Getting to the Point: saints

Showing posts with label saints. Show all posts

Thursday, January 21, 2016

They Don't Usually Drink Beer, But...

And so we continue our journey through the Mass, looking at it as a pattern of Christian discipleship. Today we come to the communicantes, the part of the Eucharistic prayer that goes thus:

In communion with those whose memory we venerate, especially the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ, and blessed Joseph, her Spouse, your blessed Apostles and Martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, (James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude: Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian) and all your Saints: we ask that through their merits and prayers, in all things we may be defended by your protecting help. (Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)

In other words, the saints. At the liturgy we are not only in the presence of God, not only all together with the others at that particular Mass, not only united in prayer and worship with all of the Church throughout the world. We are also united with the Church in heaven, with the saints gathered around the throne of God. Our communion with God in Jesus Christ, our communion with one another in (we hope and pray) the bond of charity, is also a communion with this great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us and dwell in glory and light.

The devotion to the saints is one of the great riches of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. It is an aspect of the faith that can be a bit bewildering to a new convert—that besides the Lord Jesus there is this endless company of men and women who Catholics all seem to know about and whose variety of call and individual personalities is head spinning in its diversity.

We have innocent virgin martyrs like today’s saint Agnes. We have grizzled old monks and scholars like irascible Jerome. We have great sinners who became great saints, like Augustine. We have people’s whose personalities are so attractive and warm we cannot help liking them, like Teresa of Avila. We have people who may not be quite so easy to love, who had quite a few rough edges along with the holiness (see above, Jerome).

Saints for everyone, and saints who are on the roll but largely forgotten in their particulars. That’s OK, too—they live in the presence of God, so they probably don’t care too much if we’re paying them any attention.

The whole lot of them enrich our faith life so profoundly. They are, for one thing, the most interesting people in the world—that lame Dos Equis guy can’t hold a candle to them, honestly. They don’t usually drink beer, but when they do, it’s for the glory of God, and you better bet they enjoy themselves doing so. What they did, who they were, the weird and truly awful stuff they went through, the achievements they did—all of this makes them many things, but never boring, not if you know anything about the real story of their lives.

And in that fascinating variety and wildly interesting bunch, we start to get the idea that the key to a full, rich, joyful, passionate, and even fun life is not what we think it is—money and sex and doing exactly what you want every moment of the day. All of that is a lot of nonsense, really. The key to a full and beautiful life is to plunge oneself into the heart of God like a scuba diver plumbing the depths of the ocean—to go down into those depths and never surface. To drown in the depths of God, and rise up a new creature permeated with His life giving water and Spirit and life.

So they are interesting, and they show us how to be interesting, too. And they help us—they actually are praying for us and have an active ministry in the world. There is a reason for all those holy cards and patronal saints for this, that, and just about any thing you can think of. They’re on the job, for us.

So the saints show up in the liturgy, gathering with us around the altar, and in that we are to take it that they should show up in our lives, too. They are a permanent reminder to us of the riches and wealth of God, His inexhaustible bounty and generosity, and the creativity of grace in making, at least potentially, every human being into the most interesting person in the world.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Madonna House, The Movie II: A Trail of Light

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s movie time on the blog. I am hosting the twelve short films about Madonna House that we hired a film company to make last year.

This week we have what I consider one of the best of the lot, the film introducing Catherine De Hueck Doherty, the founder of MH. It is a fine, fine introduction to her, giving not only the basic facts of her rather thrilling life, but a real sense of the person and the impact she had on others. I could see this particular video being very useful in a classroom setting, introducing high school students to contemporary Catholics or something.

So here it is, followed by some thoughts of mine:

Notable Quotes:

“Catherine Doherty was a prophet, still is a prophet through her writings… she was a very exciting human being.”

“The main thing is to understand somebody who was transformed by her relationship with God.”

“At first you were drawn to her, and then you were drawn to what she was showing you. You would get caught up in this personality, and then you would get caught up in this vision of God and love and renewing the earth and restoring all things to Christ. And then you would see what she would see.”

“Catherine would call the people on the streets ‘Christophers’ – Christ bearers, and we have continued that tradition, because where else are you going to find Him, but in the poorest of the poor?”

“She didn’t set out to establish a community, but at a certain point she accepted that that was what was happening – these people were coming, and they were not going away!”

“It was just an ever-expanding experience, living at Madonna House, in every way.”

“The tragic events she went through did not diminish in any way her love for Christ or make her pessimistic about the world. That’s why I trust her, because she came through all these things with her faith still very much alive and flaming until her dying day.”

“My definition of a saint is somebody who puts down a path of light for their neighbour’s feet, and she certainly put down a great path for my feet, a trail of light for me. That’s what I think a saint is, so in my opinion she’s a saint!”

The latter quote is from a woman named Mary Davis (everyone who knows MH, knows Mary), who first came here when she was 17, joined as soon as she reasonably could, and has been here ever since. She has mostly worked in the gardens, a heavy physical job which still happily does now in her 80s.

Catherine was an extraordinary woman, and I believe the Church will eventually determine her worthy of canonization, although I leave that assessment to those who have the authority to make it. So, enjoy the show, and I'll be back blogging again on Saturday.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Let's Party All Night

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 honors when their heavenly Father honors them by fulfilling the faithful promise of the Son? What does our commendation mean to them?

The saints have no need of honor 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.

St Bernard of Clairvaux, Office of Readings, Solemnity of All Saints

Reflection – Happy feast of All Saints, everyone. The world today in Combermere is garbed in festal white, as it seems to have snowed much of the night. It is, seriously, quite a lot of snow out there, although since the temperature is already above freezing, it will probably all melt by noon. Which is too bad, as it will make for a mucky, miry kind of day.

Anyhow. All Saints… I love this reading from St. Bernard which we read every year as part of the office. It is such a clear teaching – the saints don’t need our honor, but we certainly need to honor the saints. We celebrate All Saints Day to lift our minds and hearts out of the worldly muck and mire into this higher realm.

We celebrate the saints so as to stir up in ourselves the desire to become saints. Almost 30 years ago, when I first came to Madonna House at age 19, one of the things that impressed me about the community was that people talked openly about holiness as the actual goal of human life, about the fact that we are all called to become saints, and that in fact, as Leon Bloy wrote, the only real tragedy in life is to not become a saint.

I don’t know about you, but that had not formed part of my education and general cultural formation. And it left a deep impression on me (nothing like getting your mind blown when you’re 19 years old). We all know it, but somehow we all need to keep being reminded of it: the goal of life is not to be wealthy; it is not to be successful in a career; it is not to be famous, beautiful, brilliant; it is not even to have a happy family and be surrounded always by people who love you.

The goal of life is one thing and one thing only and that is the life of heaven. And the life of heaven is the life of the saints. And so this solemnity rolls around each year to help us refocus our attention, to stir up our desire, to get our eyes pointed in the direction we are supposed to be travelling towards.

And while it is, like every religious feast, meant to be principally a day of joy and fun (we’re having a pizza supper, which is a great treat in MH, and an all saints party where people can dress up like their favorite saint), it is indeed meant to raise that question, so disquieting to us: am I heading towards my proper goal? Is my life ordered in such a way that I am moving towards sanctity? Where are my energies going, where my principal focus? Love of God and love of neighbour? Or… something else? As St. Bernard says, we certainly are prone to getting awfully distracted and indifferent about the whole business.

As we see the saints in all their endless variety—teachers, preachers, and servants, nuns in their cloisters and lay people out in the world, martyrs dying in times of persecution and confessors dying after long years of ceaseless toil and labor for God—we do see that the path to sanctity is broad and varied enough for any one of us to find a way on it. And at the same time, it is a narrow path indeed, as Our Lord told us—to receive love and love in return, to receive mercy and be merciful, to care for nothing but this and to put our whole hearts and souls into fashioning our lives into love affairs with God, love poured out for neighbour.

Happy feast of All Saints. May we celebrate them with great joy and gratitude today, and delight in their human variety and charming individuality. And may we join them, simply, so that the party can carry on long into the night, and the day, into the night of this world and the eternal Day of the world dawning on us, alleluia.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The Church Has a Heart

Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.

I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.

When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognized myself in none of the members which St Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favorably within the whole body.

Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more.

I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.

Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul

Reflection – Today is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus. I have written about her before on the blog; she is really my favorite saint, the first saint who I got to know as a person, and a constant spiritual guide and help for me, as she is for many millions of people.

It never fails to amaze me, that God would pluck someone whose life was so utterly obscure, so thoroughly ordinary in its external details, and elevate her to the status of one of the most well known and well beloved saints of the Church. There is a prophetic quality to this story—Therese stands at the very dawn of the 20^th century and presents to us something vitally important about sanctity and the ways of God among men. It is a point of some irony, perhaps, that the vision of sanctity she presents is one especially suitable to the age of the laity in the Church, given that she herself is a consecrated Carmelite nun.

What is this vision? It’s more or less what she presents here, although she says it in different ways in her book. Namely, that it is great love that makes a saint, not great deeds. The vision of sanctity that excusably might emerge from the study of many of the canonized saints of the Church is that of a sort of spiritual Olympics—higher, faster, stronger—filled with people who shed their blood for Christ, founded orders, wrote great works of theology, performed prodigies of service to the poor, traveled to mission lands. Sanctity then, is limited to people of unusual gifts and strengths, or who find themselves in situations allowing for extremities like dying a martyr’s death (me, I’d like to die for Christ, but nobody has shown up who’s willing to kill me just yet!).

Therese, then, corrects this sort of spiritual elitism, by showing us that it is not deeds but love, not extraordinary events but extraordinary faithfulness in whatever events are ours, not prodigies of intellect or body, but a will wholly set on doing everything that is pleasing to God in the real circumstances of our real lives.

And this, then, opens the path to holiness for everyone no matter what. It is both a consoling vision, and a very challenging one. God does not demand what we cannot do—that our lives and our persons be other than what they are, before He can make us a great saint. Instead He asks that we live the lives we are living today, no matter what they consist of, with such love and fidelity, such prayer and devotion, that He can make us into a flame of love right here and right now. And this is the life of the Church, and the life of the world, that which makes everything luminous and joyous and beautiful.

And that is what St. Therese of Lisieux came to teach us.