has said (referring to 2 Cor 8:9), God is the poor one in making Himself poor in condescension for us, in accepting for Himself in compassion the sufferings of the others, and in suffering mystically out of goodness until the end of time according to the measure of suffering of everyone, even more obviously will he become God who, imitating the divine philanthropy, cures through Himself in a divine manner the sufferings of the suffering, and who manifests in his attitude the same power as God, in the analogy of the providence of salvation. (Italics mine) Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 66 Finally, apropos of the loneliness theme in Catherine’s spirituality, Mersch says this: Christ alone has suffered in solitude, without other support than God, who sustained Him at that hour so that He might suffer more intensely. He alone was engaged in the task at the moment when sinners were as yet no more than sinners, at the moment of unmitigated pain and pure redemption. (p. 315) I think that Christ’s cry on the cross is the expression of the profoundest limit of his kenosis: as much as it was possible for him to experience the absence of his Father, he did. Absolutely no one was with him in that abandonment. And even though his Mother was there, not even she could enter these depths with him. Catherine’s whole spirituality is a passion to assuage this abandonment, this loneliness, of Christ. This pain continues in us, his members. It is assuaged through our own painful kenosis as we open our hearts to others. To refuse this cross is to leave Christ alone in his abandonment. In the second line of the Mandate we begin our journey on how to assuage the ongoing loneliness of Christ.
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CHAPTER SEVEN Childlikeness Little Be Always Little Childlike So, we’re on an immense journey into the fire of the Holy Three, into the mystery of the hidden life of Nazareth, into the holiness of Mother Church. We pilgrimage, holding onto Mary’s hand as she teaches us how to walk by faith and the spirit of the beatitudes. The call to “Arise!” sounds in our ears at every moment as we seek the face of the courageous Pilgrim, Christ. Like all real adventures it is fearsome, intriguing, full of both pitfalls and wonderful surprises. We walk with great reverence into the poor heart of every person, guided by this baffling Lady Poverty who was born from the depths of Christ’s own kenosis on the Cross. If you are a true adventurer and not a comfortable modern traveler, the journey will have its pain and anguish. To be in our broken world, seeking the Father’s face, is necessarily to be on a path of suffering. But there will be no place of terror Jesus has not penetrated before us. If we join our heart to his Heart, we conquer our fears, keep him company in his ongoing passion, and co-operate with him in banishing darkness from the world. If we keep walking with Christ and Our Lady, we will discover our own loneliness being transformed into communion; also, we will assuage the loneliness of the Lonely Christ in others. I’ve already quoted a part of what Catherine says about this second line. She was seeking a “deeper meaning of the first paragraph of the Little Mandate. Two ideas of poverty were working themselves out in my soul: one physical and geographical; the other transcendent and difficult to get a hold of…an inner sort of poverty, a detachment…a giving of one’s inner self with childlike trust.” She says that this line is “the most difficult part of the Mandate” (HMCB). This second line is the most difficult because it concerns states of being, or rather, various aspects of our fundamental state of being before God. Catherine constantly calls us to “being before doing”: “What you do matters but not much! What you are matters tremendously.” Look at the other lines of the Mandate for a moment. Except for “be hidden…be a light” they are all calls to do something. But it is not possible to do any of these things unless our activity flows from a new depth of being. The activities can and do increase and deepen our state of being, but only insofar as we keep our hearts childlike, simple, little, and spiritually poor. I’m going to begin with the theme of childlikeness because I believe it is biblically the richest description of the “being-goal” to which we are tending. What is our deepest reality? It is to be like Jesus who was the perfect Child of the Father. Childlikeness for the Christian is not optional; it is not one type of spirituality among others. Jesus says, “Unless you become like children.” A very sound and accurate biblical way of understanding the personal goal of our pilgrimage is this: We are seeking to return to, have restored to us, our true heritage as children of the Father.
Bethlehem As soon as we “touch down” upon the earth we begin to be conditioned by the “sin of the world” and “original sin.” As we “grow up” we also “grow away” from our Father, more or less, depending upon many circumstances. When we begin in earnest our free and conscious return to
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the Father, it acquires, biblically, the characteristics of a journey towards spiritual childhood. Mary is the perfect one to accompany us, because, as she “grew up,” she never “grew away” from the Father. Her sinlessness means that she always was becoming more and more the daughter of the Father. Bethlehem is Catherine’s symbol for this goal of perfect childlikeness: Christmas 1969 In the dark night I heard a voice: “Where are you going restless one, who stands so still, yet pilgrims unceasingly?” I answered: “I journey always to Bethlehem, to ask The Child for the gift of childlikeness.” “But do you know that you must go through burning jungles beset by traps and napalm?” I answered: “Yes, I know, that is why I go… For only he who seeks The Child can go through Fire, beasts, traps, and napalm, to find The Child.” (JI, I) This immense pilgrimage is fraught with dangers. Only one really seeking the Child will have the necessary courage. Christ, the Beloved, is called “The Child” here because this is the depth of identification we are seeking with him: to become the perfect child of the Father, as he is. In the following poem we have the theme of the consolation of Christ joined with that of becoming a child: if we become childlike, we become a manger for him, making up for the neglect of so many: Advent 1961 I sought a woman’s womb to become Man. Now I seek a soul to bring my love to them! A soul to become my stable, my manger, my Bethlehem! So I take thy poverty into my descending and fill it to the brim. Have faith! Have love! Let my winds and waters fill you up! You will return and find me within you soul and heart simple and humble a child. (JI, I) In her earlier writings Catherine often joined Bethlehem and Nazareth together, because they were both powerful symbols of the heart of her spirituality: Let us enter the school of Bethlehem and Nazareth, to grow in the one thing that matters love. And since we are so little, let us learn in that school of charity, which is Bethlehem and Nazareth, the little things that make his charity great. Let us be small, humble, poor…ready to go where we are sent…making our home in Bethlehem and Nazareth, now and forever. (SL #34, 1958) Bethlehem and Nazareth are together because both deeply concern childlikeness, hiddenness and simplicity. Along the way, Catherine herself grew into a deeper clarification of the respective places of these mysteries. Since Catherine sees the life of Christ as a pattern for her own, Bethlehem is where the journey inward begins. Secondly, life can be conceived as a journey from Bethlehem to
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Calvary. Thirdly, because we are seeking the restoration of our image as perfect children of the Father, Bethlehem is also the final goal towards which we journey. A brief presentation of each of these aspects. The journey begins in Bethlehem: It is a very simple journey, this Journey Inward that each lay apostle takes in order to make the Lay Apostolate the true success it must be. It is like God’s journey Outward from heaven to Bethlehem; from Bethlehem to Nazareth; from Nazareth to Calvary. The Lay Apostolate starts at Bethlehem. Small, humble, unknown like the hamlet the lay apostle gives birth to God. From now on he will begin to die to self, so as to be filled with Christ and be able to say with St. Paul “I live now, not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (R, Dec., 1947) This is a very early part of Catherine’s thinking, and goes back farther than 1947; it was written originally for Friendship House News. Since we are to model our life on that of Christ, we can also conceive of our earthly journey as a pilgrimage from Bethlehem to Calvary: He came because he loved us. His Father sent him because he loved us. Eventually he would tell us about the Holy Spirit who also loves us and will guide us. But now, on the horizon, stands a cross, and we should realize that through our whole life we are pilgrimaging from the crèche to the cross. What does this mean, this life-long pilgrimage of ours? It means, or should mean, that year after year, we enter deeper and deeper into his lifestyle. That we take for our own the poverty of the cross. (R. Feb., 1976) In a very early articulation of the Mandate Catherine wrote: The Spirit of the Madonna House Institute is one of childlike simplicity. To be childlike simple means not to evade Calvary. Childlike simplicity faces the very simple fact that there is no evading the cross, and being crucified on it and dying to self. For only thus can we love Him back. So away with all the tortuous arguments! We are walking from where we are now to that cross, without deviating from that direct path. That is what is meant by childlike simplicity in its most fundamental and simple form. (SL #38, 1959) And in a Christmas Letter for 1976: When we reach Bethlehem our heart will fall and adore him quite naturally. We will understand, while we stand there, how the crèche, made of wood, blends with the cross which has also been made of wood. And in standing before the Child in that crèche (that will change its shape in time to come) we will understand that this is our life too. We too are in a crèche; we too are really journeying to a cross; we too follow in his footsteps. And so, my dearly beloved, it might not be a long Christmas letter, but it comes to your from my heart. I shall journey with you to Bethlehem. Together we shall
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walk on the journey from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Together we shall know once again (although we already know) that we live in the resurrected Christ. And as you see, there is an essence that I want to give you. I want to give you the desire of the Desired One. But I also want to give you childlikeness. It’s impossible not to be childlike with the Child Jesus. (SLFF #75, 1976) So it’s true to say that Bethlehem is both the place where we begin, because that’s where Christ began, and also the place to which we are journeying, because it symbolizes our return to childlikeness. Catherine has a great devotion to the Infant Jesus. His Incarnation as a Baby was the first great manifestation of his kenosis for love of us. One of her favorite prayers (which is on the wall of the Madonna House chapel) is: “Give me the heart of a child and the awesome courage to live it out.” The “Arise-Go!” is a pilgrimage to our becoming a child of the Father as Christ told us to do. Catherine equates this with sanctity: “I equate maturity with sanctity…and maturity and sanctity mean childlikeness. (LDM, 1978)
The Passion of The Infant Christ Christ began his journey as a Child in the crèche, but he was neglected and unknown by the world. Thus the ongoing passion of Christ continues in the Child of Bethlehem who suffers this neglect and unwantedness in the world today. This theme appears mostly in Catherine’s meditations for Christmas: If we open the ears of our souls we can hear the Child cry again, even in the noise of our machines…for this is God crying, God who made himself Man for love of us. (R, Dec., 1962) So often a new-born Child cries alone, with only a few hearts ready to become a crib for him…with only a few souls ready to pick him up and sing him a lullaby of their love. Only a few ears hear his pleading cry. (R, Dec., 1959) Yes, let us arise and go on a pilgrimage to the million Bethlehems across the endless expanse of our earth…It won’t be necessary to leave our homes to go on such a pilgrimage of prayer and atonement. One thing will be necessary this Christmas that we strip ourselves of all we don’t need and bring it to the feet of the poor. (R, Dec., 1971) It is time…for us rich nations and well-to-do individuals to make a collective and individual examination of conscience. Unless we do we shall not find our way to the cave of Bethlehem. Our hands will be empty of all gifts that we could have given to the Child who is in our brothers everywhere. (R. Dec., 1969) The pain and suffering, the passion of Christ, is alive and exists across the world today. Men are…still being hunted and tortured. These men are our brothers…because a Child was born in Bethlehem…and that Child was God. (R, Dec., 1968)
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Child in Pain Christmas 1972 Suddenly, Bethlehem was in our midst in the alley with the garbage, in the hospital of abortion, in the foundling wrapped in red tape. Yes, suddenly Bethlehem Manger and cave were here and You came with them. (JI, II) Lonely Christ Of Bethlehem Oh Lonely Christ of Bethlehem, Of Egypt’s flight to Nazareth, Where are the shepherds, where is their song? You go and go, my lonely Christ, From DP camp to DP camp, Until you die without dying, In the red tape of our denying. (JI, II) The Christ Child At night I come to you! Beseeching of your Majesty Just one gift for me. The gift of making men see your poverty, Eternally renewed in endless stables, cold and dark, Across our fair and immense land. (JI, II) And finally, the moving and poignant outpouring of a mother’s heart to comfort the Child: Christmas Lullaby The night was clear, the winds were cold, the Baby cried. Hush, Baby, Hush. Here is a quilt made just for you, out of the thousand little things we do. Hush, Baby, Hush. The night was clear, the frost was bitter, The frost was fierce, the Baby cried. Hush, Baby, Hush. We’ll make you a fire of all our desires. Hush, Baby, Hush. The night was dark, the snow fell in large, White flakes. It covered forests, covered lakes, the Baby cried. Hush, Baby, Hush. We’ll melt the snow, we’ll make it glow, With our hearts so filled with love for you Hush, Baby, Hush. (JI, II) God as a Baby is Catherine’s starting point for her passionate love, for her understanding of kenosis. She is rapt in awe at the helplessness and littleness of the Infinite:
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A Child Splendor, fire, all desire, absorbed, reflected, in aChild. Wood, straw, a Child, Lone within reach. Little, small, like a doll. Immense, infinite, Bridegroom God! Wood, nails, Man, Love fulfilled. My soul is mute; I don’t exist! For I am lost, absorbed, dissolved, In the glory of a Child’s eyes. Behold, One I can hold in my arms! (JI, II) The Lord said, “I am…the truth.” In the following excerpt we have a good example of how Catherine weaves her many themes in ever more intricate and beautiful patterns: Truth is a Child; the Child is in Bethlehem; and only Mary can lead us to him because he came through her; and to go to Bethlehem you must be humble and little and simple. Truth Is a Child Truth is a child, born in Bethlehem, Mary is the lock, the latch, the key. You will not see the Child, Unless you pass thru Her. Perhaps you think it dwells on mountains high, And you a mountaineer of great prowess. Do not ascend; descend in humility. Then, when you have walked its narrow road a lane, you will find a crossroad. Turn right. The trail is faint, but oh! how bright. For you are walking the road of simplicity. Come, I will show you where truth dwells It is a Child. Fear not, if you have sinned. If you walk in humility, simplicity, and with the staff of poverty of spirit. All you have to bring is tears. But if you go with me, let us start in search of Truth in Palestine. There in a cave, behind an inn, with door quite low. (But poor folks are used to bowing quite low.) And there we will meet Her, not very tall but stately. She will ask us what we seek, and we will say, Quite simply, “God Your Son, to know, to adore, to love, to serve, to live, to die, for Him.”
Childlike Virtues All the virtues, remember, are aspects of the poverty/love movement towards God, the emptying so as to be filled with Christ. Some virtues more than others are closely allied with childlikeness, with the attitude of a child before the Father.
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Running To Abba Modern man has “come of age.” We have ceased being dependent on the great father-image in the sky. Certainly there is a wrong way of depending on God, or expecting God to do things he has given us the grace and even command to do. In the following passage, Catherine is not speaking of false dependence. She of all people used all her talents in the service of God. But what she reveals here is that her real strength and confidence and surety come from God. She does not trust in her own strength and wisdom to meet life’s demands. I get irritated, miserable, when I don’t run to my father, when I don’t remember that I am little, when I don’t say, “ABBA,” but say: “Now, Katie, you are a pretty brilliant dame. You’ve known this apostolate for 39 years. Okay, I’ll solve this problem.” But if I run to my Father, and take his hand, and cry “ABBA,” and become very small, realizing I can solve nothing…then the big, bad dog, which seemed the size of a mountain in Switzerland, suddenly becomes the size of a Pekinese. My Father solves the problem, because I was childlike, and I approached the problem in a childlike fashion, instead of in the pride of my intellect. Being little, always little, being small, being poor, being childlike, will solve every problem. So you have a terrible problem in your house. Remember, you’re poor. Do not be ashamed to be a failure. What do you expect! If the Son of God saved us through a failure, then why can’t you save the world by failure too? At least your little world. I thank God for showing me that I am poor. Which is what our Little Mandate tells us. (TOLM)
Trust Materially, a child is totally dependent upon its parents for everything. Our material dependencies food, air, the beating of our hearts are symbols of our absolute dependency on God for our very existence. For beggars cannot be choosers. They cut their lives to fit the cloth according to the gifts of charity that others give them. They have nothing of their own, and so are dependent totally on the providence of God. This brings about an increase of faith and love for the Almighty. The Fatherhood of God, up until now a tenet of a somewhat academic faith, becomes a reality of everyday living. Now the Gospel of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air makes sense! Now one truly is a brother or sister of Christ, and a child of our Father who is in heaven. (SL #94, 1962)
Openness and Defenselessness Closely allied to this absolute trust is the openness and spontaneity of a child. Also, a child has not yet built up the defenses of adulthood. In a small child, of course, these are not really virtues. Our growth into spiritual childhood is to acquire the openness and spontaneity and defenselessness as mature virtues of the conscious Christian: Trust belongs to those who have the heart of a child. That’s why I have such a great devotion to the Infant. The Infant represents to me childlikeness which is
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what Christ said is the key to the kingdom of heaven. So, trust among us must be complete, otherwise we cannot move, we cannot grow. With trust a deep understanding of what…openness is. A child is open. He talks to his father and mother about everything and anything. Yes, openness, defenselessness, these all belong to Madonna House and are part and parcel of its very life. (MHWII, #26)
Sense of Wonder and Celebration For a small child everything is new and filled with wonder and amazement. “Adults” become accustomed to wonders. Chesterton says that if a door opens and someone comes in, the adult pays attention to the person, whereas the child is amazed with the door opening! Celebration is a return to childhood. It is simply the ability to begin to wonder again. It takes the eyes of a child to see that, and it takes the eyes of a child to wonder and to feel within his soul the music of celebration. (SL #52, 1975) th
In the 19 century much of religion was defined in terms of immature dependence. To “grow up,” the human person had to “outgrow” these dependencies. Karl Stern, in Flight From Woman, says that because of this false attitude the Holy Spirit has raised up people like the Little Flower, with how wonderful doctrine of true spiritual childhood, to again teach the world how to be “maturely dependent before the Father” (P. 296) Catherine also seeks to foster true dependency in contrast to childishness in religion. St. Paul reminds us that it is possible to remain childish in our life with God: When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I put childish ways aside. (1 Cor 13:11) Sin can also distort our concept of childlikeness. Nevertheless, there is a trust, an openness, a dependency, a defenselessness which, if guided by the Spirit, are absolutely essential to the restoration of the divine image of the Child within us.
Little Be Always Little The first paragraph of the Mandate, remember, is the heart, the “central word,” you might say. This is the word that knocked her off her horse! This is the word which opened the heavens for her (Ezk 1:1). This is the word the Lord spoke to her when, like Samuel, she finally realized it was the Lord, and she said with all her heart: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” (1 S 3:9). After every real, authentic encounter with the Lord the creature’s first reaction is one of unworthiness, insignificance: “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man”; “I am too young, I cannot speak”; “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Catherine believes that she is really being called by God to meet Christ in the heart of the poor, and that this call has immense significance not only for herself but for others as well. Realizing the awesomeness of this call, her first response is: “I must become very little, very simple, very poor like a child.” It is the response of humility, the only attitude which can allow God to accomplish all he wishes through those he elects: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.”
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Frequently in the Scriptures not to say almost invariably God chooses the smallest and weakest to accomplish his designs. Israel, Joseph, Bethlehem, David they are all the smallest, the youngest, the weakest. It is crucial to the fruitfulness of their mission that they never forget this: “If Yahweh set his heart on you and chose you, it was not because you were the greatest of all the people but because Yahweh loved you…” (Dt 7:7). St. Paul spoke of himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9) and “the least of all God’s people” (EP 3:7). I believe, then, that the words in this line flow from her awareness of having been chosen by God for a great work. For this work to be accomplished one must remain/become little, simple, poor, childlike, so that the grace of God may not encounter any obstacle. What follows are some of the important meanings of “littleness” for Catherine.
Chosen Catherine had an early and ever-deepening awareness of having been chosen by God for a special work. In the light of such an election, she is confounded by her poverty and littleness: Lately my soul had been again in great travail. I cannot help constantly to consider how God deigned to call the spirit of Madonna House into being through so poor and weak an instrument as myself. You know that I consider this “religious, spiritual, lay family” a very special mandate of God to me as Foundress, and not only for myself but for others. (SL #133, 1963) So I found out that a foundress first and foremost means a most thorough cleansing of one’s soul: there are all kinds of trashy stuff in the endless and strange corridors, nooks, and corners of my heart, mind and soul. Being a foundress means also, I have discovered, being truly NOTHING! For, very slowly tremendously slowly as if drop by drop, God finally reveals the true essence of things. It is as if he were right there, sitting at my table and saying very simply: “Catherine, now you have to begin to understand that everything that has happened to you has been because of Me. Now you know that you are indeed NOTHING, for I AM EVERYTHING! “You also have to begin to understand that this NOTHING is filled with Me, or is beginning to be filled. Remember how I said to you, “Without Me you can do nothing.” (SLFF 1, 1970)
Insignificant In one of the most beautiful of all Catherine’s letters to us she gives her teaching on doing little things of great love of God. We shall see more of it when we consider that particular line of the Mandate. Within this letter she presents her fundamental insights about the intuition of littleness. Again, her inspiration comes from a saying of St. Francis: “Lord, I throw my life at your feet and sing and sing that I give you such a small thing.” When we consider what Christ has done for us, anything our whole life, a thousand lives are as nothing” For there before my eyes is a crucifix living, breathing, full of wounds saying to me: “I love you, I love you.” When I measure myself against that crucifix, then my whole life is as nothing. So, to begin with, I consider in toto my whole life from the day He called me to the day that I am speaking to you A TINY LITTLE THING, in proportion to what He gave to me.
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To me, my life is as nothing to give to him. I wish that I had a thousand lives to give to him. Probably to you persecution would be a “big thing.” But I can’t visualize anything big. I am so small, so unworthy. I have only a life to throw at his feet, and it is so small! He gave me His life, and he is God! Always consider everything you do as very small because what he gives you is so very big. Everything in relation to God is small. (SL #104, 1962)
Unimportant, Unpretentious Pride has destroyed many a call from God. Who knows the innumerable, authentic calls people have received from God which have been corrupted and rendered fruitless by pride. People forget that they were not chosen because of their greatness, but because of God’s love and mercy. After a while we are tempted to think we were chosen because we are great, forgetting that our humble acceptance of the call is the only element that can truly make us great. Like all authentic works of God, Madonna House was born in obscurity, in the poor districts of Toronto, in Harlem, in the small village of Combermere, Ontario. The call of God does not make us small: Everyone is small. The call simply challenges us to accept our smallness in relation to the immensity of the mission and the election. Catherine was always concerned that we remain small in this sense of an awareness of our unimportance. Everything comes from God, so we should never “pretend” it is due to our own greatness and virtues. She also had a fear of “popularity.” I always visualized something that I thought would please Christ. In his life, he hobnobbed with poor, nonimportant people. He healed and he served, predominantly, unimportant people. I mean unimportant in the world’s eyes. So I always thought that Madonna House would be a small place: Christ serving people. I always thought of Madonna House as small. It was humble, small, in the sense of being unimportant. Perhaps I am stupid, but something in me is afraid. The very popularity of Madonna House is its undoing. And I have a feeling that the devil rejoices in its popularity, because that is what is going to bring it down, fast and furious. Let each staff worker have a heart, wounded by the Lord, for the Lord. A poor heart, a humble heart, unpretentious, simple, a “no big-shot” deal. (MHWII, #29) Let us be content to be misunderstood. Let us be content to be maligned, to be “made little of.” For aren’t we small, if not in numbers (though we are that yet) then in importance? And let us not worry about it. For the Lord was small in Bethlehem, and those who are small in him will someday be BIG before his face but not now. Yes, let us be small, humble, poor…ready to live with what we have…making our home in Bethlehem and Nazareth, now and forever. (SL #34, 1958) We live in an age of “religious personalities” where the media “blows up” people out of all proportion to who they really are. Jesus lived most of his life in obscurity; and even during his public life he often avoided crowds, not out of danger to his humility (!) but as an example to us.
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Popularity creates an image in people’s minds. The person chosen by God must constantly remember who he or she really is the least and littlest of all God’s people.
Five Smooth Stones and God Catherine has another concept of littleness: God doesn’t need much to accomplish his work! Jesus only had five loaves and two fish that day, but there were five loaves, two fish and God! In Catherine’s mind the important thing is to be ready and perfectly docile in God’s hands for whatever he wants. She often uses the image of David slaying Goliath with only fives smooth stones: In the line of apostles we are the smallest, the littlest…and there is his Son again, with the sling of his grace, bending down into the brook of life and getting little pebbles…you and me…to place in his sling. But it is up to God to shoot. The little pebbles must just be there. Here is the hand of the Lord, and here are the little pebbles. They must be shiny, worked over by the water, ready, and still…still on the palm of God’s hand for him to pick up and put into his divine sling, to shoot wherever he wants to. That’s all. But, oh, what goes into those stones! Chastity, poverty, obedience, humility, simplicity, death to self love. The little pebbles lie there in the palm of God’s hand, content to rest there. (R, Now., 1974)
Small Is Beautiful Catherine applies “small is beautiful” to the future form of the Madonna House Apostolate. She has never seen us as growing into some super organization which then accomplishes things “on a grand scale.” Her vision is always one of smallness, humbleness, person-to-person activity: Small is beautiful, You (Lord) want the staff to divide in some sort of a way which is not quite clear to me…but you will make it clear. For those who have gone through the poustinia, and understood a little of sobornost, You want them to become stranniki, that is, pilgrims. That means that every staff worker will become a pilgrim, factually going where they are needed, or in perfect stillness, attending to the needs of Madonna House. (SLFF #96, 1978) She quotes, in this letter, with approval, a few thoughts from Karl Rahner: The Church will be again a little flock of those sharing the same faith, the same hope, the same love, It will not pride itself on this, it will not think itself superior to earlier ages of the Church, but will obediently and thankfully accept its own age as is apportioned to it by the Lord and his Spirit. (The Christian of the Future)
Entering Hearts In order to enter the Cave in Bethlehem you have to become small, like a child. As the vision of the Mandate unfolds you will see that we are on a journey into the human heart in order to reveal the love of the Heart of Christ. To enter the human heart, one must be very small: What am I saying? I’m trying to say that we must plunge into the dark night of faith. That while we cry out for the depths, our very crying becomes a stout cord,
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a sort of ladder, that brings men out of the pit of despair into the light of his Face. I’m trying to say that God is using us as he used the uncouth, unlearned apostles and disciples, for whom he thanked God, His Father, saying, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to mere children!’ I’m trying to say that we must have one desire: to be those little ones, to allow ourselves to be used by him as he wished, no matter what the cost to us. For he brought us together…to do just that. The wise are confused. The wise are seeking their identity. The wise are worshipping a thousand idols. And we are being asked by the Lord to go into their hearts so as to bring them to him. But who of us dare venture into the caverns of men’s hearts unless we be children? A child ventures anywhere. So I finish my letter, my dearly beloved in Christ, by imploring him to truly GIVE US THE HEART OF A CHILD, AND WITH IT THE AWESOME COURAGE TO INCARNATE IT. Yes, let us become children, “for a little child shall lead them.” The theme for Madonna House, 1969, should be this: OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH THE CHRIST CHILD. We can give him our poverty, our helplessness all that we are (but maybe we shouldn’t be). But this Christ Child is so immense that, with just a glance, he will take away all the dross from us if we let him. He will make us like unto himself: A CHILD. Now I know the poverty I bring you: IT IS THE POVERTY OF THE CHILD IN BETHLEHEM. (SL #259, 1968) Littleness Beloved, you know well my foolish heart. You have beheld its foolishness so long you will not mind beholding it again in all its littleness and fears, bewilderments and tiny pains. Beloved, it is like this. I am so truly small and worth nothing at all, except in you. My smallness is alright. It fits your hand well and you know that you possess it so utterly as to absorb it fully. But you love to let me go into a cloud where knowledge does not dwell, and where all things are still and wrapped in love and you. (JI, I)
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CHAPTER EIGHT Simplicity …Simple…Poor… The words “little, simple, poor, childlike” swirl around in Catherine’s mind like waters in a whirlpool, rushing to the center. The center of what? Being: What is it to be? As we continue with the next two words of the second line, you will see Catherine struggling to penetrate the essence of the being of the child before God. But hers is not an intellectual struggle for definitions, Catherine’s thought develops, is forged, out of her desire to live the Gospel concretely. Her struggle to understand simplicity, for example, arises from her desire to identify with the poor: I went into the slums…Obviously, I had to be simple, meaning not only simple in the scriptural sense of the word, but simple and direct; a person who faces the essence of things…You see, I equated the word “simple” with a true identification with the poor…Simple, to me, meant facing, without any rationalization, the type of life that I would have to undertake, and all its effects, results. I had to lay these out in utter simplicity, face them, and say a fiat to them. Who can be simple? Who can always be little? A child. I had to be childlike in order to be simple and in order to be always little. (HMCB) Her original instinct, then, about simplicity, was that, in order to identify with the poor, she had to simplify her very complicated life, “leaving behind not only money, goods, but my intellect as well.” Simplicity is to go to the essence of things, and here it means to go to the essence of the life of the poor who live on the bare essentials of life. “Going to the essence of things” is Catherine’s key idea about simplicity; she then proceeds to speak about this essence in a variety of ways. You might say that something is simple when it is just what it is. For example, we do not say of a tree or flower, “Oh, what a simple tree!” or, “Oh, what a simple flower!” Trees and flowers are what they are, so we don’t say they are simple. We apply the word to things or people that have the potential to become complicated, that is, untrue to their being. We may say of a room, “How simply decorated it is,” implying that it could be awfully overdone. We also use the word “simple” of people who are free from artifice and duplicity: they just are who they are. Here is where Christ is also our model. We do not say that Jesus was a simple Person but simply a person. Jesus is like the trees and the flowers simply and exactly as the Father intended him to be. It is arriving at this essence of the Father’s original design that we call simplicity. In Jesus, being and doing and acting and speaking are all one: his life flowed from his essence. We are not in touch with out essence, and so our actions and lives are complicated, not simple. In an early Staff Letter Catherine briefly spelled out some of the meanings of the world “simple”: Simplicity. The moment we apply this word to our spiritual life we get an interesting picture of a person who is single-minded, whose mind goes to the essence of things without embellishment … sophistication, or complications. It conjures up a person who is innocent of guile, one who is truthful, direct. Holy simplicity is this state of mind and soul, totally, single-mindedly, lifted up and occupied by God. The colloquial word for holy simplicity would be
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childlikeness. This brings us immediately to the Gospel “Unless you become like little children” single-minded, uncomplicated, without embellishment, plain, without mental, intellectual, spiritual superfluities, free from affectation, sincere, artless, unsophisticated, humble, trusting “you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is a topic vitally important nowadays because man is so complex, filled with fears and inhibitions, fragmented, and needs to be recollected above all in the simplicity that goes to the essence of things. (SL #174, 1965)
Simplicity, Nazareth, Ordinariness In one of her important letters on simplicity Catherine reminds us that God is simplicity itself. She then goes on to consider God Incarnate among us, and says: There is no denying that we cannot understand the mystery of his simplicity; at the same time, a thousand wounds of ours would be healed if humbly and simply we approached him and asked him to allow us to become as simple as he was in our daily, nitty-gritty, uneventful (in a manner of speaking) existence. What is more simple than the life of a carpenter in the midst of a small village? The very simplicity of his occupation must have been very monotonous, very hard on his muscles, perhaps even tedious. For simplicity is like that. It accepts the nitty-gritty way of life, the sameness of it, the monotony of it. But once understood (this monotony) is shot through with great joy. Simplicity holds within itself a fantastic joy. The nitty-gritty, everyday sameness of our lives would become shot through with songs of joy if we embraced simplicity. Our lives would become very much like the life of the Holy Family. Yes, the more we grow in simplicity, the more joyous we would become. (SL #66, 1961) In several places Catherine explains simplicity in terms of ordinariness. The two themes are very closely allied in her thinking. “Order” is the root word for “ordinariness.” When our lives are perfectly ordered according to God’s will, we will be simple. We have seen the importance of the mystery of Nazareth for Catherine. Another aspect of this mystery is that Nazareth reveals to us God’s presence in the ordinary, and teaches us how to divinize the ordinary.” The acceptance of the ordinary, of the commonplace, of the obvious, which is radiant with the glory of God since the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (is) the key to this stupendous mystery that is man. We are men and women of glory and power, provided that we understand the obvious and the commonplace. (WL) Catherine called SL 124 “the beginning of My Last Will and Testament.” Thus its contents are extremely important. In the closing lines she expresses how important a treasure is this mystery of the ordinary: I leave you one of the most beautiful gifts that God has given to me. I didn’t give it to you GOD GAVE IT TO YOU: God showed you how to live the nitty-gritty life of the Gospel. And we are different from any other community because we have done that. And I would like you to continue. Especially cherish so much, cherish it like a great gift of God, that he has taught you to be ordinary. The
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ordinariness of our days in Madonna House, the simplicity of it, the hospitality of it THAT IS THE ESSENCE OF MADONNA HOUSE. Don’t break that, because then the Face of God will disappear from you, and in no time. It didn’t take long for Friendship House to break, nor will it take you a long time to break, if you are unfaithful to that ordinariness, to that simplicity, to that living of the Gospel in the reality of life. And in another important statement, the same idea: Can you catch a soap bubble? Is it easy to catch a butterfly on the wing? No. Nor is it easy to catch the spirit of Madonna House. It is the spirit that matters, nothing else does. What is this butterfly on the wing? What is this soap bubble that doesn’t allow itself to be caught, but bursts into little pieces in your hand? Very simple: Madonna House was built on humility, simplicity, ordinariness…merging with the poor, reflecting the icon of the Christ of the poor… (MHWII #23) As always, this journey to the ordinary is painful because of the pride and complexity due to sin. But it is especially in the ordinary that we will meet the lonely Christ and be remade into his image and likeness: What will your love bring to your Beloved? You will bring to him stew well made; 3 x 5 cards correctly filed over and over again; endless potatoes finely peeled; floors eternally scrubbed so as to allow his feet in your neighbor’s to walk across it; machinery kept clean day in and day out. Men will not know you for who you are. They did not know him in Nazareth. They will not understand you. All this will make you more like your Beloved. All these little things are the fingers of God the Father shaping you unto the loneliness of his Son. Shaping you unto his hiddenness. Shaping you unto his pain. In proportion as you are these things, another portion of God’s field will be restored to him. Simple is our vocation, so utterly simple that words fail to describe it. (SMHA) And, as the cross is the direct route to all the virtues, so it is with simplicity: You speak so easily of Her they call Simplicity, but do you know the way to Her? It too is simple, like Herself. Two beams that make a cross are simple, homey things to make of trees that grow abundantly. Their nails so easily come by, so cheap, so simple. A hammer, an old, familiar tool that will do nicely! Now, your hands and feet simple parts of you! You will find Simplicity. The way will be quite simple, straight, and clear when wood, nails, and you are one! Then she is yours! (SL #66, 1961)
Simplicity and the Preaching Of the Gospel There are three themes here: If one is simple one will (1) preach the Gospel with boldness and without fear; (2) the preaching will be simple; and (3) the message will be passed on without distortion.
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Boldness in preaching the truth: Yes, simplicity walked with him through all his journey, for simplicity is fearless. True, he was God. He did the will of his Father. But then, he made us gods too, for he made us brothers and sisters of himself, and heirs of his Father. And because of his love for us he preached and taught us to love God back in a simple, childlike way, a way that would not be afraid to tell (preach) the truth; because if we accept his simplicity we will never imagine that we are doing it. We will know, know for sure, that it is he who preaches in us. Yes, we will know that, if our hearts are simple. (SL #66, 1961) Priests especially should imitate Christ’s simple preaching style: So you see what I mean by simplicity. I see a priest sitting in the midst of other people, not even on a platform or anything, but just sitting and talking, telling of the marvels of God, the way God would talk about them. Simplicity is the fruit of love. Only love can be simple. I remember when I was with my mother once in Jerusalem and we went outside the city. The place was filled with red poppies. My mother looked at me and said, “You know, it is so easy to visualize Christ sitting on the little stones here and perhaps brushing the poppies with his feet. People would come and listen to the beatitudes.” I have often sat in the imaginary poppy field…and listened to Christ explain the Gospel. It is the simplicity, that authenticity, that something that comes from the heart and not from a book, that I would especially like the reverend clergy to give us. (MHWII, #16) One must be simple in order to receive and pass on the Gospel as it is: Our century is not simple. You and I, to become simple as he wants us to become, must undergo a kenosis, must stop rationalizing the Gospel away…To be simple is to accept the essence of the message and not try to twist it, to adapt it to our ideas. We don’t want to be so complex that we make God into our image, instead of remaining the image of God (She then uses the image of a plastic hose we received in donation as an image of simplicity.) This is simplicity, to be a clear, plastic hose so that the clear divine waters of Christ…can go through. How simple you have to be for that, how deep your kenosis. (COLM)
Simplicity as a Remedy for “Serious Virtue” In Not Without Parables Catherine has a delightful story entitled “How Humility Grew Into Simplicity.” Really, it could be about almost any virtue which has become too “serious” and thus lost the freshness and spontaneity of a child. “She (Humility) looked at herself, examining all her motives and intentions as was her custom. She found herself still lacking something she could not define. Could it be that what she was Humility kept her from playing with the Child?” She had been invited by this Child in Nazareth to play ball, but she could not: The Child kept cocking her head to one side, surveying her thoroughly. Then, speaking quite distinctly, told her that she needed to grow. Her growth should be downward, into littleness. He sang a song to her:
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Come on, get small. Come and play ball with me. And then you will grow very big, my dear Humility. Because you will meet Simplicity, and she will teach you how to be like me. And then you will understand that it is not enough to know your nothingness, but that to grow and grow with me you have to be Simplicity. And then you will be all filled with Charity. Come, play ball with me. I am Simplicity; and I will teach you how to be as simple as me! Without childlike simplicity the ability to play with God in self-forgetfulness all the virtues remain in their “serious” adult stage! The above are the main themes. Also scattered throughout her works is simplicity equated with: (1) kenosis: when you are empty of self you will simple; (2) dependence: “Imagine Christ as a Baby totally dependent on human beings. So simplicity is dependency. As the Lord depended on his creatures, so we, his creatures, should depend on him”; (3) Christ-likeness: “Simplicity is Christ-likeness, to live according to Christ’s lifestyle.”
Simplicity as the Essence of Madonna House Although there are several mysteries and virtues which Catherine characterizes as the “essence” of Madonna House, she does not use this word lightly or indiscriminately. I think it is very significant that in some of her final statements (in MHWII) about the nature of Madonna House, simplicity is foremost in her mind: I pray that all members of MH really begin to understand its simplicity (1) I said that MH was born out of simplicity. (3) MH is founded on such simplicity that nobody can understand how deeply MH is founded upon Christ’s simplicity. (5) I repeat, like a parrot: simplicity, total, complete simplicity, an approach to the world that is like a Child’s approach, trusting… (8) Simplicity that should be the essence of Madonna House. (17) I understood that Our Lord was drawing my attention to the great simplicity of Madonna House. (17) What is the spirit of MH? Very simple. MH was built on humility, simplicity, ordinariness. It was humble, exceedingly simple, totally ordinary. (23) And finally she equates simplicity with love: I consider that Madonna House above all is simple. By simplicity I mean many things. Perhaps I should say that Madonna House is charitable, or should be, because simplicity and charity are very much alike; they have much in common. Perhaps simplicity is just the fruit of charity, because simplicity is certainly not ambitious for any great gifts of any kind. Simplicity is also truthfulness and directness and, like love, is always patient and kind and is never jealous. Simplicity implies openness and an attitude to life that is Christlike. Through simplicity the soul enters into Christ’s life and can give it to others. (16)
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For Catherine, simplicity is one of the great keys to the mystery of Nazareth. As a state of being it will cost a great deal. T.S. Eliot said that “Christianity is a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.” We have lost God as our center, so everything has become very complicated the apostolate, human relationships, virtue everything. Simplicity is the key which unlocks the door to the essence of things. Although it is within our grasp, the journey to reach simplicity is immense. The Way By G.K. Chesterton The way is all so very clear That we may lose the way. So very simple is the road That we may stray from it. We walk bewildered in the light For something much too plain for sight And something much too clear to say. Go humbly; Humbly are the skies. And low and large and fierce the stars. So very near the Manger lies, That we may travel far.
…Poor… In chapter Three we treated of the spiritual foundations of Catherine’s thinking on poverty. I remarked that I would not be considering her teaching on material poverty since much of this would apply to our own community, or to those called to a life of total dispossession. “Poor” here in the second line, however, is of universal application, since it’s another synonym for the being of the child before the face of the Father. And, because the poverty motif plays such an all-embracing part in her spirituality, “poor,” in this line, would, I’m sure, be Catherine’s first choice for what it means to be. In the beatitudes also, “poor in spirit” was the Lord’s first choice in describing what openness to, and possession of, the kingdom really is. I treat here, then, briefly, some of her thoughts on spiritual poverty. As always her vision begins with Christ. In a letter to her spiritual director in the early ‘40s she wrote: One thing I know: He did not “help” the poor as Friendship House helps them. He helped by being poor in a sort of different way from us. He did not take upon himself holy poverty. He was poor, without taking in on. (FL) The Lord, of course, was always exceedingly rich, even while among us. We called his state “poor” because he lacked all the things on which we so much depend and pride ourselves. What are some of the components, some of the elements, of true spiritual poverty? The first is humility, the recognition and acceptance of our complete dependence on God. The beginning is in acknowledging your own immense poverty. You have to realize, deeply, fully, that all you are, all you have, is from God. Once you make this truth of your poverty before God the very marrow of your thoughts, your life,
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your love, your body, in a word, your being, then you will become truly humble, then you shall walk in truth, walk in and with God. (SL #148, 1963) The Lord Jesus conveys this truth to us when he says he can only do what he sees the Father doing, can only say what the Father gives him to say; that his doctrine is not his own, etc. The Father is Jesus’ life, whereas we, because of sin, have an illusion of a separate life of our own, independent of God. Poor in spirit means that we know how utterly dependent we are on God; in a word, to understand what it means to be a creature of God. (R, Mar., 1966) Another scriptural word for this attitude is anawim, the poor of Yahweh: Christ said, “Without me you can do nothing.” The Christian must also remember he is an “anawim” a poor man of Yahweh, the poor man of the Beatitudes. He will know he is a creature, totally dependent upon God. He will rejoice in this, because this is the essence of poverty. (R, Aug., 1966) Anawim. The really poor people who know that they are poor. Poor because they are creatures. Poor because they know they are utterly dependent upon God. Oh, to become one! To become the poor people of God who “lean” on God, as the Scripture says. Who among us realizes that everything that is, everything we have, comes from God? Who among us rejoices in this poverty which is true riches because it is the knowledge of who he is and who God is? (GWC, 104) If the mandate from God is to “go to the poor,” it is crucial for us to recognize our own inner poverty. Otherwise we will go as a “Lady Bountiful” to share with all those “poor people” our own abundant riches! We are the unknown land. Everyone is boarding a bus…to go and do something for the poor and the downtrodden. Am I not the poorest of all? Would I take a bus to discover my own need of God, my own utter poverty? What then is it that we have to bring to the poor? First, it seems the realization that we are the poorest of the poor. This is the question, and it concerns the very essence of poverty. Are we merely seeking to run away from facing our own poverty, and escape into the world of the poor? (GWC, 100-101) Thus, interior poverty is a stripping of the self which is a crucifixion, and which can only be accomplished through love: Poverty is a matter of a total change of our inner self. Such poverty can only be the child of love. For love alone can make man tear off all his masks, reveal himself as he is, and stand innerly naked before his fellow men! To say it is a painful process is to say nothing. It is the most excruciating thing…the hardest thing to do for a human being. It is to crucify oneself on the cross of Christ. And I think that is the goal of poverty. For only then will we truly draw all things to Christ as we are lifted up on that cross of poverty. (R, Apr., 1963) Scattered throughout her writings, Catherine equates this interior poverty with almost every virtue, so all pervasive a concept is it for her. But one word approximates interior poverty more
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than all others dispossession: “I am obsessed by something that is beyond poverty, or perhaps it is part of it, or perhaps it is the heart of it…I call it ‘dispossession.’” (SLFF #20, 1958) In the following letter, written in 1972, are found some of her deepest expressions of interior poverty: A desire to possess a total emptiness of heart and mind, an emptiness in which a naked child could be born, big enough to contain a naked man on a cross. Does it sink deeply into your heart, mind, and soul that dispossession is freedom? If you dispossess yourself for Christ’s sake, for God’s sake, for love’s sake, you are as free as the air. The dispossessed for Christ’s sake are meek and therefore peacemakers. They are the gentle ones who use their poverty, their dispossession, to wipe the tears of others. They are the humble ones, because they know that the greater is their dispossession, the deeper they are in the truth of God, and therefore totally humble. One of the most consistent themes of Catherine about poverty throughout her whole life is that obedience is the crown, since it entails the dispossession of our free will: I began to understand that poverty would not grow unless obedience would walk with Her. For a soul must surrender not only its goods but itself. Obedience surrenders the will of a human being, truly his most precious possession, thus becoming the crown of poverty. (SL #94, 1962) He demands the death to self through poverty/obedience. He wants you to enter into the very heart of poverty … Obedience will make you truly poor. For through it, you will have surrendered that tremendous, magnificent, incredible gift of God your free will which is truly a free, loving gift from him. (SL # 148, 1963) The naked, crucified One knows his own; but especially he cannot resist the ones who strip themselves inwardly naked for him, and immolate themselves on his own crucifix with him, for love of him and the souls for whom he died. Stripped in this fashion, dying to self, crucified on the cross of poverty and obedience, walking in humility (which is truth), you will be able to feel what the poor feel. You will heal, console, bring multitudes to God. You will be truly poor in the full sense of that glorious word! and hence, truly rich! (SLFF #20, 1972) Did it ever occur to you, dearly beloved, that to be totally dispossessed one must be totally obedient? Obedience is the crown of poverty. (SLFF #20, 1972) As always, the deepening of each virtue is a way to console Christ in his ongoing passion: That hollowing out, which dispossession must make in our heart and soul to hold that naked child once born in a cave, to hold that naked man once crucified on a cross, is done by obedience. (SLFF #20, 1972)
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Do we desire the Desired One? If so, do we wish to follow him and detach our hearts from all things that are not him, and be poor, not only in spirit but in reality? Are we going to share our immense surplus with the hungry ones of the world, the replicas of the Child? (R, Dec., 1967) Every movement of the heart is intimately connected to Christ. When we are purified of our selfexalting attitudes, Christ comes to rest in us, a warm cave instead of his cold one, a companionable cross instead of his lonely one. And every person in material need with whom we share is a replica of the Child, a replica of the Man dispossessed on the Cross Finally, this crib, this cross, created in our hearts by poverty, is not a negative space. It is charged with “joyousness” because the heart now adheres to God alone. (SL #40, 1959) The detachment and dispossession from all things is transformed into a “flaming love for all created things.” (SL #94, 1962) God himself is not detached from his creation. He loves everything passionately but purely. This pure, passionate, joyous love for everything is the final goal of interior poverty, “a love that sings his glory alone.” (SL #94, 1962) Just as the goal of kenosis is plerosis, the fullness of the Christ-life in us, so the goal of poverty is a “flaming love” for all of creation, but a love now totally rooted in God.
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APPENDIX The Spirit Of The Madonna House Apostolate By Catherine Doherty The spirit of Madonna House is one of ardent zeal for the glory of God, the salvation of souls, and the restoration of all things to Christ through Mary. You have come here by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to dedicate your life in this very humble apostolate, hidden like the Holy Family of Nazareth unknown, unsung, utterly indistinguishable, outwardly, from the rank and file of everyday humanity except for a cross. The Second aim of this Apostolate is to restore man and his institutions to Jesus Christ through Mary in the lay apostolate by means of work in any phase of Christian reconstruction. This is the work that you do. But the way that you are going to do it depends on who you are. What you do matters but not much! Who you are matters tremendously. The world is restored to Christ by being a servant: “Zeal for my Father’s house consumes me. I cannot rest.” This is you unable to rest because you love. “I shall arise and go and find my beloved, for I cannot rest until my heart rests in him.” Ours are the words, “I sleep but my heart watches.” We are passionately, utterly, completely, in love with God, or should be, as we progress along this road of our Apostolate. We breathe, we live, we eat, we sleep, only for one reason: To serve him whom our hearts love, and to extend his kingdom. You have heard the plan of God outlined for you well enough. The miracle of that plan is that God invites you and me to participate in it. What is that plan? Behold, the Crucifixion! A simple cross, and on it a Man who thirsts sitio! Does he thirst for water? For wine? Maybe. But he thirsts above all for souls. The best gift of a lay apostle of Madonna House is simply the gift of his or her life. “I give you my life, Lord, because the zeal of your house consumes me. I desire to bring you souls to assuage your thirst.? That is our vocation; that is the spirit of the Apostolate; that is what will make it work. The moment that spirit is lost, the Apostolate is dead, even if it covers the earth. It matters not if we are many in number, if our shelves groan under the weight of books, if we have any army of nurses rendering services to the sick, if we are feeding the poor. Unless our hearts are filled with the charity of Christ, and we burn with the zeal of this charity, we are like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Without love, nothing that we do will matter. No restoration will follow. Our activities will only be extensions of things Communists and pagans do. The difference between us and them is motivation. We do these things because we cannot help doing them, because, like a people on fire, we must serve; otherwise our love for God will simply tear us apart! Love must serve! Love is not an abstract thing. Love is not something that you can classify, weigh, organize. Love is a fire; it must spend itself in service. Service is the dry wood for love, that which turns it into a bonfire that reaches into eternity and burns even there! What you and I are called to be in the utter Stygian darkness of this world are flames. A lamp for my neighbor’s feet. A place where he can warm himself. A place where he can see the face of God. How can people see in the dark?
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It is to be, to love, to burn, that we have come together! And who brought us? The Fire of Love! the Holy Spirit! We are little flames, coming together, each growing, uniting in various patterns according to the call of God as expressed by the bishop. We are loving, burning, offering ourselves up in the holocaust! “I wish to burn, Lord, consume me. Take no notice of my weaknesses or difficulties. Shape me into your image and likeness.” Then we turn our faces to God the Father, the Immense Sculptor. Once we were clay, dust. Out of that clay he fashioned us. Blowing with his breath he made us come alive. Now, turning our faces to God the Father, we say in all simplicity: “Once more clay comes to you, but now clay with a free will. So, of my own free will, I come. Shape me into the likeness of your Son. I know that, before the face of the resurrected Christ can be shaped in my soul by your holy hands. I have to be shaped into the likeness of the Man of Sorrows. Shape me. For that is the purpose of my life, that is the desire of my soul to be where my Beloved is. Here I am, Lord. Shape me! And God the Father will bend towards me and you, and, in our poor human faces, shape the likeness of the Christ of Gethsemane, the Christ of pilate, the Christ of Sorrows, the Christ who was persecuted, spit upon, flagellated, crowned with thorns, crucified. And then, someday, God the Father will come and say: “Now, arise, for I desire to shape you in the likeness of my Son in glory.” That’s our vocation. That’s the spirit of it an utter surrender that knows no bounds. What is death to me but entrance into life? Do I fear man? What can he do to me? I walk in the shadow of God. Is anything impossible to me? To me, yes, but not to me and him. I cannot take a breath without him. But with him I move in utter faith towards the impossible. Is it cold where I am going? My Lord is cold. If I go there, he will warm me. The wastes of the arctic hold no fear for me. Am I going to live in the broiling sun, and shall the heat of the day consume me? What does it matter? The fire of my soul is hotter than any sun! It is cool in the Sahara desert compared to what happens inside of me! I burn with a fire that will never be quenched until it becomes one with the Fire, the Movement, that is the Most Holy Trinity! Nothing matters except the Lord of Hosts and his will. The members of Madonna House should hear constantly these words: “I have come to do the will of the Father.” And also these words of Scripture: “He was obedient unto death.” Thus burning with love I am a holocaust, offered with a zeal that consumes me for the glory of my Father’s house. How else can I surrender unless I hear these words, “I have come to do the will of my Father”? With joy I say, “Lord, O Lord, I have come to do thy will. O Christ, I will do the will of thy Father also. For thy will and the Father’s will are one.” And so, in every moment of my day, in every step that I take, I see the will of God. The duty of the moment speaks to me in the accents of a Lover. I am not doing the duty of the moment because the person in authority tells me to do it. I am doing it because my Lord spoke. Across the centuries I hear with the ears of my soul the voice of him whom my heart loves. And I arise, and I hasten to do the will of my Beloved. This is the only way that I shall restore the world. The restoration of the world, which is the aim of our Apostolate, must come from within me, and from within each one of you. The key is this intangible reality which is as strong as death, as strong as everlasting life which is called
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love. Nothing can destroy it, unless we destroy it ourselves. It is the only motive, the only reason, for being here. Everything is senseless unless you are here for loving utterly, passionately, completely. The very word “love” implies sacrifice and surrender. “He was obedient unto death.” Crosses are not fashionable in the 20th century. The Iron Curtain has not yet enclosed what we call the “Free Nations.” The shadow of the Curtain has not yet fallen over you but it might. That will be another kind of cross. But the cross of Christ always casts its shadow over all of us. It is a simple death he calls us to, but, oh, how profound, how strange, how mysterious! It is a death which in itself carries the very seeds of life. It is a simple, profound, complete death to self which opens all doors. When the “I” has completely surrendered, then the hallways of the Kingdom of Heaven have opened upon the earth. Greater love has no man than to die for his fellow man. Our vocation is to die that we may live and give life to others. To the extent that I die, to that extent my neighbor lives, to that extent I bring the light of Christ. I spoke of zeal and of fire and of light. But all fire and all light must have a container of some sort a fireplace, a stove, a lamp in which to burn. Death to self is that container. Death to self is the immense torch that we can lift on high to dispel the darkness. For what are we fighting against? We are fighting not only against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but against powers and principalities. And these can only be exorcised by love in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Love is the mother of all virtues. Love is the fire that alone can push back the darkness of those powers and principalities. These powers thrive in darkness; evil lurks in darkness; darkness covers up so many sins. It is so easy to doubt, to sow discord, to plant anger against each other in the darkness. What will dispel darkness? One thing: love. Like a poisonous flower hatred flourishes in damp and dark places in dead marshes, lakes, or rivers. From thence hate emanates its deadly, stiflingly sweet, putrid perfume. Who shall venture into the kingdom of death and hatred real death, death to the soul? Only he who dies to self because he loves; only he who is obedient to the will of God; only he who is a lamp, a light, a torch, a bonfire, unafraid to walk alone into the darkness and conquer hatred. There is only one thing that conquers hatred: love! And nothing else except love ever will. But how can I love if there is one millionth of an ounce of self in me? Love is a Person. Love is God. Where love is, God is. And our vocation is to make room for God in ourselves…if I may say so, to clothe God with our flesh, to once again give him hands and lips and eyes and a voice. But to do that we must die to self. God is immense. He needs much room our whole being! No one crevice must be left to ourselves. Otherwise we maim Christ if we refuse him access to any part of us. And where is the lover who keeps back anything from the beloved? Such a person is not a true lover. And so that is our vocation to burn, to die, to become a flame, so as to make room for Christ to grow in us. Once the feet of Christ, through our feet, touch again this earth of ours, the earth will grow and be restored. Dedication is seen in pain. There is a radiance emanating from that pain which disperses the shadows in another’s face. That is the essence of our vocation to burn with love, to be a light, to be a fire. And, as you who live in this wooded environment know only too well, you cannot start a fire with green wood. No more will the fire of the love of God take hold in a soul that is not utterly dedicated to him.
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You have no past, no future. You have no mother, no father. You have no wife, no husband. You have no children, no relatives. You are alone, facing your Lover, God. No one and nothing is between you and God. You live between two Masses. You exist in the present moment. You do the will of him who sent you, for you are an apostle, and the word “apostle” means “one who is sent.” Who sent you? Christ. Who sent Christ? God the Father. You are ready. You have nothing in your hands. How can you be an apostle with possessions? Your road is long; your road is dusty. You will be living in the alleyways and byways of the world. Yours is the stinking backyard. Yours are the places nobody wants to go to. Can you take any possessions there? Yours are the immense stretches of the desert that exist in men’s souls. You will have to cross the seas of despair and doubt in their hearts. Can you take any baggage on this strange journey? No! And so, to your obedience and love is added poverty. You go forth as an apostle should. Take no shoes, no gold or silver. Then, once more you too will hear the words of Christ at the end of the journey, “Have you wanted anything?” Our vocation is simple, so utterly simple, that words fail to describe it. It is intangible, and yet very concrete. To burn. To do the will of God in the humble duty of every moment. To die to self through obedience, poverty, love. Through chastity also: to have no one who belongs to you, and you belonging to no one, except God. To live in the present moment. To be ready to be crucified (in the mystical sense) on the cross of the will of God. To be ready to be crucified by men. You will be. You will be crucified with their words, not yet realizing that words spoken by men are like chaff in the wind. They will be words of disapproval, of doubt, of ridicule. You will also be crucified by gestures (the shrugging of shoulders, for example). You will be crucified by others’ disbelief in your way of life. And I want you to understand your crucifixion. We are not worthy to be crucified high up on a hill. St. Peter even was crucified head downwards; and St. Andrew was crucified on a cross shaped differently from that of the Lord’s. They were glad because of these differences. They felt they were unworthy to be crucified as Christ, who was God. Our cross will be very small. It will probably be in the market place where we have our dwelling. The byways, the deserts, the alleyways, the stinking backyards this is the market place, figuratively speaking. Our cross will be small, as tall as you or I, each according to his size. And what will happen? A merchant will pass by, stop, poke his fat fingers into your mouth and into your eyes, into your chest and into your side, and say, “Humph, not much!” and pass by. A lawyer will come around and say, “It’s illegal to be crucified these days in the public market place. Humph! Wonder what they’re made of?” A doctor will pass by and say, “This is unhygienic; it shouldn’t be allowed,” and poke you some more. A woman, bent on everybody’s business but God’s, will stand there and say, “Humph,” and go on to express her opinion of you to everyone in no uncertain terms. Priests will pass by and say, “How foolish.” Nuns will come and say, “Neither fish nor fowl. Just look at them!” Then somebody will come and throw mud (we don’t deserve stones yet) and say, “Oh, pelt them also with rotten eggs.” And somebody else will say, “Throw in a rotten tomatoe for good measure.” And there, crucified by the will of God for your sanctification, you will stand, crowned with an invisible kingly cape, with rotten eggs and tomatoes for your crown of thorns.
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Your daily life seemingly will be very dull. You have only one moment to live at a time. One day at a time between two Masses. You have no past. Your yesterdays are gone. You have no future. Your tomorrows belong to him. You have only today. I have only this moment to do the will of the Father. Only this moment to be obedient unto death. Only this moment to burn with a fire that knows neither beginning nor end. Only this moment to spill myself out in service to my neighbor. Words are not enough! Words die before the Word. I can only prove my love for him by loving my neighbor, for my neighbor is He Himself. What will your love bring to your Beloved? Are you going to bring beautiful vestments that you have sewn through the night with the finest of gold and silver threads? Will you bring him a crown of gold, or a sceptre that you’ve spent half your lifetime carving out of priceless ivory? Are you going to bring Him poetic verses that will move multitudes, or music that will enchant the world? Are you going to bring Him books that will make Him better known? No! You will bring Him stew well made; endless potatoes finely peeled; 3 x 5 cards correctly filed over and over again; floors eternally scrubbed so as to allow His feet in your neighbor to walk across; machinery kept clean and oiled, day in and day out; garbage removed; endless trips through snowy wastes in the Yukon, or through the rough roads in Combermere, to bring someone to the hospital. Years of this! You will bring such humble gifts that people seeing you carrying your offering to the sacrifice will shrug their shoulders and turn away their faces and say, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like these.” They will not know you for who you are. They did not understand Christ in Nazareth for who he was. They will not understand; it will be hard for you to be misunderstood; it was hard for the God-Man to be misunderstood. But you will rejoice with a great joy, for all this will make you more like your Beloved. All these little things are the fingers of God the Father, conforming you unto the loneliness of His Son, conforming you unto the misunderstanding that His Son suffered, conforming you unto Christ’s hiddenness, unto his pain. Slowly, the fingers of God’s Will, and the fingers of time, will become one. You will be shaped and shaped, not knowing even that you were shaped. You will enter into a great darkness, a great aridity, a great temptation, But oh, rejoice! For this is the desert where Christ spent 40 days fasting! This is his hunger you are experiencing. This is the Lover paying court to your soul, hiding himself, as lovers are wont to do, so that you, whom he loves, might arise and go in search of him. The hide-and-seek of love, the eternal playfulness, is now lifted to a supernatural plane. Be at peace! This darkness, this aridity, the desert, are joyful. They are the beginning of wisdom, for your Beloved is the very Wisdom of God. He teaches you His Wisdom, now in the loneliness and silence of the desert, now in the quiet and darkness of the night of love. There are two nights in this world: the night of hate and the night of love. This is the night of love. All this is the spirit of our Apostolate. This is the warp and woof of the dedication that I am talking about. Without this spirit your own restoration is but chaff in the wind. Words are inadequate to explain this dedication rooted in love. Who can explain intangibles? And so you shall go through life for many year as a sort of freak! But if you do, there will come a day when people will know you for who you are. And because you laid down your life in this
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death day after day, minute by minute; because you died to self in the duty of the moment; because with your unalterable will you were united with the will of God; because you laid down your life for your fellow man, unobtrusively, in a hidden way, without any trumpets sounding, without any acclaim because of all this the world will have another portion of God’s field restored to Him. To the extent you do these things, to that extend the world will be restored, to that extent you shall become mighty against the darkness. On the cross God will give you the strength to be a light, not only to your neighbor’s feet, but a light that blinds the devil, and the powers and principalities. Then, in the name of the Trinity, you shall go forth into the dark and dank places, diving without fear into the still waters that run so deep, in order to rescue a soul. Then you will be ready. You will be ready because there will be no self in you. You have loved, and you have made room for God. What can you be afraid of when you are able to say, “I live now, not I, but Christ liveth in me”? This is the goal of the Apostolate, to love as God wants us to live so as to be fearless. For the battle in which we are engaged demands courage. Perfect love alone casts our fear. Nothing else can cast it out. So let us learn to love perfectly. Love is a Person, Love is God. We possess God in proportion as we love. And then, because God is never outdone in generosity, we possess Him because He wishes to be possessed. He comes to us in the deserts and the dark nights, and they are no more. Then we know the Light because we have brought the Light. It is a strange vocation that you are entering luminous, full of light. The only thing that can make it dark is yourself if you do your own will and not the will of God the Father and the Son, which are identical. In everyday life, as you trudge through this vale of tears, you will constantly be looking for the Promised Land. But you love God so much that you are not concerned when He will call you home. A time will come when you will wish to die simply because living is so difficult. But even then you will say, “O.K.” You will be more interested in His will than in going to heaven, for it may not be His will that you be in heaven now. And so, in everyday life, what do we expect of you, or rather, what does God expect of you? A great simplicity, an absolute naturalness, a humility as ordinary as the air. For who are we? In the line of apostles we are the smallest, the littlest. We are lay people consecrated, dedicated but lay people. We are very small. Remember what I always say. David looked at Goliath and saw a brook. In the brook he saw little pebbles; and he had a childish sling-shot. He bent down and picked up those pebbles, put them in his sling, and slew the mighty Goliath. The Lord does likewise with us. David is a prefiguration of Christ. The Lord looked at the world and saw the goliaths of darkness waxing strong and fat, plucking away from Him the souls for which His Son died. Christ His Son, with the sling of His grace, bends down into the brook of life. He picks up little pebbles, you and me, to fix into His sling. What must we do as lay apostles? The little pebbles must just “be there.” It is up to God to shoot. Here is the hand of the Lord, and here are the pebbles. They were worked over by the water. They are shiny and ready. They lie still on the palm of God’s hand. It is for Him to pick them up, put them into His divine sling, and shoot wherever He desires. That’s all!
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But oh! what goes into those tiny pebbles! Chastity, poverty, obedience, humility, simplicity, naturalness, death to self, and love. The pebbles lie still in the palm of God’s hand, content just to rest there. How are you going to achieve all this? What’s the program? It’s superhuman; let’s call it supernatural. The only way you can acquire the strength to lie still in the palm of God’s hand, to die to self in the unglamorous and monotonous duty of the moment, is prayer. A trip to Nigeria, to Brazil, to Europe, will be glamorous for a month or two. But then, the backyards of Paris, the alleyways of Ceylon, the rural roads of Nigeria, the broiling sun here, the humid climate there, this monotony will take hold of you again. There will be new faces, but with the same old problems. There will always be the same treadmill the feeding of souls, the feeding of bodies, the clothing of the naked, the nursing of tired minds and bodies. It will always be the same story repeated as nauseam and ad infinitum. To someone experiencing these things for the first time they will be new and exciting. But for you it will be an old gramophone record. What is going to make this gramophone record exciting and pulsating with life? The Lord! The vocation to love will give you the courage, the all-consuming zeal, to listen again and again, to clothe the naked again and again, to nurse the sick again and again, to feed the hungry again and again and all with the zest of a young person on his or her first date! As the years go by you shall see the Face of your Beloved. Slowly, the thousand and one faces that told you their story, that asked for help, will take on the shape of one Face. Then, slowly, very slowly, you will touch your Beloved before you die. This is the only reward of your vocation, the reward of your faith. We can touch Christ in the Eucharist with our lips, we can touch Christ in the priest. But always at any time and in any place we can embrace our Beloved, in the real sense of the word, by embracing our neighbor. In the dark splendor of the grayness of every day, your days will be like a rosary without mysteries, like one long string without interruption. And yet, the whole rosary is a mystery of love, the love of a soul in search of God. Drop by drop, the beads of your days will dropt into time. Gray days, gray beads they are really the splendor or the incomprehensible fire that renews the face of the earth, restores the sick to health, raises the dead to life, helps souls come back to God. Such is your vocation. It is strangely hidden, like a rich pearl in the gray, flabby body of an oyster. It is so simple. But you have to pray to be able to endure the monotony of those gray days, to be able to hear your days falling into time. You must believe that they are being gathered somewhere in eternity by God. You have to pray, pray without ceasing. At first you are taught to pray in time. Pray the Mass of course, always. The Mass is the center, the heart, the essence of our faith. It is the fire into which you must plunge to become a flame. It is your rendez-vous with God. It is the only place where you and Christ become one in the reality of faith and life. The Mass is the food that will keep you on the treadmill of those gray days, chained without chains to the duty of the moment, for love is not a chain. You are going to pray the prayer of meditation, through which your feet will run and explore the life of Him whom your heart loves, the mind of Him whose will you desire to accomplish with such a flaming desire, because you are all His.
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You are going to learn how to pray vocally, and with your body. All these things you will learn. They will give you courage; that is why you are learning them. They will give you strength to lie still on the palm of God’s hand. You will learn how to pray always, to understand the mystery of the words “ora et labora” prayer is work and work is prayer. Then some day you will reach that simple prayer of the presence of God where today in faith you will possess Him whom tomorrow you shall possess in the reality of eternal life. It will come. Strange things will happen to you then. They will be new/old, shining gray things which are part of your holy vocation. They will be signs of contradiction, signs of the Lord of Hosts. You shall see and understand that, far from being gray, your days are resplendent with glory if lived by dying to self, burning with zeal and love, desiring only one thing the will of God. Splendor will walk with you, a splendor that you will scarcely understand. Moses went up a mountain and there God spoke to him. Moses came down, and his face shone so much that the people were afraid. He had heard the voice of God. But you, my friends, when you are a holocaust of love, when you are surrendered as your holy vocation calls you to be, you won’t merely hear the voice of God. You will belong to God! You are one with Him. You do not live but Christ lives in you! You will not be able to see how much your soul shines, but this shining is the essence of the restoration of the world to Christ. This is the splendor which illuminates and spills over into works of love. But I needn’t speak to you about works. I must talk about the Spirit. It’s hard to find words to describe that spirit. It’s so simple, yet so stupendously splendid that I falter. All similes that come to mind seem dead before I speak them. This I tell you: you have seven years and nine months to think over your utter dedication; your final promises are for life. Woe to you if you wound this little Apostolate of the Lord by the breaking of charity! The only thing that can kill the Apostolate instantly is uncharitableness! Far from pushing the darkness out, you will allow it to enter. Instead of adventuring from the kingdom of hate, you shall bring hate in. Whoever is going to be Director General in the years to come, into whoever’s faltering hands the spirit of this Apostolate will be placed, be watchful, day and night over only one thing: love. Never mind the discipline! Never mind anything! It will come. But I charge you, with all the power that I have, in the name of everything I stand for, I charge you: Watch day and night, with the watchfulness of a hawk, with the watchfulness of a mother over her children, with the watchfulness of a shepherd over his flock, watch for any breach of charity. Woe to him or her responsible for that breach of Charity! They bring death to the very spirit of the Apostolate, remember that! Our vocation is of God, simple and humble. The psalmist says that there is a rock, and in the rock there are little crevices where the birds can nestle. The rock, of course, is Christ. “Big people,” like John the Baptist, lay on his breast. Little people, like us, nestle in the crevices of his hand, or perhaps of his neck. We are so small. He who loves can nestle anywhere in the arms of the Beloved. Our vocation is that of nestling. How nice it is to nestle in Christ! Much goes into this privilege of nestling. Give much, and you will receive much in return. You will receive God, who is never outdone in generosity.
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If people ask you, “What is the Apostolate of Madonna House?” you answer simply, “It is an Apostolate to love. Where love is, God is. We desire to be God in the midst of the world. We are dedicated to the restoration of the world man and his institutions to God. The only way we can restore them is by loving, by having God within ourselves, a living flame.” The rest will follow. That’s all there is to it: love and death. This is life everlasting in Christ. That’s everything. I haven’t spoken at length about Our Lady; a brief mention at the beginning. This is because, for me, it is so self-evident that he who seeks Christ without Mary seeks Him in vain. All the things I have spoken about to you presuppose Christ, the Way to the Father. He said, “I am the way.” But the gate to the way is Mary. And we are domus dominae, the House of Our Lady. Should one need to mention the evident? All the things I have spoken to you about will happen to you if you go to Jesus through Mary. She possesses the secret of prayer, the secret of wisdom, for she is the Mother of God. Who else can teach you to burn with the fire of love except the Mother of fair love? Who else can teach you to pray except the woman of prayer? Who else can teach you to go through the silence of deserts and nights, the silence of pain and sorrow, the solitude of joy and gladness, except the woman wrapped in silence? Who can span the bridge between the old and the new, the “dedicated you” and the “undedicated you”? Only Mary, the bridge between the Old Testament and the New, the Jewish girl who brought forth the Messiah, the Son of the Almighty. Sometimes it is difficult to speak of the self-evident. Without Mary, how can one speak of God the Father, who was so well pleased with her that he made her the Mother of His Son? How can we speak of Christ (who was her Son begotten by the Holy Spirit) without speaking of Mary, the spouse of the Spirit? Our Lady of the Trinity, and Our Lady of Madonna House, are one and the same. Such is the spirit of our Apostolate. Perhaps my silence about Mary was a tribute to the woman wrapped in silence. But I conclude by saying that all that we do in this Apostolate we do through Mary. All of us are consecrated to her as her slaves. That’s why we are free. And that is why we can dedicate ourselves so utterly to her Son, because it is she who shows us the Way. Lovingly yours in Mary, CATHERINE (A talk given March 22, 1956 SL #140)
Journey to the Lonely Christ
Robert Wild
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Background Bibliography Arseniev, Nicholas. Russian Piety (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1964) Augustine, St. Sermo de Ascensione Domini, Mai 98, 1-2; PLS 2, 494-495. Evdokimov, Paul. Le Christ dans La Pensee Russe. Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind (2 Vols.) (Woodside, New York: Nordland publishing International, Inc., 1976). Marevee. The Ascension in the Works of St. Augustine. Mersch, Emile. The Theology of the Mystical Body. Rahner, Karl. The Christian of the Future (New York: Crossroad, 1976). Thunberg. Lars. Man and the Cosmos. Zernov, Nicolas. The Russians and Their Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977).
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LOVE, LOVE, LOVE The “Little Mandate” of Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Rev. Robert Wild
ALBA HOUSE NEW YORK SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL, 2187 VICTORY BLVD. STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK 10314
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Document Information.................................................................................................................... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................ 4 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................................... 10 PREACH THE GOSPEL WITH YOUR LIFE......................................................................... 10 CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................................................................... 14 WITHOUT COMPROMISE .................................................................................................... 14 Preach the Gospel ................................................................................................................. 18 CHAPTER THREE ...................................................................................................................... 19 LISTEN TO THE SPIRIT HE WILL LEAD YOU............................................................. 19 The Spirit as Love Between The Father And The Son ......................................................... 19 Spirit Love Creator .......................................................................................................... 20 Listen To The Spirit .............................................................................................................. 21 “Folding the Wings of the Intellect”..................................................................................... 23 Listening ............................................................................................................................... 26 Listening To God .................................................................................................................. 26 Listening To Self................................................................................................................... 27 Listening To Others .............................................................................................................. 27 The Consoler......................................................................................................................... 28 The Wind as Source of Adventure........................................................................................ 29 The Holy Spirit and Sobornost ............................................................................................. 30 The Spirit And The Splendor Of The Ordinary .................................................................... 30 CHAPTER FOUR......................................................................................................................... 31 DO LITTLE THINGS EXCEEDINGLY WELL FOR LOVE OF ME.................................... 31 Little Things.......................................................................................................................... 33 Big Things............................................................................................................................. 34 “The Vision of The Whole”.................................................................................................. 35 The Romance of The Ordinary ............................................................................................. 36 Little Things as Gifts and Music for the Christ Child .......................................................... 37 The Painful Refinery of Love ............................................................................................... 38 The “Duty of the Moment” ................................................................................................... 39 The Duty of the Moment as Our Strategic Place .................................................................. 39 CHAPTER FIVE .......................................................................................................................... 41 LOVE LOVE LOVE....................................................................................................... 41 The Apostolate Is Love......................................................................................................... 42 God Is Love........................................................................................................................... 43 Love One Another................................................................................................................. 45 …And Love Your Neighbor ................................................................................................. 45 Compassion........................................................................................................................... 48 Without Counting the Cost ................................................................................................... 49 Pain Is the Kiss Of Christ...................................................................................................... 51 NOTE ON THE THIRD VOLUME:............................................................................................ 53 APPENDIX................................................................................................................................... 54 KEY TO CITED WORKS............................................................................................................ 60
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An Interesting Thought ................................................................................................................. 65
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INTRODUCTION THIS IS the second volume of a proposed trilogy on Catherine Doherty’s “Little Mandate,” words she received from the Lord during her lifetime and which she considered the essence of her “mandate,” her vocation from God. To be understandable the present book presumes some knowledge of Catherine’s life. So, for those who may be completely unfamiliar with Catherine, I have decided to include in this Introduction a slight revision of an account of her life I recently wrote for the New Catholic Encyclopedia; I thank the editors for permission to reprint it here. It would be ideal if the reader had read the first volume of this series, Journey To The Lonely Christ (Alba House, 1987) though each volume will be understandable as it is. The three volumes will be something like the pictures of a triptych: If you look closely at only one of the pictures, it is complete in itself. But if you stand back and gaze upon all three, you will see how they form one harmonious scene. The three volumes together will form the complete panorama of Catherine Doherty’s mandate. Allow me to quote the Little Mandate here, as it will be referred to frequently throughout the text: Arise—go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me. Little—be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. Do little things exceedingly well for love of me. Love…love…love, never counting the cost. Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fears into the depths of men's hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always. I will be your rest. My first volume treated the first two lines of the Mandate, “Arise Go!” and “Little be always little.” The first line sounds all the major notes of the song of Catherine’s Beloved to her, his will for her: the immense journey inward to the Beloved’s Heart; the dispossession required to possess him alone; achieving union with the Beloved through the pain of finding him in the poor. The immense love of the Beloved impels Catherine to assuage his thirst for love, to assuage his loneliness caused by the rejection of Love on the part of so very many. The Mandate’s main thrust is how to achieve union with Christ in the poor, which is everyone. By seeking him in the poor, Christ the Good News is revealed to them, and thus His love and loneliness are assuaged. Catherine says that the second line “Little, be always little…simple poor childlike” is the most difficult because it concerns “states of being.” “What you do,” she often said to us,
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“matters but not much! What you are matters tremendously.” On the journey inward to the lonely Christ we are constantly seeking that utter simplicity and perfect interior poverty wherein God is our only Possession. But I think the heart of the second line is the last description of this interior reality childlikeness: We have been created to be the children of God (“We are even now the children of God,” writes St. John), created to share in God’s own nature as much as it is possible for created beings to do so. As far as our own being is concerned, we are seeking to become that original child of God which is our destiny. And so, after sounding the major themes of the Mandate, and, after pointing to the deep states of being out of which we ought to live, the Lord then speaks to her about what to do. This is where the present volume begins. I don’t really consider this book a very “creative” work, except perhaps in the sense of arranging the material in some kind of coherent way. There will be many and extensive quotations from Catherine’s works. My primary desire is to allow the reader to hear Catherine’s song from her own heart. More imaginative, creative presentations of her writings will be the work of the future. In the future people will be relating her spirituality to the contemporary Church, showing its continuity with Russian spirituality, etc. But all this is for the future. For now, I wish to give people a fairly comprehensive picture of Catherine’s Gospel vision from sources that are not yet available to them. It will be sometime yet before many of the primary sources we have here at Madonna House will be available for scholarship. In the meantime, I think I can present the essence of her teaching to the public, and in this way help to guide public thought concerning the main thrusts of her spirituality. It is my conviction (I may be wrong but it is my present conviction) that the research into her writings will confirm the main lines traced out in the sources from which I am presently working. As in the first volume, I have devised a very simple reference code which is found in the back of the book. Many of the sources I use are not published. So I have kept the references simple. (These references should not be taken as definitive because when the original sources are published the references will be different. Unless otherwise noted, I will be quoting now from original sources.) Also, I wish to avoid saying in this and the subsequent volume, “as I said in Volume 1,” or “as I will treat in Volume 3.” Any major theme of the Mandate will be treated somewhere in the three volumes. I hope each volume speaks sufficiently to your heart so that you will be moved by the Lord to read the others! There will be some repetition, because one of the aspects of Catherine’s genius is the intricate weaving of themes in and out of one another. There is even some danger of distortion in separating them as I do. But I don’t think there is too much! We Westerners need some order! Now let me introduce Catherine to those unfamiliar with her life, or refresh the memories of those already acquainted with her. Catherine de Hueck Doherty was the Foundress of Madonna House Apostolate in Combermere, Ontario, Canada, and of Friendship House in Canada and the United States in the 1930’s and 1940’s. She was born August 15, 1896, in Nijni-Novgorod (present Gorki), Russia. She died December 14, 1985, in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. A pioneer among the Catholic laity in North America in implementing the social doctrine of the Church, she challenged the Christian
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conscience of her day by living the radical Gospel of Christ in the face of growing materialism, Communism, secularism, atheism, apathy, and economic injustice. EARLY YEARS. Her family lived in Ekaterinoslav (Russia), Alexandria (Egypt), India and Paris before finally settling down in St. Petersburg, Russia. Catherine’s mother communicated to her an extraordinary faith in the presence of Christ in the poor. In 1912 Catherine married Boris de Hueck. World War I found them both with the 130th Division on the Western Front. As a nurse she was decorated on several occasions for bravery. Escaping to Finland after the 1917 November Revolution, she and Boris ran into Bolshevik sympathizers who almost succeeded in starving them to death. Catherine made a promise to God that if she survived she would give him her life. CANADA. The couple made their way to Scotland, and then to England, where Catherine was received into the Catholic Church. Raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, Catherine had come to love and understand Catholicism in the convent schools of the Sisters of Sion in both Alexandria and Paris. Thus, God was preparing her to be a bridge between Eastern Christianity and the West. Catherine and Boris emigrated to Canada in 1921. They made their way to Toronto where a son, George, was born to them in July, 1921. Catherine began receiving invitations to speak about Russia and Communism, eventually joining the Chatauqua circuit as a lecturer. Such activities brought her again into wealth. She kept hearing the words of the Gospel: “Go, sell all you possess.” Catherine’s marriage with Boris had been strained due to the revolution, differing personalities, and a growing divergence in goals. In the early 1930’s they separated, eventually obtaining an ecclesiastical annulment (Archdiocese of Montreal, March 18, 1943). APOSTOLATE TO THE POOR. In the 1930’s the Communist movement began making inroads among the unemployed. Catherine was disturbed. She had vivid memories of what had happened in Russia. Remembering her promise to God, she believed living the Gospel without compromise was the only solution to these social problems. She opened a settlement house in the slum area of Toronto and called it Friendship House. Thus began one of the radical Catholic movements among the poor. Others joined her. They served meals, handed out clothes, and conducted classes in the social teachings of the Church. Under the spiritual guidance of Fr. Paul of Graymoor they formed themselves into a dedicated band with promises and a simple rule of life. Soon opposition developed: a rumor spread that Catherine herself was a Communist. Misunderstandings also grew on the parochial level. The Archbishop of Toronto supported her but, unable to work in a climate of suspicion, she closed Friendship House. In 1938, however, Catherine accepted a suggestion from Father John La Farge, S.J., that she open a similar Friendship House in Harlem, New York. With the blessing of Patrick Cardinal Hayes, she brought her vision of the Gospel to bear on the racial and social struggles of America. FRIENDSHIP HOUSE, U.S.A. Catherine’s approach was simple: to live the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth among the poor, serving them in small but very basic ways: food, clothes, instruction, love, support. As in Toronto, others were attracted by her life, and dedicated laity formed into a small movement around her. Catherine grew in her ability to form lay apostles into a family of love and service. In 1943, after the annulment of Catherine’s first marriage, she married Eddie Doherty, one of the best known newspapermen of the time. 8
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Problems also arose in the U.S. Friendship House. There were disagreements about practices and structures. But a deeper rift opened when some members wanted to focus completely on interracial work. Catherine always believed her vocation was much broader, “to restore all things to Christ.” At a painful convention in Chicago in 1946, she retained nominal status as Foundress. But on May 17, 1947, she went with Eddie to Combermere in the rural areas of Ontario where the culmination of her life’s work was to begin. MADONNA HOUSE. Through her rich life experiences, Catherine had gained a faith vision for the restoration of Church and culture at a time when the de-Christianization of the West was almost complete. Not only did she serve the poor and teach the ways of community life to those who joined Madonna House, but she applied her energies and wisdom to liturgical customs, family life, mission outreach, historical museums in short, to every aspect of human existence. Before, during, and after Vatican Council II, God urged her on to renew Christ’s life in his people. Again, many were attracted to this evangelical community. Small mission houses were opened, mostly in North America, but eventually in the West Indies, England, France, and Africa. At present there are 22 missions. As her own spiritual life matured, she was better able to communicate to the West the treasures of holy Russia. Her spiritual classic, Poustinia, is a call to prayer and the “desert” of the heart. Sobornost describes a unity in the Holy Spirit beyond any human effort of model. The People of the Towel and the Water reveals the Gospel dimensions of the ordinary life. The Madonna House community numbers about 150 Catholic laymen, laywomen, and priests. There are also about 70 associate priests, and several associate bishops and deacons. It is a Public Association of the Faithful under the Bishop of Pembroke, Ontario. It is, therefore, one Association with three branches, each electing its Director-General by sobornost. Together the three Directors-General govern the whole Apostolate. CONCLUSION. Even during her lifetime Catherine influenced millions of people and received many awards, among them the Pontifical Medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice and, in 1977, the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor. Her deep personal life with God, to be found in her diaries and private writings, is still to be made known. She had an extraordinary love for the Church as the radiant Bride of Christ. She insisted that all the baptized were called to fall in love with God and to become icons of his presence in their everyday lives. Many consider her a truly prophetic voice, one of the authentic teachers of the Gospel in the 20th century.
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CHAPTER ONE PREACH THE GOSPEL WITH YOUR LIFE THERE IS a real sense in which this phrase Preach the Gospel is the heart of the Mandate, since it is the heart of what Jesus told his disciples to do: “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mk 16:15). All the other commands of the Mandate love, pray, be a light only achieve their fulfillment if they serve to proclaim the Gospel (in the sense to be shortly explained). The beginning of the formula for the taking of promises at Madonna House, is, “Because I desire with my whole heart to preach the Gospel with my life…” And Catherine wrote to the community once: “I hesitate to say this but the only memorial I wish for myself, humanly speaking, is the growth of the Apostolate in wisdom, grace, and love, so that its members might go forth to the confines of the earth, there to serve God by preaching the Gospel with their lives and thus restoring his kingdom” (Begging Letter, January 16, 1963). The service of the Christian to the world, the essence of the Church’s mission, the way to restore and transform the world, is precisely by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. “Christ loved me,” Catherine writes, “in a very special way because he chose me, with all my weaknesses, with all my poverty, to preach his Gospel everywhere, at all times, night and day. For this was I born, to preach the Gospel by my words, by my very begging” (MHWII). “Can anyone realize the torture, the pain, the sorrow of seeing so many who do not love him? If you are really in love with God…then you must go, go without resting, to all the people. You must go to impart the Good News. For this you have been created. For this you have been baptized and confirmed…that you bring the Good News to your fellowmen. The Good News must be preached to the poor. Can you understand this tremendous hunger? It is a hunger for God. It is the kind of hunger that tears you apart” (U, 12-13). These themes are constant in her thinking and writing. Only the Gospel can restore the world to the Father. Every word and action must become an expression of the Gospel. This is how she can lessen the loneliness of Christ and return his great love for her. “Woe to me,” says St. Paul, “if I do not preach the Gospel.” For Catherine it would have been a betrayal of love not to preach the Gospel of her Beloved. St. Paul also said he only knows one thing Christ and him crucified. Some expressions of Orthodoxy (e.g. Greek) tend to emphasize the risen and glorious Christ. The resurrection, of course, is central also for Catherine. But her spirituality is very Russian in that she emphasizes that Christ continues to suffer in his members here on earth. This is a very profound dimension of Russian spirituality, and also a constant desire in Catherine’s heart. But what I wish to emphasize in this chapter is that she sees the preaching of the Gospel as the goal of everything. When the poustinik is finally called out of the poustinia, “he moves to the door of his heart because now, faintly yet clearly, he hears the voice of God saying, ‘Arise and come into the marketplace and preach the Good News to all you meet.’ The poustinik is unsure for a moment or two. He had spent so long…in the poustinia. Yet he hears the voice: ‘Arise. Come into the marketplace and preach my Gospel with your life’” (St 62). “Nazareth” forms a very central place in Catherine’s spirituality. You might say it is the spiritual atmosphere where we learn what the Gospel is. Living in simplicity with Jesus and Mary and
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Joseph, we learn of God’s tremendous healing love for us. When the Lord left Nazareth he was perfectly ready to preach the Gospel, himself being the Gospel. It is otherwise with us. Though we have received the command to preach the Gospel, we ourselves are always in the process of understanding better and better what the Gospel is. However, we cannot wait until we have perfect understanding. One day we must leave Nazareth. The Lord will continue to clarify for us who he is, and what the Gospel is, even as we journey. What does it mean to “preach” the Gospel? In common usage we would say it means to speak, to tell others in words, about Christ and his message. That is certainly one meaning; but it is not the deepest biblical meaning, nor the meaning that best fits Catherine’s understanding. The words of the Mandate are “Preach the Gospel with your life. “Preach,” then, has a wider and more profound meaning and significance than only speaking words. In English, the word closest to the Greek word used for preaching would be “proclaim.” And the meaning of “proclaim” can be seen from St. Paul’s word about the Eucharist: “Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). And again in 2:1-5, he says his proclamation of the Gospel was not with “a display of fine words or wisdom” but rather “with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might be built not on human wisdom but upon the power of God.” From this we can infer that to “preach” or “proclaim” the Good News is anything it may be a word, a deed, a miracle, a sacramental ritual by which Christ is made present. The Gospel is Jesus himself, and “preaching him” is any act by which his saving presence is made real and alive. Jesus, walking among the people of Palestine, is the Good News, and not only when he is speaking about the kingdom or his Father’s love. Jesus healing the sick is proclaiming the Gospel. Jesus working in Nazareth is proclaiming the Gospel. Jesus suffering silently on the Cross is proclaiming the Gospel. So, the sense in which I will be using this word, and the sense which best fits Catherine’s own use, is this: To preach the Good News, the Gospel, is making Christ present through our lives, our actions, our words, our whole being. Because Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Love of the Father among us, the only Name by which we can be saved, then the deepest meaning of our life here on earth, the whole purpose of life, is to make him present and known in the world so that all can be saved and come to a knowledge of his truth and love. It is in this context that Catherine’s description of the pilgrim is our ultimate goal: “The pilgrim has become, in a sense, a torch. He is a light and he is fire. There is no need any more to discuss with him the preaching of the Gospel. He is the Gospel! He is fire and light. He is the icon of Christ, a walking Gospel” (St 65). “Christians are called to incarnate him in our lives, to clothe our lives with him, so that men can see him, touch him, in us, recognize him in us” (GWC, 73). In another place she says that Christians must become “the living pages of the Gospel…walking catechisms, allowing God to speak, to work, to walk through us” (R, Jan., 1967). This meaning of “preach” is fundamental to Catherine’s vision of the Christian life because she saw the essence of her Mandate as applying the Gospel to every aspect of life, living it out in every possible way, so that Christ could shine forth in as many ways as humanly possible. “Also, I want to remind you that though you get letters from me on every aspect of our spirit…actually all can be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ if properly read and applied to yourself. For all I do, when all is said and done, is to apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the biggest and to the smallest points of our Institute” (SL #58, 1960). “Preach the Gospel. It means that we simply live
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it. This is our greatest difficulty to preach the Gospel day in and day out by living, by your speaking, and to believe that this is going to solve things economically, politically, socially, or whatever. Everything is in the Gospel, but we don’t want to open our eyes to the tremendous horizon that the simple words of Christ give us. There is nothing, nothing that is not subject to the Gospel. It is the solution to every problem from now until the parousia” (COLM). Everything in the world has to be re-created from the foundations up through the Gospel, which is Christ himself. The whole world needs to know and experience the presence of the risen Christ. “The problem is that we Christians do not understand that the world is always hungering for the reality of Christ” (GWC, 73). Catherine’s heart had been won over by the Great Lover whose love has been rejected. What could she do for him to assuage his love and loneliness? The answer is given in this third line: “Make Me and My immense love present to others by living My Gospel in every aspect of life.” We might say that the rest of the Mandate is how to make Jesus and his tremendous love present to the world. When two or three are gathered in prayer, he is present. When the Eucharist is celebrated, he is present. When the Gospel is explicitly preached by word, he is present as the Word. But most central for Catherine when you love, Christ is present. “Where Love Is, God Is,” was the title of one of her earliest books, and it expresses another central core of her Mandate which we will discuss in the fifth line: “Love is needed much love, whose other name is charity. For where love is, God is; and where God is, there is hope, peace, happiness so hungered for by the multitudes whose diet is one of unrest, uncertainty, fear, and despair” (WLIGI, 35). Whenever we act out of love serving a cup of tea or listening to someone’s sorrows we make Christ present, we preach the Gospel. By assuaging the lonely Christ we strive to make Christ present in every aspect of life so as to draw people to him. However, in this chapter, I especially ask the question: “When Catherine preached the Gospel verbally, what was the essence of her message?” In season and out of season, she preached that God is love, and that we must love him back PASSIONATELY for all he has done for us. The greatest tragedy of our world is that men do not know that God loves them. The Christian faith, in its essence, is a love affair between God and man. Not just a simple love affair: It is a passionate love affair. God so loved man that he created him in his image. God so loved man that he became man himself, died on a cross, was raised from the dead by the Father, ascended into heaven and all this in order to bring man back to himself, to that heaven which he had lost through his own fault. (GWC, 77) How strange that modern Christians seem to miss the greatest point of their faith! The love affair between God and man seems never to have touched the hearts of many religious people. They do not seem to realize that the fulfillment of religion is a return of God’s immense love for us. They do not see that the tremendous glad news is that God loved us first. If only they began to love him back passionately, totally, completely, as Christians should, realizing that every word he has said, every commandment he has given, is a commandment of love. It is quite clear that the task of every Christian is to be the leaven of the world by bringing this glorious, wondrous, joyful truth to the hearts of men. Everyone,
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every baptized person, should go about the world proclaiming this one truth: God loved us first. Let us love him back! Let us learn to obey his commandments and implement his counsels so well that the world and the hearts of men will know, at long last, the peace of the Lord, and will understand and incarnate in their lives the immense truth that perfect love casts out fears, that it sets men’s hearts free and brings joy and gladness into the drabbest existence. To understand that the Christian religion is a love affair between man and God, to begin to love God back passionately as he loved us, this will, if implemented and incarnated in the lives of Christians, also brings peace to our hapless world, and a solution to the seemingly unsolvable problems of our marketplaces. Let us arise and meet the Tremendous Lover before it is to late. (GWC, 77-79) In thousands of different ways this was the Gospel Catherine preached in words. And by her deeds also she sought to bring this same “glorious, wondrous, joyful truth” to the hearts of everyone. For Catherine, then, “preach the Gospel with your life” means to live out the Gospel of God’s love in every aspect of life. Her life is the key to what it meant for her. She spoke tirelessly to hundreds of groups all her life. She wrote books and articles and literally hundreds of thousands of personal letters. She gave food to the hungry and clothed the naked. She listened to people’s problems for thousands of hours, and spent as much time in counselling. She applied reverence, an interior spirit, and love of the Gospel to every aspect of life and culture to farming, libraries, kitchens, gift shops, community life in short, to the whole of human existence. She was constantly asking herself the question, “How does the Gospel apply to this situation” How can I manifest the presence of my Beloved here and now?” Her whole enormous body of teaching is her answer to that question. Catherine, then, is not an “anonymous Christian.” It is not that every time she served a cup of tea she was talking about Christ but neither would she hesitate to do so! In her words and actions, in her whole life, it was clear that she was a follower of Christ. For her, the call was to manifest Christ explicitly. In her mind, a bland humanism with a tinge of the Gospel was not strong enough to counter the waves of darkness in the modern world.
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CHAPTER TWO WITHOUT COMPROMISE IT HAS OFTEN BEEN SAID that Russians abhor compromise and mediocrity. In their literature, ballet, music, saints, one senses his anguished striving for ultimate perfection to the breaking point and beyond. Such an uncompromising striving to preach the Gospel is a constant dimension of Catherine’s teaching and life. In all my reading about the Russians and Communism I have found no better description of the Russian origins of Catherine’s passion than in Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Communism and the Conscience of the West, Chapter VIII, “Passion,” and Chapter IX, “Russia and the Faith.” If you can possibly do so, please read them. They are particularly relevant, because much of Catherine’s spirit was forged in the furnace of her country’s struggle for justice. But, as is well known, the dark forces of Communism took over instead of the light of the Gospel. Just a few excerpts from Bishop Sheen’s book. Speaking of the Western world: There is no more Passion, Zeal, Fire, but rather broadmindedness, which is now considered the greatest of all virtues (160). About the only time we ever hear the word ‘passion’ is in a movie or a modern novel. But passion was once something real in the world. It was born on the fringes of the Roman Empire, on a hill called Calvary, and on a Friday called Good. That passion was Love, Fire, Enthusiasm…It swept off the world the Greek ideal of moderation and the Roman indifference to the truth (159). Speaking of the totalitarian passions of the modern world: A passion can be conquered only by a passion; it takes faith to conquer faith; a dogma to match a dogma; a philosophy of life to combat a philosophy of life. At the present time all that we of the Western world have to offer to this new passion is a change in editorial policy…(165). Modern Christians have truth but no zeal; materialists have zeal but no truth; they have heat but no light; we have the light but no heat; they have the passion but no ideals; we have the ideals but no passion. Neither of us is perfect. They sin against the Light, we sin against Love. Our crime is our unfulfilled Christian duty, our sprinkling the fires of passion with the cold waters of indifference, our mediocrity which blinds us to the fact that the day of broad-mindedness is over and that all humanity is in search of a soul (167). It would be difficult to find a more succinct description of a profound dimension and driving force of Catherine’s soul: Only a greater passion, dogma, vision, enthusiasm can combat, not only Communism, but all the other isms less than the Gospel. Our answer is the Gospel of Christ. If it was truly lived by all Christians, we could change the whole world. Having personally experienced her Russian people passionately striving to remake the whole world by following the Antichrist, she was determined to be just as passionate in restoring everything to Christ.
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There is a remarkable document from 19th century Russia called “the Revolutionary Catechism” written by Nechayev, one of the first social nihilists. It is a powerful expression of this anarchist, revolutionary passion of the modern Russian soul turned in the wrong direction: 1.
The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.
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The revolutionary knows that in the depths of his being, not only in words but in deeds, he has broken all bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world.
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The revolutionary despises all doctrine…he knows only one science: the science of destruction.
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For the revolutionary, everything is moral which contributes to the triumph of the revolution.
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All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude and even honor must be suppressed in him and give place to the cold and single-minded passion for revolution.
GOAL: To weld the people into one single unconquerable and all-destructive force this is our aim, our conspiracy, our task. (In Robert Payne’s The Life of Lenin). Yes, “to weld the people into one single unconquerable force,” this is our goal also, Christ’s goal; but we call it the Mystical Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God, the Church. To hear, on tape, Catherine’s prophetic talk, “The Spirit of the Madonna House Apostolate” (the text of which I included in Journey) is to hear the passion of a Russian Christian revolutionary a revolutionary for Christ. She said there: We are passionately, utterly, completely, in love with God, or should be, as we progress along this road of our Apostolate. We breathe, we live, we eat, we sleep, only for one reason: To serve him whom our hearts love, and to extend his kingdom. Unless our hearts are filled with the charity of Christ, and we burn with the zeal of this charity, we are like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Without love, nothing that we do will matter. No restoration will follow. Our activities will only be extensions of things Communists and pagans do. The difference between us and them is motivation. We do these things because we cannot help doing them, because, like a people on fire, we must serve; otherwise our love for God will simply tear us apart! And so that is our vocation to burn, to die, to become a flame, so as to make room for Christ to grow in us. You have no past, no future. You have no mother, no father. You have no wife, no husband. You have no children, no relatives. You are alone, facing your Lover, God. No one and nothing is between you and God. (SMHA) It’s powerful even to read, isn’t it! (You should have heard her speak it!) It’s the same, total, uncompromising spirit as Nechayev’s only turned to the light instead of to the darkness. “Without compromise,” for Catherine, means passion! It is not an exclusive prerogative of the Russian soul, but they seem to have a generous share of it! Its ultimate Christian source is to be found in an awareness of what Christ has done for us. In this sense it is a quality of all the saints. To really understand the essence of the Gospel is to be passionately in love with God, to return 15
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love for love. “What does it mean to love God ‘infinitely’?” the child Catherine once asked her mother. “It means to love God without measure,” was the reply. That is what Catherine tried to do. Catherine was aware of how she herself failed to reach this ideal. If she was sitting at a table and challenged about not living up to what she was preaching, she would say (and we who knew her saw her say and do this many times): “Do you see this table? This is the whole Gospel I try to preach.” Then drawing a little square with her finger in one of the corners of the table, “Do you see this little square? That is what I do.” But she insisted that the whole Gospel had to be preached. There is a perennial temptation among Christians only to preach what they are doing, or what they are capable of, considering it “insincere” if they preach something they themselves are not living. Catherine did not believe that. The command is to go out and preach the Gospel, not preach “where you’re at” in your own life and struggle with the Gospel; and, no doubt, the more we live it the greater power our words will have. But one of the agonies of being a preacher of the Gospel of being a Christian is that we must preach and witness to a message beyond us, a message not our own, a message we ourselves are conscious of not fully living up to. The Gospel response to God’s love is to love him back with one’s whole heart, mind, soul. This absolute response also must be preached. Yes, it is impossible. But the Gospel reveals the grandeur of what our hearts are capable of. Our hearts have been made for God, and with God’s help we are capable of loving him with great passion and generosity. Catherine believed that people must be called to this great and passionate love. The following quotes, although all from the same book (The Gospel Without Compromise) were actually written over a very long period (since the book is a collection of her editorials over the years). This passion, intensity and uncompromising striving was part of her Russian Christian soul, and present in all she said and did. Yes, we Christians must make our decisions for or against Christ. He said, ‘Who is not with Me is against Me.’ He demands total allegiance, total surrender, total acceptance of his Gospel, total love (75). The answer is that we must begin to live the Gospel without compromise. We must be ready to lay down our lives for our fellow man. Lay our life down also for the incarnation of the Good News if we want Christ to be known to others. There can be no half-hearted following of him. It is all or nothing! Humanity today is a man who must touch the wounds of Christ in order to believe…the only way to show these wounds of Christ to others is to live the Gospel without compromise. Does that mean that we must turn our lives upsidedown? Does it mean a complete change of values? Does it mean the breaking up, the demolition of our comfortable way of life? Quite simply, yes, it does! (74) The Gospel can be summed up by saying that it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinary, explosive, revolutionary law of Christ’s love. He calls each one of us who calls himself a Christian. He calls us directly. There is no compromise in his call. We can find umpteen quotations in the Gospel that will vividly bring forth to our minds and hearts how simply and how
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insistently he calls us to be like him, and to accept his law of love without compromise. His call is revolutionary, there is no denying it (71). His commandments mean risk, great risk…God offers us risk, danger, and a strange insecurity that leads to perfect security…It is a tremendous risk because we must also love our enemies…As this involvement of love among brothers grows and depends, we enter into a revolution. A revolution in which there is violence directed only against oneself (71). I wonder how long we can sit on the fence of compromise. God is not mocked. Christians must openly declare their allegiance to Christ, or their non-allegiance to him. The story of the disciples who had to choose is repeating itself today among us. ‘Who do you say that I am?’ It is time…we stopped fooling around. If ever there was a time when humanity needed followers of Christ and fewer fencesitters, that time is now (75). Why then do we not try the way of love, the way of the Gospel? Why do we not apply the Gospel without compromise to our personal, national, international life? Why do we not live by his law of love? What is stopping us? (76). In our own day (and perhaps in every age) the “revolutionary” dimension of Christ’s love is always in danger of being misdirected. Again, Bishop Sheen says it well: Modern youth wants what Europe wanted at the close of the last war Passion, fire, enthusiasm. It too wants to believe that there is evil in the world, and that a man ought to fight against it. But unfortunately, both the capitalists and the Communists have convinced them that the only evil is the economic order. As a result the Communists believe it is possible to combine a passion for social justice with a complete unconcern for individual righteousness. They have a social conscience to right the wrong of others but no individual conscience to right their own; they organize to combat the alleged wickedness of others, but dispense themselves from all personal obligation to morality, conscience and God. As long as they fight for the underprivileged they feel privileged to do all the wrong. Thus does youth feel a merciless aggression against wrong which fills up the void made by the loss of the Grand Passion of Love, but which only increases the world’s disorder, for now their fires burn their neighbors’ houses and not the dross of their own hearts (164). Catherine’s whole spirituality is concerned, first of all and always foremost, with channelling the “Grand Passion of Love” inward, towards the human heart. She believes, of course, that the Gospel must permeate the whole of society. But it permeates first of all by passing through the transformed heart of each person. When this person has been transformed by Christ, then he or she will have new eyes and a new heart both to see clearly how to go about the task of restoration, and have the strength to do so. Until we ourselves are transformed, we will not be able to see how to make Christ present to the world. We will only be making ourselves present which is the whole problem! But the radiant, interior fire enkindled through this conflagration of the human dross within ourselves will make Christ present in the world only if we love him passionately, without compromise. Only then will his light be able to dispel the terrible darkness. A half-hearted, mediocre love will only bring him to the world in a mediocre way.
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Preach the Gospel Another meaning of the phrase “without compromise” in reference to the Mandate in Catherine’s life was the call to preach the whole Gospel, the authentic Gospel, and not a watered-down version of it. Often when Catherine taught in the dining room a profound silence would follow. She was often upset by this, and wondered why there wasn’t any feed-back or comments or something. My own experience (which I’m sure was that of many) was that what she said just struck one as absolutely true Gospel true. It was all there complete, challenging, demanding, true to what Jesus taught. What was there to say? To sum up, then, the two phrases of this third line: Christ is the Light and transforming Love of the world. Our call is to preach him, that is, to make him present. He is made present preached by faithfully speaking and living the words of the Gospel. God has loved us infinitely by sending us his own Son. As impossible as it may seem, we are called to love God in return with our whole being with an uncompromising passion and intensity. And it is primarily love (the subject of the fifth line) which makes Christ present.
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CHAPTER THREE LISTEN TO THE SPIRIT HE WILL LEAD YOU NICHOLAS BERDYAEV was one of the greatest and most influential of the modern émigré Russian thinkers. He flirted with Marxism for a brief period. But then, the reorientation of his thinking towards Christianity made him very unwelcome in the new Soviet Union. He was exiled, never to return. Already in the 1920’s Catherine was reading his works; she had an opportunity to meet him in Paris on one occasion. I would like to begin this section on the Holy Spirit in Catherine’s thinking with a passage from the very conclusion of Berdyaev’s book, The Fate of Modern Man: The hour has struck, when after terrible struggle, after an unprecedented deChristianization of the world, and its passage through all the results of that process, Christianity will be revealed in its pure form. Then it will be clear what Christianity stands for, and what it stands against. Christianity will again become the only and final refuge of man. And when the purifying process is finished, it will be seen that Christianity stands for man and for humanity, for the value and dignity of personality, for freedom, for social justice, for the brotherhood of men and nations, for enlightenment, for the creation of a totally new life. And it will be clear that only Christianity stands for these things. The judgment upon Christianity is really judgment of the betrayal of Christianity, upon its distortion and defilement; and the justice of this is that of judgment upon the fallen world and its sinful history. But the true and final renaissance will probably begin in the world only after the elementary everyday problems of human existence are solved for all peoples and nations, after bitter human need and the economic slavery of man has been finally conquered. Only then may we expect a new and more powerful revelation of the Holy Spirit in the world. One of Berdyaev’s themes is that, eventually, all the modern “isms” and ideologies will prove bankrupt Communism included. The Russians, because of their uncompromising nature, have presented to the world what absolute atheism and materialism look like. I believe that Catherine, in her life and teaching, has presented to the world what the absolute choice for the Gospel looks like. For both Berdyaev and Catherine, the Holy Spirit is meant to be the inspiration for a whole new order of civilization. Everything must be re-created from the bottom up economics, politics, all of culture. The Mandate which the Lord gave to Catherine was to prepare for a new order of the world under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Jesus. But Catherine was not going to wait for some stage of justice to be fulfilled before the Spirit’s coming. I think it is part of the Gospel vision that the Kingdom grows within the confusion of the world. We do not wait for some prior stage of development. Christians begin to live now the absolute demands of the Kingdom. The Spirit as Love Between The Father And The Son The obvious meaning of this line of the Mandate “Listen to the Spirit” is the Holy Spirit as the Guide along our pilgrim way. He is the One who conducts us along our journey inward to the lonely Christ and into the heart of the poor. He is all this and much more for Catherine, as we shall see shortly. But first and foremost, the Spirit is love itself, that passionate, immense, all-
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embracing Love which we spoke about in the first chapter. If uncompromising love is the answer to the world, it is the Holy Spirit himself who is this Love. For Catherine, the life of the Blessed Trinity is always the deepest reality in her consciousness. We have come from the heart of the Trinity, and we shall return there. All life should become a reflection of the life within the Godhead. O, when she began to speak, on one occasion, about the Holy Spirit, her thoughts first turned to who the Spirit was in the life of the Trinity: Who is he, this Holy Spirit? Pause for a minute. Try to shut out all the noises within and outside of you. Try with his grace to catch a tiny glimpse of the intensity of the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. So awesome, incomprehensible and passionate is the love of the Father and the Son for one another that it becomes visible, as it were, and begets the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Spirit of fire, the Spirit of love. Why does he come to us? He comes every moment of our lives to help us to become saints, lovers of God, for he is the Sanctifier. Just as the Lord prayed that we might be one as he and his Father are one, so he desires that we love God and one another as passionately and intensely as he loves the Father. This Love is a Person, the Holy Spirit, and he has been given to us to become saints, that is, lovers of God and one another, since He is Love itself. Spirit Love Creator It is often Catherine’s poetry which gives most eloquent expression to the inexpressible. Here are sections of a poetic meditation on the ineffable mission of the Holy Spirit. First she speaks about creation itself, both of the world and the human person: Fire, Flame, and mighty Wind together shape and reshape creation, renewing the face of the earth. But, oh, the sight of the might that descends on the soul of man. The wind lifting up, the Fire begetting a flame; and then lighting a fire again in the soul of man. Such is creation Love its foundation. Love is a Fire, Love is a Flame, Love is a Wind, possessing, enticing, calling the soul of man. Sparks of the Fire falling light the universe; they are descending. Grace is a spark, grace is a gift of Flame and of Fire. Shower of love, falling, descending into the soul of man. Mystery profound, adorable, incomprehensible, lovable to the soul of man. Next, miracle of miracles, the Spirit of Love fashions the Incarnate One: Spirit uncreated, descending, incarnating the unencompassable, becoming encompassable, touchable, feelable Word made flesh, walking the earth, sharing Flame and Fire, touching with strange desire the soul of man. Then, Love Incarnate dying for us: Loving, loving, spilling love like a flame on the earth, dying of love on a cross for the soul of man. Then descending into death’s domain, returning unscathed, for what power does death have over Fire, Flame and Wind? Returning, ascending, only to send more Fire, more Flame to light the path of the soul of man. Then the continuing work of the Spirit in the world after Christ’s return to the Father, “to keep intact the memory”:
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To keep intact the memory of the Man Who was God. Spend-thrift of love, Pauper and King, Ragman desirous, desirous of buying raggety souls as long as they are souls of men. For the Wind will embrace, and the Fire and Flame will efface, and the Fire renew the soul of man, lifting, lifting, lifting it up again into the hands of him from Whom Wind, Fire, and Flame descended, God the Father unseen and unknown. Oh, the mystery of Love uncreated! Rise and come! The Wind is nigh. The Crimson Dove will lift you up into the heart of the King, and he will bring you before the face of the Father, so full of grace. Rise, O soul, this is the hour. The Wind is nigh. Come! for this you were created, O soul of man. To know the feel of the mighty Wind. Listen! To nestle in the arms of the Crimson Dove, to be lifted above, above, right into the arms of the Bridegroom. Rise, O soul of man! This is the hour, this is the time to know ecstasy divine! In this one poem Catherine has expressed the heart of who the Holy Spirit is (ad extra, outside the Trinitarian life, as the theologians would say) Love Itself who has fashioned creation, the Incarnation and now is the ever-burning flame Who “lights our path” into the arms of the Beloved, who “keep intact his memory.” All the other aspects of the Spirit’s activity have this as final goal: “Here is the Wind. Let yourself go. Enter the Fire, become a flame. This is the time to fall in love again. The Bridegroom waits. Enter the Wind. Be lifted up into the arms of the King, O soul of man.” As St. Paul says, “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” It is by being open to the Holy Spirit’s action within us that we are able to live be the uncompromising love to which the Gospel calls us. “To burn, to die, to become a flame this is our vocation,” Catherine had often told us. How can we do this? By being open to the Holy Spirit who is the very Love of the Father for the Son. “It is to love, to burn that we have come together. And Who brought us? The Fire of Love, the Holy Spirit. Little flames, coming together, each growing, uniting in various patterns…” (SMHA). Listen To The Spirit The above reflections give the proper setting to Catherine’s specific intuitions about the Spirit in the Mandate. We now proceed to the more specific meanings of this line. We have a remarkable tape by Catherine entitled “How the Little Mandate Came to Be.” In it she reveals how the Lord fashioned within her the particular vision of the Gospel he wished her to follow and teach to others. For that is what a spirituality is a particular vision of the Gospel for a particular time in history. The following passage, from Catherine’s own recollections, will lead us into the heart of this line of the Mandate. In the following passage she was struggling to understand what it meant to preach and live the Gospel without compromise: I prayed, but nothing very much happened. One night I was sitting at home. We had a fireplace. It was late and…I was lying before a fireplace, very much like in Russia but this time very much alive and not at all asleep and not hungry, except for knowledge. In this case, the type of knowledge that I cannot get through books but that I so often talk about and which arouses ire in so many people because I speak so much about it; but I always believed that if you really want to know something about God’s will, God, or a mystery of the faith, you have to be passive, and you have to pray very simply, ask God, and it will come. So I was lying before this fireplace, very quietly, perhaps praying to God, asking him to 21
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explain to me why I started using this phrase ‘preach the Gospel with your life without compromise,’ especially the part, ‘with your life.’ What did it mean? It bothered me. Everything bothered me at that time. Everything seemed supernatural, natural, crazy hallucinations from the devil, from God. I was praying in faith…and at that moment a thought came. Now don’t ask me if it was my thought, my own explanation, my own intellect. I didn’t hear a word. I didn’t do anything. I was just lying there. I asked a question and if you wish to put it spiritually…in the passivity of the Spirit I was waiting for an answer, for the Gospel said, ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ I wasn’t sure that I would receive it that night, but I was sure if I continued asking, sooner or later, I would receive it. Because I asked in the name of Jesus Christ. So, ergo, the Father had at some time or other to answer it, through his Son, or the Mother of the Son, or the Holy Spirit; he had to answer in some way. Then a thought came, clear as crystal: ‘Listen to the Spirit, He will lead you.’ Now, to a Russian, that’s a perfect answer! I asked myself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ But then I stopped thinking, for when such answers come it’s best to fold the wings of one’s intellect and accept it and rejoice and glorify God. (HMCB) In the context, then, of the spirituality of the Mandate, the phrase “Listen to the Spirit” came in response to her request, “What does it mean to preach the Gospel without compromise?” or, “What is the Gospel, how does one live the Gospel?” In the Gospel the Lord said that one of the main missions of the Spirit would be to help us understand what he, the Lord Jesus, had taught us: “He will bring to your minds everything I have told you.” In Catherine’s writings, then, there is a great deal of emphasis on the Holy Spirit as a Source of light, helping her to understand how to live out the Gospel: “Suddenly, through the goodness of the Father, we’re given the Spirit; and He enters into our apostolate with a song, with words, the Words of the Father that came to us through the Son. He [the Spirit] has the capacity to crack those words open and to make what is intolerable pleasurable” (TOLM). In both Latin and Greek the biblical word “obey” means to listen intently, or better, to “hear intently.” And the biblical meaning of “hear” is not like hearing or listening to music. It means doing what you hear: “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” When a real servant hears a command there is no interval between the hearing and the doing: they flow together into one action. “I tell my servant go and he goes,” said the centurion to Jesus. For believers, true knowledge comes from obeying God, doing the word. If we do what God asks, then we will understand. So the answer that Catherine received was this: “Obey do the Spirit’s leadings, and then you will understand the Gospel.” It was mostly by her concrete incarnation of the Gospel, step by step, that God taught her what the Gospel was. By doing the Gospel the Spirit taught her it was. Listen, listen with your hearts, with your souls, listen with an ear attuned, listen with expectation, desire, and love. And you will hear the coming of the wind of the Holy Spirit, mightier than any tornado that ever hit the earth, with the speed that cannot be counted or computed by any machine or mind of man; and yet, gentle as the evening breeze, swift, immense, fast, harmless to nature and to man, nay, on the contrary, leaving in His passage light and warmth, peace and wisdom,
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fortitude and long-suffering, charity, faith, hope and all the gifts and virtues. (SL #102, 1962) It’s at the very heart of our belief in revealed religion throughout the Old Testament (especially in the prophets) culminating in the Prophet, our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Word in the flesh that God can and does speak to us: “Thus says the Lord…” And this Word of the Lord is the light of our life: “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my eyes.” Now, the ability to hear the Word of God, to hear what God is actually saying, is itself a gift from God. We need the Spirit of God to hear and understand the Word of God. You might say that the desired fruit of the deep “states of being” which are in the second line of the Mandate littleness, simplicity, spiritual poverty, and especially childlikeness is to dispose us to hear the Word of God. For it is this Word by which we live we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. To be able to hear this word, in the biblical sense of responding to it, is our very life; especially the Word of Jesus in the Gospel. So, the stripping that we go through, the kenosis, is to dispose us to become teachable, docile, to the voice of the Holy Spirit. This is what one of the traditional titles for the Holy Spirit, Father of the poor, means for Catherine: He is the One who creates emptiness within us so we can be filled with God’s riches: Pentecost 1969 This is the time of emptiness. The time of shedding whatever clings to my heart, my soul, my mind, my hands! This is the time of standing so very still, allowing God to shape me to his will, to shape me finally indeed into the shape in which he wants me to appear before the Father! This is the time of nakedness, being prepared for pilgrim’s garb, and the becoming truly a pilgrim of the Absolute, who stands ready equipped, ready to go into the maples land of faith! This is the time of listening with heart and soul, of total folding of the wings of the intellect, to hear the Spirit speak! For this is the hour of Wind and Fire that will burn the dross in me, the Wind and the Fire that will lift me to him! (JI, I) Father of the Poor, of whom we are the poorest. He comes to make us rich. Do not discouraged when we speak to you of being poor. Rejoice! When we speak about our poverty, we speak theologically. While we creatures of God are poor because we have nothing of our own, at the same time we are rich because we are created in the image and likeness of God; and we are rich above all because God loves us. Thus we are both poor and rich, but we certainly need the Father of the Poor to make us see how rich we are. So he comes. (SL #102, 1962) “Folding the Wings of the Intellect” In the passage I quoted above, where Catherine was praying for light as to the meaning of living the Gospel without compromise, she said she was hungry for knowledge, “the type of knowledge that I cannot get through books but that I so often talk about and arouses ire in so many people.” At the end of that same quotation she explains: “Then I stopped thinking, for when such answers come it’s best to fold the wings of one’s intellect and accept it and rejoice and glorify God.” And in the poem “Pentecost 1969,” quoted above, there is the line, “the total folding of the wings of the intellect to hear the Spirit speak.” Another phrase which, for our purposes here can be used synonymously with “folding the wings of the intellect,” is “putting your head in your heart.”
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Catherine often used these phrases, and they often did cause ire, confusion, and misunderstanding! This is the place to briefly say something about this aspect of her teaching, for it deeply concerns the meaning of “Listen to the Spirit.” These phrases, for Catherine, are her symbolic ways of describing how true knowledge is acquired. And what is true knowledge? Wisdom. During a discussion about the Holy Spirit someone asked me what wisdom is. For a moment I was lost for an answer, but the answer is so simple that I was astonished that anyone should ask. Wisdom is the simplicity of love. He who really loves God, and others as they should be loved, is wise! He is not wise with his own wisdom, but with the wisdom of God who always comes to dwell in a soul which has so died to itself that it offers him space to dwell in. If God dwells in you and acts in you, how can you fail to be wise? To acquire wisdom, all you have to do is die to self. (SL #102, 1962) Passionate, uncompromising love is the healing and light of the world. To know how to love in the simplicity of a child of God is itself a gift of God; it is true wisdom. This light flows from kenosis, from self-emptying, which the Spirit effects in us as a result of the carrying of our cross every day and following Jesus. These phrases often aroused such “ire” in people because they were understood in an antiintellectual sense. Nothing could be farther from Catherine’s intention. In 1962, in a letter to the community, she explained her meaning very clearly. She said she was often criticized for being against Degrees and academics: “She functions on a somewhat emotional level of ‘caritas only.’” When she went into the slums to serve the poor she didn’t have time for much intellectual study. It was only years later, she tells us, that “I understood that I had been put through the highest school of learning, GOD’S SCHOOL OF LOVE. It was then I began to understand that if we give up our intellect to God at his request he will return it to us cleansed of all that is not him. And our secular and spiritual knowledge will be made new and powerful in him.” (SL #113, 1962) People must be able to lay aside intellectual pursuits for humble tasks which demand love, detachment from self, and humility. When filled with this love and detachment and holy indifference, when they truly mean their fiat, then their learning time has come. They will never make the mistake of thinking that intellectual and professional knowledge are pass-keys to human hearts. They will know that only love is important. In understanding this they will become wise with the wisdom of God…all the rest will be added unto them. To me one has to first be before the Lord, and for this one has to go to Nazareth. Then one has to do for the Lord. After that one can go to any school that will make the works of the Lord shine more clearly. (ibid.) Thus, there are two basic aspects to Catherine’s position about the use of the intellect. First, there is a kind of knowledge that is from God, from the Holy Spirit, that cannot be acquired from study. It is wisdom, how to love. Secondly, all knowledge must be subject to God, subject to the light of faith, and used for God’s honor and glory.
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Before she went to school her father prayed this blessing over her: “May the Holy Spirit overshadow you, child, so that your mind may be opened to all useful knowledge … so that you may understand that all knowledge must be used for the glory of God and the service of our fellow man.” One of the catastrophic fissures in Western civilization is the separation of the mind from its dependence on the light of faith. Traditionally, in the West, revelation was seen as the highest form of knowledge, and philosophy, or whatever human reason could discover, was seen as subject to the light of faith. One thing Catherine seeks to restore is this proper order in the use of the mind. She is not against the intellectual life: I don’t know how many times I have to repeat it but I NEVER DENIED THE INTELLECT AND ITS POWER. I also want to go on record that…as long as I live, and I hope my successors will continue this accent…I want to pass on the vision of giving the staff workers of Madonna House the benefit of all possible intellectual culture…whatever is needed to restore the whole man in Christ. Nevertheless, I will also never cease to explain, clarify, pray, that the member of our apostolate the higher they go on the scale of intellectual and spiritual values the better they will understand that they will have to ‘fold the wings of their intellect’ and become like little children, open of heart and soul and mind to the Holy Spirit who alone can lead them (with the help of his blessed spouse, the Blessed Virgin), to a true encounter with Christ and, hence, with the Father! This type of knowledge is beyond man’s intellect! Yes, beyond his natural, human intellect but not beyond his divine, supernatural self. Christ desires this encounter with himself but he demands a child-like, humble heart. (SL #179, 1965) Catherine wants to make it clear that the most important kind of knowledge wisdom, how to love comes from God, and child-like, humble, self-emptying dispositions of the soul are essential to receive this knowledge: I constantly stress the ‘workings of God on the soul and the need of the soul to be open and passive or receptive to those workings of his grace.’ I constantly stress that a true encounter with God…really happens when God acts upon us in the special manner that he alone can act, and gives us a knowledge of himself through the Holy Spirit. This knowledge is beyond our intellect, beyond our capacity to acquire. It is a pure grace, a pure gift of love from him to us. (Ibid.) Perhaps the passage in Poustinia where she asks the rhetorical question “Can the poustinik study?” best sums up her thinking on this subject. “What do they mean by the word ‘study’? Study God? Impossible. His chief study must be to ask the Lord, ‘Please teach me about yourself.’” In keeping with our spiritual insists that there is a kind of knowledge which only God can give us. Her emphatic and constant admonition, “fold the wings of the intellect,” is meant as a strong antidote to our Western hubris which really does believe that all knowledge comes from study and the unaided human intellect. Catherine keeps turning people to learn directly from the Holy Spirit. But this does not mean that everything must be learned in this way. She values study and learning very highly. When can one study then?
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She describes the poustinik (who can be taken here as a person growing in faith) walking through the desert; he keeps coming to small water holes. In each water hole is the water of faith; and faith begins to grow as the poustinik drinks more and more. He understands that this assuaging of his thirst is a gift from God and not from his own understanding. …You suddenly arrive at a beautiful river. You come to the edge of it and know that you can drink from it until you die. Now faith has taken hold of you and nothing, nothing, nothing can separate you from the river. You realize that through your journey you have fallen in love with God, and that it was really his face you saw in each water hole. The water holes were God’s gifts of faith to you, for God alone could quench your thirst. When the poustinik has arrived at this river of faith, then he can study. Then he will never be misled by what he studies. (P 102-103) In many of today’s universities, how often it happens that people with weak faith lose their faith when they begin to seriously study. We have met so many young people at Madonna House to whom this has happened. Their faith was weak when they entered college, so a new and powerful stream of knowledge subverted the true order of knowing. Catherine desires that people drink deeply of the river of faith first; and then, whatever they study will always be subject to the superior light of faith. And also, one must realize that the truly superior knowledge of faith and how to love are always gifts of the Holy Spirit. He is for the true “liberation of the intellect” (SL #179) where the infused knowledge from God orders and gives true illumination to whatever we know and learn. Listening One of Catherine’s words from poustinia (p 157-162) was listening. And because in this sharing she spoke not only about listening to God but also about listening to oneself and to others, this “listening” has a slightly different meaning that the “listen/hear/obey” of the scriptural word which we have been discussing. This second meaning is important because many of our recent mission houses are called “prayer/listening” houses. It means, of course, to obey the Holy Spirit, but it has other connotations. This kind of listening is a most significant aspect of our vocation. Listening To God “It is an interiorised situation in which he comes to you and clears a little bit of your heart. He makes it comfortable there for himself; and there he talks to you as a Friend to a friend. You feel as if you are sitting at his feet like Mary, listening, just listening.” Here the listening takes on the quality of simply “being with.” You are attentive with your whole being to your Friend, the Lord. He is not necessarily telling you to do something; he is enjoying your presence and attracting you to enjoy his. You might say it is a “contemplative listening” and presence of One to the other. And in this atmosphere you come to the Trinity. What does it mean to come to the Trinity? To me it means to come into the light from a very great darkness. It means to come into peace from great turmoil. It means to come into joy from a painful and joyless journey. It means I realized that I had to love myself more than I did because God loved me. I grew in reverence, love, and adoration of the God who created me and dwelt within me. I saw that I was an heir to my Father’s love and to all his goods. I realized in depth that I was
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an icon of Christ. I saw that I was a sister to Christ, and that I indeed always walked in the shadow of the wings of the Holy Spirit. (P 160) There is a listening to God where one simply basks in the tremendous light and love of the Trinity. In that Presence we are permeated with the knowledge of God as Friend and Companion, and of ourselves as sons and daughters of the Father. It is a listening to the reality of God and the self. Listening To Self What Catherine says next must be understood in the light of basking in the presence of the Trinity. It is only in the light of the Trinity that light comes to us; so now in that light we listen to ourselves: Listen to yourself so as to find the path to God within the frail walls of your humanity. I don’t know how I got the grace to listen to myself, but I did. It was as if all the corners of my person were illuminated, and I clearly saw much in me that wanted to talk to me and that I wanted to talk to. As the dialogue took place I discovered that it was really the grace of loving myself! You cannot really love your neighbor unless you love yourself first. The Lord said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ In the strange luminosity of the Trinity I realized that I had to love myself more than I did because God loved me. I realized too that loving one’s self included also loving God who dwells within me. It becomes interwoven, this love affair, like a piece of weaving. The warp and the woof blend in a strange and uncanny way. (P 157-160) This “listening to the self” is altogether different from psychological introspection. It is listening to oneself in the light of the Trinity. To go into the chambers of the self without faith (which is what a great deal of modern psychiatry and psychology does) can be, and often is, very destructive. To enter your soul without faith in God’s presence there, without faith that you are created in God’s image, without belief in Christ’s power to heal, forgive, etc., can be a very terrifying experience. For Catherine, to listen to the self means discovering that you are lovable loved by God himself. Strengthened by that truth we can then love ourselves, which is the prelude to loving others properly. Listening To Others There is a sense in which, for Catherine, “hospitality of the heart” is one of the supreme goals of the journey inward. Having been emptied of self and filled with Christ, one is free now to invite into his/her heart all the lonely and wounded of the world in whom the Lord Jesus is present. If we are truly basking in the presence of the Trinity and have come to love ourselves, then we will be able to “listen people into existence.” Listen well, for if you hear this [the Lord’s] voice you will be wise with the wisdom of the Lord; and then you will be able to hear the voice of men, not as a surging sea, or as a mob. But each man’s speech as his own, a treasure given to you beyond all expectations, because you led yourself to Him and listened to His voice. It is as if God came to prepare you again and again to listen to men. At this moment the Holy Spirit enters with a great strength and vigor. And suddenly the gift of wisdom and discernment becomes like a huge shady tree that grows from your heart, inviting people to sit under it and rest. 27
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With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing, because listening to your brother until he has said the last word in his heart is healing and consoling. Someone has said that it is possible to ‘listen a person’s soul into existence.’ I like that. These gifts demand an annihilation of the self. One cannot intrude oneself while listening to another. Truly, here the wings of the intellect are folded only to be unfolded by the Holy Spirit who alone knows when this immense gift from God, the intellect, must be used to help the one to whom we are listening. Always the essence of the listener is one of deep reverence, infinite respect, and deep gratitude to God for having selected us for that listening. (P 159) Remember that wisdom is love. By listening to God you become a loving person. And then you can allow your love to become a shady tree for others to rest under. This is the first fruits of hospitality: allowing people to rest in your love for them. You may or may not be inspired by the Spirit to “use your intellect” to say something, help them to solve a problem or whatever. The essence of your listening presence is an infinite reverence, love and respect for the other. In our day and age this alone can heal many, since reverence for the individual is one of the missing elements in mass society. “Listening to myself, listening to God, listening to men all blended into one word love.” The Consoler “He comes to console us. Who is there amongst us who does not need his consolation?” (SL #74, 1962) If we have been made for union with God, then loneliness may be the deepest wound. There seems to be a correspondence in the modern world between the increasing loss of faith in God and loneliness. Nietzsche said that, now that we have killed God, solitude is unbearable. Precisely so. If there is really No One there when we are alone, then the vacuum must be filled with something noise, TV, distraction of some kind. (Someone asked me once if I had a radio in my poustinia. I said no, it would be a distraction. He said, “From what?”) To be alone with the self and all its terrors, and with No One there to be a Companion to heal, to love is unbearable indeed. And the deepest suffering for the Lord may be his apartness from those he has destined for union with him. Catherine goes to Christ to comfort him in his loneliness. The word “consolation” comes from two Latin words meaning “with” and “alone.” “Consolation” basically means to be with someone in his or her aloneness; and that is how we console them, by being with them in a loving way. Contrariwise, the word “desolation” means without someone, the ultimate in aloneness. In Jewish theology the Messiah was sometimes referred to as the “consolation of Israel.” Remember in St. Luke’s Gospel, Simeon in the temple is waiting for the “consolation of Israel.” One of the words for Messiah was Consoler. Many of the promises of Jesus are about coming to dwell in us “My Father will love you and we will come to you and make our home in you” in other words, to take away our loneliness. The Gift of all gifts, therefore, is the Consoler, God himself, come to take up his dwelling within us to save us from our radical aloneness. “This is God’s dwelling among men. He shall dwell
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with them, and they shall be his people, and he shall be their God who is always with them. He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, mourning or desolation, crying or pain. The former world has passed away” (Rev. 21). Although this is a vision of the final time, we are called to mediate this consolation of the Consoler to all those who come to us now during our earthly pilgrimage. It is only the love of Love Itself who can give us the awesome strength to be an inn for every wounded pilgrim, a shady tree for every tired wayfarer, a heart hospitable to console all the lonely. The Promised One had come…he whom Jesus Christ called the ‘Advocate.’ But in Russia as in other languages the word is ‘Paraclete,’ ‘Consoler.’ Well, an advocate pleads before a judge, and, it is hoped, consoles the one for whom he pleads. The Father, the Brother, the Consoler. Just think of that! You who are lonely, don’t be lonely. You have a Consoler! (Sob 108) The Wind as Source of Adventure One of the themes of Catherine’s spirituality is that our pilgrimage towards the Trinity is a song of poetry, an exciting and thrilling adventure. Our earthly journey is not simply a gruelling climb up the hill of Calvary. The Spirit transforms our ascent into an adventure of a lover seeking the Beloved with a song in the heart. The Word of Fire that illuminates and warms, the words of the Wind pick us up…and bring us right to the top [of the mountain] lest we hurt our feet or fall down. If we listen, then, all the things that we have discussed up to this moment shall become an adventure, shall be full of life; and strength will be given to us beyond our imagination, provided we are open to the Wind and the Fire. Part of the human condition is to experience the anguish of incompleteness: we are aware that we are limited, and yet we have an infinite longing within us! And we are never satisfied: whatever truth we know, we know there is more to be known. Whatever we love, we know that we can love more, and be loved more. This anguish is holy. This longing is a sign of our transcendence, a manifestation of the Divine within us. It is the Holy Spirit who keeps propelling us along our unending search and journey. Often we don’t want to go! But I see you draw a line so far and no further will you go towards God. And there he is, standing in front of you with his arms open, waiting for you to surrender. But there you stand, before some imaginary line you have made for yourself, and you won’t move any further. Why? Who can tell? Who can judge? What to do then? The answer is the Advocate, the Consoler, the Enlightener, the Gift, the Father of the Poor. He and he alone can move your will. Remember, in the life of the Christian, every day is Pentecost. Every day the Mighty Wind comes, if only we will call upon him. Every day the tongues of Flame descend upon us, if only we realize our need of them and desire them with a great desire. (SL #102, 1962) The Holy Spirit is pushing, pushing, pushing. (SLFF #3, 1970) But now God has decided to really bring him [the pilgrim] up on the mountain of faith. That requires the wind to get him there, the Wind of the Spirit. (St 81) Our pilgrimage is also (and always, for Catherine) a journey into the hearts of others, there to bring them the love of Christ: 29
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Yes, listen. Listen to the Wind. You are not alone. Constantly with you, side by side, is the Dove that makes the wind. It’s the Wind of his gifts. With them we can enter the heart of another. With the gifts of love and tenderness and of the compassion of God, of Jesus Christ, we can seal the hearts of another to ours as ours is sealed to God’s. And so begins a chain of hearts which are sealed to God and to one another. Now there is sobornost, the unity that must exist. (St. 73) The Holy Spirit and Sobornost We will not treat here Catherine’s profound concept of sobornost, unity; but just to mention here that the Holy Spirit is the source of this immense gift: The Holy Spirit was consolidating the teachings of the Lord. Here, on this immense holy day of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, was the opening of their hearts to the parables, his teachings…the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost to begin that new dimension of unity which alone would enable men to follow the narrow path laid out by Jesus Christ, and to understand what ‘sobornost’ gathering really was. (So 14-15) The Spirit And The Splendor Of The Ordinary For Catherine, God is found primarily in the ordinary, humble duties of everyday life. This is why the mystery of Nazareth is so central for her. God himself, while he was on earth, lived a very ordinary life. So the Father is present in the ordinary. In our “Way of Life,” written by Catherine, she sees the Holy Spirit as the One who reveals the splendor of the ordinary: ‘I will send down to you him whom the Father has promised. Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.’ Do you realize what happened? He told them of the power with which they were going to be clothed, and with which we are clothed too in the sacrament of Confirmation. This Power was not only given to the Apostles. It was given to us, you and me, and that too depends our mystery; for we are men and women of glory and power provided that we understand the obvious and the commonplace. (WL) This theme leads us organically into the next line of the Mandate. For the love of Christ and the splendor of his Gospel shines most brilliantly when we can love “without compromise” in the ordinary things of every day.
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CHAPTER FOUR DO LITTLE THINGS EXCEEDINGLY WELL FOR LOVE OF ME EVERY LINE of the Mandate is extremely important; or better, every line of the Mandate has its own importance. In my own opinion the great importance of this present line is that it manifests the universal nature and application of Catherine’s spirituality. It is a Gospel spirituality for all times and for all vocations. Why? Because all the beauty and spiritual richness of the Mandate is brought to bear on the ordinary actions of everyday life. Not only brought to bear on them: our ordinary actions are the normal, most consistent places where we meet Christ, live the Gospel, continue our pilgrimage in short the place where we live out most of our journey to the lonely Christ, and to the hearts of the poor. Catherine’s spirituality is neither lay nor clerical, monastic nor religious, nor any other category. It is a profound Gospel spirituality which can be adapted to every Christian way of life. Herein lies its specifically universal character. It is this line of the Mandate that this universality is particularly manifested. We have just finished, in the previous chapter, our consideration of the work of the Holy Spirit in Catherine’s vision. In another, shorter commentary on the Mandate, she says that one of the Spirit’s principal inspirations concerns the reality of daily living: If we listen [to the Spirit] all things shall become an adventure, shall be full of light; and strength will be given to us beyond our imagination, provided we are open to the Wind and the Fire. We do these things constantly in the reality of daily living…the little things of the Spirit…that one farther step, that one true smile that comes from the very depth of your heart and not only from your lips. How about that one little touch when your arm is just about numb with the tiredness of the day, and you suddenly see, in a crowd, a sad person, and your body only wants to sit down and not move; but that inner power of the Spirit makes you get up, and inwardly you put your hand out to somebody and say, ‘Good night. Sleep well. I will really pray for you because I know you are sad.’ Don’t forget: ‘Do little things well for love of me.’ The Mandate is like a misty horizon that suddenly, under the influence of the sun, or the fire of the Spirit, extends in depth ever deeper and deeper and deeper. Each one of the words calls you. When you are laid in the grave…you will know the dimension of the road you have traveled. It’s much greater than the distance between the earth and moon, in fact, the distance is infinite. (TOLM) It is no exaggeration to say that, for Catherine, the infinite distance which must be traveled to Christ is precisely in the seemingly small acts of saying good night to someone when you are exhausted and hope the person doesn’t start talking(!); of reaching out to someone when you notice he or she needs a word or a bit of encouragement. If one does not realize that these are the immense acts which propel us across infinite space towards God, then that person will have missed the very essence of Catherine’s vision. In a letter to the community in 1960 Catherine begged us to listen, listen, listen: “If only you heard him,” she says. And what does Christ say?
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He says, ‘I do not even ask you to watch one hour with Me in my agony. I simply ask you to get out of bed when the alarm rings. I do not ask you to be smitten on your cheeks, nor spat upon. I just ask beg you to take correction…humbly for love of Me. I do not ask you to be bound to a post and flagellated with leaded whips. I simply ask you to do every task that is given to you with one-hundred percent concentration, complete recollection and thoughtfulness. I do not ask you to hang naked on my Cross, but I ask you to deepen the spirit of poverty in the use of things and the care of creatures. I was stripped naked. Why can’t you strip your soul naked of your self-centered thoughts and begin to look upon the world and all things pots, cups, dust-cloths, food, clothing., all that you have and live by with deep reverence? You can do that only if you strip yourself naked of self-centeredness and begin to connect creatures, time, work, walking, sitting, sleeping, all that you do, with Me.’ Today a sentence was going round and round in my head: ‘Lord, when will they understand and implement the connection between your luminous verities of love and switching off the lights, taking care of clothing, realizing what is hidden in all these acts?’ (SL #53) This “connecting everything with Christ” is, for Catherine, first the lesson we must learn in Nazareth: Lately, I have been thinking much about our vocation, and it seems to me that it is Nazareth, the hidden, little village to which we have to go and live with the Holy Family to become whole again, and to learn about the ‘little things’ we always talk about, always say must be done with great love, perfectly, for the love of God. Yes, there we would learn about little things, and there we would learn to implement what we are talking about. It seems to me that each one of us is going to stay there until we do, right in Nazareth. That is our true novitiate. Then, if we have made this first step, and learned the fundamental essence of our vocation, then, one day, God will say to you, ‘Go to Pakistan, go to Texas, go to the Yukon. There, show my Face to them.’ You see, the essence of our vocation is to connect ordinary and seemingly boring details with Love who is God. (SL #53, 1960) In the monotonous, the hum-drum and ordinary, that is where the Lover and the Beloved meet: ‘Practical woman,’ they say…Little do they know that the cloak of practicality hides the heart of a lover, one who loves God and man, steadfast and true, that behind the curtain of things done well for God’s love is the path of one who just loves and loves God and man! Busy, busy…that too. But somewhere deep, hidden away, lies in this woman a garden enclosed where she and the Lover are always one; God dwells there. Alleluia! (JI, II) I found a passage once in William Johnston’s The Inner Eye of Love, which expressed as well as anything the heart of this line of the Mandate. Mystical experience may at first be delightful and filled with froth and joy; but eventually the call comes to go deeper and (wonder of wonders!) this going deeper in all the great mystical traditions is a passage to the ordinary. No longer the first exciting silence of discovery but an almost boring silence of penetration and familiarity, a ‘becoming at home’…and I wonder if it does not take yet 32
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another enlightenment of the Spirit to recognize this seemingly hum-drum experience as a real God experience, and to be faithful to this time of the fallow ground. Catherine’s mysticism (although she would not call it that) is the long journey, under a profound enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, to the ordinary, there to await the Beloved. For it is precisely the ordinary which is the most purifying and constant experience. If mysticism is meeting Christ, then Catherine’s spirituality is the immense journey to the ordinary, there to meet the Beloved. I now wish to expand on the main themes in this present line. Little Things Life, from the microscopic to the macrocosmic, is made up of little things atoms, cells, infinitesimal particles. If you split one little things like an atom! you blow up the whole city. If one little cell in the body becomes diseased, the whole body can become diseased. When you are in an airplane looking down on a city you see thousands of tiny buildings; we call them homes. This is where individual people live. If every home was healthy, society would be healthy. In the homes are some individual people. If all the people in that home were loving towards one another, the home would be a happy place. If you want to play a musical score you must play each note well. You can’t simply bang on the piano with your elbows! Many examples could be given: Life is made up of countless small things. And daily life is made up of countless small acts rising, eating, working, walking and sitting, etc. One small act after another. (When quite exhausted once Catherine said, “It’s just one thing after another!”) A scientist knows he must deal with the infinitesimal; and the musician knows he must deal with each note. And the seeker after holiness? Part of our pride is that we can’t be bothered with the small things; we must get on to the big things whatever those are! Our spiritual life is “above” little things: we are preparing for great things. In our spiritual value system we label some things important and other things unimportant. Being a superior is important; being under a superior is unimportant. Prayer is important, but manual work is not so important. Writing books(!) is important, but cleaning one’s room is not important. (One day someone asked St. Francis de Sales what she could do for Lent. He said, “Just close doors quietly!”) By “little things” Catherine does not mean small actions (for example, sweeping a floor) as contrasted with something “big” (like giving a talk to thirty thousand people in a stadium). By “little things” Catherine means everything, because in relation to what God has done for her, everything is a little thing. One of her favorite lines was that of St. Francis: “Lord, I throw myself at your feet and sing and sing that I give you such a small thing.” She comments: There before my eyes is a crucifix. To me it is living, breathing, full of wounds, and saying to me, ‘I love you, I love you.’ When I compare my life with that crucifix, then my whole life is nothing. So, to begin with, I consider that the gift of my whole life from the day that he called me to the day that I am speaking to you, is a tiny thing in proportion to what he gave me. Now, is that clear, what I call a ‘little thing’? I think that we misunderstood each other right here. Understand, that, for me, my whole life is as nothing to give I
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wish that I had a thousand lives to give him. Now, if I consider that my life is about as big as a thimble, then what is in it is still smaller, isn’t it? If I consider that my life, which I throw at God’s feet, is such a small thing, then what is inside cannot be bigger than the whole, can it? We may think being persecuted for the faith is a big thing. For Catherine it is small. We may think writing books is a big thing. For Catherine it is small. We may think that being invited to give a lecture and being chauffeured around like a big-shot is a big thing. For Catherine it is small. Anything that we can give to Christ is small because of what he has done for us. So, for me, life is all small things…I ask: What can a little person do who tries to love God tremendously? I answer, everything, from putting the lights off because of holy poverty, to refraining from changing clothes every five minutes because there is a clothing room, to being indifferent to food, to going where God calls you. Big Things I said above that our pride impels us to jump over small things to get to the big things, Catherine, as we have just seen, uses the imagery differently. Everything in relationship to God is small; so in this sense we can only do small things. But then, our small things achieve (you might say) a spiritual smallness or bigness, depending on the quality of our love. In this sense she says that “sin is a big thing. Anything connected with sin is a big thing, because it hurts love.” Sin is a reaching out to achieve a false importance, a false greatness. So sin is a “big thing.” But positively, the true “bigness” which God desires for us is achieved in the quality of our love: “The only big thing about you is your hunger to love to be and do for God. The great key for Catherine is that every little thing, that is, everything, is connected with loving her Beloved. This is the vision of the whole which dominates and gives meaning to her whole spiritual world: Now here again, let us understand one another, for I do not think that we do. First, remember that I have a personal relationship with Christ. To me he is real, is in this room. Besides my faith I have a vivid imagination! For me he is real. So there is a knock at the door. Someone is calling for my nursing services. No matter how tired and exhausted I am, I know that is God knocking! I literally see his hand with a wound. Another example. I have empty hands. At night I consider that I have to bring something to the alter for tomorrow’s paten. What can I bring? I can bring a thousand buttons well-sorted with great love, understanding full well that because of my attention these buttons have redemptive value. I can bring hours of conversation with you. I can bring many letters with attention to details. This faith comes from a tremendous personal understanding that God is real and my tremendous Lover. He has first given his life for me. In the face of that gift I am like one who is bereft of my senses! I go around gathering every flower so that I can bring it to him. It never occurs to me that you can possibly separate anything from love. (SL #104, 1962) By its very Mandate given to me, Madonna House is dedicated to the restoration of the whole world to Christ by doing little things with great love for God and
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man. It is not what you do that matters; it is what you are. If you have understood the romance and the immensity of little things, you will restore the world to Christ. By being a light, adventuresome, joyous, glad, simple, humble, taking on the little things; they become big because they are done for God. (SL #177) Love is the heart of the Gospel; and the word “love” occurs four times right at the heart of the Mandate. Catherine’s teaching about doing everything with great love is not new. But she expands upon our tradition and places purity of heart at the center of her incarnational spirituality. It is not new. The Lord said, “Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful in small matters, I will set you over many. Enter into the joy of your Master.” St. Paul has that magnificent hymn to love where he says (as beautifully as it is possible to say), that whatever is not done with love is nothing. One of my favorite sayings from our tradition is from Pascal, because it brings out the fact that Christ is acting in us, and it is this Presence which gives the proper spiritual outlook on our actions: “To do the small things as though they were great, on account of the majesty of Jesus Christ who does them in us and who lives our life; and the great things as though they were small and easy, on account of his omnipotence.” Jesus acting in us, and we acting out of love for him! What immense dignity our actions have! In our own time, the Little Flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, is one of the greatest pilgrims who traveled through the infinite spaces to the ordinary. What a marvel of grace! She achieved what all the spiritual masters say is the heart of everything: to will only one thing: pure love. “The Vision of The Whole” This is Catherine’s symbol for a whole cluster of spiritual truths which, rightly understood, do indeed form the “very essence of the apostolate,” as she has often said. It is a spiritual awareness, first, that everything we do has a redemptive value; and, secondly, that doing every little thing well is a preparation for our call to help in the healing and the restoration of the human heart. Once Catherine came across a pile of material that the community had been reckless and negligent in caring for. She wrote: A mantle of fear and trembling fell upon my soul. It seemed to me that I was lying prostrate before the Lord and that, with a sad and severe countenance, he was saying to me: ‘Behold, you have failed to teach them two things: the relationship between such thoughtlessness and sanctity, and the relationship between tidiness and penance which restores my world to me.’ How in heaven’s name can an apostle of Madonna House develop the sixth sense, that empathy and sympathy so necessary in dealing with the untidiness of a thousand wounds in human souls, if they cannot take care of coats, shoes, and miscellaneous articles that they leave around so easily? How can they heal the whole person a work to which they have dedicated their lives if they do not realize the connection between untidiness and poverty? Their life is that of restoring order to the world for Christ. When you serve at table…do it quietly and efficiently. If you learn to serve that way, and connect serving to the supernatural order, you will grow greatly in
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wisdom and love, and you will be a light shining in the darkness of the world. The light of your loving service will lead people to God. My parents never let us forget that every task, however ordinary, was or redeeming, supernatural value, if done out of love. But why should I give you my poor, sinful self as an example when you are surrounded by marvellous books about the glorious saints of God? Many were canonized by the Church because they had the ‘vision of the whole,’ that is, they perfectly and constantly acted out of love. You see, this is the essence of our vocation…to connect an ordinary and seemingly boring life (with its repetitious details) with Love Who is God. Then a day at the typewriter, when your back is aching and your mind reeling with tiredness, is a day that has redeemed many souls; how many, God alone knows. We must have that awareness and make that connection. Tell me, how are you going to restore the world to Christ the tremendous world of souls if you have to be told daily (if not hourly) that the boxes in the left-hand corner of the hallway should be taken every morning to a certain place? How are you going to restore the world to Christ if your workshops or the clothing room, or the dishes or the kitchen, reflect the disorder of your souls? How can you be aware of the world of souls if you are not aware of the fact that, when it snows, it would be a good idea to shovel a path and clear the steps? How are you going to restore the world to Christ if you are doing the minimum required the letter of the law and never plunge into its spirit? In a word, Christ is waiting for you to become aware of him and of the apostolate that he has confided to you by becoming aware of the connection between brooms, dishwasher, letter-typing, tidiness and the restoration of the world. (SL #53, 1960) Our vocation is to do little things well for the love of God. This means monotonous things eternally repeated. But if we have the ‘vision of the whole’ we will connect doing these little things, these monotonous things, with spiritual truths. The vision of the whole is that every task, routine or not, is of redeeming value, supernatural value, because we are united with Christ. But we must stay aware of this truth. (PTW, 18) The Romance of The Ordinary At the beginning of our pilgrimages we are not spiritually mature enough to see our Beloved in the ordinary. We dream of great things, that is to say, we have illusions: You dream of great deeds. Everyone, for example, reads about Charles de Foucauld. Many have a starry-eyed look. They wonder if they shouldn’t become a Little Sister or Brother of Charles de Foucauld. But when I listen to their conversations I want to cry. Not one of them stops to think of what a heroic life he really led. He lived in a little hut in the blistering desert, with its cold and sering nights, amongst strange, primitive human beings. All this means hanging on a cross for years instead of hours; but nobody seems to be aware of this. Most just see the romance of his life, not the reality. (SL #53, 1960)
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What Catherine seeks to teach people challenge people to seek is to find the thrill of being with the Beloved in the ordinariness of every day: I will speak of cups, because you seem to have an aversion to washing dishes. If you have the attitude that this is a beautiful little thing that you can give to God, then washing a cup becomes an adventure. It is this sense of adventure, glory and joy that you lack. I have lots of fun. I might be terribly tired, and the job might be monotonous, but I will make it interesting for myself. For example, many of you saw the terrible monotony of the library work down in the basement before Christmas. You saw that I was sometimes tense, and sometimes, perhaps, a bit sharp, for which I was sorry. Nevertheless, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Gee, this is wonderful! Generations of our members are going to benefit from this.’ Again, a little thing to give to God. Now, do you get the picture, or are you still missing the point of what I mean by ‘little things’? The whole of life is a ‘little thing’ which we throw at God’s feet and sing and sing. Every little thing should be done perfectly, completely connected with God, for otherwise it ceases to be interesting. It has no sense and no being. There is great freedom in this. You don’t have to ‘smile’ doing the little things. The very fact that, in your hearts you enjoy doing them, will radiate in your eyes, will show forth in your concentration. (SL #76, 1962) An interesting thought by Catherine: if we do not act out of love our actions have “no sense and no being.” It is love for the Beloved that gives being to our actions. “It all hinges on God as Person, on the sense of adventure, the sense of call…” (Ibid.) Little Things as Gifts and Music for the Christ Child This is one of the best examples I have found which reveals how Catherine is able, by faith and love, to see the magnificence of the ordinary, see it for what it truly is a gift and a song for the Beloved. The strange path of monotonous little duties of everyday that could become, if we made them so, gifts more precious even than the three Kings brought him: dish washing, filing, running around from one meeting to another, answering bells, dealing with people all day long. Yet, all these things could become a cascade of gems precious beyond men’s reckoning, of gold too heavy for man’s hands to carry, of grains of incense that would cover the earth if only our hearts touched his heart, and opened themselves wide to being loved by him and loving him back. You see, I think of you as minstrels, learning to sing lullabies to the Christ Child. The notes of your songs are your daily work, and the attitudes that you bring to it. And I pray that no sour notes ever come to your songs to the Christ Child. I see you as cherished by his Mother who waits for you to come and share not only her Christmas joy in the stable of Bethlehem but her whole life, so hidden and immense. For it is she who had called us to pattern our lives on that of herself, her Son, and Joseph in Nazareth as a humble life, a hidden life, life composed of daily, ordinary little things, but oh! how well done! And with what great love!
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I see you as musical instruments perfectly attuned to the will of God. Instruments that make a concert, make beautiful music in this strange, silent world of ours. I think of you as beautiful notes in the beautiful melody of the Holy Spirit. (SL #52, 1959) In a letter in 1946 to her then spiritual director, Fr. Paul Furfey, Catherine gives another marvellous example of how she puts the delicacy of love and beauty into doing little things well: “The older I get the more clearly I see the importance of little things. Often when I look at my Lady Charity these days I see that her garments are composed of so many tiny pieces that only love could have woven into the shimmering dress she wears.” (FL, 1946) Each one of us, depending on our own relationship with the Lord, depending on our sense of lovemaking, will be inspired by the Spirit how to make each one of our actions a concrete act of love. In The Way of Divine Love there is an event in the life of Josefa Menendez which perfectly fits in here. She was going about doing her tasks when Our Lord appeared to her and asked her what she was doing. She said she was closing the windows. He said: “Wrong answer, Josefa. You are coming from love and going to love.” That particular corridor is known to this day as the corridor of love. And so it should be with all our actions. I would say that this passage to the ordinary, this immense pilgrimage to the Beloved present in every action, is at the very heart of Catherine’s asceticism. She believes, of course, in fasting and prayer and all the other practices of the spiritual life. But what are they all for? They are “all for” awareness of the Beloved at every moment and in every circumstance. (Because of the extreme importance of this line I have included, in the Appendix, Catherine’s best statement on this aspect of the Mandate.) The Painful Refinery of Love Anyone who has ever tried, in the slightest, to purify his or her ordinary actions, and act only out of love for Jesus, knows how demanding such a road is. Well do I know, dearly beloved, the intense discipline, mortification and penance that such minute and boring tasks entail: sorting buttons, separating safety pins from straight pins, sorting in the clothing room, and working in the library over small and painstaking details. Yes, for thirty years I have learned the immense and ineffable lessons of love in the school of infinitely small details. (SL #53, 1960) Catherine says that if we don’t learn how to love here in the nitty-gritty of every day, “we may not go to hell, but we will go into the painful refinery of love to the terrible school of love purgatory. We must learn love either here or there. Not to learn it at all is hell” (SL #53, 1960). Although Catherine calls purgatory the “refinery of love,” I think the phrase is well suited also to the furnace, the forge, or trying to love completely in our ordinary actions. We have our choice of one of two purgatories: either this “terrible school of love,” this “refinery of love,” here and now, or the one hereafter. There is also the cross. I should speak about that also. I cannot visualize a love story with God without a cross. To me the cross is the thing! I desire it, and I ask for the grace never to fear it, because one day I shall know its joy. God embraced the cross because he wanted to. For this he was born! For this we are born to
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lie on it with him. I literally mean the words that I say, but I don’t think you understand me. That’s why you have a problem with ‘little things.’ When somebody says to me, ‘Catherine, I don’t think that I can take a lifetime of these little things. It’s excruciating,’ I want to weep. It’s a failure to understand our faith. The same person, whoever he or she is, will have a lifetime of other little things [wherever he or she goes] that will be just as excruciating. However, never think of your vocation as a lot of monotonous ‘little things.’ Think of it as the glory of the cross. Measure the ‘little things’ against his bigness what he has done for us. Try every minute to put a little grain of sand before the altar. Before you die you might have a mountain to offer. It’s so simple! (SL #104, 1962) The “Duty of the Moment” The “duty of the moment” is Catherine’s symbolic phrase for each moment seen from the perspective of the Father’s will: We can only, completely and entirely, offer each moment to the Beloved if we are doing what the Beloved wants us to do. Surrender means doing the will of the Beloved. Using that inner hearing, that inner ingenuity of love, that intuition of love to almost anticipate the will of the Beloved. Because the will of the Beloved is…the perfection of our vocation to love in Madonna House. It is expressed in a passionate desire that flames inside like an unquenchable…to live perfectly the duty of every moment of our state in life. You may say at this point, ‘Here she goes again, talking about little things.’ Yes, you are right! But by now you should know that the little things I talk about are immense. And they are immense because they deal with God and the things of God; they deal with the love of God and our love for him. What could be greater, bigger, more immense than that! Let’s face it! In the natural order we might have moments of excitement in Madonna House or in one of our foundations; but by and large there is a sameness to our life. The repetitiousness of our daily tasks would not hold our attention, nor our interest, especially since there is no tangible remuneration of any kind attached to them in the natural order. How then can we utterly surrender? We must strip ourselves. How? We must become contemplatives. The word ‘contemplative’ simply means thinking about something of importance to us, someone we cherish, someone dear. Whatever it is, it means being absorbed in this particular person or this particular situation. (SL #116, 1962) Here Catherine identifies the awareness she has been speaking about, with prayer. (We will be discussing prayer in the last few lines of the Mandate.) Suffice to point out here that the doing of little things well, meeting the Beloved in the duty of the moment, means a deepening of one’s prayer. “Poustinia of the heart” is her prayer symbol for doing the duty of the moment in contemplative awareness of the Beloved. The Duty of the Moment as Our Strategic Place “Strategy” is a word often used in connection with warfare. We are in a spiritual combat. Catherine uses the word sometimes when, for seemingly good motives, we are tempted to
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disregard God’s present will and get involved in things he is not asking. “Satan tempts people by good when he cannot tempt them to evil.” …The duty of the moment is our strategic place. Perhaps no strategy will avail us, but still, there remains this one thing that God has given into our hands today. God has given us today, and today we must do the duty of the moment… just one day at a time. It is this day that we have to love God as God loved us. This is the day when we have to open our hearts like doors and take everyone in that we can. (MHWWI, 30) To clarify this. There were several occasions when tragedies happened, in this case, the Cuban missile crisis. People got nervous and upset. What are we to do in the face of such news? The duty of the moment. Those of us who are removed from the seat of the conflict [the missile crisis] at a given moment must then go about their business, which is the business of God, as they have done in the days of peace. For the greatest contribution that we can make at that moment is to go about the duty of the moment, which is the duty of God, and offer it up for the same intentions as our prayers. (SL #!30, 1963) Another occasion was the assassination of Robert Kennedy: I was in a sort of state of shock. I wanted to ask Fr. Cal’s permission to sleep it off, to try to forget the horror of it all but it wasn’t the will of my Father. The will of my Father was that I offer the day…according to the duty of the moment. And the duty of the moment that day was to begin sorting…It is of such things that I want you to think in depth. We must fully understand that the simple, little things, the duty of the moment in your house and in Madonna House, is the answer for that atonement [that is, for the shooting of Kennedy]. (SL #250, 1968) Or, to take another example. One of the younger women in one of our houses was concerned about all the poor women she saw in town and thought she should do something for them. (The house was already involved in helping them in different ways, but this person was troubled that Madonna House was not doing enough.) I tried with my life and with my words to preach one thing and preach it loudly, clearly; but I guess it wasn’t very clear, and I wasn’t loud enough…However, I will repeat it once more: Madonna House is the place of little things done well for the love of God, etc., etc., etc. In order to create the Community of Love the Christian community of love that is our aim we must always do the will of our Father like Christ did! It is through total concentration on the daily duty of the moment, on the will of the Father, which puts us in truth, and therefore in Christ. That is how we can help those women. This is the mystery of love. (Ibid.) When our desires to help people are bigger then our capacities, we can best help them by doing the duty of the moment, the will of the Father. Offering this in union with Christ to whom we are joined by doing the Father’s will is the very best thing we can do for them. Again, as the life of the Little Flower shows, it is the quality of love which radiates out into the spiritual world. Doing little things well is the immense journey into purity of heart in the ordinary.
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CHAPTER FIVE LOVE LOVE LOVE I CHOSE this line of the Mandate as the title for the present book because, as we have already seen, love is the central message of the Gospel and daily life. The Gospel is about the Father’s tremendous love for us revealed in Jesus Christ; about the Spirit, who is the very Love between the Father and the Son, and who opens the Gospel words to our understanding, and by his love impels us along the road of our pilgrimage. Then, in the fourth line, we saw that the heart of Catherine’s asceticism is loving in each and every moment of life. This present line Love, Love, Love is Catherine’s way of emphasizing, beyond any misunderstanding, that love is the very heart of the Gospel. Catherine has said that the first line of the Mandate is the major theme; the other lines are commentaries on the first line. Thus, there are seven lines of commentary and this line about love is at the very center of those lines. In this present line love is not so much defined as emphasized. The whole rest of the Mandate is a description of the various forms which love takes. Pilgrimaging, poverty, identification with the poor, littleness, simplicity, listening to the Spirit, doing little things well what are these except ways of loving? Since love is the name we give to that ultimate movement towards union; the name we give to that union itself being “in love”; the name we give even to God himself, “for God is love,” we can say that every kind of striving towards God is love. We give the virtues different names to emphasize different aspects of our loving. The infinite Ocean of Life from which we have all come is Love Itself. Our faith is that, to each one of us at a given moment, Love said: “Come forth.” Love is the origin of our being. I don’t know anything about genetic engineering, or about computer programming. But maybe we could put it this way: We have all been pro-stamped with love; and the deepest movement of every cell within us tends towards love. The very last line of Dante’s magnificent poem, the Divine Comedy, speaks about the “love which moves the planets and the stars.” When the Lord Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment of the law, he stated the basic code of all being. As we know, he put it in a commandment form “Love the Lord your God…” But could we not also say his reply means this: “All conscious being tends towards God with all its heart, with all its mind, with all its soul, with all it strength. All conscious being tends towards love of other conscious beings as towards oneself.” As well as a command, was he not also stating the inner law of our being, written into the very fiber of every cell? “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love.” It is all about loving. The Vatican Council II Decree on the Religious Life concerning those who live according to the three evangelical counsels, defines their way of life (in the very first words) as those engaged in the “pursuit of perfect love.” Catherine would have approved that definition very much for the goal of her own spiritual children. The word “love” occurs three times in this line. My own opinion is that this is for emphasis love is the most important reality.
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In years of meditation on the Mandate, members of our community have applied the three loves to the Persons of the Trinity, to our three promises of poverty, chastity and obedience, and to love of God, neighbor, and self. The Holy Spirit delights to speak intimately to each of us at given times; but in Catherine’s writings I do not find any specific application of the three loves. What we do find is her emphasizing that love is everything. The Apostolate Is Love The following is from our “Way of Life,” the principal document Catherine has left us concerning the nature of our apostolate: Love is the very essence of being brought together by the Lord. In my estimation the primary work of the Apostolate is that we love one another. For this reason we are pilgrims in the world. For this reason we travel in poverty. For this reason we find security only in Christ. It’s for this reason we journey in chastity to serve and love Christ in others. It’s for this reason we live in obedience, to serve only the will of God. That is the greatest work of the Apostolate. We must love God and love ourselves according to the will of God; and we must love one another. Then we shall be icons of Christ. People will want from us just the sight of our loving God, ourselves and one another. It is not our Constitution that attracts people; it is our love, our trying to love God as he wants us to love him. And let’s make sure that we understand what we’re talking about. ‘Why do you want to put in the Constitution what’s so obvious?’ you may ask. ‘Everybody knows that we have to love God.’ Yes, everybody knows; but show me that everybody does. Our primary work is love. (WL) There is only one way that I shall restore the world. The key is this intangible reality which is as strong as death, as strong as everlasting life and it is called love. Nothing can destroy it, unless we destroy it ourselves. It is the only motive, the only reason, for being here. Everything else is senseless unless you are here for loving utterly, passionately, completely… If people ask you ‘What is the Apostolate of Madonna House?’ the answer is simple: It is an apostolate to love. And where love is, God is. And we desire to be God in the midst of the world. We are dedicated to the restoration of the world man and his institutions to God. The only way we can restore them is by loving, by having God within ourselves, a living flame. The rest will follow. That’s all there is to it. (SL #140, 1956) In the early stages of our journey towards God we give the movements of the heart various names virtues, we call them. As we journey, everything blends into one movement love. The following is from a letter Catherine wrote to her then spiritual director, Fr. Paul Furfey: I asked St. Mary Magdalene to show me how to follow in her footsteps…so that of me also the only memory would be that I loved much and well…The older I get, the more my heart hungers just for Caritas. All other things seem to have fallen somewhere by the side of the road, that long, long road of life that has been mine. But Charity is still my one love, my great goal. For her sake I must go on, I cannot stop. For my heart is in love now more than ever with Love, and, of course, that means God. (FL, 1946)
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Love is a strange fire, it burns, now vividly, now flamboyantly, now banking fire and light. Love walks all roads, and it stands at all crossroads. The walking and the standing are part of loving. For everywhere men seek it at all times. Love does not die. It is again on fire and ready to light their path. They do not know its heat and warmth is this endless holocaust. (JI, II) In recent magazine interview with the three people principally responsible for our community at this time, the question was asked: “’What is the fundamental Charism of the community?’ Albert Osterberger: Love. Father Robert Pelton: Love. Jean Fox: Love.” (CCR, 301) Catherine would have been most pleased with the answer! “And above all let us enter the school of Bethlehem and Nazareth, to grow in the one thing that matters LOVE. For, after all, life is but a dialogue of LOVE…between God and us…and encounter of LOVE.” (SL #34, 1958) On this lovely day [Holy Thursday] let us try to understand the immense joy of our humble, hidden vocation…let us begin to realize that it is indeed a vocation to love, first love one another, and then all men. He addresses the words of the Last Supper to us asking us to love one another in the loveless marketplace so that men in the heat of the day and the cold of the night…could see his love for us and ours for him and one another and warm themselves at it…That is our humble, simple, glorious, joyous vocation. (SL #73, 1961) “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 Jn 4:10). I mentioned above that to “preach the Gospel without compromise” also means for Catherine to preach the Gospel and not your own idea. What strikes one in all her teaching is this Gospel authenticity. I think nowhere is this more evident than in her comprehensive teaching about love. It is the cliché of all clichés today to say that the word “love” has been abused. Catherine did not abuse it! She saw, with the eyes of Christ, what love was. It is not possible to completely separate themes in Catherine’s writings. One aspect of her religious genius was to see, live, and teach the interpenetration of all themes. We probably all experience them that way, as a complex whole; but the Western mind (in particular) thinks it necessary to speak about this complexity in some kind of ordered way! Catherine’s mind was different. So, some of the things I will quote now have already been slightly touched upon in the previous sections (especially the section on the Gospel). What I wish to do now is give a sort of comprehensive picture of the dominant ways Catherine spoke about love. God Is Love Love originates in God. Love is not first and foremost what we have done or are doing. Love first of all is what God has done for us: “This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes away our sins.” God’s overwhelming love for us dominated Catherine’s whole life and spiritual journey: Yet, I cannot stop, for I must proclaim the Good News, that God loves us first…that he emptied himself for us out of love…to save us and redeem us…to bring us to a life of union with him here and hereafter. Nor can I ever stop repeating that we must love him back…that we must empty ourselves…that we must allow him to fill us so that we might show him to others, so that they too may
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love him and be united with him. THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF OUR APOSTOLATE. THIS IS OUR GOAL. THIS IS THE SPIRIT OF MADONNA HOUSE! (SL #74, 1961) For the believer, for the Christian, life is a relationship to God, a response to God. Nothing no concept, no creature, not the self nothing can be understood properly without its reference to God. It is the same with love. Until we know that God exists, that he is Love, that he loves us, that he has sent his Son into the world to be our Savior until we know, in some kind of living way these truths, we do not really know what love is. You may be able to write beautiful poetry about love, describe sublime inner experiences of love. But until one knows with a living knowledge that God is Love and has sent Love into the world to die for us all, one does not know the deepest reality or nature of love. I think one of the modern heresies (practical if not theoretical) is a belief, an attitude, that one cannot have a direct relationship with God himself. All relations now must pass through other people. One truth (among others) which the Holy Spirit is helping to restore through movements such as the charismatic renewal concerns this transcendent nature of our relationship with God. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, this transcendent relationship with God is very much emphasized. For all Catherine’s emphasis on loving Christ in the other, she never succumbed to the reduction of one’s relationship to God with the relationship with the other. God is God. Christ is Christ. The neighbor is the neighbor. Christ is in the neighbor, but he is not absorbed by the neighbor. In her poetry, in her prayer life, Catherine has a powerful, direct, personal love relationship with God himself. It is her experience of this direct, transcendent love which is the dynamism behind her life. I love you, Christ of mystery and flame. I love you utterly. Utterly surrendered, I rest at peace in mystery and fire, knowing only that this is my place. I love you, Christ, desired one of nations, whose prefigurations began with the dawn of time. I love you, Christ of mystery and flame. Bridegroom of souls, in your arms I rest, a soul in love. O great Love, how can such a small thing as I find a nestling place within your embrace? I love you, Christ of mystery and flame. I love you with a passion that spills in torrents from my soul and changes into a white flame of pain when I behold you crucified, bleeding for the sins of all. I love you, Christ of mystery and flame, my Lord and God, with my whole being. I have forgotten all the past. The future? What is that? I love but for this moment, this instant, when, reposing on your heart, I hear your heartbeats telling me you love me too, while I can go and do the ‘duty of the instant, of the moment,’ for you. (L 16-17) When Jesus was asked about the great commandment, most of what he said was about loving God. Every other love must be ordered by, seen in the light of, dominated by, our love for God. Without this proper, transcendent ordering we will not love our neighbor aright, will not have the power to love in the truth. Domus Dominae the House of Our Lady is a house of love…All those who dwell in it are lovers of Christ, her divine Son. All have but one goal, one thought, one flaming desire TO LOVE GOD MADLY. For everyone realizes that there is so little time on earth to do so. (SL #11, 1957)
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Love One Another Loving the people with whom we live is the hardest task of all. (A friend of mine recently visited a Carmelite convent and spoke with a Sister in her 90’s, one of the original members of the community. She said: “Do you know what is the hardest thing of all? The Sisters!”) It is commonly said that it is hard to live with a saint. Actually, from our experience, we know it is hard to live with anybody! With unerring and relentless Gospel wisdom Catherine has always insisted that, after our love for God, love for one another is the first work of the Apostolate and the Gospel. Our Lord sent his apostles out two by two so that they could learn to love one another first. For it would be utterly useless for them to try to ‘love the world’ and ‘bring it the glad tidings of love, of the Gospel,’ if they did not first apply that Gospel of love to themselves and loved one another as God wants us to love one another totally, without holds barred. (SL #63, 1960) I remind you once more, Dearly Beloved Children of my Spirit, that each foundation is only a strong as the love and trust and openness and obedience and joy that reigns among you, and that is given to your director. If that openness, that trust, that love are not here no matter how great the activity that house will not grow inwardly in wisdom and in grace before God. For we do not evaluate the ‘success’ of a foundation by its physical growth; that should be the fruit of inward growth. Unless this latter is present, the first will be very shallow. The foundation is growth in love… We must feed, give drink, clothe, visit each other in a given house with a great, immense, flaming love. If we don’t, then the house is empty, like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. But even emptier than the house are our hearts, souls, and minds. We are a living lie, apostles who do not love one another…who profess before the world that they are lovers of Christ, whereas in truth they walk alone in the dark night of their own making, without the light of caritas, which, we must always remember, is a Person God himself. (SL #92, 1962) Today [Holy Thursday] is Love’s day. Today God has shown us how much he loves us! Shown it by dying on the Cross. Showing us how we must love him and one another! Try to remember how many times Christ repeated the word love. How many times he asked us to love one another as he and the Father love one another? How many times did he repeat it, so gently yet so strongly: A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. There is only one yardstick of sanctity in our apostolate how much do we love God, and how much do we first love one another, and then others? For we cannot love the poor and not love one another. (SL #18, 1957) …And Love Your Neighbor After reminding us that the people we live with are our first neighbors, Catherine emphasizes, as does the Lord in the Gospel, that everyone we pass on the road of life is our neighbor. The following passage combines many themes, and will serve as a good brief summary of her teaching here: Man is on a pilgrimage, seeking others like himself with the same needs. Actually, the need of man today is the need to be loved. We pass by, without even noticing 45
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one another. Without stopping. Without the slightest sign of recognition. That is why man comes daily closer to despair, and why he frantically continues to search for the one who will love him. The search is for God. But God isn’t easily found if he isn’t reflected in the eyes of men. It is time that Christians began to take notice of everyone they meet. For each person is his sister and brother in Christ. Each person must be ‘recognized.’ Each person must be given a token of love and friendship, be it just a smile, a nod of the head, or the total availability that Christians must offer to their brothers and sisters if they are to fulfill the hunger of men for God. Christians must be ‘icons of Christ.’ But love must be given with deep reverence, irrespective of the status of the person encountered. Reverence, understanding, the hospitality of one’s heart these are the immediate, intense needs of men today. (R, Sept., 1971) Man is capable of a universal love. The men and women called to this universal love open their hearts to the other, completely. Who is the other for them? Their neighbor. Who is their neighbor? The world, composed of all the individuals who need them. This universal love begins with falling in love with Christ, and then, for his sake, loving all people in the person of one’s neighbor. The neighbor is whoever comes to the door. (SL #154, 1964) I said in the first chapter that to preach the Gospel means to make Christ present. In our relationships with our neighbor, Christ is made present through love. Through the journey inward, through the discipline of Nazareth and all the other purifications of our life with God, we are emptied of the false self and filled with Christ. We become “icons of Christ.” By loving others, the love of Christ is made present to them. How can I love if there is one millionth of an ounce of self in me? For love, you know, is a Person. Love is God. Where love is, God is. And so our vocation is to make room for God in our self. If I may say so clothe God with our flesh. To give him hands and lips and eyes again, and a voice. But to do that we must die to self. For God is immense. He needs much room! Our whole being! And so, there is our vocation. To burn, to die, so as to become a flame, so as to make room for Christ to grow in us. (SL #140, 1956) This section on what is so fundamental and so all pervasive in Catherine’s spirituality love of neighbor will be brief. Because, actually, the whole Mandate is an intricate, wonderful doctrine on how the love of God and love of neighbor continually feed, influence and interpenetrate one another. There is hardly any moment in her thinking about God when the neighbor is far away. I will give just two of many possible examples. And I give them, not so much for the content as to show that, for Catherine, love of God and love of neighbor are intimately intertwined. Love of neighbor is not one of the virtues for Catherine: it is an essential ingredient of love for God. Thus, when she is alone: Charity does not depend on my seeing you. I love you across time and space. We think that charity is physical contact. It is that. But charity doesn’t need contact. In the night, when I can’t sleep, I smell the dust of India and the taste of cold rice is on my tongue. I hear the modern weapons whistle over Vietnam as I heard them 46
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in the last War. I am that woman who is hiding under a tree with a child, and I see my house blown up. I am in South Africa suffering from apartheid. When I love there is no space, no place where I cannot go, where I am not the other. (Private Talk, August, 1965) Even her loneliness is a grace reminding her of the loneliness of Christ of others, and impelling her towards assuaging the thirst of others for God: The land of loneliness is the land of joy. The land of loneliness is the land of union with God. The land of loneliness is the land of hunger for God. The land of loneliness is the land of belonging to God and understanding that God alone matters. The land of loneliness is a fantastic place that words cannot describe. Really but at the same time it is the land of belonging to God. I think the secret of that land is that the hunger for God grows like a fire is a fire. At the same time the love for humanity intensifies, and there is only one thought in the land of loneliness to lead men to God. And I think that’s why it’s called the ‘land of loneliness.’ In the land of loneliness there is only one thought, one goal, one dream that matters, and that is leading people to God. It’s a passion. It’s the only desire; but people do not go to God. And that’s why it’s the land of loneliness. I think this is the loneliness that Christ experienced before his death, and probably during his whole life; certainly in Gethsemane. To know a little bit about God is to passionately desire to give him to all of humanity. It is to try to give him to the best of one’s ability, but then discover that men do not want to accept him totally. They only want to give God a small token of themselves. And so one walks in the land of loneliness. To desire to lead men to God that is the land of loneliness. (Unpublished Talk, 1971) There are so many reasons why Catherine’s spirituality is the Spirit’s inspiration precisely for our times. One of them is the contemporary experience of loneliness. It may well be true (for the westernized cultures at least) that never before has loneliness been such a burning, devastating experience. Lack of faith, mass society, impersonalism, the breakup of families, constant moving, shunting the elderly, the sick, the marginal into institutions and ghettoes, secular psychoanalysis (going into the self without faith, without God) and many other factors all contribute to an isolation, a loneliness of the human person on a massive scale, and to a depth perhaps new in the history of our Western civilization. Loneliness is now one of the diseases of the modern world. Catherine’s own experience of loneliness and it was intense becomes a grace. It identifies her with the loneliness of Christ who weeps because men do not come to God in their need. But this experience of the loneliness of Christ impels Catherine to even greater efforts to reach others in their isolation. She is constantly and simultaneously desiring both God and the salvation of others. The common theme of the above quotations is expressed in Catherine’s phrase “the hospitality of the heart” and this symbolic phrase comes very close to the center of her teaching.
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In the third volume of this series I hope to show how, for Catherine, in this life, the lonely Christ in the other is the ever-recurring center to which her love returns. The journey inward is finally revealed as the journey into the “marketplace,” which, as she will say, is the human heart. The second last line of the Mandate says, “Go…into the depths of men’s hearts…” This is where the love of Christ needs to be experienced and “preached” most of all in the depths of human hearts. The Mandate has everything to do with how to make this enormous, perilous, and almost infinite journey into the land of loneliness of the human heart: Love, the mother of all virtues. Love the fire that alone can push back the darkness of the powers and principalities. Who shall venture into the kingdom of death and hate…real death…death to the soul? Only the one who would die to self because he loves; and hence, obedient to the will of God he becomes a light, a torch, a bonfire, unafraid to walk alone in the darkness and conquer hate! There is only one thing that conquers hate and that’s love. Nothing else ever will. Compassion There are several dimensions of loving which Catherine writes about that, if I had space, would fit in very well here. Tenderness, mercy, gentleness with others are very close to the essence of love. There is one dimension, however, that is closer than all of these, one aspect of love which leads us naturally into the phrase, “not counting the cost.” It is the beautiful love-dimension of compassion. You will recall that it’s the passionate love of Christ which transforms the Christian life into a wonderful adventure: Passion makes love sparkle and shine, leading it to the rugged tops of immense mountains that lie in the hearts of men but can only be scaled by passionate lovers. [Note: the journey is into the hearts of others.] Its roots are love, its fruit is love. Christ loved us passionately, and some of us love him back passionately. Passion usually means pain. Nothing strange about that. Love and passion not only hold hands, not only scale the tops of rugged mountains, but they are entwined one around the other. There is no love without pain, and no pain without love. One without the other is inconceivable: love without pain is inconceivable. (P 170) Then she presents Mary to us as our model of compassion: Mary enters into this marriage of love and passion which the Lord accepted and through which he redeemed us. Pure of heart, she saw God. She followed her Son right to the foot of the cross, and beyond, to the grave. Hers was a compassion. She shared his passion not only in a physical way but also in a spiritual, emotional, and deeply tragic way. ‘Passionate love for mankind’ and ‘pain.’ These two realities were like a chalice the Father had given Christ from which men would drink and know that he had forgiven them. This same chalice was given to Mary to drink. She truly compassionated she shared the passion of her Son. She shared his passionate love for humanity, and she shared his pain. Men need other human beings, and they need, above all, gentle ones, compassionate ones… (P 170-171)
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Christ continues to suffer in his members, in his Body. Catherine is one her immense pilgrimage to console him, to wipe his tears. Thus, loving in this world takes on the dimension of cosuffering, or com-passion. As one ventures into the perilous land of loneliness, there is necessarily suffering. This suffering purifies the one seeking to preach Christ, joins him or her to the passion of Christ, creates compassion for the one being sought. For Catherine, love is often, in the famous phrase of Dostoyevsky, a “harsh and dreadful thing.” Without Counting the Cost “Without compromise,” as we have seen, has the meaning of totality, passion, living the Gospel in every aspect of life and with all of one’s powers and energies. Christ gave his all for us on the Cross. Such love demands our all for him. “Without counting the cost” emphasizes that such totality, such passion, is very often painful; and that is why, of course, we tend to live mediocre lives. But real love costs. In Catherine’s earliest reflections on this line of the Mandate (1968) she first of all recalls words of a Jesuit priest she heard as a very young child. He was speaking about the problems of priests and how priests needed prayers. Then he said: “When you grow up perhaps some of you will offer your lives for priests.” Catherine wanted to, then and there! “He looked at me over his spectacles and said: ‘It will require a lot of love of a certain type. Only people who love terribly much can really offer their life.’” The most the priest would allow her to say was the following: “I, Catherine, want to offer my life for priests. I am a little girl and I am doing it as a little girl can do it. Please accept my offering.” So, in Catherine’s own mind and heart, offering her life for priests is one of the meanings of this line. Another recollection which came to her was going to confession as a young girl, and the priest asking her how much she loved her enemies. “I said I didn’t know I had enemies. He said: ‘Maybe now you have no enemies, but you will have in the future. So always examine your conscience as to how well you love your enemies. If you love your enemies well, as is well, and you will be in the commandment of love.’” So, she says, the first two meanings she gave to this line concerned a self-offering for priests, and love of enemies. We cannot go into her love for priests here (see Dear Father), but very, very deep in Catherine’s soul is her life being poured out as an offering for priests. While this may have been a particular call for Catherine, her spiritual children also believe that they are called, each in his or her own way, to a special concern for the priests of the world. In a commentary in 1969, a year later than the above reflections, she speaks more pointedly to the general meaning of the line: I barely dare to touch upon this line of the Mandate. Speaking of myself, I have very often counted the cost. I have cried out, as Fr. Cal my spiritual director very well knows, ‘Lord, that is impossible.’ But Fr. Cal, I guess, helps to bring the Holy Spirit back, and I make another step towards that impossibility. To love means to surrender to every situation, no matter how horrible and impossible. To love means to surrender to every person, no matter how obnoxious, how terrible, this person may be. It means to stand naked with the naked Christ in the marketplace for everyone to spit at you and push you around. But it also means that it has power to make the other surrender to God.
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Because, our love, when it is without counting the cost, is always directed towards God; then it leads people towards God. I think then our love (I wouldn’t think of it as a bulldozer because I don’t like machines!) is even harder to manage than a bulldozer, because it makes straight the paths of the Lord. We make straight the paths of the Lord with our bare hands and with our bare feet. Sometimes it is a path through brambles. We ourselves are torn, broken, yet we still move so that other people can follow this little path without being scratched. It means that no matter what the price, we make a road to Christ for the other. It’s in the life of the Spirit. There is no self-pity in the life of such a person who makes straight the way of the Lord. There can be no self-pity because no matter how hard it is to love, love, love and not count the cost there is always the Wind and the Fire; so you resolutely enter the brambles. A tremendous Wind comes in after you’ve made three or four steps into the brambles and whoooooosh, like a tornado, all the brambles are blown from the path. We have to understand that we are lovers. His way is a hard was as long as I rely on myself. But it’s easier when I let the Wind and the Fire carry me, following along in his footsteps. This means I must pray for faith. Out of this faith, which is the father of love, love grows. Strangely enough, as we go forward, making straight the path of the Lord for others, through various and terrible circumstances (I am speaking of the domain of the soul), if we strive for the Cross, it will carry us. Because, strangely enough, when we follow the Fire and the Wind, when our heart is open to his opening of the words of the Gospel we must preach, a shadow falls over us; and suddenly, next to us, Somebody else is walking. It’s a Person. Now we are not alone any more. In the real sense of the word we are never alone; but the spittle of faith on the shadow of our substance brings Christ right next to us. In his Body, in a sense, he walks with us, though our eyes may still be held. But as we love, and as this love grows and grows because we are opening our hearts to the Spirit, we do see, dimly, darkly, as in a mirror, some kind of Person. But there is more: we feel him with something that has no feeling, no sight, no touch, no smell our soul. It’s strange how, as we surrender to this powerful reality of ‘Love…love…love…never counting the cost,’ you see Golgotha, you hear, ‘I thirst,’ and you understand Who Love is (dimly, for who can understand God?) But now you arise. You can’t help it. You must arise and go to the poor, to the rich, meaning humanity, to bring Love to them. It becomes a passion. Because you have opened your heart to the Fire and the Wind, you are fired. This fire in you becomes unquenchable, a hunger for the happiness of the other, which fills you. Now nothing matters. Everybody can walk all over you until you are mush hamburger. You couldn’t care less; you let them. (Well, that’s an exaggeration. But in the spirit of faith, this is the ideal I give you!) Because you never forget that maybe you have often made hamburger of others! That’s what I always think about. So, love is a beautiful thing. (TOLM, 1969) Do we need any more commentary of this love? Do you see how she has summarized here almost every theme in this book? Overwhelmed by Love yourself, and aided by the Fire and the 50
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Wind (the Holy Spirit), you venture forth into the hearts of others to bring them the presence of Love. Precisely through the pain of it all. Love walks beside you and helps to clear the bramblecluttered path. I believe Catherine is saying that only the pain of the Cross can reveal the Presence to us. Somehow we must break through the false self self-absorption to touch the Presence with our true self the “soul.” Our movement toward the other in faith and concern has the power of love to “make the other surrender to God.” As our love grows, the Presence grows. And this Presence sustains us even when misunderstood, rejected made hamburger out of! We have often rejected and misunderstood made hamburger out of others. Who are we to complain! Self-pity is one of the great boulders along our path of loving: I tried to love them but they didn’t want me! Boo hoo! If self-pity enters in then you just plop yourself down by the side of the road and say, ‘Lord, I’m not worthy of anything. I’m just a sinner. I know nothing from nothing. Choose somebody else.’ Well, that’s the death of the apostolate. Why don’t we all acknowledge right here and now, in one voice, ‘I am a sinner. I am a failure.’ (Ibid.) Self-pity will block our path into the hearts of others if we rely on ourselves instead of God, if we take our eyes off Love. Pain Is the Kiss Of Christ Catherine had a wooden plaque in her cabin with this saying on it, “Pain is the kiss of Christ”; we all saw it many, many times, and heard her say this many times. She often reminded us that pain is part of life, one of life’s great teachers, and yes, one of life’s great benefactors. (And, if we are faithful enough to love, it could even become the kiss of Christ.) Perhaps there are many depths of being and knowledge we will never attain except through suffering. To try and avoid all pain is totally against the Christian understanding of life. Christ defined all the ways of loving not only defined them, lived them. He was Love Incarnate, and he showed us that in truth greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his brethren accentuating that love has no limits. Perhaps this is why there is so much talk about love, so much experimenting and so much disappointment with what we imagine love to be. Because deep down in our hearts we know that his way of loving is the way of the Cross, that it is painful, and that it demands an emptying of ourselves. None of us can love the way he wants us to love him. True. All this spells pain to us moderns who take sleeping pills and tranquilizers by the ton to alleviate the slightest anxiety and pain. But if we arise and follow his road of love we shall know joy beyond all telling. Incredible as it may seem, if we follow that road of love which Christ etched out for us we will solve most of our modern problems. (R, Sept., 1968) We have lost our faith in the power of redemptive, suffering love. Sitting with someone in his or her pain (as one of our guests expressed it once, “When I can no longer sit with myself”) loving them, being present to them with the love of Christ in our hearts these kind of acts will produce more fruit than all the programs and sophisticated approaches to “helping people.” What
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people need most of all is someone to enter their “land of loneliness” and help them to see the Presence with their own eyes: Words like ‘production,’ ‘efficiency,’ ‘competence,’ are constantly bandied about at various meetings and conferences of lay apostolic groups in this land. But we have been created in the image and likeness of God. Our value, the yardstick of our worth, is the Incarnation of God who was, is man. Perhaps we could say that our value is the three hours he spent on the cross, dying out of love for us. It seems, at times, that these three hours were really very ‘inefficient,’ ‘incompetent,’ ‘unproductive,’ actually a failure in the eyes of men. His death must have appeared, even to the apostles, as the acme of uselessness. They expected something more efficient, more competent, more productive. Instead, there was that seemingly useless death! They hadn’t experienced Pentecost yet. We have. But we still seem to forget that love cannot be measured in human terms, cannot be analyzed in laboratories, cannot be measured in terms of efficiency and understood by the world. Love is a spendthrift. It doesn’t mind wasting time in listening to someone in pain, or visiting some shabby street, or doing nothing more than smile at some unsmiling faces. A year or two later quite inefficient! one of those faces may smile back! (R, May, 1967) The price of souls is high as high as the cross on which we must hang. Unless we do so there will be no success, because we do not love enough…because passionate love, the love that leads to Golgotha, has not yet begun to consume us… (SL #117, 1962)
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NOTE ON THE THIRD VOLUME: A Preview IN THE THIRD VOLUME of this series, which will discuss the last three lines of the Mandate, we will see how the journey to the lonely Christ is progressively revealed as a pilgrimage into the human heart. The “marketplace” of the sixth line is the human heart, where all the buying and selling takes place, where all the idols are, and out of which, the Lord tells us, proceeds murder, hatred, adultery, and all the evils of the human race. We are told not to be afraid to enter there “Go without fears into the depths of men’s hearts” for the Lord will be with us. He will be not only with us but in us, and we will bring his Presence into that place which needs his life and light. Prayer and fasting “Pray…fast” are the two powerful spiritual weapons we must use to not only be able to enter but to withstand the “demons” within. There will always be people who do not know and love the Lord. So, one can never rest in this life without zeal for the neighbor’s salvation. In this life we can only “rest” in the midst of the human condition. It is a paradoxical rest, at one and the same time in the depth of the marketplace and in the depth of God. Catherine once received a beautiful word from the Lord. It was to the effect that every human heart is filled with a precious perfume. But this flask must be broken open so that the perfume can be poured out on the feet of the Lord. The painful Cross is the breaking open of this flask. But it is only so that the beautiful perfume the “odor of Christ” within us can be poured forth on the feet of others, which are the feet of Christ. You might say that the last three lines of the Mandate are about how to “get into” the human heart. It is the most impregnable of all fortresses on earth. Even God himself cannot “get in” if the heart is not opened from within. The Little Mandate of Catherine is a wonderful, elaborate, delicate, intricate “strategy of love,” coaxing, enticing, wooing the human heart to open from within, like a flower, so that we can enter there with great delicacy, and reveal the overwhelming love of Christ, reveal Christ himself Who is Love.
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APPENDIX Letter No. 76 June 20, 1962 Dearly Beloved: Some time ago the whole house had a long discussion. We gathered in Eddie’s∗ room, and the conversation drifted to the big topic of little things. So here is a staff letter coming to you to remind you again of the little things that are so important. The first thought that comes to me as foundress of this place is: for some reasons that I will never fathom (since it is a mystery of God until I see him), he touched me and said, “Come.” You have often read how I discuss my vocation as a stupendous adventure. Let’s begin with that. I was just breathless when God called me. Thirty years later, I am just as breathless as on that first day when I realized that this vocation had come to me. Okay, now get the picture of a young woman realizing that God has gloriously called her, although at the time she was responsible for a child, and a lot of other things. One gift that I have had since childhood is a great faith. Faith is a gift from God. You can pray for it, but you can’t grow in faith unless he gives you the grace. It is a free gift from God. Knowing what he was going to do with me, he endowed me with a very strong faith. Now as I look back, and as I look at you, I think maybe you, if you were a married woman without a husband, and with a child, would have hesitated. If a call like that had come to you, you might have hesitated because you are Americans and Canadians, having a lot of possessions. I don’t know. Maybe you would have done what I did and just said, “God, I don’t understand. Now it is up to you to remove the obstacles.” So he removed them through a bishop. Then, when I received the permission, I took the plunge. That is, I took my son and “yanked myself” into the slums. I consider this one of the “little things” because I keep repeating to you this poem: “Lord, I throw at your feet my life and sing that I give you such a little thing.” For there before my eyes is a crucifix to me, living, breathing, full of wounds, and saying to me, “I love you, I love you.” When I compare my life with that crucifix, then my whole life is nothing. So to begin with, I consider that the gift of my whole life from the day that he called me to the day that I am speaking to you, is a tiny little thing in proportion to what he gave me. Now, is that clear what I call a “little thing”? I think that we misunderstood each other right here. Understand that, for me, my whole life is as nothing to give I wish that I had a thousand lives to give him. Then you will understand why I consider it to be a “little thing.” Now if I consider that my life is about as big as a thimble, then what is in it is still smaller, isn’t it? “I sing and sing that I throw at your feet my life such a small thing.” If I consider that my life which I throw at God’s feet is such a small thing, then what is inside cannot be bigger than the whole, can it? ∗
Edward Doherty: Catherine’s husband.
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I am a poor woman. I wrote a poem. You don’t read my poems much, and probably they don’t mean too much to you, for the language is symbolic, but some day you might understand them. I wrote a poem one day in which I said: I am nothing A beggar Covered with wounds A thousand roads… Meaning that I am nothing, that I am the least of all, and that I can’t offer him anything. Be he touched me. But you came My king, And touched me With your hand, And I arose And I followed you… He touched me a dirty, unwashed, no-good soul. I am not deprecating myself; I am a marvellous creature. I have been created in the image and likeness of God. But we are all sinners, and when I say that I consider myself a sinner, I mean it! So, what can a grain of sand, who is a sinner, do for God? Little things. I am in Friendship House. Everyone in the place is calling me names. Priests do not believe in what I am doing. Only one lonely bishop and two spiritual directors believe in me. Day-in and day-out, hour-in and hour-out, I hear, “Look at that woman! She probably sleeps with those hoboes.” But I consider this persecution a “little thing.” It is the tiniest of little things to be persecuted for twenty-one years out of thirty. I consider it very little to offer to God! So I talk of little things. Probably to you persecution would be something very big. I am so small, so unworthy. I have only one life to throw at his feet, and it is so small. He gave me his life. And he is God. So I ask, what can a little person do who tries to love God tremendously? And I answer, everything: from putting the lights off because of holy poverty, to refraining from changing clothes every five minutes because there is a clothing room, to being indifferent to food, to going where God calls you. Now here again, let us understand one another, for I do not think that we do. First, remember that I have a personal relationship with Christ. To me he is real; is in this room. Besides my faith, I have a vivid imagination. He is real. So, there is a knock at the door. Someone calls for my nursing services. No matter how tired and exhausted I am, I know that it is God knocking! I literally see his hand with a wound. (I don’t mean in a vision, but in my imagination.)
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You pass by and whisper, “B, may I see you today?” So unless something more important intervenes, something that he also wants, I will talk with you. My day is directed simply by the needs of the Apostolate. I weigh those needs. Should I dictate three hours or four? For you it is simpler, and I envy you! You know his will. You know it clearly every second of the day. How lucky you are! I have to make decisions. Fortunately, if I am confused, I have Father Cal to tell me what to choose. But once I know God’s will I am going to try to do it perfectly. My heart swells and I say, “This also, Lord, for love of you.” I know very well its redemptive value. Do I speak too symbolically? Another example: I have empty hands. At night I consider that I have to bring something to the altar for tomorrow’s paten. What can I bring? I can bring a thousand buttons well-sorted with great love, understanding full well that because of my attention these buttons have redemptive value. I can bring hours of conversation with you. I can bring many letters with attention to details. This faith comes from a tremendous, personal understanding that God is real, and my tremendous Lover. He has first given his life for me. In the face of that gift I am like one who is bereft of my senses! I go around gathering every flower so that I can bring it to them. It is his will that directs the gathering. In March I shall speak to the Medical Association the psychiatrists and I’ll be a “big shot,” quote unquote. They will meet me at the train; they’ll make a fuss over me. They’ll put me up at the biggest hotel. “This is the great Baroness de Hueck, the celebrated lecturer of the United States, the author of books ” Now to me all of this is exactly the same as doing the buttons! There is no difference. Writing these books, is a little thing for me. You read my books; they have been written piecemeal. I have never said to myself, “Now I will write a book.” I would only do so if Father told me: “I want you to take three hours every day and write a book.” Then, I would try to write a book. But I don’t need three hours to write a book. Why don’t I need three hours? Because I write what I live. I don’t need any solitude, reference books or anything else. I write only what I live. I couldn’t write a story, plot, an essay, if you paid me! Why do I write as I do?? Because I love. It is so simple. Any one of you could write to your girlfriends about your boyfriends. You went out with your boyfriend and you are writing your best friend about Joe. You become eloquent, because you love Joe! And you, who ordinarily cannot put two words together, will write or scribble six pages to your girlfriend about Joe! So that’s what I do. It’s so simple. That’s what I want you to do. Yes, even writing books is a little thing. So to me, life is all little things. Thoughtfulness. Fr. Cal says to me, “Katie, I don’t want you to talk to anybody in the morning; you have low-blood pressure and you feel, shall we say, a little upset.” Then I try not to talk in the morning. I obey him. If I disobey him, I go to confession. But sometimes this combination of tension and low-blood pressure in me creates a quick retort. Well, then I am really sad, because I feel that this is a “big thing.” Sin is a big thing. Anything connected with sin is a big thing, because it hurts love. Everything else is very small. It never occurs to me that you can possibly separate anything from love. That is why I keep pushing the priests, almost impolitely, to connect daily life with poverty and reverence. I have no 56
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right to do that, but I do so unconsciously. The words are out before I can control them. I must work on that. As I told you, I am a sinner! For example, I will speak of cups, because you seem to have an aversion to washing dishes. If you have this attitude that this is a beautiful, little thing that you can give to God, then washing a cup becomes an adventure. It is this sense of adventure, glory, and joy that you lack. I have lots of fun. I might be terribly tired, and the job might be monotonous but I will make it interesting for myself. For example, many of you saw the terrible monotony of the library work down in the basement before Christmas. You saw that I was sometimes tense, and sometimes, perhaps, a bit sharp, for which I was sorry. Nevertheless, I kept thinking, “Gee, this is wonderful! Generations of our members are going to benefit from this.” Again a little thing to give to God. Now, do you get the picture, or are you still missing the point of what I mean by “little things”? The whole of life is a “little thing” which we throw at God’s feet and sing and sing. Every little thing should be done perfectly, completely connected with God, for otherwise, it ceases to be interesting. It has no sense and no being. There is great freedom in this. You don’t have to “smile” doing the little things. The very fact that, in your hearts you enjoy doing them will radiate in your eyes, will show forth in your concentration. People come here for summer school.∗ Why do you think that they come here? They come to see human beings throw their lives at Christ’s feet and sing that they bring him such a small thing. They touch us, and then change in some way, or receive graces from Christ. This is your Apostolate. If you go to Marian Centre, and wash dishes, the whole of Edmonton is changed. For Edmonton is changed in quite a big way because Marian Centre is there. Whitehorse, Yukon is changed because of the presence of Maryhouse! By doing those little things you radiate love, and that is the Apostolate. Both the talented ones and those who have no particular talents all contribute to the restoration of the world to Christ. It is not what you do that matters. It is what you are. If you have understood the romance and immensity of “little things,” then you will restore the world to Christ. You will be an adventuresome, joyous, glad, simple, and humble light by doing little things. They will become big because they are touched by God and done for him. Now, have I explained what the “little things” are, or are you still confused? How is it possible to live this life as a vocation, unless you connect every gesture and breath with God? Unless you have an awareness of every lamp that is lit unnecessarily? Unless you pick up everything after everybody, and after yourself, especially, so as not to burden your brother? Unless you are completely in every little thing with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, this is not the vocation for you. Go elsewhere, but wherever you go you will certainly have to do little things. Try to do them without love, and see what happens. But doing little things with our whole heart is our vocation. Maybe sometime you will be a great professor in a university. But then, you will be utterly indifferent to being a professor. You must neither refuse anything to God, nor ask anything as far as your vocation is concerned. ∗
Madonna House formerly had a summer school of Catholic Action.
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Christ is a piece of bread that the priest carries, and you too, are a piece of bread that is carried on the wind and word of your superiors. You are another Christ, glad to go anywhere, and glad to do anything, always considering everything so very small, because what he gives you is so very big. The smallness is always in relation to God, but the hunger to return to God is immense. The only “big thing” about you is your hunger to love to be and to do for God. Is that clear? It’ so simple! Of course we must also do “little things” well in our personal relationships. How else are we going to learn to love unless we love one another? What is the use of going to learn to love unless we love one another? What is the use of preaching and talking about Christ, unless we are Christ to one another? It all hinges on God as Person, on the sense of adventure, the sense of call and on the three lines of this poem: “Lord, I throw at your feet my life, and sing and sing that I give you such a small thing.” That’s all. Once you get that picture, you’ve got the whole thing. It’s possible that you might not be called to this life. However, once you are in it, then you know that you are called. Then, it is your vocation, and you have to accept and act accordingly. You cannot just connect a “little” with God; you must connect completely. But if you are not connecting completely, go and seek help. It can happen. Emotional or other kinds of problems might sometimes obscure the realization of your vocation. Turn to God and seek help from God, and from those who can give it to you. You have the vocation. This means that you must live the life sooner or later. That’s what I mean by “little things.” There is also the cross. I should speak about that also. I cannot visualize a love story with God without a cross. To me, the cross is the thing! I desire it, I accept it, and I ask the grace never to fear it, because one day I shall know its joy. You may think that I am just talking through my hat. But again, as God is my witness, I look at the cross as the marriage bed of Christ. I desire union with him at the price of being crucified. Then my soul cries out, “Where are the nails? Where is the hammer?” Even though my flesh flinches. Of course the cross is there. When I talk about the cross I think that you misunderstand what I mean. For me the cross is the key to him whom my heart loves. Without the cross, there is no Easter. Unless I lie on my cross, I can’t see him in heaven. But I must lie on the cross that he made for me, not the one I’m making for myself. This is all so clear to me that I, quite naturally, talk to you about the cross. However, I am beginning to think that for you the cross is something heavy. Something that you wish you could throw off, something that you have to carry, but you do so without joy. God embraced the cross because he wanted to. For this he was born! For this we are born to lie on it with him. I literally mean the words that I say, but I don’t think that you understand me. That’s why you have a problem with “little things.” Does that make sense to you? Do you understand how I think and feel about these things? You may disagree with it or not understand it, but this is what I mean by “little things.” If you wish to be in this Apostolate, you have to come to this understanding with the help of the priests and myself, and afterwards through my writings. For this is your vocation. This is what he gave me. I’m passing it on to you. 58
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When somebody says to me, “Catherine, I don’t think that I can take a lifetime of these little things. It’s excruciating.” I want to weep. It’s a failure to understand our faith. The same person, whoever he or she is, will have a lifetime of other little things that will be just as excruciating. However, never think of your vocation as a lot of monotonous “little things.” Think of it as the glory of the cross. Measure the “little things” against his bigness what he has done for us. Try every minute to put a little grain of sand before the altar, and before you die, you might have a mountain to offer. It is so simple! Lovingly in Mary, Catherine
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Journey in the Risen Christ
Robert Wild
JOURNEY In the RISEN CHRIST The “Little Mandate” of Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Rev. Robert Wild
ALBA HOUSE NEW YORK SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL. 2187 VICTORY BLVD. STATEN ISLAND NEW YORK 10314
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CONTENTS Document Information.................................................................................................................... 1 CONTENTS.................................................................................................................................... 4 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 7 The Little Mandate...................................................................................................................... 7 Summary Of The Little Mandate............................................................................................ 7 Journey In The Risen Christ: Huphsos ................................................................................... 9 Without Fear Into Hearts ...................................................................................................... 11 A Gospel Version For The Whole Of Life ........................................................................... 12 CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................................... 14 Go Into The Marketplace And Stay With Me........................................................................... 14 Go.......................................................................................................................................... 14 Into The Marketplace............................................................................................................ 14 “I Shall Vomit The Lukewarm Out Of My Mouth” ............................................................. 15 What Do We Do In The Marketplace? Catherine’s Understanding Of Mission .................. 15 Identification With The Other............................................................................................... 16 The Time Of Friendship, Word And Sacrament................................................................... 18 The Chit-Chat Apostolate ..................................................................................................... 18 “Stay With Me”: The Poustinia In The Marketplace............................................................ 19 CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................................................................... 22 Pray ........................................................................................................................................... 22 A New Breed Of Contemplative........................................................................................... 22 The Necessity Of Prayer ....................................................................................................... 23 Prayer Is Simple.................................................................................................................... 24 Prayer A “Risky Business” ................................................................................................... 24 Falling In Love With God..................................................................................................... 25 Catherine’s Own Prayer Journey: “Mary’s Garments Are Too Big” .................................. 25 Praying And Sharing Christ’s Pain ....................................................................................... 27 “All Can Be Endured Between Two Masses” ...................................................................... 27 “Joining With Our Big Brothers And Sisters In Religion”: The Liturgy Of The Hours ...... 28 “Moments Before His Face”: Meditation ............................................................................. 28 The “Opus Dei” Of The Lay Apostle ................................................................................... 29 The Name Of Jesus ............................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER THREE ...................................................................................................................... 32 Fast............................................................................................................................................ 32 God’s Word As Our Food..................................................................................................... 32 Fasting As Strength For The Marketplace ............................................................................ 33 Fasting As A Sign Of Waiting And Mourning ..................................................................... 35 Identification With The Poor ................................................................................................ 36 Fasting As Atonement........................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER FOUR......................................................................................................................... 38 Be Hidden … Be A Light To Your Neighbor’s Feet................................................................ 38 A Hidden God ....................................................................................................................... 38 Hiddenness As Preparedness ................................................................................................ 40
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Hiddenness As Hope............................................................................................................. 41 The Hiddenness Of Nazareth ................................................................................................ 42 Hiddenness As Transparency................................................................................................ 43 Hiddenness As Ordinariness ................................................................................................. 44 The Hidden Cross Illumines ................................................................................................. 45 Hiddenness And Lovers........................................................................................................ 45 Joy As A Light ...................................................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER FIVE .......................................................................................................................... 47 Go Without Fears Into The Depths Of Men’s Hearts…I Shall Be With You .......................... 47 Go.......................................................................................................................................... 47 “The Alms Of Words” .......................................................................................................... 48 Without Fears........................................................................................................................ 49 The Various Faces Of Courage............................................................................................. 50 Into The Depths Of Men’s Hearts “Garden Variety Lay People” ....................................... 50 Hospitality Of The Heart ...................................................................................................... 51 A Precipitous And Bloody Journey ...................................................................................... 54 “I Shall Be With You” .......................................................................................................... 55 “You See Your Brother, You See God” ............................................................................... 55 The Pilgrimage Into Hearts And Identification .................................................................... 56 CHAPTER SIX............................................................................................................................. 57 Pray Always .............................................................................................................................. 57 Pray Always: The Symbols Of A Fully Integrated Christian Life....................................... 58 Becoming A Prayer............................................................................................................... 59 The “Poustinia Of The Heart”............................................................................................... 61 Christ Was Nigh.................................................................................................................... 61 “Work Is Prayer And Prayer Is Work” ................................................................................. 62 Nazareth And “Being Before God Being”............................................................................ 64 Mary, Our Lady Of Combermere ......................................................................................... 64 St. Joseph .............................................................................................................................. 65 CHAPTER SEVEN ...................................................................................................................... 67 I Will Be Your Rest .................................................................................................................. 67 Jesus Is The Promised Land.................................................................................................. 69 The Resurrected Christ As Our Rest..................................................................................... 69 The Music Of Easter ............................................................................................................. 69 Pilgrimaging In The Resurrected Christ ............................................................................... 71 The Parousia.......................................................................................................................... 75 The Christ Of The Eighth Day.............................................................................................. 76 KEY TO CITED WORKS............................................................................................................ 78
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That’s what Christianity is all about the crucified Christ and the dancing Christ. The cross is but the pathway to the resurrection. (SLFF, OCTOBER 7, 1973) Resting in the arms of God…we must walk in the heat of the day…go through everything he did. But we know something that nobody else knew in his day. We know that we live in his resurrection. (COM)
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INTRODUCTION The Little Mandate Arise—go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me. Little—be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. Do little things exceedingly well for love of me. Love…love…love, never counting the cost. Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fears into the depths of men's hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always. I will be your rest. This is my third and final volume presenting the above Little Mandate of the Lord to Catherine de Hueck Doherty. The first two volumes were: Journey To the Lonely Christ (1987), and Love, Love, Love (1989), also by Alba House. Catherine believed that these words expressed her vocation, her “Little Mandate from God.” In the previous volumes I gave short sketches of Catherine’s life, in case the reader was not familiar with her. In this present work I will presume such familiarity. But even if the reader is not too acquainted with Catherine, this book will still be understandable. Perhaps it will whet the reader’s appetite for my first two volumes as well as other books concerning Catherine’s life and works. (See the bibliography for references.) I call attention especially to her autobiography, Fragments of My Life, and to Emile Brière’s Katia. Fr. Brière was perhaps Catherine’s closest associate and confidant during the last twenty years of her life. His personal reflections are an important source for understanding this prophetic woman of our time. For those who have not read my two previous volumes, a brief description of the Lord’s Mandate to Catherine, exclusive of the last three lines the subject of the present book may be helpful here.
Summary of the Little Mandate Catherine was born in Russia on August 15, 1896. When she was a young child of seven or eight she attended a convent school in Alexandria, Egypt, conducted by the Sisters of Sion. In the chapel of that school was a western crucifix the first she had ever seen? depicting blood flowing rather profusely from the Lord’s wounds. One day she went into the chapel with soap and water and tried to wash the blood off! The inspiration behind this far from childish gesture grew into the great passion of her life.
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What was that passion? To assuage the pain, the loneliness, the abandonment of Christ. She was given an extraordinary realization that, in the human race, Christ continues to suffer mystically. “Christ is in agony until the end of the world. But Christ is in you and me. And what is more important, in the other fellow. What about them being in agony, my brothers and sisters? That, my friend, is what Madonna House is all about. Open your hearts; you have the key to do it. The Lord has given it to you in baptism. Open your hearts and let him in. Stop thinking about yourself and begin honestly, truthfully, totally thinking of others.” (Family Letter, May, 1980) In some real but mysterious sense, “the First and the Last,” “the Living One,” “the One who was dead and is alive forever,” “the One who holds the keys of death and of Hades” (Rv 1:18) in some way this resurrected and glorious Christ is still suffering in his members (Ac 9:5). This theme is also central to the spirituality of other contemporary figures. Fr. Werenfriend van Straaten, a Dutch Norbertine (and one of the great men of our time), is the founder of an international organization called “Aid To the Church In Need.” Over the past forty years he has begged and given away more than 600 million dollars. He is driven by the same passion which drove Catherine; he describes it beautifully: The essential part of my vocation is this: that whenever God weeps, I have to dry his tears. God, of course, does not weep in heaven, where he dwells in inaccessible light and eternally enjoys his endless happiness. God weeps on earth. Ceaselessly, his tears flow over the divine countenance of Jesus, who is One with the Heavenly Father and yet on earth lives on in the least of his people, and suffers, and starves, and is persecuted. The tears of the poor are his tears, because he has become one with them. And Jesus’ tears are the tears of God. Thus God weeps in all the sad, suffering, and sighing people of our times. We cannot love him if we do not dry their tears. (Where God Weeps, pp. xiv-xv). In a recent book, For the Least of My Brothers, Omer Tanghe, a priest associate of Madonna House, compares the spiritualities of Catherine and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa understands Christ’s “I thirst” from the cross as referring to the continuation of his suffering in humanity. This theme is part of our western tradition. In the words of Pope St. Leo the Great (5th Century): “The Lord’s passion is not over and done with; it will continue until the end of the world. Just as in the saints it is Jesus who is honoured, in the poor it is Jesus who is fed and clothed, so in all who suffer for doing right it is Jesus who suffers” (Sermon LXX, On the Passion). And St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 25: “In this life God feels cold and hunger in all who are stricken with poverty; for remember, he once said: What have you done to the least of my brothers, you have done to me.’ When the poor are starving, Christ too hungers. Christ hungers now, my brethren; it is he who designs to hunger and thirst in the persons of the poor.” Catherine, then, was on a long journey to meet Christ in every human person, to comfort and console him there, to “wash the blood” from his wounds, The first paragraph of the Mandate contains this central theme. She must “arise and go” to attend to the lonely and forgotten Christ. The journey requires a stripping of all things “Sell all you possess” so she can embrace the cross of the poor which is the cross of Christ. In this way she will attain union with Christ “One with Me” since whatever we do to one another we do to him.
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The second line of the Mandate describes the various dimensions of the poverty necessary to reach Christ in the poor. One must be “little,” realizing that everything is from God. This will bring us into a fundamental simplicity and transparency, a deeper spiritual poverty through which God can work most effectively. Above all, it will make us childlike, restoring us to our basic inheritance as Children of the Father. As children of God, we become channels of his grace, and help to restore the image of God in others. These first two lines were the topic of my first volume. In the second volume I treated lines three, four and five. When we are as transparent as children, the Gospel, which is the presence of the risen Christ within us, will be preached, that is, made present in every aspect of our lives. But it must be made present “without compromise,” that is, passionately, intensely. To be in love with God is to be uncompromisingly in love. The Holy Spirit, if we truly listen to him, will bring to our minds all the Lord has said to us, and will show us how to love. Especially will he help us perform the ordinary tasks of everyday life with great love. In this way, wherever and however people encounter us, they will also meet the Risen Christ whom we bear within. You might say that lines two to five express more our preparation for the journey; lines six, seven and eight the subject of this present book point to our destination, where we are going. And where are we going? We are going into the marketplace, into the depths of men’s hearts, to be a light for their feet on their journey. Prayer “pray always” is both food for this journey and, amazingly, the final goal “I will be your rest.” The last line is the promise that, if we keep trying to center our whole lives on God through prayer and love, the Lord himself will become our rest. This “rest” means several things, but mostly it refers to an ever greater faith awareness that we are already living in the risen Christ. That our whole journey takes place in the risen Christ is the central theme of this last volume.
Journey In The Risen Christ: Huphsos The lonely Christ. The risen Christ. We are confronted with a paradox: in a most mysterious way the risen Christ has a Body that can still suffer, and which still does suffer, as we can all testify. It was the risen Lord who met Paul on the road to Damascus, and who said to him, “Why are you persecuting Me?” Christ’s joy and pain are joined in a single Body. As Catherine pilgrimages to console the lonely Christ she experienced this strange duality of suffering and joy. Every act of love was simultaneously a com-passion in the suffering of Christ and a new experience of his resurrected joy. The journey to the lonely Christ is at one and the same time a journey in the risen Christ. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, speaking about the descent of the candidates into the baptismal pool, described it as both a dying and a rising. And this is true of every act of selfless love. As a selfemptying, it is pain. And precisely because of the death to selfishness, one should be better able to experience the new life within the joy of the risen Christ. In fact, Catherine insisted that the only reason we empty ourselves is to be filled with Christ. As we shall see, the “rest” of the last line refers primarily to an ever greater awareness and realization of living in the risen Lord.
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As a result of modern biblical studies some new words have entered our popular Christian vocabulary. From the Hebrew we have learned “anawim,” which means the poor and faithful remnant awaiting the Messiah. From the Greek of the New Testament we picked up the word “diaspora,” “scattering,” referring to the Christian communities scattered abroad like seed in the world; and “parousia,” “appearance,” referring to the second coming of the Lord. Another new word expressing an aspect of the Christian life very dear to Catherine’s Russian soul is “kenosis,” “emptying,” referring to the self-abasement of the Word Incarnate: “Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus who, being in the very nature God…made himself nothing” (literally, “emptied himself,” ekenosen; Ph 2:5-7). “Kenosis” expresses the cross dimension of our pilgrimage the journey to the lonely Christ and into the pain of the world. But two lines later in Philippians is the “other side” of that life: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place.” I don’t know how new words like anawim, diaspora, and kenosis enter our vocabulary. I suppose enough scholars would have to write about it, and then the word is used in books and catechesis. I’m sure my little book will not be enough to effect this, but I wish somehow another new word would enter our vocabulary. I ardently suggest the word “huphsos.” It is the Greek word for “height” or “heaven,” but especially, by metonymy, means a spiritual height. It is the technical word used for the Lord’s own “uplifting.” In St. John we read: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…” (3,14); “when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He” (8,28); “and when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself” (12:32). In all these texts the same verb is used husphsoo “to be lifted up, to exalt.” Commentators point out that when Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem he began his ascent, his huphsos, his final “uplifting” in the three-fold movement of being lifted up on the cross, being raised from the dead, and being exalted to the Father’s right hand. “Huphsos,” therefore, means more than the resurrection: it is Christ’s whole exaltation to glory by the Father precisely because he was obedient to the Father’s will and humble emptied himself. The Christian life essentially consists in living, even now, in the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer before he died: “I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may see the glory you have given me” (Jn 17:24). What has happened to Christ, has happened to us. This was the belief and awareness of the early Christians: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms” (EP 2:6). “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated…” (Col 3:1). Consequently, those who are joined to Christ through his Spirit have also “been exalted” with him. Although we have not yet passed through physical death, in our deepest reality we are already on the other side of death. Every true act of love, every act of dying to our old self(ishness), should enable us to realize more and more the truth of our being: we are already raised and exalted with Christ. Like Lazarus, we are already out of the tomb, standing in the sunlight. The Lord said, “Unbind him.” Every act of love arising from faith should help to remove the bandages from our spiritual eyes. When bandages are removed there is a brief pain, a tearing, which may momentarily obscure our vision of the light. As in physical darkness, so in the darkness of pain, it takes a little
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while to readjust our eyes. The cross is the removal of the bandages. We should never experience a death without a rising. Catherine’s book Strannik (Pilgrim) is very important for understanding her vision of the Christian life. “Strannik” is her symbolic Russian word expressing the final stage of the journey the stage of integration. The pilgrim is one who has internalized the dimensions of community and poustinia the journey into the hearts of others and into the Heart of God and is now simply available to the Wind of the Spirit, poised for the Father’s will. And the pilgrim has arrived precisely at the realization of the resurrection: “Now the pilgrim begins in the fullness of the resurrected Christ. He has followed Christ through his Incarnation and his passion; and he was ready to be crucified. That’s when he realized that Christ is with us, and the miracle of his presence is the eternal miracle of the resurrection. He [the pilgrim] now functions, lives, has his being, breathes the resurrection” (St 69). Since baptism our whole being has been immersed in the resurrected Christ. On each step of our journey, whether joyful or painful, we should become more aware of this new life within us.
Without Fear into Hearts The overall effect of sin, of our disorientation from God, is fear: “The Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ he answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” (Gn 3:9-10) Our faith-vision of reality is personal. Catherine often taught us that “we have come from the mind of God and are returning to the heart of God.” And we are destined by God to be united with one another: “…that they may be one as You and I are one.” The Mandate maps the long journey from behind the trees of the garden to walking once again in the cool of the evening, in open friendship with God and with one another. In the last three lines of the Mandate which we are about to consider, “pray” occurs three times. Prayer emphasizes the journey into the Heart of God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Although Mary is not mentioned explicitly in the Mandate, we are also on a journey into her heart. As Catherine used to say, “Christ is the way to the Father, but Mary is the Gate to Christ.” I will treat of Mary under the title of Our Lady of Combermere. The phrases of the Mandate, “marketplace,” “neighbor’s feet,” and “men’s hearts,” refer primarily on the journey into human hearts. These words are symbols of the final integration of prayer and service of neighbor. We all sense, in the depths of our being, a brokenness and fragmentation. In the garden before the fall there was no prayer and work, prayer and marketplace. Our whole being was immersed in the contemplative presence of God; and tending the garden did not distract us from that Presence. It is only after the fall that life was broken up into “work” and “prayer.” The Mandate calls us to return to the wholeness of Eden. The Lord is already in the marketplace, already in men’s hearts. But we are not completely united to the Lord. Because of our lack of wholeness, prayer must be considered from various perspectives: as helping us enter the marketplace; as giving us strength to remain there; as resting in the Lord once we attain some measure of union. “Pray always” especially symbolizes the final integration. It means that whatever we are doing we should always be walking with the Father in the cool of
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the evening. Perhaps the final goal of the Mandate could be stated as always reposing on the breast of God while serving with passionate love in the marketplace.
A Gospel Version for the Whole Of Life When Catherine came to North America in 1921 she experienced that the Gospel was absent from much of our culture. In the “New World” of North America we have never really experienced anything approaching a Christian culture such as existed in Russia before the revolution, or in the Western Europe in the centuries of faith. Since the time of her pioneering racial justice in the 30’s and 40’s, North America has experienced more of a thrust of the Gospel into society. Still, sociologists and cultural analysts are telling us that, in the last quarter of this century, we are entering another age of public apathy. We are experiencing the “fall of public man,” and the “naked public square” (titles of books documenting this withdrawal). The present “habit of the American heart” is pretty much to take care of oneself. Catherine was fond of saying, “A stranger is a friend I haven’t met yet.” “Stranger” is an ominous word today. Children are now taught not to speak to strangers. This may be understandable and prudent in today’s society, but it mirrors a new fear of one another, and a deterioration of public life. Catherine’s spirituality has everything to do with preparing people to enter the marketplaces of human hearts and human activity. But first of all, it is necessary to create environs families, parishes, neighborhoods with a Nazareth atmosphere where people can be nourished, nurtured, and formed in the love of God and neighbor. Then they will have the courage to venture forth into the marketplaces of the world, there to witness to the risen Christ. Superbly attuned to the Lord’s own life among us, Catherine insists that in this world the journey must end on Golgotha. The Lord left Nazareth and walked the marketplaces of the world. But eventually he died in the marketplace, totally naked and drained of every drop of blood for Christ will lead us deeply into his heart and the hearts of all our brothers and sisters. But, in this world, it will mean crucifixion in the marketplace. Then, life everlasting! It has been said that “the future belongs to the masses, so someone better tell them in very simple terms what reality is all about!” Catherine’s Mandate is a simple but far from easy Gospel vision of how, by journeying in the risen Christ, we can be vehicles of his life and love to others. On a number of occasions people have said to me, “Thank God that Catherine spoke in simple language we lay people can understand!” I pray that I may be able to communicate her vision in the same way she did, that this book may be a simple and humble light to the feet of everyone on their way to everlasting life.
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CHAPTER ONE Go into the Marketplace and Stay with Me Go Personal life is essentially movement towards, relationship with, the other. In the Trinitarian life there is a perfect gift of Self a movement towards the Other among the Three Persons. To save mankind the Father asked the Son to go into the world; and after his resurrection, Jesus commanded his disciples to likewise “go into the world and proclaim the good news.” At the heart of life, then, is a constant call to go forth. In the Mandate the word “Go” appears four times twice in the thematic first paragraph, and twice in the three lines we are now considering. (And even in the second last line where it is not stated explicitly, it is implied: “Go and be a light to your neighbor’s feet.”) The Mandate directs our steps in this life along our journey to the Father. Very early in her apostolic life, Catherine was struggling with the question of her vocation, where the Lord wanted her to go. She came across the following poem which expressed so well the depths of his answer that she included it on the first page of the Constitution or “Way of Life” she wrote for her spiritual children in 1971: I said: Let me work in the fields. Christ said: No, work in the town. I said: There are no flowers there. He said: No flowers, but a crown. I said: But the sky is dark and there is nothing but noise and din. Christ wept as He answered back: There is more, there is sin. I said: I shall miss the light, and friends will miss me, they say. Christ answered: Choose tonight…if I shall miss you, or they. She went into the town, into the marketplace.
Into The Marketplace What is the marketplace? In a geographic sense it is where the busy-ness of human, and especially public, activity takes place the buying and selling, the joys and tragedies, the politics and expressions of culture. It is the streets and shops, the theatres and coliseums, the halls of parliament and council. “Marketplace” is the word we use in contrast to “desert” and “home” and being by ourselves. But Catherine, in one of her commentaries on this line, first gives the word a more elemental meaning: What is the marketplace? Is it the secular city? Is that the actual marketplace? Is it the urban city, suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. It’s simply the soul of man. The marketplace is the soul of man, where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil, or to anyone in between…it is the supermarket of the spiritual world…the marketplace of souls. (COLM) The activity of the public marketplace is simply a reflection of the marketplace which is the soul of man. It is in the human heart where all the trading, all the buying and selling, takes place. It is in the soul of man where deals are made, speeches given, revolutions planned, pacts made with
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God or the devil. “Go” is another word for “mission,” and presently we will be discussing Catherine’s concept of missionary activity. But it is precisely because the human heart is the primary marketplace that it is also the primary mission field
“I Shall Vomit the Lukewarm Out Of My Mouth” Catherine leads us still deeper. When she comments on what happens in the marketplace, she often uses words like tepidity, indifference, and even vomit (Rv 7:16): “I shall vomit the lukewarm out of My mouth.” When you get into the mire of this terrible tepidity, it is really like vomit all around you. That’s the moment you want to turn away. That’s the moment when all your spiritual, psychological, and physical powers say, “Lord, it is impossible.” (Com) The great sin against love is lukewarmness which translated means not caring. We refuse the command to “go into the marketplace” when we don’t care. We may be called to raise a family and be unable to be involved in public issues. It doesn’t matter, as long as we care for our family. We may be called to a contemplative monastery and have no outside apostolate. It doesn’t matter, as long as in prayer and community life we are directed outward and care for others. “Going into the marketplace” means caring, overcoming our fears of involvement: If we were given a mission to deal with, let us say, the Yukon, what would you think of a missionary who would hide himself within the cozy framework of his little or big mission house, if he seldom went out, if he established himself in sort of fortress-like walls that spell the words, “leave me alone, I am busy.” Actually, these words spell, above all, fear of involvement with our brethren and with anyone who comes to us. (SLFF #23, 1958) “Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the marketplace. She calls out at the street corners; she delivers her message at the city gates” (Pr 1:20-21). These Scriptures were literally and completely fulfilled when Divine Wisdom, Jesus, cried out in the marketplace in Jerusalem on the last day of the festival, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me” (Jn 7:37-39). So too, we are called to radiate the presence of Jesus in the marketplaces of the world for those who are dying of hunger and thirst; to minister to him in others; to make him known and loved. Whenever, either in ourselves or in others, we fail to care, we leave the Lord alone in his solitude. The prophetic call is to keep him company in the marketplaces of the world. “Choose tonight, whether I will miss you, or they.”
What Do We Do In The Marketplace? Catherine’s Understanding Of Mission All countries are mission territories, that is, our own heart and our own soul. And the mind and heart of every neighbor. That’s the country. The will of God for you, as for all our missions, is contact with people. It is unimportant what form this contact takes. (SLFF #23, 1958) To me, this last sentence is truly astounding! What do we do when we go into the marketplace? It’s not important! Our Mandate allows us the freedom to do anything. The form our activity takes is not the essential thing. For Catherine, the heart of missionary activity is personal contact with people. “Interpersonal relationships in the Christian sense means a loving contact, bring the mystery of God’s presence in you to others.” (Ibid.)
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The Gospel is God’s love for us manifested in Jesus. If you meet people in a loving way, you are a missionary: “The mystery of God’s love in which he asks you to be present where often his presence is not experienced. Yours is an apostolate of bringing the Christ who dwells in you; and you witness to him first of all by your presence.” Throughout her long life Catherine had been involved in almost every form of the apostolate lecturing to audiences, teaching classes, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, finding lodging for the homeless, writing articles and books. In all these activities her emphasis was always on a most personal contact with people. If ever a particular apostolic activity tended to become impersonal, she would rethink it. Oftentimes, because of our fears, we unconsciously (or consciously) seek impersonal ways of helping people. In our modern world we have all experienced being helped by people who don’t even look at us. Catherine’s genius was always to concentrate on the personal factor, so much so that “it is unimportant what form this contact takes.” She wanted people to be able to see the presence of Christ in us. So whatever we may do, we must be careful not to “help people” without this personal touch. Nursing, teaching, handing out clothes, can become impersonal, and thus fail to mediate the loving presence of Christ. Yes, people need clothes. Yes, people need advice. But most of all they need to know God’s personal love for them. Everything we do must be a medium for this communication of the reality of God’s loving presence. When this loving contact takes place, all kinds of miracles can happen. Relationships are established which no amount of arranging and planning could ever have achieved. Love opens peoples’ hearts. And then we are able to enter their hearts not just with clothes or food, but with ourselves. Or rather, the presence of Christ whom we bear is revealed to them. Even more deeply: the loving presence of Christ within us gives birth to their awareness of Christ within them.
Identification with the Other In Staff Letter 117, 1962, Catherine outlined her basic approach to mission. She speaks specifically about our going to foreign missions, in this case, Pakistan; but her teaching can be applied to the whole Mandate: You can’t presume that our western ideas and our white skin are passports to peoples’ hearts. They’re often a handicap, a tremendous handicap to the giving of the glad news that God loved us first and calls us to a life of love with him. Our weapons are peace and charity. Love identifies itself with those it serves. We must not have the attitude of ‘Lady Bountiful,’ coming to these poor people to help them. We walk in humility, with a heart filled with gratitude that we have been permitted to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the world. Catherine counsels us, first of all, to go to the poor humbly. It is a privilege to serve the poor. We should be grateful for the graces that come to us through them, for we need the poor just as much as perhaps more so than they may need us. If we are from affluent societies, helping the poor is our key to the heavenly mansions. “I was sick…Enter into the kingdom…”
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Catherine is always thinking about the life of Christ as a model for our life. So too here. She recalls that the Lord spent most of his earthly sojourn living our ordinary life. What will we do when we go to Pakistan or Africa? We just go and live the same kind of life we have been living in Combermere. We don’t have any special program: our way of life is the program. It is a life of ordinariness, of simplicity, of sharing what we have with others. We will incarnate ourselves and be born like a little child to a new civilization and to a new people who will be our people. Like Ruth of the Bible we will leave our country and our people and incarnate ourselves as much as is spiritually possible into the ways of the new country or new city or a new part of America or Canada. The whole process is gentle, never violent, never coming from one who thinks himself better than the one who teaches. Incarnation is our first step. It’s another name for identification, but a more powerful one, one that can shake the foundation of the world, change it, restore it to the Christ whose incarnation is the motivation of our own. The process is long and tedious and painful; but we must change, in a way, into the Hindu we serve, into the African we serve, inasmuch as love will enable us to do so. Without any compromise with our Christian principles. This is a deep incarnation. It will require prayer and fasting, contemplation, silence, work, dying to self. (Ibid.) Catherine’s attitude is not that everyone in the world already believes in Christ in some “anonymous” way, and therefore it’s unnecessary to speak about Jesus. No. But love, the work of the Holy Spirit, must precede the message, however it is finally communicated. In fact, only love will be able to find a way to communicate the Gospel in a life-giving way. The Lord said to his apostles, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” There weren’t really nations at that time. The word used in the Gospel is closer to “cultures”: “Go and purify all cultures and make disciples of all peoples living in those cultures.” A culture is like the clothes of a particular people their customs, language, songs, art, how they express who they are. To preach the Gospel to them we must clothe ourselves in their skin, get inside their ways of life, rituals, dances, patterns of speaking and thinking. It is presumed that every marketplace needs to be purified by the Word. In Nazareth Jesus was doing precisely that clothing himself with our existence. He had taken our nature upon himself. He lived and walked around in our clothes for thirty years so that when he finally did speak and act he did so in ways the people could understand in their ways. If he had been born in Brooklyn in 1930, he would have spoken and acted differently. In Nazareth he listened to the particular cultural existence he had assumed the language, the customs, the thought patterns. And when he finally spoke, the simplest people could understand him. He spoke about birds and seed and catching men like fish. Anyone who was of the truth was able to hear his voice and understand, and understanding, he converted and live. In our own Nazareth the community of love where we are nourished we get in touch with the marketplace of our own hearts. This is the mystery of kenosis: we empty our hearts of whatever prevents us from identifying with others. Once we have heard the Gospel clearly in our own hearts, we will be able to speak it clearly to others. The kenosis Catherine speaks about leads to the freedom to be able to identify. Then, because of the self-emptying, we are free to
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enter into the marketplaces of the world. If we have learned to live the Gospel in our own Nazareth, we will be able to go and live it anywhere. There is no other way to enter into a people. Strangely enough, it does not consist in the poverty of rats, of mad dogs outside. It doesn’t consist in drinking putrid water. No, it doesn’t consist in any of those things. What happens is a mysterious thing. It’s a mystery worked in the soul by God himself. It’s the mystery of dying to self through others for love of him. It begins with compassion. If you never opened your mouth, never taught a lesson, never did anything but just be there the way you are, you would fulfill the great commandment to love God through your neighbor. It all leads to identification you with God in the manger, [identifying] with his weakness and smallness and poverty and dependence. Of course your stay in the village is fruitful. The things that really matter in the apostolate, however, are not a matter of results. They have no other reason but love. Our vocation is to love and often for years never to see any results; but always remembering that we are tillers of the soil, the ones who till it and make it ready for Christ to sow. He and he alone can give it a harvest.
The Time of Friendship, Word and Sacrament Years ago Jacques Lowe’s book, As If He Had Seen the Invisible spoke very much to Catherine’s heart. He described three main phases of the Lord’s sojourn among us: the time of friendship, his simple, ordinary life in Nazareth; the time of the Word, when he publicly spoke the good news; the time of the Sacrament, the three hours on the Cross. Catherine expands on these three phases and relates them to her own Gospel vision. The time of friendship in Nazareth, the childhood presence, a life of shared working together, a thousand acquaintances, the bonds of kinship which make people say, “Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Joseph?” Have you thought about this, the time of friendship for us in Madonna House? It’s the time of the hidden life, the buried leaven, of silence that accepts cultural differences and difficulties, anything and everything. It is the blending of the missionaries with the people they serve. It’s a time of uselessness, the secrecy of the Father. For he deals with missionaries as he dealt with his Son. He wants to send us into his Bethlehem and his Nazareth. Perhaps that is what I mean exactly when I talk about the chit-chat apostolate. I’m talking about this time of Nazareth and friendship.
The Chit-Chat Apostolate There are many aspects to this life of Nazareth, this time of friendship among a people. But there is one aspect which, for Catherine, is a doorway to all the others, and the most characteristic feature of her approach to mission the chit-chat apostolate: My technique has always been the chit-chat apostolate. I did not believe, by the grace of God and my own background, that we can do anything in a massive way, that is, by dealing with masses of people. I never went in for big meetings and so forth. Fr. Mulvoy in Harlem tried to involve me in such things but I said, “Oh, Father, you do that. I’ll just meet the Negro person by person.”
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Always I tend to put across this person-to-person approach. People are afraid to meet the other person. People are afraid to meet the Negro. People are afraid to meet local people. People are afraid to meet the hobo. People are afraid, and they draw back. People are afraid to talk to a little group of local people. People are afraid because they are afraid of being ridiculed, maybe laughed at. They will not produce great results. God wants that we should love everybody, that we should be free with the freedom of the children of God. God wants that we should be free to talk to everybody. That freedom is achieved by prayer. There is no other way to make us free except by prayer. I foresee that we must go to people person to person. That is the chit-chat apostolate that is going to be the solution of our apostolate. I mean the essence, not the solution. (SLFF #3, 1970) There are several points worth emphasizing here. Being free of one’s fears to approach others, person to person, is somehow the essence of the apostolate considered from the point of view of a missionary “technique.” What changes people most of all is meeting someone who genuinely loves them. To do this we must overcome our fear of loving the other. This can only be achieved by prayer (which we will consider further on). The ordinary approach of much apostolic activity is to immediately set up a program and begin helping people. This can bear certain fruits. But often this can be quite impersonal, the program getting in the way of the communication of personal love. Catherine’s approach is to sit down with people and have a cup of coffee with them and get to know them first. That personal contact is the essence of the apostolate. I have often heard people who were the beneficiaries of Catherine’s apostolic activity remark that what affected them most was not the program but the impact of her personal love on them. They remember the power of her love, and it changed them forever. (Christ changed them, of course, but working through Catherine’s personal love.) And many people who were formed by her twenty, thirty years ago, continue to lead fruitful Gospel lives. They had been set on fire, and they continue to light fires themselves. They were touched by the love of God in Catherine, and they were never quite the same afterwards. It is also in keeping with her Gospel intuition that not only is such an individual approach necessary to radically change a person’s life, but if you just change a few peoples’ lives, you can change the world. She is not interested in approaching people en masse. She is interested in setting hearts aflame one person at a time. It is such people who can then change others. Many of the words of Christ in the New Testament were probably spoken only to his small band of disciples. He spent a great deal of time forming this little group. It seems his plan was that, if a few understood his teaching in some depth, then they could spread it to others, and eventually to the world. And they did. Trotsky said once that with a hundred really dedicated people you could take over any country in the world. Catherine (who often spoke of the dedication of die-hard Communists), I’m sure, also believed that a small, dedicated band of people, totally in love with Christ could accomplish much.
“Stay With Me”: The Poustinia in the Marketplace The best explanation of what Catherine means by “staying with Christ in the marketplace” is to be found in her teaching on the “poustinia in the marketplace.” (I will treat the poustinia further
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on. I can mention here that Catherine, in Combermere, in 1962, introduced the poustinia as a cabin, a place apart for solitude and prayer. “Poustinia” is the Russian word for “desert.”) The poustinia in the marketplace is one of Catherine’s symbols for integration the unity of prayer and action; retaining a wholeness in our hearts while pouring them out in service for others; our union with God while immersed in the pain of the world. It is her way of describing what she means by staying with the Lord in the marketplace. She recounts the birth of her insight concerning the poustinia in the marketplace. It happened during the visitation of one of our houses in 1968. One morning I was listening with my heart to the various reports being given. Portland House was very involved in all kinds of things, good things. They were involved with migrant workers, clothing rooms, study groups, etc. I was suddenly shaken by a thought that had never ever dimly entered my mind. I saw three people that were being called to a poustinia in the marketplace. So, at one point in the meeting, after the reports had been given, there was a heavy silence. With that silence a bombshell fell. Quite unexpectedly, almost without knowing what I was saying, I put the following question to everyone: “What if the Lord needs this house to be a poustinia in the marketplace? This will be a new flowering for our apostolate, to be this presence in the marketplace.” (P, 78) It was a Pentecostal experience. Not one of us doubted it was from the Holy Spirit. It came like a wind, like tongues of fire that, though shaken, our silence had the quality of awe and astonishment and fear; yet our hearts listened. In some strange way we knew that this was the unity. It’s what I wanted to do in the beginning. (Ibid.) Catherine’s original vision of her vocation “what she wanted to do in the beginning” was just to go into the marketplace of the city and live a hidden life of prayer and service to the poor. This Pentecostal experience narrated above recalled her early longings. I say her longings because, as she soon learned, God had other plans for her! The “poustinia in the marketplace” was a new grace for Catherine, revealing unsuspected depths of how to be immersed in service while keeping the spirit of her own Little Mandate. In Combermere she had been led into the depths of the life of Nazareth a perfect community of love, revealing on earth, as much as possible, the life of the Blessed Trinity, the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. This community existence is the preaching of the Gospel, is the essence of mission. The new insight was to now live this community of love in the midst of the marketplace. It will be an intensification of your love for one another and your hearts open to everyone, revealing the face of Christ to them. Be careful, the devil will try above all to destroy your love for one another. The only thing that can destroy us is the lack of love. (Ibid.) Speaking of this Portland experience years later, she wrote: It seemed that I had found some kind of connection between solitude and crowds, between fasting and feeding others. In a blinding instant, in a flash, it all came together. It was only a beginning. It was as if I grasped the edge of his garment. I sensed that if I could hold onto it, he would show himself in a strange dispossession. At that moment I realized that the memories that I outlined above
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[that is, about her original vocation of hiddenness] were footsteps in the sands of time that the Lord let me take, to lead myself and all of you to the poustinia. It’s the answer of God to us. Something vitally important. (SLFF #3, 1970) It is because of this new Portland grace that the last houses Catherine established before she died were called listening houses, of which Portland was the first. In the later years of her life she said that “the chit-chat apostolate now is listening,” which I think is very significant. Catherine was always attuned to the needs of others. At one time we used to knock on doors. Now we are present in the marketplace, living the life of Nazareth, and people come and knock on our doors. It’s the same person-to-person contact. The new but not exclusive emphasis was on tending the wound of loneliness in the modern cities. We live our community life with a door always open to those who need a listening heart. God is at work in everyone. What allows the light of his presence to shine in hearts is the power of love. “The form of the apostolate doesn’t matter.” What matters is love. This is not a teaching of indifference, that it doesn’t matter if people believe in Christ or not. Catherine believed that Christ was the Savior of the world, and that it was the Father’s plan for all to come to believe in him. But how are people to become aware of the light of Christ shining within them? Through love, Where love is, God is. Through kenosis we come to befriend the poor man within, which each one of us is. Then we are free enough from self to identify with the other. Identification leads to an openness on the part of the other. And then, when the heart has opened, Love can enter. To many people viewing the latter part of Catherine’s life from outside the community, from outside of Combermere, and without knowing the new phases of her interior journey which happened there, it often seems that she abandoned the marketplace and opted for a “counterculture life-style in the country.” It is an understandable evaluation but quite superficial. During the last 30 years of her life Catherine was led into the depths of her vocation and vision. She had spent many years in fighting for racial and social justice. But more and more she intuited that the greatest need of our post-Christian era was an authentic Catholic/Christian restoration of the whole of culture. She realized that not only was the Gospel absent from racial or social issues; it was disappearing from social life. Combermere is a tiny seed containing a vision for the restoration of every aspect of human existence. In one sense there was a withdrawal from former types of apostolate, but only so that God could lead Catherine into planting firmly the community of love, which then would become the source of all the apostolates of the future. God wanted to teach Catherine, and us through her, that the community of love is the primary apostolate; everything else is secondary. It will be the task of her spiritual children to fashion new forms of the apostolate, based on, and flowing out of, the incredible depths of her own journey inward. No apostolate is foreign to us, but it must flow from the house of love. In a sense, she left us on the brink of this enterprise, poised and listening to the modern world, clothed for the journey in the risen Christ. Future forms of “going into the marketplace” are as yet hidden in the Hearts of Jesus and our Lady of Combermere.
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CHAPTER TWO Pray Catherine always tried to live the gospel as literally as possible. She read there: “He told them a parable about the necessity of praying always, and of not giving up” (Lk 18, 1). And St. Paul instructed his disciples to “pray without ceasing” (1 Th 5, 17). Like the Russian seeker in The Way of a Pilgrim, Catherine too is a Russian pilgrim of the Absolute searching for an understanding of this command of the Lord “pray always.” Catherine, through the grace of God, really did achieve the magnificent state of “praying always,” and her total teaching on the Christian life is capable of leading others to this goal also. The injunction to pray occurs three times in the Mandate. Because it first appears in relation to going into the marketplace. I will consider prayer here in a more active sense: to obtain strength to stay with Christ in the turmoil of the marketplace. Then, in the last line, I will treat prayer in the more contemplative sense of resting in the Beloved wherever we are. In discussing this last line I will present the symbols Catherine uses for the integrated state of action and contemplation. As has been remarked, perhaps one way of envisioning the goal of the Mandate is to always be prayerfully resting in the Beloved in the midst of the marketplace where Christ is both in anguish and gloriously risen. I will present in this chapter her general teaching on prayer, and something of her own prayer journey. (It is always important to remember, when reflecting on Catherine’s teachings, that she herself traveled a very long road to achieve union with her Beloved.) Prayer is the conscious journey into God’s Heart through a dialogue of love with him: “How can you define prayer except by saying that it is love? It is love expressed in speech, and love expressed in silence. To put it another way, prayer is the meeting of two loves: the love of God and our love. That’s all there is to prayer.” (SMS, 8)
A New Breed of Contemplative What follows is one of Catherine’s best descriptions of what it means to pray in the marketplace, and the goal she desires for all her spiritual children: I have been thinking about the spirit of our Institute as a whole. And one thought lingers with me that I want to share with you. That our apostolate, factually one of the most active that can be imagined by men, is destined by God, I think, to be deeply contemplative. For how in heaven’s name will we be able to face up for a lifetime that is broken into small particles of days that will bring us doubts, temptations and fears! I repeat: How in heaven’s name will we stand up to that grind of those grains of sand that are such days, unless we become contemplatives? Unless we enter the immense silence of God and His soothing tranquility; unless we repose, rest on his breast, listening to no other sounds than the heartbeats of God that will reveal to us, in part at least, and in proportion to the depth of our silence and recollection, his love for us.
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Yes, we are a new breed of contemplatives, whose monasteries and convents are busy streets of new pagan cities, noisy thoroughfares of immense metropolises that sing the hymns of the flesh, the world and the devil; of endless rural roads that would be God’s if men who hate him or do not know him did not travel on them! Yes, we are a new breed of contemplatives, whose prayer is accompanied by the noise of swishing cars and clanking bells, and tramping feet. We are a new breed of contemplatives, whose bells are knocks at old dilapidated doors. Yes, we are a new breed of contemplatives who must learn repose, rest, on the breast of God, listening to the perfect music of his heartbeats whilst we go about his business and that of his Father, moving amongst one of the most broken-down, discordant, uneven, out-of-pitch music that the world ever heard. (SL #9, 1957)
The Necessity of Prayer We cannot journey into the Lonely Christ, nor become aware of our being in the risen Christ, without prayer. And all the fears we must overcome to enter God’s Heart, our Lady’s Heart, our own heart, and the hearts of others, cannot be accomplished without prayer. Just as in human friendship we overcome our isolation and distance with one another through conversation and deeper personal knowledge of the other, so it is with the Lord. The basic problem of humanity is our disorientation, our distance in friendship, from the Lord of life who made us and loves us. All fears the fear of God, of death, of ourselves, of others can only be radically overcome through the intimacy of prayer. Prayer is the great key to union with God and freedom from fear. How are we going to strip ourselves? Before God we are both resplendent, because we are created in his image and have his divine life, but at the same time we are paupers that have nothing of our own. So the answer is simple and very concrete: We must become contemplatives, that is to say, we must pray constantly, without ceasing. (SL 1 16, 1962) I see Christians the world over battling with themselves, with hope and with despair. I see them almost giving up and retreating. At these moments, I am not ashamed to say that I kneel down, or even prostrate myself flat on the floor, for I know that against this North Wind there is only one remedy, PRAYER. (R, April, 1966) And to seminarians she writes: Prayer is your life. There you will find strength, faith, and fortitude, not only to persevere, but to become an alter Christus, which you were always meant to be. Prayer will make you a giant, running on the way to God. Do not neglect it. Do not allow even the best and holiest of works of mercy to become for you the heresy of good works, or to take you away from prayer. (DS, 6-69) There is only one way to lead men to God and that is to teach them prayer, and to pray for them. So the real answer to all our modern problems, whatever they may be, are two hands like Moses standing on the mountain of faith, animated by love, and sustained by hope. There is no other answer. If this happens, if this happens to one person, this grace, this charism to stand up there with uplifted hands like Moses, then the miracle of action will take place. It
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seems so strange that the prostration of prayer, or the dance of prayer, or the rock-stillness of prayer, or whatever form prayer takes, floods the world with action. Because he who turns his face to God in prayer, he who has been led to the summit to lift his hands and be still, seems also to be in the eye of the hurricane, the eye of action. This, then, is the ultimate being of a Christian. We all must lead one another to the top of the mountain to pray, because prayer is dynamic, and prayer is holy. It is a contact with God; it is a union with him. When we do this, then indeed we have accepted his saying, we have fulfilled his invitation! Now we can act! (Unpub.Talk)
Prayer Is Simple For Catherine, first of all, prayer is simple, not complicated: Prayer is so very simple. Many people think it is something esoteric, as if you could learn to pray only after having studied theology and spirituality and all the different methodologies of prayer from St. Teresa of Avila to transcendental meditation! I think if Christ had wanted to talk to Ph. D’s he would have found their equivalent in the society of his day. He didn’t. He talked to Peter and John. He talked to illiterate people who didn’t know how to read or write, and they absorbed his voice and understood his words because he spoke so simply. If you want to know what prayer is, listen to a child of two or three. (SS, 7)
Prayer a “Risky Business” One of the marks of the authenticity of Catherine’s spirituality is her realism about the cross. Many people today confuse prayer with meditation exercises whereby they seek to achieve peace or a state of mindlessness: In Zen Buddhism, one is suppose to sit in the lotus position and meditate until nothing at all is left in the mind: Forget about yesterday, today and tomorrow, and concentrate on the present moment. But, it seems to me, Christianity has a better idea. For us, contemplation is the contemplation of a Person. (SS, 11-12) This comment by Catherine is of one piece with her absolutely incarnational spirituality. Influenced by Buddhist and Hindu approaches to meditation, there is a widespread notion today that the more perfect goal of prayer is not thinking or speaking to anyone. “Meditation” has come to mean achieving peace by focusing on a beautiful landscape, or by gazing into the starry heavens, or by clearing the mind of any thought whatsoever. For Catherine, prayer is speaking with the Beloved. The traditional definition of prayer as being “conversation with God” is how Catherine understood it. It is nothing complicated, nothing new, nothing requiring seminars to learn! But the Scriptures and the lives of the saints and also Catherine’s life reveal that speaking with God, simple as it may be, is a very demanding kind of conversation. He is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. We must be ready to hear and obey what he asks of us. He seeks to draw us beyond all our fears, and clasp us to his Heart. We must literally “fall” in love with God, fall into Love, fall without fear into his arms and allow his heartbeats to overpower us.
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In many books one has the impression that we should all learn to pray because prayer is so interesting and so thrilling, that is the discovery of a new world where one meets God and finds the way to spiritual life. That is true, but the implications of prayer are more far-reaching than that. Prayer is an adventure, but it is a dangerous one. We cannot enter into it without risk. As St. Paul says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” At Madonna House, our experience with the poustinia, and with the million and one questions people ask, has shown us that we can’t speak of prayer as if it were some new fad everyone should try. Prayer must lead us to total surrender, or it will lead us nowhere except back to ourselves. It is this surrender that we fear so much, as this is why prayer is such a fearsome and dangerous thing. This is why following Christ is indeed a risky business. He calls us to enter a revolution not like the fight for a cause, but one that is infinitely more powerful. This revolution takes place inside of us, for heaven is taken by violence to oneself. Prayer is part of this adventure. Do not fool yourself: Once you encounter God, you will no longer be the same person you were before. (SS, 17-18)
Falling In Love with God The great key to prayer is love to love God by doing his will, and to love others through service. Prayer will deepen as our love deepens. It is by love that we penetrate into God’s heart; and prayer will deepen our love for others. Prayer will come when we fall in love with God. The way to fall in love with God is on our knees. Everything in us resists this falling in love. Who wants to fall in love with the Crucified One? But if we reach this point, prayer will spring like a song from our heart. Love will uphold it. When we fall in love with God we will receive the gift of compassion and tenderness. With these gifts, we will really begin to be people of the towel and the water, washing the feet of everyone, because now we know that everyone is Christ and Christ is in everyone. (SS 13) But to love someone, I must know him. To know him I must meet him. Then I will recognize him in others. How do I get to know Him, so that I can love Him and continue to love him in my brothers, and to love my brothers because I love Him? I know Him in prayer, prayer of all types. (R, Dec., 1968)
Catherine’s Own Prayer Journey: “Mary’s Garments Are Too Big” Because Catherine speaks of prayer in many symbolic and poetic ways, we need to look briefly at her own journey to the state of praying always, which I believe she had achieved. We need to distinguish at least two phases of her long life of prayer. We know from her diaries and correspondence that, in her early years, she traveled the traditional road of prayer daily Mass, prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, meditation time. In the latter part of her life she had achieved a true integration of prayer and life, the state of always resting in the arms of her Beloved while engaged in serving him in others. It was in this later stage of her life that she could say:
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When I think of prayer, the sentence that comes to me is this: “Hold the hand of the Lord, and talk to him any time you wish.” There is not a time to pray and a time not to pray. To pray is to pray always. You hold the hand of God. Sometimes you talk to him and sometimes you don’t, but you are with him all the time. That is what our basic approach to prayer must be. With so many people to pray for, long prayers are not necessary. That is why I simply say, “Lord, take care of so-and-so.” I wish I could take each one of you by the hand and say, “Come with me. Let’s all hold the hand of our Lord and pray in this simple fashion.” Most of us are not used to praying as life flows along. We are used to spending so many hours in prayer. We are used to “taking time” for prayer, when, in truth, we should be praying all the time. Prayer never stops. It is such a beautiful thing to hold God’s hand and to pray always. (SS, 21, 23) But Catherine did not begin her prayer walk in this integrated way. Around 1940, Father Paul Furfey, her spiritual director, began to call her to deeper prayer contemplation even. Catherine struggled with this: No, Father, I still think you are mistaken. I still think God made me a Martha. I still think Mary’s garments are way too big for me. What makes you think that I, so sinful and so weak, might even attempt the first steps on this royal road of sanctity…I haven’t even an ounce of the contemplative in me, as I see it. (FF, 54,57,58) But she continues to pray about it, and writes, not too long afterwards: Having faced this frightening picture [leadership in the Friendship House Movement]…I have come to the next point. If this is so that I must assume leadership then the answer is clear: I must do it. In order to do it well, I must throw myself on God more and more. The first thought that comes to me therefore is PRAYER, and ever more prayer. I do not mean only oral ones. No, mental prayer, meditation, contemplation even. Yes, Father, imagine: I who always was afraid of this word, I am willing now to embrace it if it is God’s will. (Of course I realize that it is he who makes the first move; I only wait.) And especially the cultivation of God’s presence through the day by short ejaculations and the lifting of my heart to him. I wait for your approval to begin this. Also, I think if you agree, I shall take a full hour in the afternoon before the Blessed Sacrament; heretofore it has been 30-45 minutes. The way I see it, PRAYER, then, or should I say now, becomes more and more imperative. (FL,29) A couple of years later she is making progress in prayer: Also a strange newness in praying and relationship to God…the prayer of petition seems unnecessary…nor is there any desire or inclination whatsoever to vocal prayer; nor even what I would have called, a few months ago, mental prayer. (FL, May 1, 1943) Deeper and deeper my thoughts probe into my own soul (all of this happens in the concentrated time of meditation and the silent time of contemplation…) If it were not for your insistence, I would never have gone in for these strange silent minutes…halfhours and now almost hours of “just sitting there and looking at
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God…and letting him look at me.” Are the deep thoughts that come to me his, or are they mine? (FL, April, 1944) Father Furfey had challenged her to enter upon the road of contemplation. She was beginning to see more clearly that a contemplative presence to God was the heart of all activity: “What perverse trait is it in us that makes us look on Martha’s work as important and on Mary’s work as incidental? Yet, we all do make that mistake constantly. We think we are doing God’s will when we are busy about many things. That’s not the right way.” (FL, 1941)
Praying and Sharing Christ’s Pain We recall here Catherine’s great theme of comforting Christ Who is in pain in the other in the marketplace. In the beautiful words of St. Augustine: Christ’s whole Body groans in pain. Until the end of the world when pain will pass away, this Man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has a part in that cry of the whole Body. In your day you cried out, and then your days passed away; another took your place and cried out in his day. You here, he there, and another there. The Body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one Man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry out are always his members. The groaning of the Man propels Catherine into the marketplace. The goal is “to listen to the perfect music of his heartbeats” even as we go about his business. Stop…look…listen, and behold the pain of Christ! A searing metal that should set your heart afire so that you might both share His pain and become a flame that lights and warms the world! Well may you ask at this point: How do I propose you should do this, you who are walking in that part of His vineyard that he has allotted you, and who are assuaging His pain daily in hundreds of people? And my answer comes to you simple and direct: LOVE MORE, and to love more, PRAY MORE. Pray not only the prayers of the Mass, the Hours, the rosary, spiritual reading, which, of course, are essential, super-essential, the foundation of all prayer. But pray the prayer of the presence of God. Ask those who direct your soul to teach you. (SL 8, 1956) Let us look briefly at the different kinds of prayer Catherine herself practiced and taught to others.
“All Can Be Endured Between Two Masses” One day Dom Virgil Michel, O.S.B., who was one of the pioneers in the modern liturgical movement in America, visited Friendship House in Toronto. The above phrase about living between two Masses comes from him, and it spoke powerfully to Catherine’s heart: All things can be endured and all things become possible between two Masses: the Mass of yesterday and the Mass of tomorrow. I need to be able to sustain one day of my life. I need that Food if I am to live his commandments. I need him daily because I am a sinner and weak. (“Daily Mass” in conquest, Winter, 1969-1970, p. 15) Beautiful and simple is our prayer life that begins our day with Mass…the Eucharist. What is there in heaven or earth that can keep us from becoming
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contemplatives? For all lovers are contemplating the object of their love always and everywhere. So can we, in utter childlikeness and simplicity. To love is to contemplate. (SL #11, 1957) If I stressed anything in my life it has always been the fact that liturgy especially the Mass is the very center of our life. You’ve got to implore God to help you…Steep yourself in the Mass. Learn about it. Pray about it. For unless you do, your life in Madonna House will have no deep roots, no deep spiritual roots, and it might be one reason why your total surrender is being delayed so long. (SL #118, 1962) If any group of people need the Mass, we lay apostles of the marketplace do. We could not exist without it, nor persevere in our new, strange, and seemingly radical vocation of organized Catholic action. We could not even begin to try to practice the counsels of perfection, stability, and dedication…unless we daily came to the Food of the Poor Man…Only in him, with him, and through him could we achieve our goal. (Unpub. Man.) It is so simple. You have to pray to endure the monotony of those gray days. You have to pray. You have to pray without ceasing. Pray the Mass, of course. Always it is the center, the heart, the essence of our faith. It is the fire where you plunge to become its spark. It is your rendezvous with God. It is the only spot where you and Christ become one in the reality of faith and life. It is the meat that is going to keep you on the treadmill of those gray days, chained to the duty of the moment, chained without chains for love is not a chain. (SL #140, 1956)
“Joining With Our Big Brothers and Sisters in Religion”: The Liturgy of the Hours Dom Virgil, in the early days of Friendship House in Toronto, also introduced Catherine to the canonical hours of Prime and Compline. She was thrilled to know that the laity also could pray these hours of the Divine Office. Ever afterwards she continued to incorporate several of the Hours into the daily schedule of her spiritual family. A humorous anecdote from the early Combermere days is recalled by Catherine: If Father Dwyer the Pastor were on time, we said Prime after Mass. If he were delayed, we said it before Mass. Altar boys spread the story that when Father Dwyer was late we said the Mass for him in the pews. If he were on time, we said Mass in the pews after he left. We killed that story, but it took us quite a little time! (HA, 509) Many lay people now pray the Liturgy of the Hours. It is a wonderful way to be united daily with the whole Church as it prays and celebrates the mysteries of Christ. It is still an integral part of the Madonna House way of life.
“Moments Before His Face”: Meditation “You are going to pray the prayer of meditation, in which your feet are going to run to and fro, and explore the life of him whom your heart loves, the mind of him whose will you desire to do with such a flaming desire because you are his.” (SL #140, 1956)
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“An oasis in the heat of our days are the moments spent before his Face and his tabernacle.” (SL #11, 1957) As mentioned above, Catherine, in the early part of her pilgrimage, often spent an hour before the Blessed Sacrament each day.
The “Opus Dei” Of the Lay Apostle But we speak of God and contemplation of him, and it might seem to us that after Mass that we haven’t thought of him for a single moment, until duty brought us back to chapel. This is where our work begins, the real “Opus Dei” of a lay apostle: we must begin to work on ourselves to bring ourselves back to the contemplation of God. There are many ways and means to help his travail of the soul. Amongst them, if at all possible, half an hour before the Blessed Sacrament in silent prayer during each 24 hours of our lives. (SL #116, 1962) An interesting expression here is the “Opus Dei” of the lay apostle. “Opus Dei,” the “work of God,” is the traditional monastic phrase for praying the Divine Office in common. In the Rule of St. Benedict it is considered the main work of the monk: “Let nothing be preferred to the work of God.” Catherine says that the lay person’s constant struggle to be mindful of the presence of the Beloved in the marketplace is his or her “Opus Dei.” You might say that to be able to accomplish this “work of God” perfectly is also what she means by constant prayer. “Opus Dei” is another of her symbols for praying always.
The Name Of Jesus “And then there is the prayer of the heart which repeats the name of Jesus constantly. (SL #116, 1962) Many in the West are becoming more and more familiar with the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy one me, a sinner.” This prayer is from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and it is the basis for a whole school of spirituality. Coming from Russia, Catherine was familiar with this prayer. In Catherine’s diaries we see that she had the practice of choosing a particular ejaculation, or short prayer, to say each the day. Ninety percent of the time her choice was simply the name of Jesus. We presume, then, that she spoke his name thousands of times as she went about doing the will of her Beloved. It may be true to say that, for Catherine, the constant repeating of the name of Jesus, or “Jesus I love you,” was her way of achieving and maintaining the goal of constant prayer, of constant awareness of the Beloved in the midst of service. What better way to achieve this awareness than using the Beloved’s name! The Eastern tradition teaches that one of the purposes of this prayer is to achieve an attentiveness to everything and everyone around you, noticing what needs to be done, the needs of the neighbor. This fruit of the Jesus Prayer would have fit in well with Catherine’s desires for the marketplace. When you are in love, only one person matters to you, and that is your beloved. The others are just a crowd of people. When our beloved is God, we must recognize that he is the King, and we must surrender to him. The Jesus Prayer might be enough for us, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Why would it be enough? Because it brings Jesus into your life.
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The repetition of the holy Name brings the presence of the Person, for in the Hebrew tradition, the name of the person is the person. When I invoke the name of Jesus, I myself cease to exist. I am drawn into his name, immersed into his name, immersed in him. Once you’ve called on the name of Jesus, his name will remain with you because you desire it to be there too; and the two desires merge into one. (SS, 99-100) Catherine’s book Poustinia is already a modern spiritual classic, having been translated into half a dozen languages, and most recently into Japanese. Poustinia is the Russian word for “desert.” One of the main thrusts of the book is a call to go apart into some room or cabin and spend time alone with the Lord. As mentioned above, Catherine in her early life saw herself more as a Martha than as a Mary. But the Lord needed to teach her also the lessons of solitude: “With all this comes only one thing that disturbs me: a craving for solitude. Though deep down I am alone with my God in the midst of turmoil around me, I dream of physically being alone…Perhaps I must watch out here, for it might hurt this vocation of mine, which is active.” (FL, 1941) What can help modern man find the answers to his own mystery and the mystery of him in whose image he is created…is silence, solitude in a word, the desert. We need silence…Yes, such silence is holy, a prayer beyond all prayers, leading to the final prayer of the constant presence of God, to the heights of contemplation. (P, 20-21) But broadly speaking, it amounted to a very simple affair. It amounted to seeking the Kingdom of God first within our souls; and then, when the noise outside becomes unbearable, and tension mounts, we should not be afraid to drop everything and go to the poustinia for 24, 36, or 48 hours. For we would easily do that retire from action if we had the flu or a temperature. How much more so for God? This was not an easy hurdle for members of this culture. For thousands of emotions reared themselves in our conversations, amongst them, guilt of not working. We agreed that this guilt must be slain at its roots by every possible means, natural and supernatural. So the essence is to be before God all the time. And through the growth of love of God in man’s soul, to develop an intuition as to when and how to drop everything that seems important, to regain a peace that is being lost. (LDM, Sept. 1965, #196) I saw us going ALONE into our Poustinias, and I saw ourselves…trying to be totally dispossessed. And in that solitude of a room or a cabin, I suddenly saw the brotherhood of men under the Fatherhood of God take place in our own souls. The Poustinia for me, at that moment, opened part of its secret! This was it: This life of prayer, solitude, fasting, led to true dispossession, and therefore to true identification! Identification with whom and with what? WITH CHRIST! If one gets identified with Christ, that means one gets identified with all men, and a strange mystery of God’s dealing with man, and man’s dealing with God, stood partly revealed before me at the moment during this July 1972. I admit that it rocked me. It was almost a traumatic experience. I seemed to have found some kind of a connection between solitude and crowns, between fasting
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and feeding others, between penance and joy. In a blinding instant and a flash it all came together. It was if I grasped the edge of his garment…(SLFF 11, 1972) The “edge of His garment” was an insight into the relatedness of solitude to the marketplace. Solitude can help one become more dispossessed of the self, more identified with Christ, and therefore more concerned about and identified with everyone. We will see later that “Poustinia of the heart” is her symbolic phrase for living in the cell of your heart in the midst of the actual marketplace.
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CHAPTER THREE Fast The mandate’s prophetic call to fast occurs in the context of going into the marketplace and staying with the Lord. Although fasting has many dimensions, my focus will be to consider fasting as a preparation for going into, and staying in, the marketplace. As is well known, the word “fasting” in the Scriptures has other meanings. Fasting in reference to injustice finds its classic expression in Isaiah 58:5-7: “Is that what you call fasting…Is this not the sort of fast that pleases me…to break the unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, to share your break with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor.” It would be difficult to express more clearly the apostolate of the marketplace. Catherine, too, often used the word “fast” in this symbolic sense. But here I will treat fasting in its most literal sense as fasting from food. As such it is one of the spiritual weapons necessary in order to ender the depth of the marketplace. It is extremely important to insist, however, that, for Catherine, as for the prophet, one of the primary purposes of fasting from food is the emptying of the false self so that we may be more free to minister to Christ in the poor. All our ascetical practices have love for their goal: “Abba Theonas said, ‘We do not practice patience and love in order to fast, but we fast that we may succeed in attaining love and purity of heart’” (Cassian). The purpose of all ascetical practices is something positive a purity of the spirit, a festival of the heart. Food is not evil. One of the metaphors for heaven is the eternal banquet of the Lamb that will last forever. Having been exalted with Christ (huphsos) we are already seated with him at the heavenly table. But because our hearts are not yet pure, therefore must we fast. Fasting from food not yet pure, therefore must we fast. Fasting from food during our earthly pilgrimage is not an optional practice. The Lord said, “When you fast” (Mt 6:16), not “if you fast.
God’s Word as Our Food In the wilderness the Lord quoted to Satan the words of Dt 8:3: “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God’s will, God’s law, God’s word—in some very deep and real sense was meant to be our food, as when Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of My Father. In the Garden of Eden story the act of disobedience doing our own will is described in terms of reaching out for forbidden food. Instead of believing that God’s will was our life, we believed the lie that we could have even more life by following our own desires. The most important purpose and effect of fasting, then, is to restore our freedom to hear the Word of God and experience this Word as our most substantial food. One particular day, as I waited in a state of anticipation for Communion, I suddenly said to myself, “Catherine, every day you feed yourself with the Word! The Word can be eaten!” It is as if the footsteps that Adam and Eve heard in the twilight move toward me, and I am absorbed by God, absorbed by the Word. We read in the Scriptures, “In the beginning was the Word.” All that God the Father created he created through
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the Word. It staggers my imagination to think that the Word actually becomes one with me in this way, and I wish It. It becomes part of me. Depending on how completely I absorb It, I reflect It visibly, Its rays emanating from me. I eat the Word with a love and a passion that have no equal. Now the Word fills me to overflowing. Now you see its reflection in me. I become one with the Word. I eat so much so that I cease to exist. The Word absorbs me in this way because I am willing, because I say to God, “Let me dissolve before my death. Let me be filled with you, so that every step I take is your step, and every gesture I make is your gesture.” This is beyond abandonment, beyond kenosis, beyond anything I can describe. It is like the void in which one meets God. I have surrendered to the Word. I have eaten it. I am filled. Now the Word preaches through me. (SS, 94-95) In the Book of Exodus, Moses prepared to receive the Commandments by fasting: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Put these words in writing, for they are the terms of the covenant I am making with you and with Israel.’ He stayed there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, eating and drinking nothing. He inscribed on the tablets the words of the Covenant” (34:27-28) And Christ’s own sojourn of forty days in the wilderness is meant to recall this same extraordinary giving of the Word to mankind, only now the Lord’s fasting is a preparation for the new and final Word of God to be definitively given to the world in his own Person. Fasting, then, empties our heart so that we may be filled with the Word of God; increases our spiritual hunger so that our appetite for the Word is insatiable. Feeding upon the Word, we are changed and become, as it were, a walking Gospel of the Word to others. “Now the Word preaches through me,” as Catherine expressed it. And the Word of God tells us mostly to care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Fasting opens us to hear the Lord crying out in the needs of the poor. “Listen to the Spirit,” listen to God’s voice, is a line of the Mandate. The Holy Spirit of Jesus will “bring to our minds everything that the Lord has said to us.” Fasting is one of the means to help us listen more completely to the inspirations of the Spirit, especially as we journey through the wilderness of the marketplace. Huphsos we have been exalted with him. This means that the total victory of Christ in the wilderness is within us. In our struggles with fasting and temptation we should believe ever more strongly that Christ has already conquered all the temptations of the body. Huphsos means that the victory over our bodily struggles has already been achieved. In general, this is what Catherine means by fasting: “To fast means both to subdue and to alert our senses. They have to be subdued because they distract us too much from the one thing necessary, namely, turning our focus to God and to God alone. Perhaps ‘subdue’ isn’t the most apt word. Perhaps ‘direct’ would be better. Fasting directs our whole person towards the Lord” (Restoration).
Fasting As Strength for the Marketplace “I could only do this enter the marketplace if I prayed and fasted.” (Tape on HMCB) The marketplace is first of all the human heart itself. One day when the disciples were unsuccessfully trying to cast our demons from this marketplace, they asked the Lord why they
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were unable to do so. He said that certain kinds of demons can only be cast out “by prayer and fasting.” These powerful weapons must be brought to bear on the demons within and without. It is a spiritual battle. The Lord emerged from his desert of prayer and fasting “in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Lk 4:4). Fasting helps to release within us this same power of the Spirit of Jesus for exorcising the demons of the marketplace. “ ‘Lord, it’s impossible [being in the marketplace].’ Okay, that’s the moment when you have to go and pray and fast. For it’s impossible for man to do that. What else can you do but pray and fast so as to be armed with the strength of the Lord.” (CLM) Now comes the next paragraph, “Go into the marketplace…” Yes, these days, what my father used to say really must take place: “If you want to reach God you must lift the two arms of fasting and prayer.” In our days when everybody is catering to the appetites of the flesh; in our days when the senses rule as if they were God, it is time that we should fast as well as pray. The Lord fasted quite a bit, and we should follow in his footsteps. He said to his apostles when they complained that they couldn’t cast the devil out from someone, “This kind can be cast out only by prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:28). We who are of one mind and heart, who have held hands to walk in the darkness of this world to restore it, we must continue to do so in the marketplace, and stay in the marketplace and fast and pray. (Sob 95-96) Stand still, don’t run away! Stand still! Such is what the writers in Eastern spirituality offer as a remedy against the temptations of the devil. They also recommend more fasting… (P 112-13) We have several aspects of Catherine’s teaching here. The two arms of prayer and fasting, refer to Moses praying on the mountain. It is the classic example of the power of prayer and fasting for the battle in the marketplace: “As long as Moses kept his arms raised Israel had the advantage; when he let his arms fall, the advantage went to Amalek” (Ex 17:11) In many of the Church’s documents on the importance of the contemplative life, she uses this image of Moses in testimony of her belief that prayer and fasting can help turn the tide of the spiritual warfare on the plains. Catherine often reminded us that the battle was spiritual love against hate, light against darkness. Such battles ultimately can only be fought with spiritual weapons. Prayer and fasting bring the spiritual power of God to bear in the marketplace: For what are we fighting against? We are fighting against powers and principalities. And these can only be exorcised by love in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. These powers thrive in darkness; evil lurks in darkness; darkness covers up so many sins. It is so easy to doubt, to sow discord, to plant anger against each other in the darkness. What will dispel darkness? One thing: love. (SMH, 1956) “Fasting is a remedy against the temptations of the devil,” said Catherine. The principal temptation of the devil is pride. “My strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9),” said the risen Lord to St. Paul. The biblical expression for fasting means “to humble one’s soul.” I humbled my soul with fasting” (Ps 35:13). Fasting fosters a state of “experienced weakness,” which then increases our dependence on God’s strength. True fasting can lead to humility.
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Our body and its well-being is the closest thing to us! When we experience bodily weakness (and how often sickness, if accepted in the right spirit, can be a grace), we are driven to call upon God for aid. Fasting helps to undermine our false self-sufficiency. When fasting is practiced in the true spirit of faith, the power of God is released in us and sustains us. We then begin to live more truly by grace and not by mere will power or other false securities. In the Scriptures as in the Mandate, prayer and fasting are intimately linked together. Fasting, because it depends our experience of weakness and dependency, intensifies our prayer. “There beside the river Ahava, I proclaimed a fast: we were to humble ourselves before our God and pray to him for a successful journey…So we fasted, pleading with our God for his favor, and he answered our prayers” (Ezr 8:21, 23). “In each of the churches they appointed elders, and with prayer and fasting they commended them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe” (Ac 14:22-23). Prayer is most powerful when accompanied by fasting.
Fasting As a Sign of Waiting and Mourning Often in the Scriptures people fast when they wish to express their grief. “Then David took hold of his garments and tore them, and all the men with him did the same. They mourned and wept and fasted until the evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword” (2 S 1:11-12). “Jesus said to them, ‘Can you expect the bridegroom’s friends to fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, there can be no fasting. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and on that day they will fast’” (Mk 2:19-20). This latter text had a great significance for the origin of the Lenten fast. As the early Christians began more elaborate preparations for celebrating the Easter mysteries waiting, as they believed, for the imminent coming of the Lord they recalled that Jesus had said his disciples would fast when he was taken from them. Fasting was a means of reminding themselves that the Bridegroom was absent. It increased their longing for his coming. As we have frequently noted, Catherine had a profound mystical intuition that the Lord continues to suffer in his Mystical Body. Her passion was to console him. Fasting, then, also takes on a certain state of commiseration with the Lord in his own mourning over the sins of the world. The Lord is “absent” from the lives of so many people. How can we fully rejoice in this life when so many still do not know and love the Lord? The Lord has an infinite longing to be known and loved by all his people. Through fasting we enter more deeply into the Lord’s desire for the glory of his Father and the coming of the kingdom. This longing, always suffused with the glory of God, is, to use a beautiful phrase from the Eastern Church, a “bright sadness,” but a sadness nonetheless. Christ is the One who experiences most of all the confusion and sacrilege of the marketplace. Through fasting we can identify with those sufferings. Christ, because he is always profoundly and completely joined to humanity, (and therefore is always “in the marketplace”), draws us also into his passionate concern. Fasting this felt hunger keeps alive in our hearts a compassion for the sufferings of the Lord in the marketplace.
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Identification with the Poor We saw above, in our treatment of the marketplace, that we must empty ourselves as the Lord emptied himself, clothe ourselves in the skin and culture of others as he did, so as to be free enough to identify with those to whom we are sent. Just as fasting allows us to better hear the word of God, and directs our whole person towards the Lord, so it also allows us to listen to God Who is always at work in others. “This is a deep incarnation, and it will require much prayer, fasting, meditation, contemplation, and silence to achieve, as well as work and dying to self” (SL #117, 1962). Thousands of people die every day because of lack of food. (I think a child dies every minute from malnutrition.) When we are hungry, we are more in touch with the hungry. We are reminded that Christ is hungry in the poor, and that we shall be judged on how we responded to their needs. Bodily hunger increases our compassion and concern for the materially hungry. Through fasting we can also grow in compassion for the “spiritually poor,” namely, those responsible for much of the world’s poverty. Fasting should remind us to pray for those who are in great spiritual danger because, by their policies and actions, they deprive the poor of their food or their land or their just wages. I pray more for those responsible for injustice than for the poor themselves. The poor are in the hands of God. I tremble at the spiritual state of those depriving the poor of food. The cries of the poor certainly reach the ear of the God of all mercy and consolation. The prayers of the unconcerned rich are a stench in the nostrils of God.
Fasting As Atonement “It is to be remembered that you are going to the desert for the following reasons: to fast…so that you might give him Christ, to a world that is so hungry for him…to atone for your sins and those of others.” (P 54-55) “The pilgrim’s fasting is not only for himself. As all gifts of God, it is for others, to atone for all those who give in to all kinds of excesses, by drinking, smoking, eating. Yes, he understands now very clearly his role in helping Christ.” (St 75) “Atonement,” is a foreign concept for many in the modern world. It simply means “at-onement.” It means that we really are one body in the Lord. Just as in our physical body blood can rush from a healthy to a weak part, so in the Mystical Body, when one member is sick or sinful, our prayer and penance can flow into them, and “make up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.” Especially in North America, the most materially prosperous region on the earth, how many people are overweight, surfeited with too much food? How many are sick in spirit as well as body through overeating? By fasting we can help to gain graces of restraint for them; by our example we can remind people that fasting is physically healthy as well as spiritually wholesome. By fasting we can help to restore oneness to the body. To sum up, fasting is simply part of pilgrimaging, which is the great theme of the Mandate. It is part of the pilgrim’s discipline as he journeys to the lonely Christ: “Then you also had to get a bag made out of linen. It crisscrossed your shoulders from left to right, very much like water bags. In it would be a loaf of black bread and a little salt. On the other shoulder, crisscrossing from right to left, would be a gourd of water.” (St 29) Fasting is one of the means to effect the self-emptying of the pilgrim so he can become more aware of the risen Christ’s presence within, so this presence can radiate from him to others as he
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journeys. Fasting intensifies the power of prayer; prayer increases mercy and service. Fasting helps us keep Christ company in the marketplace. Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petitions of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself. (St. Peter Chrysologus)
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CHAPTER FOUR Be Hidden … Be A Light To Your Neighbor’s Feet We have just seen that the mandate calls us into the marketplace, which is first of all the human heart; but secondarily, into all the spheres of human activity. And now we are admonished to be hidden there. How is it possible to be hidden in the midst of the human condition? And how can one be a “hidden light”? The Christian life is a participation in the attitudes, powers and gifts of Christ in his very Spirit, his divine life (1 Peter). The call to be simultaneously hidden and a light must correspond, then, in some way, to a dimension of the Christ-life. How is the Christian both hidden and a shining light? That is the mystery of this present line. Isaiah 42:1-4 is one of the prophetic words most frequently applied to Jesus by the New Testament writers: “Lo! My servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul delights. He will not bawl or cry out, his voice is not heard in the streets, he will not break the crushed reed, or snuff the faltering wick…” Strange words of “non-speaking” for one who is to “present judgment to the nations” (v. 2). Isaiah here expresses a hiddenness about the Messiah, and a delicacy. The journey to the lonely and in the risen Christ is also a journey into the mystery of the hiddenness of Christ, who is the Light of the world but unknown to much of the world: “…but standing among you unknown to you is the one who is coming after me…” (Jn. 1,26). And even to those who know Christ by faith, are not his depths still hidden from our eyes? To be a light even though hidden, is an aspect of Christ’s existence in the world, and therefore an aspect of the life of his disciples. In these modern days of “witnessing” and televangelism and media coverage and “high profile” and “visibility” and everything that passes as “news,” we don’t often think of hiddenness as part of the Christian life. In our media-conscious world, not to be known is almost equivalent to not existing at all! Before reflecting on Catherine’s understanding of this aspect of the Mandate, let us see what the Scriptures have to say about hiddenness in reference to the Lord’s and his servants’ activity.
A Hidden God “They will say to you, O Israel, ‘Only with you is God, there is no rival, no other God. Truly with you is the God Who hides himself, the God of Israel is Savior’” (Is 45:14,15). Since we sinned and hid from God in the garden, we now sometimes experience God hiding from us, as being unknown. This is because of sin. In actuality, says St. Paul, God is not very far from any one of us, for “in him we live and move and have our being.” In many pagan religions there is a dim perception of some “high god.” This “unknown, high God,” dimly sensed by the pagans, had been fully revealed to Israel. Until the Lord Jesus came, God remained “hidden” in the bosom of Israel. The revelation at the time was for its children and for them alone. Now, of course, the revelation of the Trinity is for the whole world. But we can understand “be hidden” in the Mandate in the sense that we who are the light of the world (Mt 5:14) carry around within, as did Israel before us, the great secret of the revelation of the true God. We are in the marketplace with the hidden God within us. He hides himself within
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us, waiting for an opportunity to reveal himself through us. The “light to the neighbor’s feet” that we are called to be is the light of Christ manifested through us: “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). One of the early Christian writers said that what the soul is to the body, that Christians are to the world. Jesus called us salt, the preservative element in the world (Mt 5:13). Are we not, then, also like that yeast hidden in the dough: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast which a woman took and put (literally “hid”) in a hundred pounds of flour till it was all leavened” (Mt 13:33)? The Wisdom that Christ is, and whom we carry within us, is still hidden in the world: “And yet I do speak words of wisdom to those who are ripe for it, not a wisdom belonging to this passing age, nor to any of its governing powers which are declining to their end; I speak God’s hidden wisdom, his secret foreordained from the very beginning, to bring us to our full glory” (1 Cor 2:7). Christ has been God’s secret, hidden since the beginning of the world. We carry this great secret treasure around within us: “I who am less than the least of all God’s people have been entrusted with this special grace, not only of proclaiming to the pagans the infinite treasure of Christ but also of manifesting how the mystery is to be carried out. Through all the ages, this has been kept hidden in God, the Creator of everything” (Ep 3:8-9). “In all this Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables; indeed, he would never speak to them except in parables. This was to fulfill the prophecy: ‘I will speak to you in parables, and expound things hidden from the foundation of the world’” (Ps 78:2) (Mt 13:35). “I became the servant of the Church by virtue of the task assigned to me by God for your benefit: to deliver his word in full; to announce the mystery hidden for long ages and through many generations, but now disclosed to God’s people, to whom it was his will to make it known to make known how rich and glorious it is among all nations. The mystery is this: Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:25-27). “I want you to know how greatly I exert myself for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have never seen me, that their hearts may be encouraged as they are knit together in love, to have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ, in whom lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:1-3). Just as in the Old Testament God was hidden from much of the religious experience of mankind, so even now the great revelation of God, Christ, is still hidden in the world in us. God does not wish to be hidden! He has spoken. He has entered the world through his Son in order to be known and loved. Christ wants to be discovered, but so many people are not looking for him. This is part of his loneliness wanting to be known but not being sought by his people. One who desires to be known and is not known, is lonely. By being hidden, we share in his longing to be known. It is another way of sharing in his loneliness. Hiddenness is, then, first of all, the “unknownness” of the Light of the world. We who carry this Light within us share also in his unknownness, his hiddenness. Until people are ready to receive the Light, we share in the hiddenness of Christ in the world.
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Hiddenness as Preparedness Being ready is part of hiddenness. Paint on a pallet, a baton on the podium, a violin on its stand, each is waiting for the hand of the master, each unnoticed and hidden until picked up and used for his purposes. Carrying within us the mystery of Christ, we are poised, ready to be used by God at any moment, like an arrow in a quiver: “Yahweh called me before I was born, from my mother’s womb he called my name. He made my mouth a sharp sword, and kept me in the shadow of his hand. He made me a sharpened arrow, and hid me in his quiver. He said to me, you are my servant…” (Is 49: 1-3). One of Catherine’s favorite images for the members of Madonna House is from the First Book of Samuel. Arrows in a quiver, stones in a pouch both are hidden, but ready to be used to slay giants: He took his stick in his hand, selected five smooth stones from the river bed and put them in his shepherd’s bag, in his pouch; then, sling in hand, he walked towards the Philistine (17:40). And so, in everyday life, what do we expect of you, or rather, what does God expect of you? A great simplicity, an absolute naturalness, a humility as ordinary as the air. For who are we? In the line of apostles we are the smallest, the littlest. We are lay people consecrated, dedicated but lay people. We are very small. Remember what I always say. David looked at Goliath and saw a brook. In the brook he saw little pebbles; and he had a childish slingshot. He bent down and picked up those pebbles, put them in his sling, and slew the mighty Goliath. The Lord does likewise with us. David is a prefiguration of Christ. The Lord looked at the world and saw the Goliaths of darkness waxing strong and fat, plucking away from him the souls of his grace, bends down into the brook of life. He picks up little pebbles, you and me, to fix into His sling. What must we do as lay apostles? The little pebbles must just “be there.” It is up to God to shoot! Here is the hand of the Lord, and here are the pebbles. They were worked over by the water. They are shiny and ready. They lie still on the palm of God’s hand. It is for Him to pick them up, put them into His divine sling, and shoot wherever He desires. That’s all! But oh! what goes into those tiny pebbles! Chastity, poverty, obedience, humility, simplicity, naturalness, death to self, and love. The pebbles lie still in the palm of God’s hand, content just to rest there. (SL #140, 1956) The hiddenness of those stones lying in David’s pouch is also true of our hiddenness in Christ. At any given moment, if we are ready, the Holy Spirit can use us to reveal to someone the mystery hidden from all ages. Christ the Lord. Our task is to be ready. The Mandate prepares us for this task, and we wait, “hidden with Christ in God.” Just as Christ in Nazareth could have been considered as waiting in a state of preparedness for his Father’s call to public life, so too we wait for the Spirit’s movement. Small objects are often hidden, but just because they are small doesn’t mean they are not powerful! Smallness is also part of the mystery of hiddenness. How could such small objects topple a huge giant! Catherine believed that the spiritual giants of our day unbelief, greed,
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pride could only be conquered by the small but powerful pebbles of humble people living the Gospel of Christ’s power, who alone can win the victory. “WHOM GOD LOVES, HE HIDES” There is a French saying, “Whom God loves, he hides.” What does this mean? It can mean that God protects, by hiddenness, the graces we have received. Notoriety can often lead to pride; and pride can lead to ascribing graces to ourselves instead of the Lord. Hiddenness keeps us focused on the Lord as the Giver of the graces. In this sense, hiddenness relates to the second line of the Mandate where we are called to be little, that is, humble. The saying could also mean that God protects those he loves: “One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek: that I should live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and go into his temple. He shelters me in his cabin, on the day of trouble; he hides me deep within his tent; he sets me high on a rock” (Ps 27:4-5). God hides to protect. There is a theme in the Fathers of the Church that the secrets of the Incarnation were kept hidden from the machinations of the devil: “The virginity of Mary, and her giving birth, were hidden from the prince of this world; as was also the death of the Lord. Three mysteries of a cry which were wrought in the stillness of God” (St. Ignatius of Antioch). St. Therese, the Little Flower, said she was going to remain so hidden that even the devil would not know what was going on within her. She embraced hiddenness mostly as a way of humility and purity of heart, but also as a protection from the devil. She was so skilled at this game of hiddenness that even her own Sisters did not know what they would be able to say about her when she died! Does not the Lord, in his teachings about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving call us to hidenness, to humility (Mt 6)? And this, no doubt, to keep our hearts pure: We are to close our doors to pray; not seek public acclaim in our penances; not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing as we go about helping others. Such hiddenness results from a desire that God shine forth, that he be glorified and not ourselves. The Lord said, “Let your light shine so that men may…glorify your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). Hiddenness is a state we enter so that God may increase and we may decrease. It is a characteristic of trying to act purely for God and not out of pride, or for the acclaim or approval of others. Having been acclaimed by others, we will loose the reward of the Lord. But, more tragically, we will not have acted out of love for the Lord but out of love for ourselves. Nor is this hiddenness timidity. An athlete poised on the bench, ready, willing and able to spring into the game at a moment’s notice, is not timid. He is waiting to be called.
Hiddenness as Hope Isn’t it true that most of life grows in hiddenness? The Lord spoke of the seed growing in the hiddenness of the earth, and the farmer not knowing how it grows. The baby grows in the hiddenness and darkness of the womb. Dreams and desires grow in our hearts; thoughts in our minds. The artist, the composer, the philosopher, creating in their solitudes are not the beginnings of life almost always hidden from view? Hiddenness in this sense is an act of hope, and act of reliance on God’s power to bring forth life. The seed dying, the baby growing slowly, the artist creating in solitude, not knowing often what fruits his creation will have, hoping it will give life and beauty to the world.
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An embracing of hiddenness is an act of reliance on God’s power to bring forth life: “Only God can make things grow,” says St. Paul. Hiddenness results from the desire that God shine forth and be glorified and not ourselves. With this biblical background, we turn now to Catherine’s understanding of hiddenness.
The Hiddenness of Nazareth Catherine’s thoughts about hiddenness center around Nazareth. In a paragraph which sums up almost the whole mandate, Catherine sees hiddenness as a way for light to illumine the path of others. I understood always remember that human understanding is dim, very dim but I understood always that by going to my Bethlehem, my Nazareth, by identifying myself with the poor, by living their life, by living the Gospel without compromise, by living always, by remaining little, I would be hidden as Christ was hidden in Nazareth. And I considered Nazareth, at the time, to be the end-all and be-all and center of my vocation. For only by being hidden would I be a light to my neighbor’s feet in the slums; and that all my fears would be taken away. I believed it.” (HMCB, 25) And thanks be to God we are still almost as hidden as the life of the Holy Three was in Nazareth. Let us always wish to remain hidden in one way or another. For ours is the apostolate of the alleyways…of the lonely places…lonely in more ways than one…of the world. (SL 34, 1958) The spirit of Madonna House is the spirit of Nazareth. Hidden. Humble. (SL 183) One of the aspects of the Lord’s life that amazed Catherine most of all, and which she pondered endlessly, was not only how God could be unknown in Nazareth for 30 years, but why he should have chosen this path. Thus her tremendous journey to Christ is also a journey into the mystery of this hiddenness of his earthly existence. I believe that in some very deep and precise way Catherine was always in “Nazareth” in her being before God. We tend to equate effectiveness and having influence with “popularity,” and “being known.” To have any influence in the world, it is thought, you must enter politics or the public realm and start moving the world around. The modern world considers being unknown equivalent to being without influence. The mystery of Nazareth, among other things, means that real effectiveness in the world is totally bound up with union with God. I believe God could have saved the world by remaining unknown if he had so desired. (And was he not hidden to most of the world of his day?) It is not a question of being known or unknown, but of doing the Father’s will. Whoever is doing the Father’s will is helping to heal the world. So Catherine sought to enter this mystery of hiddenness, of simply being before the Father’s face at all times. If we could just be in this sense, we would, by that very fact, be a light to the world. To be a light you don’t have to be a “big shot”: I always thought of Madonna House as small. I don’t mean actually small as regards houses. (In Canada we had places in Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton; in the U.S. we had Harlem, Chicago, and other places seven altogether.) So in a sense it was big. But it was simple, exceedingly simple. It was humble, small, in the sense of unimportant; and certainly it didn’t rate in the eyes of others. Let
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each staff worker have a heart wounded by the Lord, for the Lord, a poor heart, a humble heart, unpretentious, simple; a “no big-shot” deal. If this direction isn’t followed, then there won’t be a Madonna House. (MHWII, Ch. 29) To do God’s work does not mean to be “effective” in the worldly sense. The mystery of hiddenness means believing that your union with God is the important thing, not results. God asks us to be faithful to him, not effective or successful. The results depend on him: Of course your stay in the village is fruitful. There is no need to give me any results or reasons. The things that really matter in the Apostolate show no results and have no other reason than love. There are results of your stay, but it is not given to you to see them, and that too is part of your vocation often for years never seeing any results, always remembering that we are the tillers of the soil, the ones who plow it, make it ready for the Sower, and that He and He alone, through us alone, will sow it, and He alone will harvest it. [But] “a grain of wheat must die before it bears fruit.” Recognizing this hidden aspect of the work of Christ, Thomas Merton once wrote to Catherine: Now, as always, God’s real work remains obscure and humble in the eyes of the world. Now more than ever we have to be suspicious of results that are achieved by the efficient, over-efficient technological means of which the world is so proud. Christ works always humbly and almost in the dark, but never more than now. I can think of nothing more disquieting, more hopeless, than some of the supposedly dazzling results of what is regarded as a Christian revival in America. There may be some kind of a Christian revival somewhere, but if there is one among us it is in the shade, not in the limelight. (Personal Correspondence)
Hiddenness as Transparency John the Baptist is an elusive character. This is due to his transparency. He was only “a voice,” a feeble word pointing to the Word. His life is a key to hiddenness as transparency. “John…who came as a witness to testify to the light, so that through him all men might belive…only to testify to the light. For he himself was not the light. The real Light which gives light to every man was coming into the world” (Jn 1:6). John was only a voice pointing to the true Light; he was not the light himself. In this sense there is a hiddenness, a transparency, even about the Lord himself who always had his face turned towards the Father. Perhaps his hiddenness in Nazareth was due to his total absorption with the Father and the Father’s will. The Father told him to live in Nazareth. By doing this in great simplicity and ordinariness, Jesus has become for all ages a light for our ordinary days. Hiddenness, therefore, does not simply mean being unknown. It has more to do with being a window, a pointer, an icon of something beyond the self. When we open the curtains in the morning we rejoice in the sun and do not look at the window. The window is there, but it is hidden, or rather, not seen, not attended to. It is only a medium for the light. By being totally centered on the Father’s will in selfless love, we become transparent windows for the light of Christ:
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What is transparency? I see a window washed clean, through which whatever light is outside comes in, as if there were no window at all. If there is a sun outside, such a window, it floods the room with its golden light, obliterating the window completely, because of its transparency. Is this Your way to unpollute the world? For if the soul itself, the person, was truly defenceless, forgiving, and loving, the result of this would be transparent minds, everyone who seeks You, for unless we become transparent, people will not know You. For every human face is also an icon of Christ so is every human heart. But for the icon to be reflected in the face, it must be painted in the hearts of men. (P, 163) Next comes “Be hidden,” and “Be a light to your neighbor’s feet.” Strange, paradoxical, contradictory statements. How shall I be hidden and yet be a light to my neighbor’s feet? Very simply: Christ was hidden in Nazareth, and Nazareth is the light of many Christians, in fact, of all Christians. Charles de Foucauld founded his communities on Nazareth and on hiddenness, and we have so much in common with him. We started in the hidden places of the world the slums when it wasn’t fashionable to be there. When we didn’t have to be avant-garde. Yes, our apostolate began in hiddenness, and continued in hiddenness; and yet, because it was hidden and still is, it is a light to many of our neighbors’ feet. This is the strange, paradoxical way that God has of talking without speaking to the soul of man, in this case mine. This is the essence of the community of love. It is poor. It is childlike. It is little. It is simple. It listens to the Spirit. It doesn’t speak publicity, as we moderns call it. It seeks hiddenness, and lo it becomes simplicity, childlikeness, a flame comes over you and over your house, and I think over Madonna House. A light of some sort that we do not see, but God makes others see. (COLM) “When you hide yourself…a flame comes over you.” An authentic spiritual life means you are aware that you are not the light, not the lamp. When you are more aware of the Light of Christ within you than of yourself, then, in some mysterious way, this Light radiates around you. On the other hand, if you are too preoccupied with consciously being a light, you get in the way of the true Light.
Hiddenness as Ordinariness Did you ever consider (maybe not, because they are so hidden!), that the most essential realities are often not consciously noticed, not attended to, but taken for granted? You probably have not adverted to the white page upon which you are reading these words. Yet, without the white page, you would not be able to read. The white page is the light illuminating the words. We do not pay attention to the air we breath, the sun which shines, the ground upon which we walk. These realities are always present, giving sustenance, substance and light, as we go about our tasks. In one of her commentaries on the Little Mandate concerning hiddenness. Catherine speaks about this theme of the ordinary things which form a background for life. She recalled visiting a sick person on a farm. The priest preceded her with the Blessed Sacrament; and in front of the priest was a boy with a lantern. “Now you see, nobody paid attention to that little light. It was so common to carry a lantern from your house to the barn. In a
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sense, the lantern was hidden. There are invisible men also. (Lcom p. 12.) The invisible man she refers to here is the postman on his rounds whom no one sees because he is there all the time. So, although she saw hiddenness as a profound ordinariness, it is an ordinariness which is essential for life to go on. The hiddenness of essential realities, you might say, is one of the aspects of life, and of the Christian life as well. It is a characteristic she desired for the apostolate. In another place Catherine said, “To be truly hidden is to be totally revealed.” (R Feb., 1971) When we are absorbed in the Father’s will, we become “totally revealed,” that is, simple, a light. Everyone is called to be concentrated on the Father’s will in ordinary existence. It is at the heart of the Madonna House vocation and the Christian life: “What is the vocation of Madonna House? First of all, terribly hidden, sometimes not making any sense at all. Yet, making an awesome sense both in the Church and in the secular world. Little things done well for the love of God…monotonous things, eternally repeated…” (SLFF 23, 1973)
The Hidden Cross Illumines We have all experienced a sick person patiently bearing his or her suffering. When we enter such a person’s presence does not he or she illumine our lives like a supernova? From contact with such a person we receive strength for our own suffering. We are edified and encouraged. Bearing our crosses patiently is another way of radiating, in a hidden fashion, the light of Christ and his peace: All of us have to carry the cross of the Lord. It is the one God has given us to go through to his resurrection. This is the one we should keep hidden. True, we can help to carry other people’s crosses and they can help to carry our crosses, but the operative word here is “hidden.” The Lord told us to give alms and fast in secret. Our very hiddenness becomes a light if we do not complain when we carry our crosses, if we carry our cross manfully, ready to help in the carrying of other people’s crosses. Then we become a light to our neighbor’s feet because we become an icon of Christ shining! (So, 96-97) The attitude of hiddenness does not impose one’s cross on others, does not, by complaining, force others to help us carry our cross. The word “complain” comes from the Latin word which means to “beat our breast in grief thoroughly.” And here I mean complaining so that others can see! We don’t mind suffering in a hidden manner as long as somebody eventually finds out about it! We don’t mind being hidden, as long as we eventually become known! By bearing our crosses in a hidden manner we help to create peace around us. “For then indeed we are hidden and we are revealed as the men and women we should be … who pray for peace…” (Ibid.)
Hiddenness and Lovers Hiddenness is a characteristic of lovers: they seek hidden places to make love. This is why Jesus went apart to speak with his Father; this is why we go apart at times to speak to the Beloved. Love seeks hiddenness:
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Arise and come once again…I am waiting. I am waiting on my heights, come. This is the “hidden place you dreamt of long ago when I first wove the fabric of your dreams. This is the “hidden place,” my Nazareth you wanted to share with Me so many years ago; when you did not know that I was sharing my passion with you…(JI I, 149) And in the final embrace, the Lord will speak to us the “hidden manna,” which will be our new name, by which we are known to the Beloved alone (Rv 2:17).
Joy as A Light For love to be a light it must be joyful. In a Christmas Letter of 1973 Catherine summed up the Gospel in a beautiful way: Christianity is about the crucified Christ and the dancing Christ. We exist to wash the feet of men as Christ washed the feet of the apostles. This means entering into every phase of their life spiritual, political, economic and that means tension, anxiety, and a host of other emotions. But inside of our hearts joy should sing, for if our faith does not sing it is a kind of dead faith. For love is a song, the echo of God’s voice, and we must make this echo available. We must make it heard by all those we come in contact with for a song attracts more than a sob! Joy is a way of washing the neighbor’s feet, a way of being a light to the neighbor’s feet. Christ, of course, consoles us more than we do him. The smile of the Babe of Bethlehem “will assuage our depressions, our anxieties, our tensions. From his smile we are going to learn to smile and sing ourselves. No matter where we are and what we have to do, we shall know that our life is an eternal pilgrimage to Bethlehem.”
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CHAPTER FIVE Go Without Fears into the Depths of Men’s Hearts…I Shall Be With You Go The journey into one’s own heart is painful and crucifying enough. By the grace of God we do achieve some peace and freedom there through our acceptance of the gospel. But the mandate keeps calling us “to the poor,” “to the market place,” and now, in this line “into the depths of men’s hearts.” The Mandate is not a call to rest, (except in the sense to be explained in the last line) “I will be your rest.” The Mandate is basically a constant summons to preach the Gospel Christ in all the hearts where people have not yet experienced him: “through love and being a light,” to make others aware of his presence within them. While the final goal of the Mandate is union with the Heart of God, in this world the ideal is also the pilgrimage into human hearts, ushering people into the presence of the risen Christ. It is only by being “one with the poor,” that we can be “one with the Lord.” And is it not also into human hearts that the prophets are told to go? “Speak to the heart of Jerusalem…” (Is 40:2); “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, the Lord has anointed me, he has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor, to bind up broken hearts…” (Is 61:1). This latter text the Lord himself used in the synagogue in Nazareth to describe his own mission, his own going forth into human hearts. What the poor need most of all and remember, we are all poor is the Good News of Jesus Christ. And this must be preached in human hearts. This line “Go without fears…” occurs towards the end of the Mandate because the whole Mandate is a preparation for it. Catherine intimates as much when she writes: Of course, I had given away everything as he had asked me. The whole Mandate was there in my heart, as far as I was concerned. I had given up everything: I had gone to the poor; I had lived in the marketplace; I was poor with him and poor with them, and I hoped that all the things that the Mandate said were at least germinating in me, even though they hadn’t attained full flowering. It takes a long while to again such flowering. But I had begun. The Mandate said, “Go into the depths of men’s hearts I shall be with you.” Well, that is another pilgrimage, and an important one. It doesn’t apply only to me. It applies to everyone. (St, 52) We should not attempt to go into a human heart unless we have achieved a certain humility, simplicity and childlikeness; in other words, until we have lived in Nazareth. Otherwise we will not be radiating the light of Christ but only spreading our own darkness and obscuring the Light. Unless we are united with Christ we will not understand that only he really knows the human heart and is able to heal it. Through hiddenness and humility, we become transparent for his light to shine in hearts. The essential prerequisite for the journey into the hearts of others is, as we have seen, Catherine’s call to journey into the mission field of our own heart. If we wish to understand the human heart, to radiate the light of the Gospel there, we must first realize the “tortuousness” of our own heart, and that God alone knows its depth.
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Tortuous is the heart more than anything, and desperately sick; who really knows it? I, the Lord, peer into the heart, and assay the innards of a man (Jr 17:9). You know every heart You alone know the hearts of all mankind (1 K 8:40). The Almighty fathoms the Great Deep and the human heart, and he knows their designs (Si 42:18). God sees into the inmost parts of him, truly observes his heart (Ws 1:6). Sheol and Perdition lie open to the Lord, how much more the hearts of men (Pr 15:11). And just as the Lord in Nazareth did not first of all speak but listened to the human heart and the human condition, so Catherine says that we do not first of all go into hearts to speak. She put it this way: When you talk about “going into the depths of men’s hearts,” it is not chitchatting. It is not a question of discussing. It is strange and prayerful. To enter into men’s hearts you don’t necessarily talk to them. You feel them. You open yourself up, and it is a terrible thing. God permitted a Roman soldier to put a lance into his side. But he wants you to pull your rib cage apart, as it were, so that your heart is naked and that you really go into the depths of men’s hearts. You cannot find out anything about those depths by cerebration. You can only find the depths by love, a love that tears you apart until there is nothing but little pieces left rotting in the sun. It is entering into the very marrow of the other person. It is knowing without knowing what is to be done. It is like you were dead, and God discerns in you. I don’t mean physically dead. I mean dead to the noise, to anything around you. You lie like one supine, like somebody hit you on the head or something. You hear and you don’t hear; you see and you don’t see. And slowly, God takes you by the hand, deeper, deeper, deeper, until you reach the bottom. And then you can see into men’s hearts from the other side from God’s side. Then he says, “Now you know. Act accordingly.” You have to love with a love that transcends all understanding to do that. This is why your love is incomprehensible, because you don’t love, he loves. (LDM, 1976) This is a commentary on the truth that only God knows the human heart. To understand the human heart you must love, for love is a kind of knowing. It is the Holy Spirit of Christ “knowing” in you. If, through humility, you can listen to the human heart in this way, then and only then will you know what to do or say.
“The Alms of Words” Since the words of the Mandate are in the prophetic voice, and, since the prophet is told to “speak to the heart of Jerusalem,” we too are called by the Spirit to give what Catherine refers to as the “alms of words.” The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Uncreated became man for love of us. The Word of God walks among us, and yet millions in our dark and fearsome days “know him not.” However, not only the fate of our own world and civilization, but also our life eternal depends upon our knowing and loving him. It is therefore the acceptable time for us, the children of his light and love, to make him known.
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We can do this in many ways. The simplest and most direct way is through almsgiving. Not only can we give money, food and clothing…but we can give the alms of words which we all need. However, like all other alms, words must be given lovingly, gently, thoughtfully. To be able to dispense the alms of words, we must be one with the Word, and on the way to dying to self and living in him. One must try to see with his gentle eyes, think with his clear-sighted mind, try to love with his burning heart. Do you see that lonely and sad child? Have you a moment to spare to give him the alms of a few little words? They will bring light into a darkness that should not be there. Making friends with a lonely, lost or unloved child, be he rich or poor, is to bring Christ into their hearts. And surely He will reverse the process in eternity by taking you into his heart! A smile and a pleasant word to an ill-clad poor person in a public conveyance. How can we console the sick? How else but through the alms of our comforting words. The forgotten, the unwanted, the lost, the rambling alcoholic, the neurotic would they be what they are if someone had given them the alms of words? Such words of understanding, love, compassion, patience, and help are oils that soothe the burning wounds of exhausted minds. They are cool waters that quench the thirst that almost kills them. They are food that nourishes a starvation resembling that found in concentration camps. Words are often keys that open prison doors. They are so easy to give, yet so often withheld. Everywhere, at all times of the night and day, people cry out for the alms of words. They cry silently not even knowing why they cry. Yet they do know that they are desperately hungry and thirsty for love and friendship. But love and its flower, friendship, are God, for God is Love, and Love is the Word, and he clothed himself with flesh for love of us! Let us then lovingly show him to our brothers and sisters expressed in the thousand ways of love’s ingenuity, but especially in the alms of loving words! (SL 114, 1962)
Without Fears If we have any knowledge at all of our own hearts we know that it is a fearsome place. Jesus said that it is out of the heart that lust, hatred and murder come (Lk 6:46; 15:18). And was not the Lord referring to human hearts when he used that frightful phrase, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into the hands of men” (Mk 26:45)? Do we not fear the human heart more than anything else? Isn’t this why the prophets must constantly be encouraged to go and speak the message the Lord had given them? Fear certainly does dominate our journey into human hearts. Although our faith tells us that every person is the image and likeness of God, still, it requires much courage to enter “the land of souls.” “The Lord replied, ‘Do not say “I am a child.” Go to whomever I send you, and speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid in their presence, for I am with you to protect you…’” (Jr 1:7-8). “Be strong, stand firm, have no fear of them, no terror, for the Lord your God is going with you; he will not fail you or desert you” (Dt 31:6). “…go without fear.” That’s hard, because naturally we are afraid to confront each other, aren’t we? We’re afraid to be a path to each other, lest his feet might
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wear shoes with nails. And so, at the last moment in our Little Mandate, when we have contemplated our fears these fears notwithstanding the Wind, the Fire, the Presence of Christ says to us, “Go without fears into the depths of men’s hearts, I shall be with you.” And suddenly, this Figure, seen darkly as in a glass, becomes luminously clear. If we let ourselves go, we shall rest in the hollow of His neck, as in the Song of Songs. (COM) Fear of entering men’s hearts is overcome by faith: The mere thought of taking up Christ’s cross and following him somewhere…nowhere…no place…is frightening, and when that fear gets hold of you your pilgrimage ceases. Fear is conquered by faith. Because your heart is faith-full, and because you love the God who calls you into the nowhere…you go! Yes, we have to be faith-full to show the way, so we go.
The Various Faces of Courage Fear is overcome by courage, which is derived from the Latin word for heart “Cor.” Courage is having a great heart, a heart that is bigger than the fears, a heart that swallows up the fears in a greater love. Courage does not consist in the absence of fear, fright, and worry, but in overcoming them for the sake of a greater good. The soldier on the battlefield is afraid, but he loves his country, and so he goes ahead courageously. The missionary who knows that his hour has come…He is still afraid of pain. Mostly, however, he thinks about his soul, and prays to God to give him the flaming, fiery courage of the martyrs who went before him. Perhaps we should begin in small ways to train ourselves to grow in courage, to shed fear, to grow in faith and love of God, a faith and love that humbly prays: “Lord, I am ready to live and die for you, and I accept whatever form of death your will has selected for me. But I am weak, and my soul is housed in a house of clay. Be thou my strength, and give me but one gift the gift of perfect love of you that casts out all fears.” Suffice to say that I learned slowly, as I hope you will, the various faces of courage, which I repeat, is not the absence of fear but the conquest of fear for a greater motive. (SL #24, 1958) I met a Black person once who had worked with Catherine in Friendship House in the United States. She said that “Catherine didn’t know very much about Black people when she went into Harlem in the late 30’s, but she went because she believed God was asking her to go. That took tremendous courage. So I know she is from God!”
Into The Depths of Men’s Hearts “Garden Variety Lay People” “Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.” What does it mean? You have all experienced it. Who are we? Some of us have a little psychological knowledge. Some of us are counsellors of a type. Some of us have education. But the majority of us have nothing but ourselves to offer. We are not counsellors. We are not doctors of psychology. We are not psychiatrists. We are
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ordinary, humble, “garden variety” lay people, with some education, but not along these lines [of counselling]. Why do people invite us to go into their hearts? Why, in every one of our houses, do men and women, young and old, priests and nuns, “open their hearts to us?” Ask yourself that and you will know that it is because they see our poverty, our simplicity, and, I hope, our childlikeness. And they trust us, trust us to be good listeners to whom they really can “open their hearts.” And God says to us, “Be not afraid. Listen. Enter those hearts. I shall be there waiting for you in them. And as I told you, be not afraid to speak what you have to say, because you will not be speaking, I will. Open your mouth and I shall speak.” (COLM) Catherine was not against learning and getting degrees in counselling. (Although, to my knowledge, no one in the community has ever gone away to obtain certification as a counsellor.) She believed strongly that, if you loved God, then by that very fact, you were able to communicate that love. What people need most of all is a listening ear, and a confirmation that they are loved and accepted for who they are. This is how most healing takes place, and it cannot be taught. This reminds me of a story about Catherine. About a year ago or so before she died I was sitting with her in her cabin. She was in bed. I was asking her about her early days of nursing in the rural areas around Combermere. I said, “People must have been very glad to see you coming with your little black bag of medicine.” “Oh,” she said, “there wasn’t very much in the bag. Life is mostly symbolic, you know.” My interpretation of that remark is this: Ninety-five percent of the healing was just going to see people, boiling some water on the stove, sitting down with them for an hour or so, perhaps holding their hand. What better medicine is there than that! We are all capable of doing this, and it doesn’t require any degree. Such love creates a bridge over which we can walk into each others’ hearts: If you are in love with God, passionately in love with God, and therefore vitally alerted to the needs and existence of your neighbor, you will make a bridge between yourself and him without any difficulty. For love seems to be a universally understood language. But the longer I live, the clearer I see that the answer to our personal, collective, national and international problem is bridge-making between human beings. Not allowing any human beings to be an island unto himself, but connecting each with the other, with bridges of love. (R. March, 1963) The present line of the Mandate we are considering is a call to have the courage to build such bridges.
Hospitality of the Heart I speak of the hospitality of the heart as well as the hospitality of food and shelter. They come here usually hungry for God. This is their real reason for coming here, disguised under all kinds of other reasons. One thing they crave, whoever they are, and I sense it. It is as if somebody cried at the door and said to me: “Let me in! I have to touch someone who believes in God. I live in a desert of people who tear me apart. They talk about gods. They talk about what appears to be
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Antichrist. They talk about Satan. Everything in me is falling apart. I don’t know any more what is right or wrong. Let me touch you. It is said that you know right from wrong, that you believe in God.” This is the kind of real cry at our doorstep. If we are going to forget that then there is no need for any other kind of hospitality. The main point of our Apostolate everywhere is the hospitality of the heart. Our hospitality is an answer to peoples’ hunger for God. It is through our hospitality that they will know love, care, gentleness, understanding, listening, etc. If we don’t practice it, we might as well not have a library, or a PX, and so forth. Because all these things are there to feed a hungry heart through contact. (LDM, 1975) If I had to choose the phrase which would sum up, best of all, the Mandate and the spirit of Madonna House, it would be this phrase hospitality of the heart. Christ is present in others. He seeks a welcome, an acceptance. “I was lonely and you visited me.” Through our own interior journey we become free enough, loving enough, to invite others to the feast, which is the presence of the risen Christ. The following passage, from a manuscript Catherine wrote a few years before she died, describes, as well as anything she ever said, the essence of Madonna House, and therefore the essence of the Mandate. These are the opening paragraphs of the book: I am going to write “Madonna House What Is It?” Madonna House is based on hospitality, which is to open our door to anybody who knocks. But that is superficial hospitality. The pagans do likewise, as Christ himself said. There is the hospitality of the heart. How are we measuring up to the hospitality of the heart? It is an entirely different hospitality from the hospitality of an open door. When we begin to talk about the hospitality of the heart, we are talking about a wounded heart, at least that is how I see it. Yes, we are talking about a wounded heart, a heart that has been wounded by the love of God. A heart wounded by the knife of love, and of a passionate, incredible, God-given love of himself. This can not happen by ourselves. It can only happen through prayer. He will give it to us. He will give us a wounded heart, a heart that has open doors always, and where others can rest. It is said that Simeon, when he met our Lady, exclaimed, “A sword will pierce your heart.” That is what I mean a wounded heart. What is a wounded heart? A wounded heart is an open heart, completely open. It has only one gesture arms wide open. A wounded heart belongs to a crucified person. It is one who willingly and voluntarily moves up to the other side of the cross, opens his arms and says, “Put in the nails.” A wounded heart is an open heart. It has no doors. You begin to understand what a wounded heart is when you hear the Word of God which I repeat so often: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.” He is not asking us to just love one another. He puts it straight: AS I HAVE LOVED YOU. Now then, that is Madonna House. That is an open heart. We are not there yet. We are on the way, I’m sure. But I wish that somehow or other that wounded and
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open heart was really there so that when I come, weary and tired, even I who am a member of the place, could curl up and fall asleep in that wounded heart and rest myself. A closed heart cannot say, “I’m open.” I don’t seem to be able to find anything that I could do to clarify all this. Yet, the charity of Christ urges me on. I want you to love him passionately, totally, completely, without ever turning back. That is the best I can do. You have to excuse me, but that is as far as my words go. (MHWII, Chap, 2) Once I asked one of the family here what finally convinced her this was her vocation. She said the very first day she got out of the car Catherine came out of the door and, with wide open arms, said, “Elizabeth, welcome home!” She said at that moment she knew she had come home. And the final purpose of the Cross “take up My Cross” is here revealed: it is to lance the heart so that others may come in: so that our hearts may become these inns for Christ in the other to find rest and welcome: People say, “What is Madonna House?” Madonna House is a very simple thing. It can be said in a few sentences. It is an open door. It is a cup of tea or coffee, warm or hot. Madonna House is a house of hospitality. It is a place where people are received, not on their education, not on how wonderful they are as painters or whatever they can do. They are received simply as people. They come and they go, and the memory of Madonna House lingers on. Something happens. What happens, nobody knows. But something happens. (SLFF 127, 1980) The very first house Catherine opened she simply called, “Friendship House.” She wanted to create a place where everyone would feel welcome, where people could meet as fellow pilgrims over a cup of tea. And the basis for this, she says in the same letter, is an acceptance of the fact that we ourselves are sinners: “God feels at home with us just because we are sinners, and because he came to save sinners. That is why God feels at home here. I want you to understand that. Madonna House, in other words, is built on mercy, on acknowledging our own sinfulness. But Jesus love sinners; he often came to eat with them. “Christ was very fond of sinners, of prostitutes, of unpleasant people, of all kinds of strange people. We are just that kind of people.” When we acknowledge our own need for Christ, he comes to visit us, feels comfortable in our homes. Then we can invite others and make them feel welcome also. Having been emptied of our pride by our own recognition of mercy, our hearts are now open to receive others who are in need. And relating this to the previous theme, she shows how our hiddenness helps to make Christ feel at home: “It is your simplicity, your ordinariness, your duty of the moment, your non-desire to shine before men, that makes Christ at home in Madonna House. And where Christ is at home…others also feel at home.” Having made our own journey inward and become “at home with Christ,” we are now able to create a place where others are at home also.
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A Precipitous and Bloody Journey The constant presence of the cross is one of the signs of the Gospel authenticity of Catherine’s vision: “If anyone wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross…” says the Gospel; “Take up My cross…” says the Mandate. The journey into hearts is bloody: Yes, my feet were bloody because, quite evidently, I was still pilgrimaging. I was on a pilgrimage that was both outward and inward. Suddenly I knew why my feet were bloody: I was going into the depths of men’s hearts. That is a precipitous pilgrimage. The depths are stony and they wound your feet. You walk on sharp gravel. You try to hold on to something but there is nothing to hold on to. So, when you go into men’s hearts, your feet get bloody. (St, 51-52) The hardest cross to carry is the descent into another’s deep heart, to feel that heart, to be present not simply with food and shelter and external aids, but to enter into the inner chamber of another’s heart to take their pain upon yourself: Why [is the descent into hearts so bloody]? Going into men’s hearts is a precipitous descent because men’s hearts are deep; it is taking the pain of men upon yourself. I suddenly realized that there was something much deeper and more profound in pilgrimage than just bloody feet. It was the carrying of another man’s cross. Crosses have a way of biting into your shoulders and into your back. That’s when I realized that I was still on a pilgrimage, though it wasn’t the way I had thought about it. It was the way God had thought about it. I was fulfilling the Little Mandate [emphasis added] as God wished me to do. (Ibid.) And, again, it is love, love, love, always love that must be the driving force: Such a pilgrimage can be undertaken only with love and not with any ordinary human love. Human love does not want precipitous descents into men’s hearts. It doesn’t want to have bloody feet. It doesn’t want to have bloody backs and deep scars from other peoples’ crosses. Men can’t help themselves. They have to embark on this pilgrimage…(Ibid.) You will recall that we pray and fast because only these spiritual weapons can conquer certain demons within. When you enter men’s hearts you must be ready to face such demons: As one listens to all those screaming, whispering cries of despair, to those cries of hope that men bring to a pilgrimage, one becomes cognizant again of why his feet are bloody. Because he who enters the hearts of men enters a new world. One cannot describe it geographically. One can only describe it as an immense, new totally new land: the land of God. The land where sometimes the battle of Jesus Christ and the devil in the desert is repeated. So when you enter the hearts of men, you might possibly be entering at the moment when the devil is tempting man in the same way that he tempted Jesus Christ. So vast is the land of souls, so immense is the land of hearts, that a pilgrim must enter in the spirit of the Gospel. No wonder the feet of the pilgrim are bloody, for the hearts of men are often stony, fragmented stones, not easy to walk on. (St, 56)
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“I Shall Be With You” The word of the Mandate “Go” is in the prophetic voice; and, “I shall be with you” is the constant promise of the Lord whenever he sends someone on a mission. “Moses said to God, ‘Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ ‘I shall be with you,’ was the answer” (Ex 3:12). Like Moses, do we also not tremble each time we approach the doorway of a human heart? Egypt is a symbol of the flesh pots, of the place of slavery, of the marketplaces where demons are worshipped. The human heart is capable of all this. The Lord doesn’t tell us very much about where we are going, or what we will meet in the human heart. He promises to be with us, and to guide and protect us with his presence. When we go into the depths of men’s hearts in the power of the spirit we will experience the strength to carry any cross we find there; we will find words on our lips that we have not “thought of before hand”; we will experience that God is with us in that deep and awesome place. The constant promise is, “Do not be afraid in their presence, for I am with you to protect you” (Jr 1:7-8).
“You See Your Brother, You See God” But there is another sense in which “I will be with you” is realized. In the Gospel, and in the first line of the Mandate, the Lord identifies himself with the other. “Going to the poor…being one with them…one with Me.” Catherine believed that one day the Mandate would lead to the Face of the Beloved: As the years go by you shall see the Face of your Beloved. Slowly, the thousand and one faces that told you their story, that asked for help, will take on the shape of one Face. Then, slowly, very slowly, you will touch your Beloved before you die. Always, at any time and in any place, we can embrace our Beloved…by embracing our neighbor. (SL #140, 1956) There was a saying among the desert Fathers, “You see your brother, you see God.” The inspiration for this saying is a fruit of their meditation on the passage in Genesis of Jacob’s meeting with his brother. Jacob was afraid to meet Esau, and sent gifts ahead to placate him “a whole camp of gifts. But Esau ran to meet him, took him in his arms, threw himself on his neck and wept as he kissed him.” And Jacob insisted his brother keep the gifts he had brought him, “for in fact I have come into your presence as into the presence of God” (Gn 33) This is a very unusual statement indeed. You will remember that, the night before, Jacob had wrestled with God, and “named the place Peniel, because I have seen God face to face and have survived” (Gn 32) I think of this story now in relation to going into men’s hearts. What a struggle it is! How fearful we are! And yet, God was faithful to his promise to Jacob. His brother kissed him and threw his arms around him. His very name “Jacob” means someone who has struggled with God and man and has prevailed (32:29). This is the promise held out to each of us. Not necessarily that we will be kissed and embraced by everyone (!), but that we will be kissed and embraced by the Lord who awaits us in every person “the shape of one Face.” And we experience this “one Face” because we have descended into our own heart and become aware of our oneness with everyone:
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A man of prayer descends into his inmost heart, into his natural heart first, and thence into those depths that are no longer of the flesh. He then finds his deep heart, reaches the profound spiritual, metaphysical core of his being; and looking into it he sees that the existence of mankind is not something alien and extraneous to him but is inextricably bound up with his own existence. (Archimandrite Sofrony) Catherine expressed this experience at the end of the journey as the grace “to be everyone”: I am the millions who seek him and yet I found him. How can that be? Why must I live as if I were all others? What am I? Who am I? I know I am everyone, because I love him, my Lord. I am everyone whom he loves, that is my agony. That is my ecstasy. That is who and what I am. To be everyone for love of him is to participate in the fullness of his passion. (JI, I) While “metaphysically and actually,” God and others and the self are distinct, at the end of the journey the “circumferences” of these realities experientially blend into one. Because of the pain of the world, we can never be free of his passion as long as this life lasts.
The Pilgrimage into Hearts and Identification What am I talking about? Let us say that you have living with you a down-andout, broken down, selfish, self-centered, not too clean hobo, who doesn’t want to do a stitch of work to repay your hospitality. There are many ways you can face this situation. You can decide that it is a good Lenten mortification to bear with him. That will be good, but that is far from perfect. The next step would be to realize what terrible handicaps this man may have suffered from the beginning of his life. Try to make the pilgrimage of his life, and ask yourself what would have happened to you if you had been in his place. You see, you demand from us, your superiors, that we should always understand you, constantly help you and patiently bear with you…Look into the depths of your hearts and answer that question. True or false? If you ask us to make that pilgrimage into your lives, you should be able to do the same for the imaginary hobo. That would be good if you could do this, but it still would not be perfect. It would be perfect if you tore open your guts, so to speak, opened your heart wide, and out of love became that hobo. Love, empathy and grace would help you to do that. You would become that hobo in your mind, actually. This would be identification. At times like this, I clearly see Christ in my neighbor, and you should too. I don’t mean I see the face of the human Christ of the Gospels. The Russians portray the Trinity as fire, light and movement. We can see Christ in our neighbor, become drawn to that light, that flame, that movement. Then, by the grace of God and the Divine Light that is in us, we can love that gross, lazy, good-for-nothing hobo for whom this Light, this Flame, this Movement became incarnate and died on the cross. This is what I call identification. Love alone can do that. Only if you become him will you know his needs and be able to help him. How else can you know? You will only be guessing. (SL 129, 1963)
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CHAPTER SIX Pray Always We come to the last sentence, “Pray always. I will be your rest.” Now the Pauper who had nowhere to lay his head tells us that if we share his poverty, if we are little, if we are simple, if we are childlike, if we preach the gospel with our life and listen to this Spirit, he, the Pauper, will become our rest, for we will be poor together God and us and this we shall achieve by praying always. (COM) So we arrive, finally, at the last line of the Mandate, after quite a long journey! Catherine has sought to follow the “Supreme Pilgrim, the loving Pilgrim, who descended from heaven to earth and returned from earth to heaven, thereby making us free. Free to love and serve. Free to undertake a pilgrimage of that sort.” (St 14) Catherine always focused her spiritual eyes on the life of this Pilgrim, so as to walk the same path he walked. We do well, then, in the first place, to reflect on how the Supreme Pilgrim, Christ, ended his earthy days among us, so we may have a faith vision concerning the final stage of the Mandate. Jesus died in the marketplace on the eve of the Sabbath, the day of rest, pouring out his whole being in love and sacrifice. Even on the Cross he was “always with the Father,” praying and communing with him. The Lord’s own final hours were not “restful” in the ordinary sense of that word. It is important here to mention the Lord’s final days of his earthly existence because Catherine constantly called us to the “Hill of the Skull.” The Mandate reveals this “Hill of the Skull” to be an ever greater and greater penetration of the marketplace, of hearts, of the poor; and all this while growing in prayer and communion with God. The “rest” of this line is the rest in God in the midst of human hearts, rest in the midst of the marketplace, rest in the midst of the poor. But also, as we shall see, the mirror image of this “rest” is an ever greater realization of living in the risen Christ. The “rest” of perfect delight and peace in God is not for this life. That is waiting for us on the other side of death. Recall that Jesus died on the eve of the Sabbath rest. “Rest” for him, on his final day, was to be in the midst of suffering humanity. In other words, the movement and goal of the Mandate is towards an ever deeper realization of meeting Christ in the midst of the suffering world. We must pass through this crucifixion to the definitive Easter. This is our faith. In this world we are called to ever greater and greater love, prayer and service, growing, all the while, in an awareness of being in the risen Christ. To live in this paradoxical existence is our preparation for entry into eternal life. Jesus in the marketplace on the Cross praying this is the faith reality for this final line. “Why are you learning all these different ways of praying? First, to get the strength to stand still on the palm of God’s hand, to lie still; secondly, to someday reach that simple prayer of the presence of God where in faith you possess him, whom tomorrow you shall possess in the reality of life eternal. It will come.” (SL #140, 1956) “Tomorrow,” in eternity, will be the final possession, the everlasting rest. Now is the time for work and service. For Catherine, in this life, she only finds rest in the midst of living the Gospel.
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The final years of her own life also bear this out. Her last books portray her own ever-increasing identification with a world in grave danger. In a sense, her prophetic outcries intensified during her final years: I lifted my voice and I told them: “Stop it! Don’t do it! Don’t put into action your arms, which are made for the destruction of the world. Look! In the midst of your airplanes, missiles, and submarines stands an enormous cross. It is as big as the sky. It loses itself in the universe. The transverse beams touch unknown areas. It comes from the hearts of men. See how it goes up and up and up, to the feet of the Father. How its shadow falls on the whole world. Don’t do it! Don’t annihilate! Don’t kill! It is against the commandments of God, the loving God who died for us. My voice rose like thunder, but no one paid any attention to it.” (U, 48) And physically as well, she suffered a great deal during her last illness, offering all especially for the Church. She finally did become the “poor woman” she so ardently desired. Although physically she was removed from much of the world’s turmoil, her spiritual identification only increased. She certainly died on the cross in the marketplace, as we who witnessed it can testify. She had reached a spiritual state of identification with the world in pain. However, there is one essential difference between Jesus’ state and ours: On the cross he was not yet living his resurrected life, while we do live in this resurrected life. Our whole journey takes place in the resurrected Christ, and the resurrected Christ is the final goal. The phrases I have underlined in the following text all refer to this intuition and vision of finding rest, of living in the resurrection (which is already the reality of eternal life in God), in the midst of the struggles of life. It is a commentary on this last line of the Mandate: …no matter what state we are in, if we let ourselves go, we shall rest in the hollow of His neck. That’s the Song of Songs; and that’s where he adds, “I will be your rest.” Resting in the arms of God is having one’s ears opened by God. All this doesn’t happen in a day. Like himself, we must walk in the heat of a Palestinian day. Like himself, we have to go through everything he did. But we know something that nobody else knew in this day. We know that we live in his resurrection, and that he will temper this heat, and quiet the wind of our emotional storms if we let him. (COM) “We know that we live in his resurrection.” Catherine equates “rest” with her living in the resurrected life. Although we still have our death to pass through the wind and the heat even now we live in the resurrected life.
Pray Always: The Symbols of a Fully Integrated Christian Life We have seen something of Catherine’s own prayer journey how she took time out for prayer and meditation in her early years. But, eventually, I believe she did achieve a total integration of life and prayer. It is to this total integration which she constantly calls us: Yes, we are a new breed of contemplatives who must learn repose, rest, on the breast of God listening to the perfect music of His heartbeats whilst we go
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about his business and that of his Father, moving amidst some of the most broken down, discordant, uneven, out-of-pitch music that the world has ever heard. (SL 9, 1957) She used various symbolic phrases to express this integration: contemplatives in repose in the midst of the Father’s business; prayer is work and work is prayer; “being a prayer”; “the poustinia of the heart”; “being before God”; to “stand before God while walking with men.” They all express, from different Gospel perspectives, the desire for, and living experience of, always being aware of the Beloved’s presence no matter what one is doing: Now, people can be busy while still keeping the people they love present to them. A woman can be a nurse, taking care of her patients with great efficiency; yet, in her mind and heart be deeply united with her husband…the eyes of her heart behold the countenance of her beloved. What human beings can do when they love one another, a Christian can do with the Tremendous Lover who is the Lord (GWC, 123) I will treat, therefore, in this chapter, her symbols of integration, her symbolic phrases for praying always. Then, in a final chapter, I will treat the phrase “I will be your rest.”
Becoming a Prayer What is said next about “being a prayer” will apply as well to all the other symbols of integration. “Being a prayer” is the symbol Catherine elaborates the most, and so serves as a profound description of what an integrated life means. In our “Way of Life” we read: “A cruciform man is a symbol of prayer. For no one will be crucified unless HE IS A PRAYER. No one will have the strength to be crucified unless God gives him the strength. God gives it to those who are ‘prayers,’ and I mean ‘prayers.’ For clothing the Gospel with our flesh means that we have to BECOME A PRAYER BEFORE GOD.” In other words, when you are crucified with Christ, you are a prayer; when you live the Gospel completely, you have become a prayer. In the following passage she reveals something extremely important about her own prayer journey. She says simply that she arrived at an integration of life and prayer by meditating on the Gospel. “Becoming a prayer” means perfect identification with the words of the Beloved. I proceeded slowly, even painstakingly, to vocal prayers. Suddenly those were left behind, and I found myself in a new land the land of meditation. I always compare it to going to a dance and finding a boy friend who deeply attracts you. You remember and savor every word he says. My Lover was Christ, and so I read the Gospel avidly, meditating on each word. The Gospel became my favorite prayer. But the land of meditation was also a temporary one. Meditation fell away as old clothes, and now I was clad in the beautiful garments of contemplation. Life was entirely different now. It seemed as if the Lord himself were explaining things to me. In meditation, my intellect had sought the answers. Now God himself clarified this or that passage. I was lost in God in those days. Where does one go after being “lost in God”? The answer is a strange one, difficult to understand. You will not be able to understand it with your head, only
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with your heart. What happened now was that I myself became a prayer. (SMS 25-26) “Becoming a prayer” means you have arrived at some strange of love whereby activity no longer distracts you from the Beloved: A person who is a prayer is someone deeply in love with the Word. He is deeply in love with a Person. When you are in love with God, your head is plunged into your heart. It is the happiest time of your life. Of course, we use our minds as far as practical needs are concerned. The house gets cleaned. The duty of the moment is always there. Far from interfering with your life, “being a prayer” makes you very meticulous about doing little things well for the love of God. The detached, critical part of your brain that endlessly dissects and analyzes and reasons about matters of faith has gone into your heart. This is what it means to become a prayer. (26) This perfection of prayer leads to the identification with Christ in the other, one of the goals of the Mandate: Prayer is suffering. It is com-passion. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the suffering of humanity will fill you and you are like one dead. You listen to the news, and you are the man who has been kidnapped by terrorists. You become the woman dying of cancer. Sometimes you go into the depths of hell, a man-made hell, an atheistic hell. You identify with the atheist. But you descended there of your own free will, out of love. The pain of the whole world is upon you. At this moment you don’t “pray.” You simply share the suffering. That is what it means to be a prayer. (26,27) Being a prayer is not only an experience of suffering or identification with those in pain. It is also identification with those who rejoice: From another corner of the earth, you hear good news! You hear of a fiesta being celebrated, and you share the happiness! Suddenly you feel like dancing in the middle of the night. You feel that perhaps God is dancing with you. Yes, you are becoming a prayer. (27) And, even when we can’t pray, St. Paul tells us that the Spirit is praying in us; and is this not constant prayer: “You can’t pray? God sits there and doesn’t mind at all. He prays for you (Rm 8:26). As you pray about the living, the suffering, the doubting, and all the manner of things, God is there. Once he is there, all things are there, and you become a prayer.” (27) Just as we have already been “exalted with Christ” (huphsos) to the Father’s right hand, so too, in the risen Christ, we are already “prayers” because we are joined to Christ who is “always interceding for us.” The integration of life and prayer becoming a prayer is possible because of the Incarnation: The mystery of God becoming man and of our humanity “becoming God” meet in prayer: the prayer of the Son to the Father, and our prayer to our Brother. At this point, the mystery of being a prayer is more fully revealed. By his Incarnation, the God-Man was able to pray to the Father, and by our divinisation in Christ, we are able to pray through Jesus Christ to God the Father. God and human beings
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are thus united in prayer, joined in the one prayer which is Jesus Christ. In him, we, too, become a prayer. (28) Just as St. Paul said that Jesus is our “Yes” to God, so Catherine is saying that Jesus himself is Prayer, the Son whose whole being is love speaking love to the Father. In him our deepest being is already a total yes to God. The Christian journey is getting rid of all the noes!
The “Poustinia of the Heart” This is a symbol for the constant awareness of the presence of the Beloved within. When you come right down to it, the poustinia is not a place at all and yet it is. It is a state, a vocation, belonging to all Christians by Baptism. It is the vocation to be a contemplative. There will always be solitaries, or should be. But the essence of the poustinia is that it is a place within oneself, a result of Baptism, where each of us contemplates the Trinity. Within my heart, within me, I am or should be constantly in the presence of God. This is another way of saying that I am a garden enclosed, where I walk and talk with God, where all in me is silent and where I am immersed in the silence of God. How stumbling the words are! How inadequate the similes! Yet the poustinia is something like this to me: a state of contemplating God in silence. The poustinia is a state of constantly being in the presence of God because one desires him with a great desire, because in him alone can one rest. My life of service and love to my fellowman is simply the echo of this silence and solitude. For some people, this poustinia of the heart will take on, through the call of God, a definite physical dimension. But it is the poustinia of the heart that I believe is the answer for the modern world. This demands a kenosis. The kenosis begins with the repeating of the Jesus prayer. It begins with a silencing of the noise of my heart. It begins by my folding the wings of the intellect and putting my head into my heart. Only then will the poustinia of the heart become a reality. Then indeed I can go anywhere, speak to anybody, make a community of love with my brothers and sisters, meet the stranger (who is simply a friend I haven’t met yet). Now it is not I doing these things, it is Christ within me. My words are not my own. They are the echoes of God’s voice that comes to me out of his silence. Now I know how to catch fire from his words and become a fire myself, shedding sparks over the face of the earth. Now I can say that it is not I who live, but Christ lives in me. (P, 212-215) The following poem, written during a very special year in Catherine’s spiritual growth, expresses her entrance into the world of contemplation, the “garden enclosed,” the poustinia of the heart, the experience out of which she now lives. The constant experiencing of the “kiss of his mouth” does not distract her from “the will of the Lord”:
Christ Was Nigh The Lord called me suddenly out of the marketplace where I was busy about his Father’s business. Yes, the Lord called me suddenly out of the marketplace and the heat of the day. He called me suddenly into his shade, and then into his glory.
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But I did not arise and go as I should have done at once when the Lord spoke. For I looked at my garments and saw them as they were soiled and in tatters from the sweat and the labours of the marketplace, from the heat of the day and the labor of the night. No, I did not arise and go at once, for I saw more. I saw my soul covered with the leprosy of sins, many sins, sins forgiven and shriven. I saw my soul still covered with scars, the white, shining scars that the leprosy of sin leaves always behind. No, I did not arise and go as I should have, in answer to the call of the Lord! I held back for an instant called time. Held back because I saw myself as my Lord’s Father sees me, and I was sorely afraid! But my Lord bent down, down to the thing of ugliness, sweat and scars that I was. Yes, the Lord bent down, down, and lifted my face into his cupped hands, kissed me with the kiss of his mouth. And I became as white as the new fallen snow, and all my scars vanished beneath the touch of his lips. And my youth was renewed, and beauty shone forth from me. For I became clothed with the kiss of his mouth. Then I arose from the depths of the marketplace, and I left the heat of the day behind me. I became a garden enclosed in a walled city. And the Lord shut the door of the garden that is I and took the keys away. Now I am all his, a garden enclosed where he takes delight whenever he wishes. For now he is my Beloved, a seal upon my heart; and my mouth forever knows the kiss of his mouth, and my breasts the touch of his hand. I am his garden enclosed! I lie in the sun of his passion, or in the night of his love, always. Now the will of my Lord is mine, and I have no other! (MHI, 6-7)
“Work Is Prayer and Prayer Is Work” We have seen, in a former chapter, something of Catherine’s own prayer journey. This will now enable us to understand more clearly what Catherine meant by the phrase “work is prayer and prayer is work.” (Note that she also says “prayer is work” when you are praying you are also working.) It is clear that this is another phrase for the total integration of life and prayer towards which she is always striving. It would be a mistake to understand this phrase as a kind of “substitution” of one for the other. For many years, until the last years of her life, Catherine spent one day a week in the physical poustinia, in prayer and penance. Also, whenever Catherine wrote on this topic she entitled her letters with the Benedictine phrase, “Ora et Labora,” (SLFF 128), which means prayer and work. And in another place she wrote, “Ora et labora dominates the spirit of Madonna House” (SLFF #129, 1980). The following passages make it clear that the phrase “work is prayer” is another symbol for integration, now from the point of view of doing God’s will each moment in a spirit of thanksgiving and selfoffering. In my life, to work and to pray factually meant the same thing, for all work of human hands and human intellect is a gift from God to man and from man to God. There should be no separation between work and prayer, for in this sense, PRAYER IS WORK, or should be, and he who works, prays; that’s the way it should be. In my personal life it was. It was called by my parents, “the duty of the
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moment is the duty of God!” Even to this day I have not strayed from this wonderful training that they gave me. Time passed. My parents died. Fifty years ago I founded Friendship House and later Madonna House, in various towns of Canada and the U.S.A. One thing I remember, remember deeply PRAYER AND WORK ARE INSEPARABLE. Or to put it in another way, “THE DUTY OF THE MOMENT IS THE DUTY OF GOD.” And I followed this on a sometimes twisted, sometimes straight road of God’s will. (SLFF #128, 1980) When she was a young girl she often went with her mother to help the poor in their homes. She relates a conversation she had on one occasion with some poor Russian children in their house. She (Catherine) was explaining to them how this work that she and her mother were doing was prayer: Then we got into a serious conversation, and I was expounding to them as best I could work is prayer and prayer is work. The oldest boy was about fourteen said to me: “Why do you talk about it? It is obvious, isn’t it? You offer everything you have from God to God. That’s all you have to do because everything that you have comes from him, and so you really have nothing. Since you have nothing, the only thing you can do is offer your world with love for him, and also your prayers. And since most of the people have to work very hard on the farm and elsewhere, well, all you have to do is offer God that work wrapped in prayer. “You know something,” he said to me (and this I did not know at all), “when you do that, there is an angel who comes around and he really picks up both your prayer and your work and takes it straight up to heaven. It all depends on what kind of work you do. If it is woman’s work, he gives it to Our Lady. If it is man’s work, he gives it to Our Father, who art in heaven.” He stopped talking, but I didn’t stop listening. This was a novel idea. But then the Russians have a lot of imagination, so you have to take it perhaps with a grain of salt; but then, perhaps not. (Ibid.) Catherine also had a “lot of imagination”! I believe she put into this story her basic idea behind “prayer is work.” We belong entirely to God, so everything we have and are and do is to be offered to him. It is the early Christian intuition, expressed by St. Peter, that we are now “living stones making a spiritual house as a holy priesthood to offer the spiritual sacrifices made acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 P 2:5). Catherine equates “prayer is work” with the “duty of the moment,” that is, with doing God’s will. When we are doing God’s will, the angels take our sacrifice to God, just as at the liturgy they take the Eucharist sacrifice before the throne of God “We pray that Your angel may take this sacrifice to Your altar in heaven…” This phrase, then, is a symbol of integration from the point of view of doing God’s will. If you are not doing God’s will, your work is not a prayer; or “if there is anger against God, then work is not a prayer” (Ibid.). As she said in the last line of the poem quoted above, “now the will of the Lord is mine, and I have no other.” This phrase “work is prayer” expresses the perfect carrying out of the Lord’s will. When you do that to some degree of perfection, an integration of life and prayer has been achieved. Then “your work is prayer.”
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Nazareth and “Being before God Being” “Being before God” is another of Catherine’s symbolic phrase for praying always from the point of view of doing the Father’s will: when you are doing the Father’s will you are praying always; you as “being before God.” Jesus said, “Remain in my love. If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (Jn 15:9-10). “Remaining in the Father’s love” is “being before God,” and we remain we most profoundly are when we do the Father’s will. Catherine presents the life of the Holy Family as an example of truly “being before God”: There is no denying that Mary, God’s Mother, was a contemplative. First and foremost She WAS ALWAYS BEFORE GOD. She lived in his presence, the presence of God the Father, of God the Holy Spirit, who overshadowed her, and of God the Son, who was bodily with her! Yes SHE WORKED FOR THE LORD TOO, serving the needs of Joseph and Jesus, and, I am certain, of many, many of the villagers… Joseph likewise was a contemplative. How could he be anything else? He lived with God and God’s Mother. Yet one feels that he too “worked for the Lord,” first by being a provider for his own family, and surely by assisting his neighbors… As to Christ himself!! BEING BEFORE HIS FATHER WAS HIS VERY LIFE! The very essence of it. DOING THE WILL OF HIS FATHER WAS ALSO THE ESSENCE OF HIS EXISTENCE. What a simple answer I find here to the complexity of the questions you asked of me. (SL #183, 1965) In Christ alone do we have the complete integration of prayer and life: Christ’s work and being were one and the same.
Mary, Our Lady of Combermere Catherine always had an extraordinary understanding of the place of Mary in the Christian life. Born on the Feast of Mary’s Assumption, Catherine believed that Madonna House, the House of Our Lady, was part of the Father’s plan in the modern world to restore Mary to her rightful place in the hearts of her children. Catherine believed that Madonna House had been given into Mary’s hands by Her Son to do with whatever she wished. And we believe the same. Whatever decline in devotion to Mary in our tragic times, we can say absolutely that such neglect is not the mind of the Church, not the mind of God. In this century Mary has continued to appear to her children on numerous occasions. The Second Vatican Council, in the document on the Church, has reaffirmed our whole Marian tradition. And, in his magnificent encyclical “The Mother of the Redeemer,” Pope John Paul II has given us an unparalleled vision of Mary’s role in the Christian life. Furthermore, in several post-conciliar documents, the Church has directed that Catholic education on all levels be integrated with the Marian dimension. Mary, then, must become an integral part of the life of every Christian. This is the teaching of the Church. Mary is seen by Catherine as a model of the life of prayer: she of all people was a prayer. I will say a few words about Mary under the title by which she is invoked in our Madonna House family, Our Lady of Combermere.
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The following poem expresses well who Our Lady of Combermere is: I am the Lady of Combermere. It is my wish that you make clear the meaning of my name to all the little ones so dear to me. To all who come to Combermere aflame with love of me. I am the Lady of Combermere. I am the Mother of the heights and depths of love. The Mother of the Valley high above the lowly haunts of men. No one can come to me without ascending, and none can reach these heights without descending into lowly nothingness. Heights are low and depths are high at Combermere. All weakness here is strength, and those who know how weak they are are those who grow in grace and power. I am the Lady of Combermere. My home is built on heights of lowliness and lighted with lamps of emptiness, and filled with wondrous sights of loveliness that those alone can see who walk in darkness and in me. The atmosphere is clear at Combermere, and clearest when the night is done and early morning mist is rising slowly with the rising sun. This is the valley where all sorrow is a joy, and all the painful crosses, happiness. This is where a winding river pauses to become my bay the place where Love’s tomorrow flows into today so dear is Combermere to me, so near my heart, so much a part of our Triune Home in heaven. I am the Lady of Combermere. I am the Mother of the Valley high above the crumbling mountains and the falling stars of all the loveless love in man. I am the Mother of the Heights and Depths of Love the Mother of my Son, the God of Love Incarnate. (Unpub. Man.) On June 8, 1960, Bishop William Smith, then bishop of Pembroke, came to bless the statue of Our Lady of Combermere designed by the American artist Frances Rich. On that occasion he said: This afternoon in this very blessed part of the diocese, in this very beautiful part of the world, in this month of June, I know that, as the years go by, great graces will flow out all over this diocese, all over Canada and the United States, and all over the rest of the world through Our Lady of Combermere…In blessing the statue of Our Lady of Combermere…I have in mind the thought that a great deal of the work necessary to bring the world to the feet of Our Lady will depend on the loyalty and devotion of the friends of Combermere. Now we bless and dedicate the diocese, and the country, and all the Americas to Our Lady of Combermere. Graces will go out in abundance from Our Lady of Combermere, and we shall all benefit from this center of the lay apostolate…all of us…we in the diocese and those outside. (R, July, 1960)
St. Joseph Our Blessed Lady was without sin. St. Joseph, as the foster-father of Christ, spouse of the Virgin, and Patron of the Universal Church, must also have received many extraordinary graces. As we are considering here the final integration of the Christian life, it is appropriate to also say a few words about Joseph. He must have achieved a rare degree of union with God, of prayer and integration of life.
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Joseph, as well as Mary, was involved in forming Jesus in his human experience. Joseph taught him how to walk, how to work, how to pray. He taught him how to speak: the vocabulary the Lord eventually used in his teaching came as much from Joseph as from Mary. We associate Joseph with silence “he passes through the whole of Scripture without speaking a word,” says Paul Claudel. Joseph instructs us in the ways of silence so we can meditate on what the Lord has spoken to us. Joseph teaches us about the Fatherhood of God, just as Jesus received his human understanding of Father from him. After Mary, Joseph was the first to see the Incarnate Word in the flesh. He was chosen to be foster father because of his fidelity. God looked down on the earth and said, “Now, to whom can I entrust my Son, the Savior of the world, and his mother.” An awesome assignment! Joseph teaches us the mysteries of fidelity. And, in an age when there is a crisis in masculinity and manhood. Joseph can again teach men about true masculinity and fatherhood. (I think it was Peguy who said that “the revolutionaries of the 20th century will be the fathers of Christian families.”) Joseph can teach us how to incarnate again, in families, the image of God the Father. Joseph is the patron of the laymen of our apostolate. A prayer by Catherine describes very well her sentiments towards him: St. Joseph, you who know the silence of the night, the thickness of its dark that presses down mind and heart, keep me close. You who knew the size and shape of doubts, and felt its sharp claws tear your mind. You who walked under the crushing weight, keep me close. You who knew the haste of flight, and who felt the thousand fears that the slightest noises bring, keep me close. You who knew the desire, burning bright like flames, to put between you and those who pursue the frontiers of time and space, keep me close. You who drank the cup of exile and loneliness beyond all reckoning, and yet contained the bitterness and tears within the holy silence of your heart, keep me close. St. Joseph, who died in the arms of the Lord, and so in death were within Life, tell me the secret of its night, and how far it would be for me to travel from death to life; and will make the journey with me? Oh, keep me close, St. Joseph, young and strong and alive. Tell me, what was it like that holy night? Were the walls like gold, the stable walls, and was the straw like a thousand lights; or was it just like straw? And did he cry, or did you hear the music of creation near? Was the stable quite small, or did it grow immense and tall? Take me by the hand and show me where it stands. St. Joseph, man of strength and wisdom and silence that speaks so loud, teach me to bear all wrongs in silence deep. Teach me to slacken my loneliness that cries like a child, night after night, at some hidden and holy stream. St. Joseph, I know you understand these things, the hunger and the dream: the hunger that no one it seems feeds on earth; the dreams a woman can never share with anyone on earth. You understand. Keep me close! (Unpub. Man.)
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CHAPTER SEVEN I Will Be Your Rest We all know what physical rest is! After a hard days’ work, or strenuous exercise, we flop down in our favorite chair, close our eyes, and relax. This is not the rest of the last line of the Mandate! The promise “I will be your rest” occurs as an effect, a result, a reward, the fulfillment of a promise connected with the command to pray always. And we have seen that praying always is not the cessation of activity but rather the journey to the perfection of prayer and work, solitude and community, being and doing. The “rest” of the last line is living in the eye of the hurricane of the Blessed Trinity who is Light and Fire and Movement. It is precisely in the midst of intense life in Christ that the promise of his being our rest is fulfilled. Note that the promise is not that God will give us rest, but that he himself will be our rest “I will be your rest.” What does it mean that even in this life God is our rest? That is the mystery we explore in this last line of the Mandate. It is a profound biblical concept. A brief consideration of this theme in Scripture will lead us into Catherine’s understanding. The notion of “rest” in the Bible applies to two realities: the Sabbath and the Promised Land. We will understand the Sabbath here as the integration of the Christian life I spoke of above. Rest is what we do after having achieved a goal. In this sense, the “poustinia of the heart,” the “being before God,” is the Sabbath for us. The Promised Land is entering into possession of that which God has promised. In this life, it is the awareness and tranquil joy of possessing Jesus the Beloved in faith. I say, “in this life,” because the Mandate concerns this life, and this last line concerns the faith awareness of the Beloved as we arrive at the perfection of spiritual integration Let us look briefly at some of the scriptural texts: Thus were completed the heavens and the earth with all their array. God finished on the seventh day the work he had done; on the seventh day he rested from the work he had done (Gn 2:1-3). Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that these hold, but on the seventh day he rested (Ex 20:8, 11). Now when God rested he did not cease from “work”: As the Lord says, “My Father works until now, and so do I.” God’s rest is (to speak symbolically) a deeper dimension of his activity. So too, the poustinia of the heart is not a cessation of spiritual activity but rather a perfection of it, and as such a completion, a “rest,” in the biblical sense. In commenting on the feast of the Sabbath, St. Thomas Aquinas says: All the solemnities of the Old Law were instituted to commemorate a divine gift, either recalling one in the past or prefiguring one in the future. Among all the divine gifts of the past which should be borne in mind, the first and greatest is the gift of creation which is commemorated in keeping holy the Sabbath as the text in
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Exodus 20:11 points out. Among all the future gifts which should be borne in mind the greatest and the final gift is the rest of the human spirit in God, either in the present by the gift of grace or in the future by the gift of glory; and this is symbolized by the keeping of the Sabbath. The state of integration symbolized by the poustinia of the heart is the gift of grace, the intense sharing in God’s own life. When we enter this state we enter the “rest of the human spirit,” which is not physical rest but possession of God in faith. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: “You must keep my Sabbaths carefully, because the Sabbath is a sign between myself and you from generation to generation to show that it is I, the Lord, who make you holy”’” (Ex 31:12). When we arrive at some degree of perfection of integration, of being and doing, of working and praying, we will know that it was the Lord who brought us to this state. This state itself is a sign of God’s power in our lives as well as a celebration and a resting a Sabbath. This state of integration will occur when the Lord has subdued all our enemies: “So it was the Lord gave the Israelites all the land he had sworn to give their fathers. They took possession of it and settled there. And the Lord gave them rest from all their enemies round about…” (Jos 21:43). In a marvellous text on this passage, Origen says: This text was not accomplished except in Jesus Christ alone, who is my Lord. For if you think about yourself, you who have come to Jesus and from him through the grace of baptism have received forgiveness of your sins, so that now there is in you no war of the flesh against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, then your land is at rest from war; provided that you bear about in your body the death of Jesus, so that as all battles cease within you, you become a peacemaker and are called a child of God. Catherine would have loved this text! Even in the state of rest we bear about in our bodies the death of Jesus. But then we become peacemakers, bridge-builders, and repossess our birthright as children of God, which is expressed in the second line of the Mandate, to “be childlike.” On the other hand, if we have not been faithful to the Gospel, to living the Mandate, we shall not enter into God’s rest, into the perfection that Jesus had called us to in the Gospel: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”: Therefore we must have before us the fear that while the promise of entering his rest remains open, one or another among you should be found to have missed his chance. For indeed we have heard the Good News, as they did. But in them the word they heard did them no good because they did not share the faith of those who listened. We, however, who have faith, shall reach this “rest,” as in the text: “I vowed in my anger they shall never enter my rest.” God’s work was undoubtedly finished at the beginning of the world, as one text says referring to the seventh day: “After all his work, God rested on the seventh day.” The text we are considering says, “They shall not enter my rest.” It is established, then, that some people would reach this rest; and since those who first heard the
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Good News failed to reach it through their disobedience, God fixed another day when, much later, he said, “Today” through David in the text already quoted: “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” If Joshua had led them into their rest, God would not have spoken of another “day” after that. There must still be, therefore, a Sabbath Rest reserved for God’s people; for anyone who enters rest, rests from his own work as God did from his. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by following this evil example of disbelief (Heb 3:7-4, 11).
Jesus Is the Promised Land This brings us, then, to the final meaning of the final word of the Mandate. We have said this “rest” refers to two realities in the Scripture: the Sabbath, understood as the perfection of a work, the integration of our lives; and secondly, the Promised Land. Very simply, Jesus himself is the Promised Land. We are told to preach the Gospel, and the Gospel is God’s love manifested in Jesus. The awareness of Jesus as our Beloved is our “Rest.” He has said: “Come to Me all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls” (Mt 11:28, 29). Jesus himself is this rest. “His left arm is under my head and his right arm embraces me. I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, not to stir my love, nor rouse her, until she pleases to awake” (Song of Songs, 8).
The Resurrected Christ As Our Rest “CHRIST IS RISEN…VERILY HE IS RISEN…ALLELUIA! I think that is the essence of our apostolate, this resurrection of his. Let us remember that we are children of the resurrection.” (SLFF 4, 1971) I have quoted this text before, but let me repeat it here. In commenting on this last line of the Mandate, Catherine says: “Resting in the arms of God…we must walk in the heat of the day…go through everything he did. But we know something that nobody else knew in his day. We know that we live in his resurrection.” (COM) “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above” (Col 3:1). “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren” (1 Jn 3:14). We believe that even now we live the life of the resurrected Christ himself. Because of our sins and our lack of purity of heart, we cannot experience the full splendor of this life. But he is in us: “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me.” We are still a mixture of the old and the new. But our life even now is essentially the same eternal life we shall live forever now in a glass, darkly, then face to face. To the extent that, by faith, we live in the reality of the resurrected Christ, to that extent we “rest” in this life. The resurrected Christ will be our eternal life; he is even now our rest.
The Music of Easter In the following passage we see how Catherine experienced all the great deeds of God in the light of the resurrection. The gloriously risen Christ was the Father’s plan from all eternity, and everything must be seen in that light. The music of Easter surrounds all of reality:
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Easter! A breathless feast of light and love! A Love triumphant. Easter! A little word that holds the answer to so many troubled hearts… The music of Easter is tremendous and yet, for those who have ears to hear, it begins with the voice of the Almighty, filled with accents of love, tenderness and compassion, promising sinners Adam and Eve forgiveness, salvation, and redemption. It continues through the mighty voices of the prophets of old and comes to a climax in the cry of a Child in a cave of Bethlehem a Child who is also God. In that Easter music, the sounds of a small village in Nazareth can be heard. The soft notes of wood shavings falling on a floor. The daily, ordinary noises of living heard from a street and that easily enter a carpenter’s shop. That music contains the voice of God speaking the words of man as He walked with other men across the tiny land of Palestine. The noises of that music hold within themselves the almost unbearable symphony of his words at the last Supper, words of Love, of Hope. But they also hold the sound of whips, of a human hand against a human cheek. Of the hundred voices of an angry mob and of a moan, or was it the prayer, of Christ in Gethsemane, and his last words on the Cross? And the rending of a temple veil and of a strange, unearthly earthquake. The music that holds the silence of a tomb and the rolling away of an immense stone. And, again, the voice of the resurrected Christ speaking to many. And it holds the sound that is almost soundless, and yet deafening, of the victory of life over death and love over death. Christ is risen! Let us now arise and go and preach his Gospel with our lives. For it is because he is risen that we are his. WE ARE CHRISTIANS! (R, April, 1966) In the next passage Catherine speaks about “the little line of darkness.” It is the line which results from our weak faith, our weak vision and experience of the depth of reality, which is the risen Christ: It began Good Friday. For already the cross and the tomb stood against the slowly reddening sky. Darkness is really evaporated. And Easter is light, so tremendously bright that you cannot even see the cross or the tomb or the people or anything around about. You can only see the light. This light penetrates every fiber of your being. Easter isn’t over, you know. It’s never over. It’s always with us. Easter is a strange fabric. You turn it one way, and it’s all light. You can see the light. You turn it a different way, and at the horizon there is a little line of darkness. Christ is in our midst. And where he is, there is the Father and the Spirit. All this is clearly understood. The tiny line should be accepted naturally, or shall we say, supernaturally, because constantly the light and the darkness mix to present to you his love. We can look at our lives this way and that, like we’re examining a piece of cloth.. Now we see the resurrected Christ; now we see more the darkness of our old life. (Unpub. Talk, Easter, 1977) I believe that, for Catherine, the “rest” of God is living in the resurrected Christ. This is the essence of the Apostolate, the essence of the Mandate, the essence of the Gospel. It is an ever-
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growing faith awareness that even now we are children of the resurrection. It is living in the consciousness of the ultimate victory of Christ within us. As we grow towards love and poverty and all the other dimensions of the Christ life, we grow also in living the resurrected life, because we are experiencing the triumph, in ourselves, of his Easter victory. “Rest,” for Catherine, is living more and more even now in this eternal life that will never end. As I bring this final volume of reflections on Catherine’s Little Mandate to a close, I would now like to show how she connects the Mandate with the resurrection and the resurrected Christ. The Christ Catherine proclaims, the Christ she is in love with, the Christ who can transform the whole world, the Christ we are immersed in, is always the resurrected Christ, even though he mysteriously continues to suffer in his members. To live in the risen Christ is to be at rest. It is to have the apex of our spirit already living in the eternal life which shall never end.
Pilgrimaging In the Resurrected Christ I have never found this in Catherine’s works, but we could understand the very first word of the Mandate Arise! as a call to live the new life of the resurrection. In Ephesians there is part of a very ancient Christian hymn: “Wake up from sleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (5, 14). The ancient Church called her children to throw off the slumber of the old life and be fully awake to the new dawn, the new life of Christ. It is to be remembered, then, first of all, that the whole long journey of the pilgrimage to the lonely and risen Christ takes place in the resurrection” The pilgrim views everything he has and is as belonging to God and his brethren. His motto is “I am third: God, neighbor, myself.” Yes, that’s the strange reality of a pilgrimage in the resurrected Christ. The pilgrim in the resurrected Christ preaches the Gospel without ceasing, night and day. He isn’t only preaching it, he is living it. The reality of the pilgrimage in the resurrected Christ demands a surrender of one’s will to God in a sort of totality. It demands that we do the most ordinary things the duty of the moment for it is the duty of God. And all the time we pilgrimage to attend to the duty of the moment. (St, 69-71) Catherine here indicates that the whole Mandate is to be understood in terms of journeying in the resurrected Christ. And we so journey in the resurrected Christ because now the whole world lives in the resurrected Christ. ALLELUIA! Christ is risen! Verily he is risen! Because he has risen, darkness has been conquered by light, death by life, hatred by love. Now the world lives in the resurrected Christ. Whether men know it or not, the world has changed. It and the whole universe are now living, existing in the Lord of history, in the Lord of eternity, of time, and of love. Not only is the Church in pilgrimage toward the parousia, but so is man and all of his world, and everything that surrounds his world. The resurrection of Christ brought love among us and is now the very principle of our existence. If only we recognize this we could transform the world. It’s such a simple thing that only requires faith in the resurrected Christ!
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Christians have received this gift of faith, and it should be the cradle of their love. For Love dwells in them and they in Love. Love is God. It is so simple. Mankind needs love more desperately than almost the air it breathes. Why not start the fire of love by loving one by one all whom we meet and deal with during the day. Then indeed the resurrection of Christ will become meaningful and our pilgrimage to him will become joyful. (R, April, 1967) The Mandate is a journey to the poor “going to the poor.” It is the resurrected Christ who is present in the poor of the world, which is everyone. In the following passage we see that even though Christ still mysteriously suffers in his members, it is always, as it was for Paul on the road to Damascus mystery of mysteries! the risen Christ who needs to be consoled, the risen Christ who is present in suffering humanity: Christ is risen! Yes, Lord, we see you clad in splendor. Alleluia! But our hearts are heavy. All around us your resurrected beauty suddenly changes into a million hungry faces. The alleluias of our joy make jonquil carpets for your pierced feet. But our hearts weep before the thousands who are homeless men, women, and children the victims of war and human greed. Our eyes are dazzled by your resurrected glory. Yet, our hearts behold the dark night of your loneliness in the forsaken, the old, the forgotten. Your resurrection has made the desert bloom. Yet, the bitter smell of your poverty comes to us from the endless lines of the pierced gray faces of the poor. They cry to us who profess to follow you in many places. Exultant is our soul with songs of gratitude and joy at the conquest of death by you, O risen Lord. And yet, so many of us will see your bloodstained face in the poor dead, buried in some forgotten potter’s field. Christ is risen! Alleluia! Let us sing our alleluias, but let us also console him in all our brothers and sisters from whom he died, whoever they may be. Then indeed our alleluias will really mean what they were meant to mean: hope for new life for all men. (R, April, 1972) We cannot believe in the resurrected Christ and fail to go out to the poor: We cannot rejoice in the resurrection and be halfhearted Christians; it would be our condemnation. We cannot remain indifferent to the need of our brothers everywhere, for we are our brothers’ keeper, because Christ came unto us, became man for us, and incarnated Himself for love of us. It is incredible that we can celebrate his resurrection in our churches with glad hearts, while our brothers across the world are denied their rights and privileges of human dignity and equality. It is impossible that we can celebrate his resurrection in our churches while children, men, and women die from hunger in any corner of the world. Yes, the joyous, incredible feat of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ must become a time for a deep, painful search of our consciences. This is the acceptable hour. (R, April, 1965) Does the Gospel, the Mandate, seem impossible? Who can give up all you possess, preach the Gospel without compromise, go without fears into the depths of men’s hearts? Is all this
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possible? Can the whole world become a community of love, a reflection of the Trinity? Is it an unreal dream? No, it is not a dream. It is possible because of the resurrection: Christ is risen! What does this message mean to the average Christian in his ordinary daily life? It means hope. The world belongs to those who give it hope. Christ gave it hope the supreme hope of love, of peace, of life everlasting. Now it is the Christian’s turn to continue to give that love and that hope. Because we have surrendered ourselves to Christ, because we have accepted his Gospel in its totality, because we have stripped ourselves of ourselves, he will be able to work his healing process through us, and men will find that faith, love and hope they so desperately seek. Then they too will know that Christ is truly risen. Alleluia! (R, April, 1970) Christ is risen! Now it is up to us to be witnesses to his resurrection. To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up. It consists in living a mystery in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that people find hope in our presence, in the presence of Christ in us. (R, April, 1971) We have been called to “preach the Gospel with our lives.” The Gospel that we have been called to preach is the Good News of the resurrected Christ God saying that he still loves us even after we put his Son to death: Easter, the greatest feast of the Christian world…It should awaken, arouse, draw, attract, compel, call, every Catholic TO ARISE AND BECOME WHAT HE TRULY IS AN APOSTOLE ONE WHO IS SENT TO PREACH THE GLAD TIDINGS OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD AFTER HIS INCARNATION, AND WHAT THAT RESURRECTION MEANS TO US. Which is but another way of arising and preaching the Gospel of love to the marketplaces of the world, for the glad tidings simply means THAT GOD LOVED US FIRST…THAT OUR FAITH IS A LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN GOD AND US. AND THAT ALL WE HAVE TO DO, WE WHO HAVE DIED AND RESURRECTED WITH HIM IN BAPTISM, IS TO GO FORTH AND BY WORDS AND DEEDS TELL THE WORLD ABOUT THIS INCREDIBLE GLAD NEWS THAT GOD LOVES US! (R, March, 1964) How like the first Easter this Easter of 1960 seems to be! Now, as then, he appears to a small group before his Ascension. For the number of the faithful…is both expanding and shrinking. New worlds that lay dormant Africa and Asia are arising. New giants. To these lands modern apostles priestly, religious and lay will have to go, even as the apostles had to go into unbelieving, pagan worlds, to show them the living Christ, the Redeemer, the Conqueror of Death, the Tremendous lover. Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen! Verily he is risen! Now, as then, we must show him to our fellow countrymen in the free world democracies that profess to believe in Him, and yet, like Thomas, the apostle, are besieged by doubts and temptations. And even as we sing, with heart, mind, and soul, the joyous alleluias
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of Easter, let us all be sure that all that Easter Sunday stands for, we bring to the marketplaces of our disturbed and sorrowful world. (R, May, 1960) We are called to love, to be a light to our neighbor’s feet in the midst of the darkness, to help establish communication in a world of isolation, to overcome our fears. Withdrawal from other men leads us into hopelessness the narrow circle of living death, where all is silent and where words are meaningless noises. We have gone beyond the Tower of Babel days. We who speak the same tongue have ceased to understand each other because our words have become empty symbols of our own emptiness and nothingness. How can we communicate with one another again? How can we restore ourselves to God and to each other? How can we implement the awesome reality of the mystery of the Mystical Body? The answer is Easter, the feast of the resurrection. The feast of hope, the feast of love and of oneness. We, too, can resurrect ourselves from the tomb of silence and of withdrawal by faith and by love. We, too, can rise. We, too, can leave fears behind. For in him and in his resurrection we are all one. (R, April, 1962) Finally, the resurrection is seen as the final goal. Alleluia! We contemplate the apex of a fantastic mountain, the summit of the incomprehensible, the essence of all the joy of the world…THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. Each step up that mountain is a step into faith, the faith that is the true gift of God, and which he enlarges with every step of man. Finally, as if having ascended a thousand Tabors, we behold Christ, risen from the dead! But in our day so many stand at the foot of the mountain, looking upwards, and say, “Where is the mountain?” They convince themselves that there was no resurrection. Others see the mountain, begin to climb it, but find it too hard; they descend back into the valley and remain there. Then there are others who know that they cannot climb the mountain by themselves. They prostrate themselves at the foot of the mountain and cry out: “With your help alone shall we climb it. Hear us, Lord, extend your helping hand. We believe that Christ is the Messiah. We believe in his passion and resurrection. Help our unbelief.” All of us who live in the valley, all of us who must climb this mountain of the Lord, must extend a hand to our brother and say, “Let us climb together. In unity there is strength.” Then indeed will the valley be transformed, and everyone will be climbing the mountain of the Lord, because everyone will be helping each other to remember his face. So let us all join hands and sing our alleluias in a loud voice. Let it be a chorus of love to God, making us ready to follow wherever the resurrected Christ leads us. (Unpub. Talk, 1988) “The valley will be transformed.” The valley is the human race, which could be transformed into the Body of the risen Christ if everyone loved enough to take his brother and sister by the hand and showed them the face of Christ.
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The Parousia In our “Way of Life” which Catherine wrote for our community we read: “The Apostolate of Madonna House and its members are pilgrims in this world proclaiming the Second Coming of Christ, when all things will be restored in him.” As is well known, “parousia” simply means “appearance.” It is used by St. Paul referring to the final “appearing” of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was a very rich and profound reality for Catherine. We might even say that she lived not only in the resurrected Christ but also in some profound and mysterious way in the parousia as well. She lived in the awareness that he could come again at any moment. She lived in this heightened expectancy of his coming: How clearly the Christians understood that each Sunday was a “little Easter” that each was a parousia, for in each Christ came again in the mysteries and in the Eucharist. And, at the same time, each Sunday was the expectation of the parousia (the Second Coming of Christ). When this was to be, no one knew for sure, but all should be always expecting it! That feeling, that flaming hope and expectation, was deeply rooted in the Russian heart, and it made all things bearable. All pains and sorrows were endurable, and it brought a mysterious understanding of the things that the human intellect alone cannot understand. It made the nights of life, with their stygian darkness, light with this hope. It was an ever-present reality. It was spoken about amongst pilgrims and paupers. It gave buoyancy to all. It gave a zest for living, whilst, at the same time, taking away the fear of dying. FOR THERE WAS THE RESURRECTION AND THERE WAS THE PAROUSIA HIS SECOND COMING. ALL WAS WELL, EVEN IF ALL SEEMED TO GO WRONG ON EARTH. (R April, 1961) The Little Mandate is about life here on earth, so this is not the place to present Catherine’s teaching about heaven. She never liked the idea of “eternal rest” as understood by most people! Just as the Little Flower, St. Therese, said she was going to spend her heaven doing good on earth, so I think this would more be Catherine’s desire! Life for her was always movement and fire and vitality. In one of the richest and most comprehensive of her expressions of the Mandate, she said: “For us to live in Nazareth we must, strange as it may seem, begin with Golgotha and the tomb! Then, resurrected in him, by his grace, we shall journey to Bethlehem with the knowledge of the resurrected Christ, and live in Nazareth in expectation of the parousia.” (SL #183, 1965) It is by baptism that we are plunged into the tomb and then rise with Christ. Then we journey in life towards our original likeness as children of God, journey with the Holy Family in the spirit of Nazareth. And yes, we expect the final parousia, the final appearance of Christ. But Catherine once said this: Heaven is in persons God, the saints, the saved ones. Heaven is in you, whatever it might be. And the “Credo” faith already brings you to the parousia. For the parousia is really the Trinity. The parousia is Our Lady. The parousia is all the saints and angels and everybody crying “Credo!” (Unpub. Talk, 1977)
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Easter! It holds within its alleluias and joy the promise of the Second coming of the Lord, the parousia. That will truly bring us to the kingdom of God, and finally unite mankind once again to its Creator. (R, April, 1963) In prayer, in the Eucharist, in her own interior journey, in others, Catherine not only met the lonely and risen Christ. She met “the Christ of the parousia,” the Christ of the end time. This Christ of the parousia expresses an even deeper consummation, if we can put it that way, than the resurrected Christ. The resurrected Christ still suffers mysteriously in his Body, the Church. The Christ of the parousia is the Christ who, even now, sums up in himself the totality of the Father’s plan. It is the “one Christ loving himself” of Augustine’s final passage of the City of God. It is this touching, in faith, of the Christ of the parousia which, I believe, constituted for Catherine the depths of resting: “Credo faith already brings you to the parousia.” When your faith and life of love penetrates to this dimension of the Christ-life, then your human spirit is at rest. The promise, “I will be your rest” has been fulfilled and experienced as deeply as it can be in this life.
The Christ of The Eighth Day In the Madonna House chapel in Combermere we have a magnificent icon entitled “The Christ of the Eighth Day.” “Parousia” means appearance. The Eighth Day, you might say, is one stage beyond the parousia! It is the EVERLASTING DAY that will never end, the final consummation of all Sabbaths, Sundays, Feast Days. To be immersed, by faith, in this “Christ of the Eighth Day,” is to be at rest. Thus, after the long journey to the lonely and in the risen Christ does the pilgrim arrive home in the Heart of the Trinity, and rest, through the power of the Holy Spirit, in Christ, the Eighth Day that has no end. It is to come home to the kingdom that has been prepared for those who met the lonely and risen Christ in the sick, the hungry, the naked, those in prison. Christ’s Little Mandate to Catherine is a profound and trustworthy guide to all the pilgrims of the earth for making this journey. May it help to guide you, dear reader, along your pilgrimage. May your journey be filled with the music of Easter. And may we all meet on the Eighth Day and rejoice together forever! I would like to give Catherine the last word. In her personal diary for May 22, 1954, she asks the Lord Jesus to grant her the very essence of his Little Mandate to her to be always reposing on his Heart “while going about his business.” It is a magnificent prayer for total union with the lonely and risen Christ until she sees him face to face. It can be our prayer to the lonely and risen Christ, asking his help to live the Mandate: My days, my nights, minutes, seconds are all his through Mary. That I know. But how is my heart? Does it rest in him always? Here I come before a baffling fact. I know one cannot “think” unceasingly of God, and yet, I also know that one can “rest in God” while going about his business. O Lord of Peace, keep me within thy breast no matter where I am. My feet may fly upon a thousand tasks for thee. My hands be busy with things to do for thee. My mind immersed in thoughts and deeds that all are there for thee. But let my heart repose within thy heart. For then the rest of me will truly be blessed by thee. I hunger so for that “repose” in thee. My heart is restless unless it rests in thee.
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And as time goes by into the where time flies, my heart hungers more and more for silence and solitude. I am so parched for both. It is like walking in a burning desert to be without them! Oh grant me the grace of solitude amidst a milling throng! Of silence amidst all deafening noise! Of repose and rest within thy heart amidst activity on your behalf that never ceases. O Lover, come and take possession of my heart and keep it forever in your Sacred Heart.
The Life of Catherine Doherty by Fa t h e r R o b e r t Pe l t o n
Catherine Kolyschkine was born into a wealthy family in Russia on the feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1896 (N.S.). She was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, although many Christian strands were woven into the spiritual fabric of her family, including Catholicism. During her father’s long assignments abroad in connection with Russian diplomatic and business interests, Catherine was entrusted to convent schools and Catholic nuns. However, the distinctively Russian incarnation of the Gospel was the great crucible into which every other element poured to forge Catherine’s early life. From the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the living faith of her father and mother, and the earthy piety of the Russian people themselves, sinners and skeptics as well as saints, she received the powerful spiritual traditions and symbols of the Christian East. At fifteen Catherine was married to Boris de Hueck. Soon they were swept into the devastating battles of World War I, she as a nurse, he as an engineer. After the Revolution of 1917, they endured with all the peoples of the Russian Empire the agonies of starvation and civil war. Many of Catherine’s relatives were killed, but she and Boris escaped at last and, stripped of everything but
Journey to the Heart of Christ clothes and faith, made their way to Finland and then to England. It was in England that Catherine formally became a Catholic. At the beginning of her new life in the West, Catherine accepted the teachings of the Catholic Church, without rejecting, then or ever, the spiritual wealth of her Orthodox heritage. In 1921, Boris and Catherine, with little money and uncertain health, sailed to Canada. She was pregnant and gave birth to her son, George, soon after they arrived in their new country. They settled in Toronto, but even with the help of friends it was not easy to find work that would support them and their child. Catherine often remembered that she had first come to know the people of North America not through wealthy benefactors who were intrigued by her aristocratic connections, but in the working poor whose lives she shared as maid, laundress, waitress and salesclerk. Soon Catherine’s intelligence, energy, and gift for public speaking brought her to the attention of a large lecture bureau. Her talks were popular all across Canada and the United States. Within a few years, she became an executive with another, international lecture service. Before long she had a large apartment, many books, a nurse for her son, a fine car, celebrated friends. She was a North American success story. But Catherine began to wonder. Her marriage was disintegrating, and she seemed unable to heal it. Moreover, she knew that she was also struggling with God. Had He saved her from death in Russia so many
The Life of Catherine Doherty times only to make her a comfortable bourgeoise in North America? The words of Christ haunted her: “Sell all you possess, and give it to the poor, and come, follow me.” It seemed madness, and she tried to close her soul to these words, which she has described as sounding within her like the faint, disjointed stammering of a dying man. She could not escape them. In the early 1930s, after several years of anguish, Catherine and Boris separated permanently; later, the Church annulled their marriage. As devastated as Catherine was by what felt to her yet another, more intimate death, she knew that God wanted something new from her now. But she did not know what it was. It was to the Archbishop of Toronto, Neil McNeil, that she turned for help in her need for a word from the Lord. The Archbishop listened to Catherine and told her that he believed God was asking something most unusual from her, something that would demand her own crucifixion on the other side of the cross of Christ. Did she love Christ enough to do that? Catherine did. She agreed to spend a year in prayer for further discernment, and when the year was over, the Archbishop gave Catherine his blessing, and she and her son went to live in a humble section of the city. George was enrolled in a good school, and Catherine began to seek to obey the Lord’s word to her “to become one with the poor, one with Him.” At first Catherine desired only to be with the poor, to love and serve them very quietly, to become their friend, to pray with them, hidden in their midst. But
Journey to the Heart of Christ when others saw her and heard her speak, they wanted to join her. There was an intensity to her faith and love that lit a flame in the hearts of many men and women. Catherine had not envisaged a community, but when the Archbishop told her that, yes, Christ was calling her to found a community of lay people to serve him in the poor, she accepted what he said. Soon Friendship House was born. The works of Friendship House were modest—a shelter for the homeless, meals for the hungry, recreation and books for the young, a newspaper to make known the social teachings of the Church. The prophetic voice of Catherine and the community of Friendship House resounded boldly, however, in a city where Catholics were not well accepted. The poor welcomed her, but others were scandalized by her forceful insistence that caring for the poor was not optional for Christians. After a few years, misunderstanding and gossip drove her out of Toronto. The first Friendship House was dead. Yet Catherine’s voice had reached other ears in North America. In 1938 Father John LaFarge, S.J., arranged to have the Archbishop of New York invite her to work in Harlem. She agreed to start Friendship House again, alone, in total poverty, this time among the African–Americans. Catherine brought them not only compassion and an irresistible passion for justice, but her whole soul. Once again men and women came to share her life and work. The interracial apostolate grew in New York and expanded to other cities, to Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon. Friendship House became
The Life of Catherine Doherty well known, if not necessarily well thought of, in the American Church. Catherine shared with her friend Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, the intense struggle to move the gospel out of books into believers’ lives. Even if a few, such as the young Thomas Merton, recognized in her the power of the Holy Spirit and an unwavering fidelity to Christ’s Church, many others were frightened by her Russian bluntness. Others simply could not grasp the largeness of her vision, especially because her experience of the ways of God were so foreign to them. Finally after a painful difference of opinion over the nature of the Friendship House apostolate, Catherine found herself pushed again into the chartless waters of the Lord. This time, however, Catherine did not have to start alone. In 1943, she had married Eddie Doherty, a celebrated newspaperman, after he convinced her and her bishop that he wanted to share and support her vocation. In 1947, then, Catherine and Eddie came to Combermere, a small village 180 miles northeast of Toronto, where the Bishop of Pembroke had agreed she could work among the rural families. They came bewildered and uncertain. Still exhausted with grief of another separation, they planted a dozen apple trees. Somehow they knew that they had come home, and that the mysterious vocation of prayer, communal love and simple service of the poor, which the Lord had given to Catherine, would not be lost. They could not see what the future held, and often during the first years in Combermere they were tempted to leave. But they had planted those trees, and if they had come
Journey to the Heart of Christ to what seemed to them a wilderness, they knew that it was the Lord’s and that he would make it bloom. He did. Again others came to join Catherine, and this time priests came to stay as well. The apostolate, now called Madonna House, grew slowly. Father John T. Callahan, the founder–director of the priests of Madonna House, was a constant support. In 1955, when the community had agreed to establish itself more formally in the Church with vows of poverty, chastity and obedience leading to a life–time commitment, Catherine and Eddie took a vow of celibacy. Their sacrifice bore fruit in vocations and in stability, and in 1978 Bishop Joseph R. Windle approved the constitution of Madonna House as a single community with branches of laymen, laywomen and clerics. (Under the new code of canon law, the apostolate is a public association of the faithful.) At present, fifty–three years later, Madonna House has 212 members, including twenty priests, along with eleven novices and 132 associate priests. The apostolate has missions in Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, France, England, Ghana, Liberia, and Russia, in addition to fourteen others in Canada and the United States. The training center in Combermere offers an experience of the Gospel life to hundreds every year. As Catherine’s inner life deepened and the community matured, she was better able to share with us the fullness of the inner vocation Christ had formed in her through the many blessings and struggles of her life. “Love is ingenious”, she liked to say, and the ingenuity of her heart and her mind found new words and deeds
The Life of Catherine Doherty to show us how deep and how broad was the call Madonna House had received through her “to restore all things in Christ.
More information about Catherine Doherty’s life, works, and news about the progress of her cause for canonization can be found at the Internet web site: www.c atherinedoherty.org
Key to Cited Works and other relevant publications
So as not to get too complicated, I have devised a simple key to the documents I am using. Sometimes I am working from the published editions; then I will quote the page reference. Sometimes I am working from original manuscripts; in that case I simply quote the work, since the public does not have access to the reference anyhow. I will list here also works of Catherine not used in this book so as to give the reader an overall view of other significant material. AF - Apostolic Farming: Healing the Earth. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2001. CI - “The Church and I.” Unpublished talk. COLM - “Comments on the Little Mandate.” 1969. Unpublished talk. DB - Dear Bishop. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947. DBEL - Dearly Beloved: Letters to the Children of My Spirit. 3 vols. Combermere: Madonna House Publications, 1990. DF - Dear Father: A Message of Love for Priests. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2001. DLR - Doubts, Loneliness, Rejection. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1993. Dsem - Dear Seminarian. Combermere: Madonna House Publications, 1989. FH - Friendship House. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946.
Journey to the Heart of Christ FL - “Furfey Letters.” Correspondence with her former spiritual director, Father Paul Furfey. Unpublished. FML - Fragments of My Life: A Memoir. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1996. GPW - The Gospel of A Poor Woman. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1992. GWC - The Gospel Without Compromise. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1989. HA - The History of the Apostolate. 3 Vols. Unpublished. HMCB - “How the Little Mandate Came To Be” in Unfinished Pilgrimage: God’s ‘Little Mandate’. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1995. ILI - I Live on an Island. New title: Welcome, Pilgrim. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1991. JI&II - “Journey Inward.” 2 vols. of poetry. Unpublished. JI - Journey Inward: Interior Conversations. New York: Alba House, 1984. LDM - “Local Director’s Meetings.” Unpublished. L - Lubov: The Heart of the Beloved. Locust Valley, NY: Living Flame Press, 1985. M - Molchanie: Experiencing the Silence of God. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2001. MHI - My Heart and I: Spiritual Reflections. Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1987. MHWII - “Madonna House, What Is It?” 1980. Unpublished. MRY - My Russian Yesterdays. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1990. NWP - Not Without Parables: Stories of Yesterday, Today and Eternity. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1989.
Key to Cited Works OC - Out of the Crucible: Some Ideas on Training for the Lay Apostolate. St. Paul's Publications, 1961. OLUM - Our Lady's Unknown Mysteries. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1990. P - Poustinia: Experiencing God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2000. POV - “Poverty.” Manuscript. Unpublished. R - Restoration. The Madonna House monthly newspaper. SC - Stations of the Cross: A Meditation. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, N.D. SL - “Staff Letters.” Letters from Catherine to the staff of her Madonna House community. Unpublished. SLFF - “Staff Letters from the Foundress.” Unpublished. SMHA - “The Spirit of the Madonna House Apostolate.” Also known as Staff Letter #140, it is published in an edited form here in Appendix A of Journey to the Lonely Christ. SMS - Soul of My Soul: Reflections from a Life of Prayer. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1985. So - Sobornost: Experiencing Unity of Mind, Heart and Soul. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2000. St - Strannik: The Call to the Pilgrimage of the Heart. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2000. TOLM - “Thoughts on the Little Mandate.” Unpublished talk. U - Uródivoi: Holy Fools. Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 2001. WL - “Way of Life.” Constitution of Madonna House, written 1970–71. Unpublished. WLIGI - Where Love Is, God Is. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co., 1953
“Lord, give bread to the hungry, and hunger for you to those who have bread,” was a favourite prayer of our foundress, Catherine Doherty. At Madonna House Publications, we strive to satisfy the spiritual hunger for God in our modern world with the timeless words of the Gospel message. Faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church and its magisterium, Madonna House Publications is a non-profit apostolate dedicated to publishing high quality and easily accessible books, audiobooks, videos and music. We pray our publications will awaken and deepen in our readers an experience of Jesus’ love in the most simple and ordinary facets of everyday life. Your generosity can help Madonna House Publications provide the poor around the world with editions of important spiritual works containing the enduring wisdom of the Gospel message. If you would like to help, please send your contribution to the address below. We also welcome your questions and comments. May God bless you for your participation in this apostolate. Madonna House Publications 2888 Dafoe Rd Combermere ON K0J 1L0 Canada Internet: www.madonnahouse.org/publications E-mail:
[email protected] Telephone: (613) 756-3728
