Invitatory for a Wedding Anniversary

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Yesterday one of our sisters, Sr. Katie, made her Final Profession of Vows.  It was a wonderful day for all of us.  Today another sister, Sr. Christina, is celebrating her first anniversary of Final Vows, and tomorrow on one of our major feasts, the Triumph of the Cross, three other sisters are celebrating anniversaries.  This poem, by Mother Mary Francis, seems so appropriate:

Invitatory for a Wedding Anniversary

“We recount your marvelous deeds” (Psalm 75)

Come, let us marvel at God confecting dawn
Out of a pastelled fluff of fancy, then
Unbfolding night from velvet bolt of mystery, arranging
Moons halved, then quartered, then plumped full
To serve our recreation.

          But marvel more that He has brided me.

Here is tall marvel: twirled by hand Divine
All birds’ propellers dancing circled grace
Down boulevarded space and all trees waving
For such performance, fans of jubilation.
Sun stoked and skies spread and clouds lit
With virgin light or pregnant with the rain
Are marvels that demand high recounting.

          But marvel more that He has brided me.

Come, let us kneel before th Lord devising
Day from the night and marshalling the stars,
Flattering peaches pink, and then gone off surprising
Carrots to gold with glance Divine
And us to exaltation.

          But marvel more that He has brided me.

All the long aeons God has lightly laid
Across our history call: Marvel! and
We gladly tell it, call for cosmic chorus to proclaim it:
God great, God mighty, God beyond
Our power small to marvel.

          But marvel more that He has brided me. 

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The way to men’s souls is through their hearts

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Beauty can can come to us in so many varied ways.  Through story and song, as described in this excerpt from Stephen Lawhead’s Merlin:

And it came to me while I was singing–watching the ring of faces around the night’s fire, their eyes glinting like dark sparks, gazing raptly as the song kindled and took light in their souls–it came to me that the way to men’s souls was through their hearts, not through their minds.  As much as a man might be convinced in his mind, as long as his heart remained unchanged, all persuasion would fail.  The surest way to the heart is through song and story: a single tale of high and noble deeds spoke to men more forcefully than all of blessed Dafydd’s homilies.

Beauty can come to us through a beautifully written book or poem.  I re-read certain books periodically, like Cry, the Beloved Country, just for the beauty of the story and of its writing.

Or through the life of a lover of souls.  John Paul II.

All true beauty reflects the pure and stunning beauty of God, and, of course, I have only mentioned a few avenues of encountering it.  How have you perceived His beauty?

The impact on our hearts

“The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart . . .” (Ratzinger)

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I feel a need to talk about beauty.  Some of you have heard me speak about this, and it is still very much on my heart. I continue to be struck by its lack in our culture and society with the predominant emphasis on technology and efficiency.  So I think my next few posts will be an attempt to remind us of the importance of beauty in our lives.  All true beauty reflects the beauty of God and draws us to Him.

The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgement and can correctly evaluate the arguments.  For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter.  I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann.  When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: “Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true.”  The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration. (emphasis added) 
(Cardinal Ratzinger, Message to the Communion and Liberation meeting at Rimini, 2002)

In another place, Cardinal Ratzinger said:

The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saintsthe Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.  Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendour of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history.  If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection?  No.  Christians must not be too easily satisfied.  They must make their Church into a place where beauty–is at home.  Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell. (quoted in John Saward, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997)

How can we bring more beauty into our lives?  Are there ways that we are letting efficiency and technology dominate?  I know for myself, I can feel guilty sometimes for taking time to peruse something beautiful, say, a poem or a piece of art–that I’m wasting time (!).  But I also wonder if there are not more ways to just bring beauty into our daily life.  I think doing so will give us more hope.

“Davey’s Song”

A Professor of English writes about the “divine music” of his autistic son.

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

This article by Anthony Esolen (Professor of English at Touchstone College and senior editor of Touchstone magazine) has been on  my mind.  He wrote it a few years ago about his relationship with is son, Davey, who is autistic.  It is subtitled “Anthony Esolen on the Divine Music of an Autistic Son”.  I encourage you to read it (and anything else by him as well): “Davey’s Song.”

Nativity of Mary

A short hymn in honor of the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, the Theotokos.

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Just a short hymn from the Eastern Church in honor of this day.   

          Kontakion (Tone 3)

Today the Virgin Theotokos Mary
The bridal chamber of the Heavenly Bridegroom
By the will of God is born of a barren woman,
Being prepared as the chariot of God the Word.
She was fore-ordained for this, since she is the divine gate and the true Mother of Life.

Nativity of the Theotokos

“Sit here, please.”

A reflection on the second reading for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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Just a short reflection on yesterday’s second reading from James.  It struck me as I was reading it that I am that “poor person in shabby clothes”–perhaps not so much exteriorly, but definitely interiorly–but I can have great hope for when I come to Christ’s “assembly”, he will pay attention to me (and to you) and say, “Sit here, please.” 

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature . . . for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance.” (1 Samuel 16.6)

The Little Black Sheep

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A wonderful poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (best read aloud . . .):

     The Little Black Sheep

Po’ lil’ brack sheep dat strayed away,
     Done los’ in de win’ an’ de rain–
An’ de Shepherd He say, “O, hirelin’,
     Go fin’ my sheep again.”
An’ de hirelin’ say, “O, Shepherd,
     Dat sheep am brack an’ bad.”
But de Shepherd He smile, like dat lil’ brack sheep
     Wuz de onliest lamb He had.

An’ de Shepherd go out in de darkness
     Where de night wuz col’ and’ bleak,
An’ dat lil’ brack sheep, He fin’ it
     An’ lay it agains’ His cheek.
An’ de hirelin frown, “O, Shepherd,
     Don’ bring dat sheep to me!”
But de Shepherd He smile, an’ He hol’ it close.
     An’–dat lil’ brack sheep–wuz–me!

 

A shelter for the shelterless

Mary is a shelter for the shelterless.

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A quote about Mary, on this Saturday, her day:

“Our Lady’s heart is the most empty of all human hearts, the most empty of self and empty of pride, and therefore the most ready to give a heart’s welcome and shelter to those who are shelterless.” (Fr. Joseph Langford, Mother Teresa in the Shadow of Our Lady, p. 42)

“I think he sees Jesus”

How a little boy loves his dying grandfather.

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I am reading through a book by a retired Catholic hospice nurse, Trudy Harris, Glimpses of Heaven.  In it she recounts forty-four of her experiences with people she helped during their last days from a six-week old baby to folks in their nineties.  Her main focus is on the hope and peace each experienced as they drew nearer to their final moments on this earth.  I just wanted to share two short extracts from one story that touched me very much:

Jess, in his early seventies, had been married many times and had children and grandchildren he did not even know.  Contacting his youngest daughter, he asked if he could come to her house to die.  The daughter he barely knew immediately said yes.  There were lessons for all of us to learn.  We watched this youngest daughter not only care for her dying father with love and tenderness but also teach her own family, by example, to do the same.
Jess was about to be loved in a way he had never known before and did not believe possible.  There were many children in the home, but his six-year-old grandson, John, took charge.   Putting a mat on the floor so he could sleep next to Grandpa’s hospital bed and using a clothesline as a make-believe door, he transformed the family room into Grandpa’s new bedroom.  John seldom left Jess’s side, and if and when he had to be away from the house, he would always run first thing to check on Grandpa when he got home.

Each day, John would sit close to Grandpa’s bed, touching him gently and watching TV with him. Slowly but surely, Jess’s life was ebbing away, but not before finding the unconditional, all-forgiving love he had been seeking his entire life.  He found it all through John.
“How does he feel?”  John asked moments after Grandpa died.
“You can touch him if you want to,” I said as he reached out gently to feel his grandpa’s face.
“What is in his eyes?” he asked.
“You can open them up and look to see if you want to,” I said.
Slowly, John lifted himself up onto the bed, and opening Grandpa’s eyes he said, “I think he sees Jesus!”  This seemed very natural to one so young and untouched by the world’s need to interpret everything.  Grandpa was in heaven now, and it made good sense to John that he was looking at Jesus.  Out of the mouths of babes oftentimes come gems.
Seeing that John was not yet ready to leave and wanted to spend more time with Grandpa, we left the room and closed the curtain, separating him from the rest of the house.  About fifteen minutes later when I had completed all the funeral arrangements, I peeked around the clothesline that was his door, and there on top of the bed was little John, straddling his grandpa, with arms wrapped around his rotund belly, sound asleep.

“How can we reach the place where we can say ‘More than’?”

“Have you noticed that, from the place where you stand, there is always a shining way on the water, in the sunrise or sunset, or in moonlight, or when a bright planet like Venus is rising or setting?” (Amy Carmichael)

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Continued from yesterday:

     How can we reach the place where we can say “More than”?
     Have you noticed that, from the place where you stand, there is always a shining way on the water, in the sunrise or sunset, or in moonlight, or when a bright planet like Venus is rising or setting?  There may be a hundred people on the shore, and yet each one sees that path beginning just where he or she stands.  I shall never forget my astonishment when I saw this for the first time.
    It is like that with the Bible.  Wherever you are reading you will find a path that leads you from that place straight to the heart of God, and the desires of God.
    Perhaps some are puzzled about the path which I said leads straight from whatever part of the Bible you are reading, to the heart of God, just as the shining path on the water leads from the place where your feet are standing across to the other side.
    I was reading the Psalms, especially Psalms 3 and 4, when I wrote that, so I will take these as our starting point–the place on the shore where we are standing.
    In both psalms there is that clear honesty in prayer that we find in all Bible prayers.  David was not thinking of making the kind of prayer people would talk about, and call beautiful or earnest or anything of that sort.  He was keen to tell his God the truth about things, as far as he knew it, even about the miserable noise of words [Ps 3.2; Ps 4.2, 6]–a thing that very advanced Christians would have told him he really ought not to mind at all.  Then there was a restful committal of things in general and all that unkind talk in particular, and then the will to trust and not be afraid; and as the fears rolled up, prayer again, honest prayer.
     I want to remind myself and you that we never get anywhere if we only look at the shining path.  These notes will have been entirely useless if they have not helped to bring us to the place where our happiness does not depend on the work we are doing, the place we are in, our friends, our health, whether people notice us or not, praise us or not, understand us or not.  No single one of the circumstances has any power itself to upset the joy of God, but it can instantly and utterly quench it if we look at the circumstances instead of up into the Face of light and love that is looking down upon us–the Face of our own God.
     This is the shining path, stretching away from the place were we stand today to the very heart of God.  This is the shining path that shineth more and more as we walk into it.

Let us ask God to show us the shining paths in our lives today and to give us the grace to look up from them to His Face of love that is looking down upon us today, in this moment.