A tremendous yearning

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

For those of you who do not have access to the Office of Readings for today, All Saints Day–a magnificent reading from a sermon by St. Bernard:

Let us make haste to our brethren who are awaiting us

Why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this feast day mean anything to the saints? What do they care about earthly honours when their heavenly Father honours them by fulfilling the faithful promise of the Son? What does our commendation mean to them? The saints have no need of honour from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning.
Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints. But our dispositions change. The Church of all the first followers of Christ awaits us, but we do nothing about it. The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them.
Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness. While we desire to be in their company, we must also earnestly seek to share in their glory. Do not imagine that there is anything harmful in such an ambition as this; there is no danger in setting our hearts on such glory.
When we commemorate the saints we are inflamed with another yearning: that Christ our life may also appear to us as he appeared to them and that we may one day share in his glory. Until then we see him, not as he is, but as he became for our sake. He is our head, crowned, not with glory, but with the thorns of our sins. As members of that head, crowned with thorns, we should be ashamed to live in luxury; his purple robes are a mockery rather than an honour. When Christ comes again, his death shall no longer be proclaimed, and we shall know that we also have died, and that our life is hidden with him. The glorious head of the Church will appear and his glorified members will shine in splendour with him, when he forms this lowly body anew into such glory as belongs to himself, its head.
Therefore, we should aim at attaining this glory with a wholehearted and prudent desire. That we may rightly hope and strive for such blessedness, we must above all seek the prayers of the saints. Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession.

And one last short little word from St. Katharine Drexel:

We are called to be saints, all of us; do not forget that.

(The photo above is of a tapestry panel in Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles. If you want to see more go here and click on the “Art” tab, then click on “Tapestries”, then “View North Tapestries” or “View South Tapestries.”)

“God is a Strange Lover”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved7 Comments

A Sunday-poem from Jessica Powers:

God is a Strange Lover

God is the strangest of all lovers; His ways are past explaining.
He sets His heart on a soul; He says to Himself, “Here will I rest my love.”
But He does not woo her with flowers or jewels or words that are set to music,
no name endearing, no kindled praise His heart’s direction prove.
His jealousy is an infinite thing.  He stalks the soul with sorrows;
He tramples the bloom; He blots the sun that could make her vision dim.
He robs and breaks and destroys–there is nothing at last but her own shame, her own affliction,
and then He comes and there is nothing in the vast world but Him and her love of Him.

Not till the great rebellions die and her will is safe in His hands forever
does He open the door of light and His tendernesses fall,
and then for what is seen in the soul’s virgin places,
for what is heard in the heart, there is no speech at all.

God is a strange lover; the story of His love is most surprising.
There is no proud queen in her cloth of gold; over and over again
there is only, deep in the soul, a poor disheveled woman weeping . . .
for us who have need of a picture and words: the Magdalen.

~Jessica Powers

“You don’t see Him, but He is there.”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

You know, most of the time–as I freely admit in the sidebar–I am writing these posts mainly for myself.  This is a post I actually wrote quite awhile ago, but somehow never posted.  Again, we hear from Amy Carmichael.  This seems to be taken from a letter she wrote in response to someone else’s, someone who was experiencing dryness in prayer, and someone who had sent her some dried myrtle.

You are sitting on the well-side with your Lord who once was weary and sat thus on the well.  You don’t see Him, but He is there.  You are His honoured one: “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

bog myrtle

The bog myrtle you gave me is in my Daily Light, and every day its sweetness is a special little joy to me.  It knows nothing of that.  It only knows it is dried up, a withered thing.  I wonder if in its freshest days it was sweeter than it is now.

Times of dryness are times when we are meant to live in the middle line of Zephaniah 3.17 RV margin: “He will rejoice over thee with joy.  He will be silent in His love, He will joy over thee with singing.”  Our dear Lord does not misunderstand silence.  Offer Him your silence and accept His, “I will be silent in My love.”  Songs are not far away.  They are on either side of the Silence.  It is folded up in song.

Now be at rest.  he is not looking at your with dis-pleased eyes.  Oh now, I can all but see just the opposite.

Spirituality of events

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

In a talk I gave at WTH on Mary, the Witness to Hope, I shared about learning how to live our lives with an attentiveness to the “spirituality of events.”  This basically means asking the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the events that happen to us in our days, to help us to learn what God is trying to teach us through all that comes our way.  God wants to teach us how to look at the events in our lives with His eyes, with the eyes of faith. Yesterday’s meditation in Magnificat reminded me of that:

“The circumstances through which God has us pass are an essential and not a secondary factor of . . . the mission to which he calls us.  If Christianity is the announcement of the fact that that Mystery has become flesh in a man, the circumstance in which one takes a position about this in front of the whole world is important for the very definition of witness” (L. Giussani)

We all know well what these circumstances are that have challenged us throughout this year: the economic crisis, . . . the many forms of pain which have caused us to reflect . . . seeing a world collapse in front of our eyes, with laws that no longer know how to defend the good of life or of the family, finding ourselves more and more obliged to live our lives without a homeland, dramatic personal and social circumstances from illness to trouble to the loss of work, if not in fact the loss of everything . . . So these circumstances through which God has us pass, says Father Guissani, “are an essential and not a secondary factor of our vocation.”  For us, then, circumstances are not neutral.  They are not things that happen without any meaning; that is, they are not just things to put up with, to suffer stoically.  They are part of our vocation, of the way in which God, the good Mystery, calls us, challenges us, educates us.  For us, these circumstances have all the weight of a call, and thus are part of the dialogue of each one of us with the Mystery present.

Life is a dialogue.

“Life is not a tragedy.  Tragedy is what makes everything amount to nothing.  Yes, life is a drama.  It is dramatic because it is the relationship between our I and the You of God, our I that must follow the steps which God indicates” (L. Giussani).  It is this Presence, this You that makes circumstances change, because without this You everything would be nothing, everything would be a step toward an every darker tragedy. But precisely because this You exists, circumstances call us to him.  It is he who calls us through them.  It is he who calls us to destiny through everything that happens.

How to manage

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Some more excerpts from Deb Herbeck’s book, Safely Through the Storm:

I will not mistrust [God], thought I feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome by fear . . . .I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.  (St. Thomas More)

Go and find him when your patience and strength give out and you feel alone and helpless.  Jesus is waiting for you in the chapel.  Say to him, “Jesus, you know exactly what is going on.  You are all that I have, and you know all.  Come to my help.”  And then go, and don’t worry about how you are going to manage.  That you have told God about it is enough.  He has a good memory.  (St. Jeanne Jugan)

All things fail, but You, O Lord of them all, never fail. . . . You seem, O Lord, to give extreme tests to those who love You, but only that, in the extremity of their trials, they may learn the greater extremity of Your love.  (St. Teresa of Avila)

Pneuma

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Pneuma

The wind breathes where it wishes
blows where it flows
The eye of your storm
sees from the wild height
Your air augments the world
tearing away dead wood
testing, toughening all trees
spreading all seeds
sifting the sand
carving the rock
the water
in the end
moving the mountain.

~Luci Shaw

“The Power of the Powerless”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

My new favorite, must-read, book is The Power of the Powerless, by Christopher de Vinck.  Perhaps you’ve heard of this book already–published in 1988.  I just stumbled upon it recently.  In his book, Christopher recounts the powerful impact his blind, mute, brain-damaged older brother had on his life, his brother, Oliver, who could do absolutely nothing for himself except to teach Christopher how to love.  You can dip into the book yourself here.  It’s one of those books that permanently brands your life upon reading.  A very important book for our-lack-of-respect-for-life times.

Today I am an English teacher, and each time I introduce my class to the play about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker, I tell my students the story about Oliver.

One day, during my first year of teaching, I was trying to describe Oliver’s lack of response, how he had been spoon-fed every morsel he ever ate, how he never spoke.  A boy in the last row raised his hand and said, “Oh, Mr. de Vinck.  You mean he was a vegetable.”

I stammered for a few seconds.  My family and I fed Oliver.  We changed his diapers, hung his clothes and bed linens on the basement line in the winter, and spread them out white and clean to dry on the lawn in the summer.  I always liked to watch the grasshoppers jump on the pillowcases.

We bathed Oliver, tickled his chest to make him laugh.  Sometimes we left the radio on in his room.  We pulled the shade down on the window over his bed in the morning to keep the sun from burning his tender skin.  We listened to him laugh as we watched television downstairs.  We listened to him rock his arms up and down to make the bed squeak.  We listened to him cough in the middle of the night.

“Well, I guess you could call him a vegetable.  I called him Oliver, my brother.  You would have loved him.”