Month: June 2009

Make God your hero

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

The following is an encouragement from Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins to parents and teachers to help their children understand the true Christ so that they might make Him their hero.  It’s also an encouragement to all of us to do the same.  What I find striking about this piece is the quality that Hopkins emphasizes as heroic–it’s reminiscent of yesterday’s post.  May the Holy Spirit help us to perceive Christ in this way. . . and to perceive others likewise.   

 [Christ] is the true-love and the bridegroom of men’s souls: the virgins follow him whithersoeer he goes; the martyrs follow him through a sea of blood, through great tribulation; all his servants take up their cross and follow him.  And those even that do not follow him, yet they look wistfully after him, own him a hero, and wish they dared answer to his call.  Children as soon as they can understand ought to be told about him, that they may make him the hero of their young hearts . . .
     From all that might be said of Christ’s character I single out one point and beg you to notice that.  He loved to praise, he loved to reward.  He knew what was in man, he best knew men’s faults and yet he was the warmest in their praise.  When he worked a miracle he would grace it with ‘Thy faith hath saved thee,’ that it might almost seem the receiver’s work, not his.  He said of Nathanial that he was an Israelite without guile; he that searches hearts said this, and yet what praise that was to give!  He called the two sons of Zebedee Sons of Thunder, kind and stately and honorable name!  We read of nothing thunderlike that they did except, what was sinful, to wish fire down from heaven on some sinners but they deserved the name or he would not have given it, and he has given it them for all time.  Of John the Baptist he said that his greater was not born of women.  He said to Peter, ‘Thou art Rock,’ and rewarded a moment’s acknowledgement of him with the lasting headship of His Church.  He defended Magdalen and took means that the story of her generosity should be told for ever.  And though he bids us say we are unprofitable servants, yet he himself will say to each of us ‘Good and faithful servant, well done.’
     And this man whose picture I have tried to draw for you, brethren, is your God.  He was your maker in time past; hereafter he will be your judge.  Make him your hero now.

‘The God of hope’ hopes for us

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Some mornings it’s hard for me to choose which gem to share with you.  .  .  but this is the one that I finally decided upon.  It’s another from Amy Carmichael.  She looks at how Jesus always had hope for His disciples, and so this is true for us as well. She’s commenting on Romans 15:13: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

     These words have often helped us to go on hoping for those who were disappointing us.  But this morning they came differently to me.
‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.’  A few hours later — ‘Could ye not watch with Me one hour?’  Very soon after — ‘All the disciples forsook Him and fled.’
‘They have kept Thy word’ . . . ‘There was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest’ –this had happened only a little while before.  And yet, so perfect was the understanding between Father and Son that He does not explain–to the Father the all-knowing Son says, ‘They have kept Thy word.’ How could He say it?  What does it mean to us?  Just this: Our Lord of Love, our blessed Lord Jesus, looks upon us with such loving eyes that He sees us as we are in our deepest, lowliest, holiest moments, in those hours when, like John, we lean upon His bosom, and He speaks to us, and we all but see His face.
He knows, as no one else can know, the deep longing of our hearts.  He knows, as no one else can know, how far we fall. ‘Not as though I had already attained–He knows that; but ‘I press on’–He knows that, too.
The love of the Father has the same golden quality of hope. ‘The God of Hope’ hopes for us, even for us.  He never loses hope.  He accepted the word of His beloved Son: ‘They have kept [intensely observed] Thy word,’ in spite of times when they had seemed most grievously to disregard it–when for example at our Lord’s own table they strove about the dreadful matter of pre-eminence.  The God of Hope saw what they wished to be, what they yet would be.  And He looks at us like that.  Is there not something in this that touches us to the quick?  How grieve a love like that?  And is there not encouragement, too, for the strengthening of our souls?       (Edges of His Ways)

If you are cold, come to the Fire

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Some excerpts from Fr. Cantalamessa’s book, The Eucharist: Our Sanctification:

The Eucharist springs from love; the reason for every thing was that he loved us: ‘Christ love us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph 5:2).

At every ‘breaking of the bread’ when the priest breaks the host, it’s as if the alabaster vase of Christ’s humanity were being broken again, which is what happened on the Cross, and as if the perfume of his obedience were rising to touch the Father’s heart again.

“Drown yourself in the Blood of Christ crucified, bathe yourself in the Blood, inebriate and satiate yourself with the Blood and clothe yourself in the Blood.  And if you are unfaithful, baptize yourself again in the Blood; if the devil has blurred your mind’s eye, cleanse your eyes with the Blood; if you become ungrateful for unseen gifts, be grateful in the Blood. . . . Melt your lukewarmness in the heat of the Blood and in the light of the Blood darkness will dissolve and you will be the spouse of Truth.” (Catherine of Siena, Letter 102)

And from St. Alphonsus Liguori:

If you are cold, do you think it sensible to move away from fire?  Precisely because you feel your heart frozen you should go more frequently to Holy Communion, provided you feel a sincere desire to love Jesus Christ.

Serving badly, suffering badly, loving badly

Sr. Dorcee, beloved7 Comments

I guess this is a bit of a follow-up to “When you feel like you have nothing left to give”.   I’m thinking of how so often I feel that when I try to give to folks, I don’t feel like I’m doing it very well or saying it very well.  Dom Hebert van Zeller addresses this in the following excerpt from his book, The Inner Search.  Too often I’m more concerned about how well I’m doing things rather than about the importance of just doing something and and maybe doing it badly, but being willing to be humble.  Of course, this is true of loving God as well as loving my neighbor.  It’s important for us to know who we really are as well as who God really is.  A lesson I’m obviously still learning.

What costs the soul most is not the service itself, or the love itself, or the suffering itself, but the sense of serving badly, suffering badly, loving badly.  What God wants is not only the acts of service, love, suffering, but the acts of resignation to personal insufficiency.
       For the soul to know that the whole purpose is to search after God, and at the same time to see how half-hearted is its search, must lead either to dependence or to defeat.  If the soul makes use of the knowledge and trust in God, it learns humility.  If the soul makes use of the light only in order to be miserable, it exchanges the darkness of faith for the darkness of self.  The grace of true humility is sacrificed for the false comfort of self pity.

The top half of the picture

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

A story we can all learn from from the then Cardinal Ratzinger:

The British doctor Sheila Cassidy (who in 1978 entered the Benedictine order) was imprisoned and tortured in Chile in 1975 for having given medical treatment to a revolutionary.  Shortly after being tortured she was transferred to another cell, where she found a tattered  Bible.  She opened it, and the first thing she saw was a picture of a man prostrate under lightning, thunder and hail. Immediately she identified herself with this man, saw herself in him.  Then she looked further and saw in the upper part of the picture a mighty hand, the hand of God, and the text from the eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, a text that comes straight from the center of Resurrection-faith: “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ” (8:39).  And whereas at first it was the bottom half of the picture which she experienced, her being invaded by all that was terrible, crushing her like a helpless worm, she gradually came to experience more and more the other part of the picture, the powerful hand and the “Nothing that can separate us .”  At first she still prayed, “Lord, let me out of here,” but this interior shaking of the prison bars turned more and more into that truly free composure which prays, with Jesus Christ: “Not my will, but thine, be done.”  Furthermore she discovered that, as a result, she was filled with a great freedom and kindness toward those who hated her: now she could love them, for she saw their hatred as their distress and imprisonment.”   (Co-workers for the Truth)

Well done, good and faithful servants . . .

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Today we buried Pat, a 70 year old resident of Emmanuel House, one of two homes we run for the elderly who are no longer able to live on their own and have little income.  They live at Emmanuel House free of charge. Many of our sisters staff the homes during the day time, but the rest of the time many, many good folks from the area volunteer their time to give the EH residents round the clock love and care.  Today at her funeral service, many of those volunteers shared about Pat and how she changed their lives.  Pat was frequently described as very rough around the edges.  None of her children were at her funeral which says a lot about her pain and woundedness.  But almost every volunteer who shared, shared about how Pat called out of them a decision to love her for her sake, and not theirs, and that made all the difference in their lives.  And it ended up making all the difference in Pat’s life in the end.  That’s what Emmanuel House is all about: loving others as Christ loves us.

When you feel like you have nothing left to give . . .

Like the poor widow, Jesus is more pleased when we give from our poverty than when we give from our abundance.

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Widow's MiteIn my position as superior of our community, there are many days when I feel like I don’t have anything to give my sisters–not that I don’t want to–I just feel very poor.  I also feel that way pretty much all the time in prayer these days.  I have always experienced great encouragement from the story of the widow’s mite.  Some words on this topic from Andre Louf, abbot emeritus of the Cistercian monastery of Mont-des-Cats, France:

Jesus was elated over the poor widow who offered two copper coins.  She gave from her poverty and in so doing offered up everything she had to live on (Mk 12:42-44).  The others had also given money, a lot of it even, but “from their surplus wealth” . . . Jesus, however, preferred the two miserable coins of the widow to these substantial gifts even though the coins were of no significance in the sum total of the collection.    Why did he rate this gift more highly?  Jesus’ answer was very simple: “She, from her poverty, put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”  Does this mean the others should have been more generous?  Should they have given larger sums?  Of course not.  They were naturally free to do this and a higher contribution would certainly have been appreciated.  But that was not what was important to Jesus; the issue was not so much one of quantity.  Even if the rich were to give more, they would still only be giving from their abundance.  For them it would always remain immensely difficult to give from their poverty.  It is the same for us: whatever we may give of all the things that belong to us–our money, our time, our magnanimity, our health, our thousand good qualities–even if we put all this at Jesus’ disposal, still we are only giving from our abundance.  And it will always remain hard and even painful for us to give from our poverty.  To give everything to Jesus always means to give from our poverty and that is not an easy thing to do.  But it is precisely this gift that Jesus expects from us all . . . To give from our poverty means, first of all, to know that we are poor, that we have discovered in ourselves the wound for which (for that matter) no one is responsible but which for ever makes us utterly poor indeed, poor to a degree we would not dare to admit to ourselves. . . [The widow] accepts the fact that she just wants to give what she has because Jesus looked at her and accepted her as she was.  Happy are they who dare to give from their poverty: in the eyes of Jesus they have given everything they had.   (from Mercy in Weakness)

The Mercy of God

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

I was thinking this morning of introducing you to Jessica Powers, a discalced Carmelite nun who wrote poetry.  Which poem to share with you first, for whichever I choose will form an opinion of her?  I’ll start with the first in the compilation, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers:

                                               The Mercy of God

I am copying down in a book from my heart’s archives
the day that I ceased to fear God with a shadowy fear.
Would you name it the day that I measured my column of virtue
and sighted through windows of merit a crown that was near?
Ah, no, it was rather the day I began to see truly
that I came forth from nothing and ever toward nothingness tend,
that the works of my hands are a foolishness wrought in the presence
of the worthiest king in a kingdom that shall never end.
I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion
and defended with flurries of pride;
I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God’s mercy,
and here I abide.
There is greenness and calmness and coolness, a soft leafy covering
from the judgment of sun overhead,
and the hush of His peace, and the moss of His mercy to tread.
I have naught but my will seeking God; even love burning in me
is a fragment of infinite loving and never my own.
And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever
in a wilderness made of His infinite mercy alone.

                                                                                                  (1949)

The persistent will of love

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

A word of hope from Caryll Houselander for those of us who go to Mass distracted,  maybe not quite awake, no inspiration, perhaps with a heart that feels dull and cold, but with the firm intention and desire to worship and adore this One Who gives Himself to us beyond measure:

Every day crowds of unknown people come to him, who feel as hard, as cold, as empty as the tomb.  They come with the first light, before going to the day’s work, and with the grey mind of early morning, hardly able to concentrate at all on the mystery which they themselves are part of: impelled only by the persistent will of love, not by any sweetness of consolation, and it seems to them as if nothing happens at all.  But Christ’s response to that dogged, devoted will of a multitude of insignificant men is his coming to life in them, his resurrection in their souls.  In the eyes of the world they are without importance, but in fact, because of them and their unemotional communions, when the world seems to be finished, given up to hatred and pride, secretly, in unimaginable humility Love comes to life again.  There is resurrection everywhere. (The Risen Christ)

It’s a great word of hope also for us who may feel powerless in the face of the state of this world.   Because of us and our “unemotional communions”, Love comes to life again.  And that will change the world.