Mother Teresa

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judge, love, Mother Teresa, Peace, saint, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today the world celebrates Saint Teresa of Calcutta, known during her life as “Mother Teresa” because of her tireless work of caring for the poorest of the poor and dying. Inspiring women and men not only in India but all over the world, she died on September 5, 1997 and was named a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 2016.

This tiny woman who impacted the way the world saw care for the poor spoke often of the importance of small efforts toward love. Here are some of her words of advice. We would do well to allow the words to enter deeply into us because they come easily to mind but may take a long time to seep into the heart.

There are no great things, only small things with great love.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed just one.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Potential Saints

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compassion, decisions, potential, saint, Saint Francesco Antonio Fasani, saints, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Recognized (canonized) saints all used to be well-known by their heroic, holy lives. I’m happier now to hear about saints I’ve never encountered because it seems more possible to imitate them simply by living a good life. Today’s entry in the Franciscan Media’s litany is a good example and the reflection about Saint Francesco Antonio Fasani points up what I mean. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always happy to celebrate people like Pope St. John XXIII or St. Joseph, but it’s good to remember there’s potential in all of us as long as our goal is not recognition but rather sincerity and deep love. Here’s how the short biography of Francesco reads.

Eventually we become what we choose. If we choose stinginess, we become stingy. If we choose compassion, we become compassionate. The holiness of Francesco Antonio Fasani resulted from his many small decisions to cooperate with God’s grace.

Yes, there was a short listing of his life’s works and how he accomplished them but the above paragraph was, for me, a telling conclusion. It seems self-evident that becoming a saint – if only in an “unsung” category – is possible for all of us. That fact could change everything about our striving, don’t you think? It really could be just our attitude and motivation about “the little things in life.” And that, my friends, puts us all in the running for sainthood!

Mother Cabrini

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give thanks, Mother Cabrini, optimism, perseverance, saint, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thessalonians, trust in God, willingness

If we need a model of perseverance so that we’ll never give up on life, we would do well to consider St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. I learned about the woman called “Mother” Cabrini (a great designation for the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church) in elementary school. She lived until 1917 – when my parents were already three years old – so seemed more real to us than most of the holy people we learned about who had died and been declared “official” saints centuries ago. If anyone ever had reason to sit back and say, “Enough! I give up,” she did! Here are a few of the facts.

She was refused entrance to the religious community that had educated her to be a teacher. She began work at a House of Providence doing charitable work; the bishop closed it three years later. She wanted to be a missionary to China but the Pope (Leo XIII) told her to go to the United States instead to work with Italian immigrants and she went. She had a fear of drowning but crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times before she died in one of her own hospitals in Chicago, Illinois. Perseverance? Oh, yes…and a willingness to hear the voice of God in those she trusted to guide her.

It is not enough to list her challenges; I advise reading even a short biography. My point today, however, is to note her willingness and the optimism that must have accompanied her throughout her life. Today’s verse before the gospel in the lectionary readings seems a perfect example of how she must have moved through her days. In Paul’s first Letter to the Thessalonians we read, “In all circumstances, give thanks!”

Praised be, Mother Cabrini!

Becoming A Saint

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desire being a saint, Henri Nouwen, saint, The Seven Storey Mountain, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

In a book by Henri Nouwen entitled Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic, I read a quote yesterday from Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain that I found quite ingenuous. It was from an incident early in Merton’s life of searching, when he was at college in the company of his friends, Bob Lax and Mark Van Doren. He remembered the conversation and recorded it word for word (as Nouwen then does in his book) and reads as follows.

Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:

L: What do you want to be, anyway? M: I don’t know. I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic. L: What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?…What you should say…is that you want to be a saint. M: How do you expect me to become a saint? L: By wanting to. M: I can’t be a saint, I can’t be a saint… L: All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let God do it? All you have to do is desire it.

The next day I told Mark Van Doren: Lax is going around saying that all a man needs to be a saint is to want to be one. “Of course,” said Mark.“

The conversation first made me smile and then got me wondering what I think (or what I had been taught in my early days in Catholic school) was necessary to become a saint. I rather like how Merton’s friends see the process. I intend to go back to smiling and remembering to “want to be one” every day.

Beware the Touch of God

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beggar, Congregation of St. Anne of Providence, poor, saint, St. Joan of the Cross, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Here’s a cautionary tale for those of us who encounter people with signs begging at traffic lights or on streets of our big cities – or anywhere at all… The lesson is to beware of the poor who might touch your heart and change your life.

A relatively “new saint” in the Christian tradition is Saint Joan of the Cross, who lived in France from 1666 to 1736. Joan worked in her family business in Anjou, taking over the small shop of her parents after their death. She was known as a greedy and insensitive shop owner, especially toward the beggars who often came to her shop seeking help. One day, however, a strange woman who claimed she was “on intimate terms with God” had such an effect on Joan that she became a new person, caring for needy children. Eventually, she closed the family business to dedicate herself to good works and ultimately to found a religious community of women: the Congregation of St. Anne of Providence. By the time of her death she had founded 12 religious houses, hospices and schools. Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1982. (franciscanmedia.org)

Radical Generosity

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Father Damien de Veuster, Mother Marianne Cope, saint, St. Francis of Assisi, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

When I was 13 years old my father’s job changed and we moved from Massachusetts to Syracuse, New York where I met and was educated for two years by Franciscan Sisters. It was during that first school year that I read a book about Mother Marianne of Molokai, later to be canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Mother Marianne Cope was already famous in Syracuse; she was, in the early years of the 20th century, the Superior General of the Sisters who taught in my school and lived only about a mile from there. Many of the Sisters in her community were born in or ministered to the people of Hawaii.

Today is the feast of Father Damien de Veuster who entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at age 19 and later volunteered to go to the Hawaiian Islands to replace his brother, a priest who had been assigned there but fell ill. In 1873 Damien went as a part-time chaplain to the Hawaiian government’s leper colony on the island of Moloka’i but soon volunteered to stay there permanently to serve the physical, medical and spiritual needs of the people, especially those with leprosy (now called Hansen’s disease.).

Needing help for this difficult ministry, Father Damien wrote to many communities of religious Sisters asking for volunteers to come to work with him. The story goes that he promised in his letters that no Sisters who volunteered would contract the disease (although he himself was later to die of Hansen’s disease). Of the reputed 50 communities to whom he made the request, Mother Marianne was the only Superior who responded affirmatively and volunteered herself to go with her Sisters to Moloka’i. As promised, none of the Sisters became infected with the disease which is now curable with multi-drug therapy and early treatment.

The courage and willingness of Mother Marianne Cope and Father Damien touched my heart as a young teenager and remains an example to me to this day. I honor all of those who follow in the steps of St. Francis and celebrate them especially in the heritage of Father Damien and Mother Marianne.

All Saints/All Souls

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All Saints Day, All Souls Day, departed, faithful departed, loved ones, saint, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There has always been a twinning in my religious tradition of first two days of November. The first is, as we saw yesterday, the celebration of all those people whom the Church has recognized – for various reasons – as worthy of the designation “saint.” In one way, I always thought in my youth that today was more important because we were praying with all our might to get our relatives and friends released from any sinfulness that still clung to them as they left the earth, thereby speeding them on to heaven. It was the only day that priests were allowed to celebrate three Masses in one day and we all spent the day petitioning God to hear our constant prayers for our loved ones.

These days it’s common for people to think of the “faithful departed” closer to us than they used to be when heaven was a faraway place to which we ascended. Now we say things like “the veil is very thin” and we sometimes feel our loved ones very close, praying for us, perhaps, and cheering us on in the everyday. My list of “cheerleaders” gets longer as I get older (as with all of us) and it is a comfort to know that what the Church calls the “great cloud of witnesses” is on my side. So today is now a day not only to pray for those loved ones who have departed this realm but also to pray to them and with them for the good of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pope Saint John XXIII

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gratitude, holiness, humility, humor, Job, Pope John XXIII, saint, Second Vatican Council, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today we celebrate Pope John XXIII, canonized (some would add “finally!”) by Pope Francis in 2014. The website franciscanmedia.org opens today’s reflection with a wonderful sentence: “A shy, retiring man with a wonderful sense of humor, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli became our beloved Pope St. John XXIII.” It is well known that he was elected by the College of Cardinals as a stop-gap pope to give them time to “get the politics ironed out for a more permanent candidate.” The Holy Spirit had other plans, however, as John XXIII rocked the Church by calling the Second Vatican Council, an aggiornamento (updating) that changed the face of Roman Catholicism for all time.

We remember Pope John for that cataclysmic event (1962-1965) as if he had never done anything in his life before, but here are a few of his credentials that should have alerted people to his fitness for the “job” of Pope even before the Council.

He was the eldest son of a farm family, simple and not interested in the limelight but rather proud of his down-to-earth roots. Having served as a stretcher bearer in World War I, he experienced war firsthand. After ordination to the priesthood he became a canon lawyer, secretary to his bishop, history teacher in the seminary and publisher of the diocesan newspaper in Rome. Subsequently, he was Italy’s national director for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith while also teaching in the seminary. He served as a papal diplomat in Bulgaria, Turkey and France. During World War II he became acquainted with Orthodox Church leaders and with the help of Germany’s ambassador to Turkey, helped save an estimated 24,000 Jewish people. As a cardinal, he was the Patriarch of Venice and a residential bishop, finally being elected Pope in his 78th year. As pope, He worked with political and religious leaders around the world and was deeply involved in efforts to resolve the Cuban missile crisis. He enlarged the membership of the College of Cardinals, making it more international, and wrote important encyclical letters to the world, most famously about the Church: Mater et magistra (Mother and Teacher) and the world: Pacem in terris (Peace on Earth).

It could be said that all of those credentials, so wonderfully documented at www.franciscanmedia.org, are overshadowed by his holiness and humility. Although it is useless to quantify such qualities, we would do well to think on these things and pray in gratitude for this saintly friend of God who served his Church and the world so well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Dwell in Possibility

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conversion, destruction, hope, saint, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

On this feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the thought comes to me that God can work with anyone to grant a behavioral turnaround. Granted that more serious situations demand more cataclysmic, Cecil B. De Mille-like solutions (as in Paul’s case) but it seems that God is willing to go to any extreme to bring us back from the precipice of destruction. A comforting and hope-filled thought, I’d say, when I am feeling less than saintly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Be A Saint

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Auschwitz, Blessed Mother, devotion, franciscan, greed, hatred, heroism, mystics, Peace, saint, selfishness, St. Maximilian Kolbe, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Often when speaking of a very good person, someone will say, “S/he’s a saint!” but when we’re talking about saints in a specific way, we generally look to people who lived in the early days of Christianity or the Middle Ages. Almost everyone knows about St. Francis of Assisi, St. Benedict and (finally!) St. Mary Magdalene, as well as mystics Sts. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. Lately, we Catholics in the United States have been gratified with the canonization (official recognition) of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American saint, and Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. Now there are also “regular people” who have lived a good and holy life who are coming to the notice of people in high places or those whose diligence pleads their case successfully with the Vatican to have them recognized in this special way. One such heroic holy person is Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who volunteered to take the place of a Jewish man in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. A prisoner had escaped and, in retribution, the commandant announced that ten men would die. Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek was married with a family and lived to tell the tale of the holy man who took his place in the group of ten executed on this day in 1941. Fr. Kolbe was canonized in 1982.

Although this heroism was extreme, it was not uncharacteristic behavior for Maximilian Kolbe. His entire life was dedicated to God, most significantly in devotion to the Blessed Mother, Mary. Reading his biography – even the snapshot found on the website http://www.franciscanmedia.org – is inspiring. Most of us will not be called to the kind of heroism that Fr. Kolbe exercised, but we can all aspire to the holiness born of love, willingness and generosity that characterized his life. And in this moment in our complex and dangerous world, we can use those motivations to mitigate the hatred, greed and selfishness that causes the negative energies to rise.

May peace reign in our hearts today and lead to peace in our world.