My Story 

A Story About Mercy

                                                                 by Paul Mitchell

    My name is Paul and I’m a member of Madonna House. My story is about mercy. It’s about God’s love for me and how through his mercy, I’m alive, truly alive.

    I was the youngest of ten children in a good Catholic family in Michigan. When I was four, my brother Mark, who was twelve years older than me, went to a minor seminary for high school. I looked up to him and I wanted to be a priest, too.

    When I was a kid, I loved being in church. I loved Mass, I loved the statues, I loved the stained glass windows, and I felt the sacredness there.

    And I loved catechism. I never missed a day because I got to learn about God. In the second grade, I learned to pray the rosary. I worried about how I was doing in school and, lying in bed at night, I used to pray the rosary that I would get by. In eighth grade I became an altar boy.

    I was a pious kid. If I had been killed when I was twelve, they might have been able to canonize me. But I lived longer; so I’m not going to hold my breath.

    When I was fifteen, I went to a minor seminary and thought, “This is great; I’m on my way to the priesthood!” But the school was more like a reform school than a seminary. People sent their kids there because they couldn’t deal with them! Most of the kids didn’t even believe in God. While I was there it was closed down.

    So I went to another minor seminary, a better one. I lived at school, and I wanted to be liked. I started drinking and smoking “pot” (marijuana), and when I went home for the summer, I partied even more.

    If I hadn’t partied so much, maybe I would have done better in school, but I would start doing homework at midnight.

    College scared me. It scared me to death. The summer before my senior year I took some tests to get financial aid to go to college, and the night before, I drank a fifth of Southern Comfort. When I took the test, I was so drunk I couldn’t even read the questions.

    During my senior year a priest came to talk with each of us individually about our vocations. After questioning me about my prayer life and other things, he told me I wasn’t called to the priesthood. My heart sank and I was very, very angry.

    Later when I took an aptitude test, priesthood came out close to the bottom of the list of what I should be. Policeman was first and merchant marine second.

    That summer, the summer of `79, I started working in a factory. I thought I was making big bucks and it was a lot easier than school. So I decided I was finished with school and for a while I was pretty happy. I partied half my money away.

    I went to Mass less and less. By the end of a year, I didn’t even go for funerals. I stopped praying the rosary and I stopped reading the Bible.

    I still believed in God, but a God of my own making. I thought I could pick out the attributes of God that I liked and drop the rest.

    I had worked hard as a kid and knew how to work. At the factory I was surrounded by people who had never been taught. I didn’t know that. I just thought, “ What a bunch of losers!”

    I had low self-esteem and, to bring myself up, I started  putting people down. I could make people feel so stupid and so bad about themselves.

    I had a nasty temper and I mean nasty. I was small but I could literally bring a six foot two muscle-bound man to his knees and make him cry, and I was proud of it.

    I was moving up the work ladder, making more money. I bought a brand new four wheel drive truck, but after getting my second drunk-driving ticket, I totally wrecked it.

    I was having woman problems, my drinking was getting worse, and I was living a terrible life. I got depressed.

    What do you do when you’re depressed? You find somebody more depressed. Job! All of a sudden Job popped into my mind. Now there’s a depressed guy. And he had something to be depressed about!

    So I read the Book of Job. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t said a rosary in a long time. So I started saying it again, and I started going back to church sometimes. I checked out different churches—Christian Science, Baptist, Christian Reform. But mainly because a friend was going there, I ended up going back to the Catholic church.

    In 1985, my brother Mark became an associate priest of Madonna House and, when he visited the family, he would visit the Madonna House nearby in Muskegon. He probably first took me with him there in the early `80s.

    I thought, “Wow! Here’s a vocation you don’t have to go to college for eight years for!” I had always known that God was calling me to something, but I had no idea what. I couldn’t be a priest, I had never thought of becoming a brother, and even in the second grade I was sure I wasn’t going to get married.

    I thought I was crazy and decided to see a psychiatrist. But then I found out that they cost about sixty dollars an hour! How would I be able to afford my drugs? So I decided to talk to the staff at MH Muskegon instead. At no charge. They were free!

    Sometimes I made a poustinia there, but the greatest thing about that house is that the staff listened. And they prayed with me.

    I thought about going to MH in Combermere but my sister reminded me that I don’t like gardening. And I thought, “She’s right. I hate gardening.” So I didn’t go.

    As time went on, my addiction got worse and worse. By ‘94, things were really bad.

    One day I went to MH Muskegon and cried on Sushi’s shoulder. Suddenly I decided it was time for me to go to Combermere.

    When I arrived there, I wasn’t even sober, and after a couple of days, the place was driving me nuts. “These people are crazy,” I thought. I figured I’d stick it out for a week and then leave and spend the rest of my vacation somewhere else.

    The next day I was sent to the farm. Oh no, gardening! When I got there, I was assigned to take rocks out of the fields. (That’s the best crop in Combermere, rocks.)

    There was a sign, “Rocks and stones, praise the Lord!” And I was picking up rocks and throwing them in the wheel barrow and saying, “Rocks and stones, praise the Lord…”

    Suddenly it was the most incredible moment in my life! I was filled with God and with joy. I just kept praising God

    The next two and a half weeks were like a fairy tale. The joy and peace continued, and I knew I was experiencing God’s grace.

    I returned to Michigan, to the job I’d been working at for twelve and a half years and worked another month and a half until I had enough money to pay my bills. Then on June 18, 1994, I returned to Combermere.

    Just two months later, I asked if could become an applicant and would you believe it, I was told yes! Two years later, I made promises as a Madonna House staff worker.

    It’s amazing. There are six billion people on this planet and what were the chances of my being called to Madonna House? I had a better chance of winning the lottery numbers of times, and my life is much better than if I had won the lottery.

    It hasn’t been easy. Besides the other stuff, I’ve had to deal with my addictions. But I’m alive and I’m surrounded by people who love me and whom I love.

    I love my life, and I love my vocation.

Our Lady of Combermere

You Just Have to Ask Her

                                                              by Fr. Emile Brière 

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    The following is a reflection on some of the titles found in the Litany to Our Lady of Combermere.

    Mother and consoler of the lost sheep: Millions of people have left the Church, and are no longer practicing Catholics. Some of these come to MH and are no longer lost.  They begin to realize that the Church is their mother and that returning to the sacraments will bring them joy, peace, and goodness.

    Mother of Christ’s Body, the Church: At MH, we have a great love for the Church, which we try to share with those who come. Mary is the greatest, holiest member of the Church and is also its Mother.

    In the broadest sense, the Church includes the whole human race. So, Mary is also the Mother of the whole human race. We are all her children and she wants us to know how much she loves us.

    Refuge of the afflicted: Whatever problems or sufferings we face, Our Lady is right there with us. At MH we try to be aware of this ourselves and pass that awareness on to others.

    Homemaker of Nazareth: Our Lady is a practical woman. Most women are wives and mothers. So many think that being a homemaker is unim-  portant, but with Our Lady’s help, they can begin to realize that their vocation is Nazareth, and that through their daily tasks they can become saints.

    Their humble lives are not insignificant; on the contrary, Nazareth is where holiness and sanctity develop.

    Teacher of everyday wisdom: Everybody has decisions to make every day. These require common sense, which is renowned for being uncommon. Catherine Doherty had common sense; she got it from Our Lady.

    It was a gift from Our Lady, and we can learn it from her, too, by going to her and asking her to teach us.

    Icon of the total fiat: Our Lady knew the Scriptures. She knew from Isaiah that the Messiah would be a suffering servant. Yet, when the angel asked her to be the Mother of God, she said `fiat’ (yes).

    We, too, are asked to say `yes’ in both big and little things. It’s often in the little things that it’s the most difficult.

    Someone is at the door, and we are tired. Someone talks too much and we can’t stand it, etc. Our Lady can help us to say `fiat’ to the situations we are in, and to the little things we are asked to do everyday.

    Iconographer of Christ’s love among us: If we are little children with our mother, she will intercede with the Holy Spirit to create sobornost (unity) in our midst. That’s what we mean when we call her the iconographer of Christ’s love among us.

    We don’t have to work at sobornost. We just have to submit to the Holy Spirit’s action, praying to Our Lady to do so. Then sobornost takes place. It’s a gift from the Holy Spirit.

    It’s the same for the whole Church, for Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants. If we all submit to God’s will, to the work of Christ and Our Lady, then sobornost will happen.

    Pope John Paul II said we have to work hard at sobornost, but that when it comes it will be a gift from God. Smart man.

Word Made Flesh 

Renounce My “Self?”

                                                               by Fr. Pat McNulty 

    He called the people and his disciples to him and said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it. But anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34, 35, from the Gospel of Sunday, September 17th)

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    “Renounce my `self’? Forget it! That’s all I have ever done from the time I was a kid. I’m just now beginning to know who I am—it took me over 50 years—and I’m not about to renounce what has taken me so long to understand, embrace and finally enjoy!”

    Have you ever felt that? Said it? I sure have. For as long as I can remember—I was a pre Vatican II baby—every time I came up against something difficult or what might, in an unguarded moment give me pleasure (God forbid!) I got the same message, “Offer it up.” As if the only way was “death to self”! Death to “self”?

    It was a difficult and dangerous journey for people of my generation to leave all of that behind in the name of “mental health” as so many of us did in the late `60’s and early `70’s. Did and had to do. I myself was at the edge of a serious breakdown, buried as I was under a false notion of “offer it up”.

    I suspect that each of us that went through this has his or her own story, and that we could all learn from each other. I hope what little bit I have learned will open up something in your heart about this deny and renounce-your- self thing Jesus calls us to in this Gospel passage for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

    For us Christians, probably the most common understanding of this “self-renunciation” is “death to self”. That is in fact what it ends up being, but usually, if we begin with that phrase, we are putting the cart before the horse. Before we plumb what Jesus means, we must begin with what he said.

    Most translations of the Gospels use the words “renounce” or “deny”: “Unless you renounce yourself…”, “unless you deny your very self…” So, what does it mean to deny something or to renounce it?

    In this biblical context they mean the same thing: To deny means to state that something which was considered to be true or acceptable (even to you alone) is not so. To renounce means that you act on that awareness and move in another direction altogether.

    Jesus is not telling us to commit spiritual suicide in order to then be free to follow him. (The Christian life is not a cult of holy self destruction based on the whim of the guru.)

    What Jesus is revealing is that we have the wrong concept of the self!  Period. And so we must deny this concept and renounce it and then believe Christ’s revelation and embrace it.

    What has gotten us into so much trouble and needless emotional agony is that we have put this revelation of Christ about the “self” into the realm of psychology. Certain aspects of the self do indeed belong to that fruitful science and to deny them, even in the name of religion, can be deadly.

    But, as Christians, we need to know that the primary realm of the self is that of Faith. To have this clear in our hearts may not lessen the emotional agony some of us go through in the painful process of “denying” and “renouncing” our self, but it will change our focus and eventually assuage the agony.

    Jesus is not asking, as some of us thought, to renounce the self in order to create some sort of super-self who does not really live on this earth but only touches down here once in a while until we become perfectly “self-less”.

    He is first and foremost telling us that the very notion we have of the self is off!

    Nor can we discover the “new one” by any earthly science or discipline—mental, philosophical or psychological. We can only discover it when we embrace and trust what Christ tells us the self is. To do this we must enter into His life, death, and resurrection. We must expose our self to his attitudes, his values, his vision of life and history. In a word, we must “follow him”!

    This is not about “offering it up”. This is denial in its proper form: the rejection of a lie about the self. This is renunciation in its proper form: embracing the new truth, Christ’s truth.

    This is not about a suicidal “death to self” but about a whole new way of living which gives the fullness of life to the self   earthly and eternal.

    Yes, the emotional pain, struggle and confusion may remain. They are what’s left over in each of us from that Original Lie. But if we see them as the focus of this journey, we are destined for all sorts of “breakdowns”—emotional, spiritual and social.

    The real confusion has to do with our very notion of the self. And once we realize that, half the battle is over. The rest is Jesus leading me into the fullness of his self where alone I will find Life.

    What are we “offering up” then? First of all we are offering up our unhealthy attachment to our own idea of the self, of what we think will make us happy, complete, fulfilled, self sufficient.

    We are offering up our subconscious rebellion at Christ’s revelation about the old self. And, perhaps the most difficult of all, we are offering up our lack of trust in Christ’s vision of the true self. Really this is a lack of trust in Christ’s own Self.

    Unless this holy act of “deny” and “renounce” comes first, we end up unwittingly embracing the terrible agony of this world as it tries desperately to face it’s real self and then mistakenly tries to create a new one.

    Locked in that endless agony, we will never experience the fulfillment and joy of the self Jesus proclaims to be our true one. Without that many of us will be “offer up ers” filled with judgment, subconscious hostility and, worst of all, a joyless life.

    How do we get there? Simple but not easy. Having made the initial self “denial and renunciation” we come before Jesus Christ a thousand times a day (in our heart):

    “O Jesus, I don’t know what life really is; teach me.” “O Jesus, I don’t know what love is; teach me!”

    “O Jesus, I don’t know who I am; teach me!”

    “O Jesus, I am so confused; teach me.”

    “O Jesus, why don’t I love you as I could; teach me.”

    Believe me, if you do, it won’t take you half as long as it took me to finally “wise up,” “shut up,” and know what I really needed to “offer up”: My Self!

My Dear Family 

The Gospel Without Compromise

                                                             by Catherine Doherty

                        Are Christians becoming a smaller group in this immense secular world, a group that doesn’t matter very much, a group that is merely tolerated? It all depends on one’s point of view. Sociologists, theologians, and others specialists may think so. But ordinary lay apostles working in the heat of the day, in the uncharted frontiers of the Spirit, may not agree with these conclusions.

    Daily, hourly, we deal with people whose hunger for God is unlimited, who will go to any lengths to find God.

    Perhaps it is a bit farfetched to say that young rebels are pilgrims of the Absolute and that those who take drugs are searching for God. But we know this to be so because we meet them constantly and listen endlessly to their hunger for things spiritual, for a meaning in life.

    Listening day in and day out to the modern music of the young, we clearly hear the psalmist crying, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Hear the voice of my supplication (Psalm 130)

    The longer we live, the more we realize that there is literally a massive search for God taking place, the God of the Christians, the God who died for them.

    The problem does not lie in the fact that we seem to be living in a diaspora situation. The problem is that we Christians do not understand that the world is always hungry for the reality that is Christ.

    Liturgical experiments are interesting but they soon pale. Change is exciting but man cannot live on change alone. Change must be a road leading to the essence.

    What is the essence? Christians who love one another and who form communities of love. Humanity today is the Doubting Thomas who wasn’t there when Christ appeared for the first time after the resurrection. Humanity today is a man who must touch the wounds of Christ in order to believe, to be converted. Then he will come to the Lord in thousands, perhaps in millions.

    The only way to show these wounds of Christ to others is to live the Gospel without compromise.

    Does this mean that we must turn our lives upside down? Does it mean a complete change of values? Does it mean the breaking up, the demolition of our comfortable way of life? Quite simply, yes, it does.

    When we who call ourselves Christians show forth the Gospel in our lives, the searchers for God, these pilgrims of the Absolute, will see him, touch him, and they will believe.

    It is time we showed all people the face of the resurrected Christ in whom we and all creation have our being. It’s time that we cease to bemoan our miseries and begin to love one another, to form communities of love to which all others can come—communities where people can touch, see, and feel the wounds of Christ. Yes, we who work in the heat of the day, in the front lines of the spiritual warfare, know that this is the true and only answer for a world which seeks so desperately for meaning in life.

 from Gospel Without Compro mise, pp. 73-74 available from MH Publications.

The Pope’s Corner 

The New Evangelization

                                                             by Pope John Paul II 

    The following is from the book, Agenda for the Third  Millennium, a compilation of excerpts from talks by Pope John Paul II. 

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    The new evangelization does not consist in a “new gospel”, for this would always be derived from ourselves, from our culture, from our own analysis of human needs. So it would not be a “gospel” but mere human invention, and there would be no salvation in it.

    Nor is it a question of excising everything from the Gospel that might seem hard for today’s mentality to accept. Culture is not the measure of the Gospel, but Jesus Christ is the measure of every culture and every human action.

    No, the new evangelization is not born of a desire “to please human beings” or to “win their favor” (cf. Gal 1:10), but of responsibility for the gift which God has given in Christ, in whom we have access to the truth about God and human beings and the possibility of an authentic life.

    The new evangelization has, as its starting point, the certainty that in Christ there are “unsearchable riches”(cf. Eph 3:8) that no culture nor any age can exhaust and to which we human beings can ever have recourse to enrich ourselves (cf. Special Assembly for Europe, Synod of Bishops, Concluding Declaration 3).

    These riches are, first and foremost, Christ himself, his person, because he is our salvation. We human beings of whatever age and culture can, by approaching him through faith and through incorporation into his Body—which is the Church—find answer to these questions, ever old and ever new, with which we face the mystery of our existence and which we bear indelibly printed in our hearts.

    An evangelization, new in its ardor, postulates a solid faith, an intense pastoral charity, and a great faithfulness which, under the action of the Spirit, may generate a mystique, an unrestrained enthusiasm for the task of preaching the Gospel. In the language of the New Testament, this is the parrhesia which inflames the heart of the apostle (cf. Acts 5:28-29).

(from Address to the 4th General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, Oct. ‘92)

The Mission of Beauty - Part 3 

Giving God Space 

                                                            by Mark Schlingerman

    I started to carve wood because, before I came to Madonna House, the Lord led me to a religious order where the members do a great deal of manual work. (And that continued at Madonna House!)

    At the time I had had no experience of such work, so I asked the Lord to give me some help. He put me in touch with a man from Greece, a professional wood carver, a Christian who carved icons among other things. Though he did not teach me how to carve, he let me watch him work and do small jobs in his shop. So I learned to love the wood and use the tools. As a result I picked up a love of carving but never learned the technique.

    Over the years I started to carve some objects and teach myself the art. When I joined Madonna House, I continued to carve for relaxation.

    But when I was assigned to one of our mission houses, I saw that the chapel was in need of some sacred art. There were no representations of the saints there and so I started to carve some in my spare time.

    I understood that we need to be reminded of the saints and I began to see that the Lord wanted me to put images of the saints back in a few churches as well.

    At the same time I was becoming interested in the art of the Byzantine Church and found that I could carve images in the icon style—and they worked!

    I discovered that, in order for me to carve something, I needed a reason. Since I was not carving for money, there had to be some sign, a request or an inspiration.

    I also needed to look for a design. And, since I cannot design well, I had to find a piece of art and adapt its design to my needs.

    This method of designing has an advantage: it meant that I needed to follow tradition, rather than invent a new form.

    The purpose of a saint’s statue is to help us to meet that saint as a person and to help us to talk with him or her. But a great deal of modern liturgical art is simply a personal statement of an artist’s faith experience, a statement which uses symbols very particular to that artist. Often such images are not accessible to people.

    If I use traditional images in new ways, there is a better chance that the statue will aid their devotion and become a meeting place between the saint and the viewer.

    So my starting points are first, a need for a piece of work, and second, a design. To these I bring sharp tools, a rhythm of working the wood and a certain fearlessness (one cannot be afraid of cutting into the wood, or of making mistakes). I also bring the expectation that I will often be called away from my work by the greater priority of service.

    As the carving progresses, the design alters. As mistakes or misjudgments are made, the piece of wood is adapted, often with the result of transforming the mistake into a better line or gesture. Sometimes it is my very lack of technique which allows the work to become better than I expected. Or sometimes my leaving the work to serve elsewhere mysteriously improves it.

    I am amazed at what emerges from this process. I’m not saying that everything I make is so great; but it is usually better than I had expected.

    This way of working takes a lot more time than if I knew exactly where I was going. Often I think the work is ruined—sometimes the face looks bad, or the body is awkward. But if I keep at it, the image is transformed.

    (Most of the time! Sometimes a disaster is a disaster, and it makes good fire wood. But not too often.)

    Finally the most important moment of creating a work of art arrives: the time to stop. Knowing when to stop is the true mark of an artist. If one does too much, rather than getting better, the piece gets worse.

    I have found that in this process God accomplishes what we do. For it is his work in some way. I have to give him space. Often this space is my weakness which he has to fill or my lack of technique which he has to provide.

    So too for all of us, I think, “giving God space” is the key to giving birth to beauty. It is the Lord who gives the increase, the Lord who takes what little gestures we make and transforms them into something much better than we had imagined. When I finish a piece of carving, I am usually conscious that God has had a part in the work.

    As Scripture says, It is you, Lord, who accomplish what we have done (Isaiah 26:12).