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.
Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
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.
In 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
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
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.
Tim’s birthday
Yesterday would have been my brother Tim’s 57th birthday. Three years ago he took his life on St. Patrick’s Day. (This was the “very challenging time” of the “Courage” post. See May 7, 2009.) There were many, many ways that God upheld me through that time and many, many friends who did the same. One of those friends was Amy Carmichael (see my last post). Four months after Tim’s death, I read this and it was a great comfort:
For God sees the whole man, and He has a tender way of looking at a soul at its highest, not its lowest. He does not do as we so often do, misjudge it because of what its diseased mind made its body do in a blind and broken hour. And we have to do with a Love that can grasp the poor hands that reach out to Him in that darkness–what father would not do that? And He is our Father.
But when those who have prayed for such a one have no assurance that there was ever any turning to Him who alone can save, then indeed we seem to be viewing a land like that hopeless country the prophet describes, whose streams shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone. ‘And He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness.’ But a word of peace comes through the confusion: prayer in the name of His Beloved Son does not fall upon stones of emptiness. Sometimes, somewhere we shall know better than we know now how gracious the Lord is.
from Gold by Moonlight
Accepting the unexplained
A woman who has been very instrumental in my life was a Protestant missionary from Ireland to India in the first half of the last century. (A little anecdote: as a child, she prayed for God to change her brown eyes to blue, a prayer God did not answer. Only later when she was in India rescuing children from temple prostitution, did she realize the value of her brown eyes. It made it much easier for her to disguise herself as an Indian. She could darken her skin, but she would never have been able to disguise her blue eyes . . .) As a result of an injury, she ended up spending a good part of her life bedridden and wrote many poems, letters, and meditations from her bed, for which I will be eternally grateful.
For some reason, this excerpt from her book, Edges of His Ways, has been on my mind the past few days:
This is the fruit of my morning’s reading. It is not new, but it came to me as new.
God counts on us to accept whatever answer to our prayers He gives us, whether or not it be the answer that we wished and expected. When Paul wrote to the Christians of Rome, he asked for the kind of prayer that is like wrestling with a strong (though unseen) enemy [cf. Rom 15.30-32]. He asked for prayer for three things, that his service (the offering of alms) might be acceptable to the Jewish Christians; that he might be delivered from the Jews who did not believe; that he might come to them–the Christians of Rome–with joy. The answer to the second of these three prayers was two years in a prison in Caesarea; the answer to the third was two years’ imprisonment in Rome. In both cases his was the kind of imprisonment which required the prisoner’s right hand to be chained to a soldier’s left.
Not many of us love to be under a roof between walls, without being able to go out into the open air. Think what it must have meant to Paul to be not only indoors but never once alone. Think of being chained to a Roman soldier at all hours of the day and night. “That I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed.” There was not much natural joy and refreshment in coming as a chained prisoner.
Nothing was explained. Paul and the men and women of Rome were trusted to accept the unexplained and, like John the Baptist, not to be offended in their Lord.
When we feel weak and incapable
One of my top five books is Dom Marmion’s Union with God, a collection of some of his letters of spiritual direction.
An excerpt:
You must not pay too much attention to the fluctuations which are ever passing over the surface of your soul. Like the sea, it is constantly ruffled, but in its depths it is all God’s. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you an abundance of His gift of fortitude, nothing so honours God as to lean on Him in full confidence, just when we feel weak and incapable, ‘When I am weak, it is then that I am strong . . . I glory in my infirmities that His strength dwell in me.’ May you be filled with Christ’s strength, the spouse is never so pleasing to her beloved as when she bears all her weight on the strong arm of her beloved.
And another:
Abandon yourself blindly into the hands of this Heavenly Father Who loves you better and more than you love yourself.
More to come . . .
Behold, there He stands . . .
Another of James Tissot’s paintings and another of my favorites. It came to mind as I was pondering returning to Ordinary Time. Yet He still stands behind our wall, speaking to us:
“Behold, there he stands behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for lo, the winter is past,
the rain is gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come. . . .
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face,
let me hear your voice.” (Song of Songs 2:9b-12a, 14)
Some of the Church fathers see the “cleft in the rock” as the pierced Heart of Jesus. . .
Stubborn belief
“Believe stubbornly that Jesus loves you.”
(letter to St. Therese from Fr. Pichon, 1889)
Let Me love you.
I am a great fan of James Tissot’s art (The Passion of Christ illustrated by James Tissot). I find he had a fresh and authentic way of portraying the events in the life of Christ. Tissot named this piece “Our Lord Jesus Christ”, but to me it is the best portrayal I have seen of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of His incessant thirst to give His love to us. “I am yours. Let Me love you.”
(Look for more of his work in future blog entries.)
Witnesses to Hope 