Judgment 

Seeing With God’s Eyes

                                                                 by Chuck Sharp

    What do you think is the most common sin in Madonna House? Probably it is judgment. Judgment wreaks grievous harm on ourselves and on those we judge.

    What is judgment? It is imputing a negative motive to someone else’s behavior, or saying that someone else has sinned. If I think or say, for example, that you have left a mess in the car, that is not judgment. But if I think or say that you did it because you are selfish or lazy or just want to annoy me, that is judgment.

    The Gospel is very clear. Judge not lest you be judged(Matt. 7:1). What am I doing when I `sit in judgment’? I am taking upon myself an authority that belongs to God alone. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord (Deut. 32:35 and Rom. 12:19).

    When I am tempted to judge, what is the antidote? Focus on Jesus. When I first joined MH, my spiritual director taught me the Jesus Prayer. Over the years, it has helped me to focus on Jesus.

    It’s not rocket science. It’s very simple. “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

    This prayer, repeated over and over again, moves us into the presence of God. The more we repeat it, the deeper it goes into our hearts and minds, and the more aware we become of his presence.

    Another antidote to judging, surprisingly, is loving ourselves. Our foundress Catherine Doherty told us over and over that we modern North Americans don’t love ourselves, and said that this is because we don’t really believe that God loves us.

    Also, many of us spend a lot of time confronted by our own sin, our own weakness, our own failures. Often we judge ourselves:“I’m not worthy. I’m not good. I’m not acceptable.”

    But the fact is: We are acceptable. We have been bought and paid for at a high price, and we have been washed in the blood of Jesus.

    And we are worthy. We don’t have to work at saving ourselves. Our salvation is a free gift.

    The challenge is how to live in the awareness that we are worthy, that we are blessed, that we have been saved. How do you, how do I, come to that level inside where we are no longer trying to work out our own salvation or justify ourselves?

    Focus on Jesus. Just today at morning prayer, during meditation time, I heard the woman next to me murmur quietly “Jesus” and it just thrilled me. All we have to do is say “Jesus…Jesus…Jesus”.

    If we can go to that deep place in our hearts and repeat over and over and over again, “Jesus”, then no longer do we have to worry. Am I good? Am I bad? Am I worthy? Am I doing a good job? A bad job? Am I acceptable? Does so-and-so see my sinfulness? Does so-and-so like my hair-do? None of these things matter. What matters is Jesus.

    A few years ago I was going through a particularly difficult time. My prayer life was strained at best, and there just didn’t seem to be a lot of joy or zest in me. Life was a grind.

    This state seemed to go on for a long time, and during that time, Ray Gene Neubig, one of our staff, died suddenly. Several of us were waiting for the coroner to come. We were just sitting around, kind of trying to absorb what had happened, and we were in shock because nobody had expected her to die.

    At one point, Jean Fox said, “If you need anything, now is a good time to ask Ray Gene. She just got to heaven. She’s not busy (answering prayers) yet.”

    That struck me as a good idea, and that day I prayed, “Nuje (our nickname for Ray Gene), I need a grace. I need a big grace and I need it quick.”

    Very shortly thereafter, probably the next day, I was in the chapel—and this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me a whole lot—I was given an image, a vision in my mind. I saw Madonna House, including St. Mary’s and the farm, and I saw everybody that was here then. Bill was Bill and Ruth was Ruth and Fr. Tom was Fr. Tom.

    People that I had trouble with were still troublesome. People that I was mad at, I was still mad at. But out of every single person, an incredible radiance was shining. It was so bright and so brilliant that it filled the heavens and went all the way out into the cosmos.

    It was just a quick, three-second vision, but I realized —or so it seemed—that, for just that moment, the Lord had given me his eyes.

    Everybody’s `stuff’ (weakness, wounds, sinfulness) was still their `stuff’. My stuff was still my stuff. The things I had to work on in me I still had to work on. The things that were painful for me continued to be painful. But all that didn’t matter.

    What was important was that the life of God shone in each person, the work of grace that was happening in the deepest place in everyone’s heart was revitalizing and illuminating the entire cosmos. And that is absolutely true.

    I get caught up in my own `stuff’ or someone else’s `stuff’, but that’s not the important thing. It seems to me that my difficulty, and the difficulty for many of us, is that our vision is too small. If we get caught up in our own pain and sinfulness, or in other people’s sinfulness (he parked in the wrong spot, etc.), if that’s all we see, then we’re focusing on the wrong thing. What we should be looking for is the life of God happening in each person.

    Our attitude before each other has to be one of reverence. We are standing on holy ground. No one really knows what is happening in someone else; only God and that person know. And, even what we do see, we only see in glimpses. We understand so little of what is happening, even in ourselves.

    Let us focus on Jesus. Not on the `stuff’, not on the pain, not on the sin—our own or anyone else’s—but on Jesus. Let us reverence each person—ourselves and one another.  Let us reverence what Jesus is doing in each person. That is the deepest reality.

    I will close with a prayer. I heard it one day at Mass a number of years ago and was so struck by it that I copied it, and kept it for years.

    “Almighty Father, the love you offer always exceeds the furthest expression of our human longing. For you are greater than the human heart. Direct each thought, each effort of our life, so that the limits of our faults and weaknesses may not obscure the vision of your glory or keep us from the peace you have promised. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Love One Another 

A Different Kind of Poverty

                                                         by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

    It always moves my heart whenever anyone talks about the poverty of the beginnings of MH—of the days when Catherine began Friendship House on Portland Street in the slums of Toronto in the 1930’s.

    In our heart of hearts when we really listen to it, we mem-bers of MH know that that kind of poverty is what we desire. The spirit of Portland Street is for us a cause of joy, even though we can’t perhaps live that degree of physical poverty now.

    Our own personal happiness and joy and that of our MH family will grow in the measure in which we have prayed that we desire nothing, and use well what is given to us. This is true for every religious community.

    But there is another aspect of poverty, and that is the poverty, the emptiness, required so that we be really united in heart and mind, so that we really become a family before God,

    The poverty I see being asked of me today, that I feel called to in my flesh and bones and sinews and heart, and in my emotions, in a sense goes beyond the poverty of Portland Street.     The poverty I feel called to is the complete acceptance of every person that God brings here—every guest and every staff worker of Madonna House.

    The poverty I’m talking about is the acceptance of each person as he or she is, without trying to manipulate him or `work things out’, the poverty of standing in reverence before each person so that he may become the person he is, whether I like it or not. That is a tremendous poverty.

    So I would say that the poverty required of us is that of oneness. We are called to be one as the Blessed Trinity is one. This means a letting go of “if only X wouldn’t do this,” and “if only Y wouldn’t do that…”

    It means a tremendous reverence for the other person who is not like me, in all those areas in which he or she is not like me.  And that requires a tremendous emptiness.

    To stand before one another in reverence no matter how annoyed we get, no matter how distressed we are by his or her ways, no matter how hurt we are, this is poverty.

    And this leads us to another aspect of poverty—tenderness. We need to allow the tenderness of God to enter into us so that we can go out to one another, first of all in the family. And then to everyone else. It’s always so much easier to go out to those outside the family or community than it is to go out to those we live with every day.

    So often someone has a little bit of joy, a little bit of an idea, a little bit of enthusiasm—and boom!—we throw cold water on it. And so often we slap one another down without hardly even realizing that we’re doing it.

    Tenderness and gentleness are not of our own making. Unless we are penetrated by God’s presence, we don’t have it inside of us. We can only stand before God each day exactly as we are, feeling good or bad, feeling happy or unhappy, feeling bitchy or warm-hearted—it doesn’t matter too much which.

    We can only choose to want to give tenderness and gentleness, the same tenderness and gentleness that God gives us, and in deep faith believe that, when we ask him, he will give it to us to pass on to others.

    As I think about poverty these days, this is what comes to my heart.

My Dear Family 

Showing Forth Christ

by Catherine Doherty 

    Today, across a confused world, man seeks Christ! He seeks the reality of Christ, or, to put it another way, he seeks the real Christ, the Christ of the gospels, the one he has read about but cannot seem to find.

    In this seeking, men ask one another, “How do you find Christ? Where is he? Where can I find him?” Who, then, is this Christ that they seek? Why does he seem to be so elusive, so unreal, so difficult to meet? It seems to me that the answer to these questions is exceedingly simple: we meet Christ in a real Christian.

    What a strange and seemingly simplistic answer! Yet, it is the true answer, and I don’t think there is another. Man has to be shown. The time of mere talking is over.

    After his resurrection, Christ showed his disciple his wounds and they believed. These wounds were visible signs of Christ’s love for them and for all of us. No one needed to say anything, least of all Christ. Thomas the Doubter was the only one who spoke.

    Today, it seems to me, we must likewise show the wounds of Christ to men, for then they will believe. This is what men are seeking today: someone who will show them the wounds of Christ so that they may touch him and be reassured.

    But we must go further. Christ prepared breakfast on the beach for his friends. We, too, by our service, must show how much we love our brethren, all those who are seeking the Lord.

    But even all this—to show the wounds, to prepare meals —is not enough. One must open one’s heart with a lance by taking that lance in one’s own hands. We must accept all human beings as they are, without wanting to change or to manipulate them. It is a benediction and a joy in itself that they come to us.

    Men will not know God unless we, their neighbors, their brethren, show Christ to them in the tremendous love that Christ had for them. This is the acceptable time, so that people may once again say what was said of the early Christians, “See how these Christians love one another”—and us!

    Yes, we must open the doors of our hearts. We must open the doors of our homes. We must accept people as they are. We must serve them, and we must show them the wounds of our love. Love  is always wounded because love and pain are inseparable.

    Even as a young girl barely falling in love is worried about her boyfriend traveling on a wet road to Chicago, so in the love of people for each other, pain is interwoven. There is no love without pain.

    But how do we acquire these wounds that we must show? Where do we get the strength to cook a supper for someone when we ourselves are already exhausted by the day’s toil? How do we get the strength to open the doors of our hearts which we so readily want to close against the noise of our incredibly noisy world?

    How, how, how? The answer comes irresistibly. We cannot hide from it or ignore it or make it disappear. The answer is always the same: prayer.

    Let’s face it. We cannot love the way we ought to. God alone can love in us that way. So we must empty our hearts of all the things that are not of God.

    The Lord said we must love our enemies. Until we do, we cannot show Christ to other men. We must go further: we must lay down our lives for our brethren. By emptying ourselves, according to his commandment of love and with his grace, we can allow God to love in us.

    No, words are not enough. But a loving glance, a wound, a breakfast cooked for a friend, a welcome through an open door into an open heart, these will do. It is only then, when my brother has been filled with my supper, when he has beheld my wounds of love for him, when he has experienced a totality of acceptance, only then will he be open to the glad news!

  from The Gospel without Compromise, pp. 88-90, available from MH Publications.

  

Grace Through Sickness — Part 2 

Holy Idleness

                                                               by Jeannine Biron

    There is nothing like sickness to bring you down to earth. Last winter, when I was lying in bed with bronchitis, I had plenty of time to think.

    It all started with a cough, and at that point I refused to admit to myself that I was sick. I was just afraid that my coughing during the night would keep everyone awake. (In MH, we sleep in dormitories.) So I asked the nurse to give me something to stop the cough.

    This helped at first; but then my cough got worse, and she told me to stay in bed.

    I resented this. I was thinking that we have so much work to do and that the people I work with would miss me. I am so important!

    But, in fact, not working makes me feel useless and lazy and no good. So I said to myself, “I’d better fight this thing by going to bed early and sleeping later in the morning instead of being in bed all the time”.

    So I disobeyed the nurse. That was my pride.

    For a couple more days, I continued to go to work, and my cough and my sickness got worse. The nurse told me again to go to bed, and this time I did.

    Then I got depressed. So I asked myself, “What do I do about this depression?” Letting it simmer will not help. So I decided to offer it to God and asked him to help me.

    After about an hour, the depression lifted. I received the grace to accept my sickness, and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7) came over me.

    After that, whenever I started to feel depressed again, all I did was say the name of Jesus, and the peace returned.

    I asked God to show me his will and he did. I came to realize that his will for me, my duty of the moment, was to stay in bed.

    I looked up `idleness’ in the dictionary. According to the dictionary, idleness is almost a sin, akin to laziness. But that is only one aspect of it. Is there a `holy idleness’, I wondered.

    Idleness or “inactivity, passivity, state of rest or quiescence, a kind of immobility” can be good or evil depending on how it’s used. A bedridden person like me has a choice. I can rage against God, or I can praise and thank him for my illness.

    Idleness is a crucifixion and it can be useful. It unites me to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross and has redeeming value. I can offer it in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass all over the world. I can offer it to Mary the Mother of God who will present it to her Son. I can offer my idleness and my suffering for others.

    I think there is a holy idleness. It is resting in the living arms of God the Father and reclining on the gentle breast of Mary our Mother.

Word Made Flesh

Sell All I Possess?

                                                               by Fr. Pat McNulty

    This month’s article looks at the readings for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time (October 15th): Wisdom 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, and Mk 10:17-30 (the story of the rich young man). 

                                                                      ─────── 

    Our foundress Catherine Doherty warned us often that “the day Madonna House stops begging, it will disappear from the mind of God.” Powerful and frightening words. It’s like saying, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:25) than for MH to survive without begging!

    Maybe you think that because we beg, there is something holy and awesome about us that is not true of you who are not called to beg. And especially today when the discrepancy between rich and poor is so obvious, this whole topic of wealth can be very confusing and can cause unnecessary guilt.

    Most of the serious Christians I know, be they `rich’ or somewhere in between rich and poor, struggle with the fact that they have more than those who have nothing. And constantly they ask themselves, “What can I do about it?”

    On the surface, today’s gospel may not seem like an answer to that common Christian dilemma. Not only is it impossible for most of us to go and sell what we have, give it to the poor and follow Christ, most of us are not called to do so.

    But there is something else much more essential at stake here. If we do not understand that—whether we are rich or poor—we cannot follow Christ.

    Back in the `60’s when so many of us were `into’ social justice and working with the poor, I told Catherine that God was calling me to sell everything and live on Divine Providence. She disagreed and was very adamant about it. But what did an old Russian lady know about ministry in America? So I did it.

    It was not the worst disaster in my life but it came close!  All I really discovered was how spiritually manipulative I was—get rid of the easy stuff in order to avoid getting rid of the hard stuff.

            The truth is that wealth is not about money. Wealth is about power. And for both rich and poor, power is one of the most seductive of all human `possessions’.

    As we have learned from the traumas of history, those who have it—the rich—are prone to abuse it. And those who have suffered from that abuse—the poor—come to believe that power is the only way. Thus the lie is that power or wealth will solve the problems of poverty.

    Whatever else Jesus said about wealth, he did not condemn those who had it. But he certainly warned them of its dangers.

    But he also warned those who had no power—his own disciples, for example. After this poignant, sad encounter with the rich young man and Jesus’ comments about needles and camels, they asked, “in that case, who can be saved?” (Mark 10:26)

    Why would they say that? They weren’t rich. But Jesus knew they were powerful in the sense that they were still attached to much which would have to be `sold’ before they could really follow Him.

    They would have to allow the sharp, painful sword of his divine revelation to cut to where their soul was divided from their spirit (Heb 4:12). It is this `divided soul’ which attracts us to power and makes us, even if we are materially poor,  feel `wealthy’ in a most deadly fashion.

    It is the abuse of power which dwarfs our vision of what is right and just, what is possible, what is necessary, what is best for all as opposed to what is best for me and mine.

    And once we are hooked on that power, that `wealth’—whether it’s on having it and abusing it or not having it and striving for it—it is easier to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to see with the eyes of faith.

    No, this gospel is not just about money and riches. It is about vision and faith. And it is about a vision of faith which leads us to value and seek the only real power we have as Christians: love.

    If I beg for everything from toothpicks to tooth brushes and do not love, it profits me nothing. If I sell everything I have, give it to the poor and go live in a cave in the desert—I did that, too, and it was a disaster—and do not love the unlovable, it profits me nothing.

    This gospel is about powerlessness, the only kind of love that can cut through that place in every human heart where the vision of Christ is darkness until we beg him to flood it with the light of faith.

    The call to Christ’s vision of poverty, Christ’s revelation of powerlessness, comes in all shapes and sizes. For some the question might be, “What do we do with our superfluous income besides banking it and spending it?” For others it might be “How can we live on the edge of poverty with hope and joy?” For still others it might be, “Do I need this, or can I share a bit with those who have not?” None of this is an end in itself, but only a beginning.

    The questions are the same for rich and poor both: How do I see power? How do I use it? Is it removing me from real life? Does it make me blind and arrogant to those in need? Does it cloud my vision of what it means to love another as Christ loves me? Does it make me violent toward those who have?

    Does Christ’s call cut through that place in my heart where my soul is divided from my spirit so that I, in the words of today’s responsorial psalm, know the shortness of life and can gain wisdom of heart? (Ps 89:12)

    Before we talk about freely chosen poverty for the sake of the kingdom—and it is an option proclaimed by Jesus—we must first talk about powerlessness for the sake of the kingdom.

    What Catherine caught in me, like one who can smell a skunk from miles away, was a frantic attempt to avoid the powerlessness of love—the erratic (though sometimes heroic) attempt of so many in the ‘60’s to avoid loving those whom we had determined did not deserve it any longer, especially those powerful people, secular or clerical, who did not love us in return.

    In the end it was really about wanting the power to decide what to do with them. And that’s the power which fends off that sword of love which can cut through that place where my soul is divided from my spirit, the place where I am deaf to the call of Christ, because he is asking too much of me as he seemed to be asking too much of the rich young man.

    Madonna House does not beg because begging is holy or makes us holy. If we do not beg in order to learn the kind of powerlessness which makes it possible for us to love more, we might as well get out the needle and see what we can do about our own problematic camel.

    I find it very heartening to know so many Christians who are honestly struggling with Christ’s call to some level of gospel poverty. I believe that the Spirit will cut through that place in their hearts where there is division and bring them and the world around them new life and hope.

    So then, let us not ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my money?” Let us ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my power?” If we have enough money and do not realize that the power God has given us is to be used for the good of all, we do not love as Christ has loved us. If we have little money and do not love, we cannot realize the power God has given us for the good of all.

    Perhaps the greatest `sin’ in all of this is that we who have power of any kind, rich or not so rich, do not realize how badly we need the powerlessness of poverty and the poverty of powerlessness.

    We must beg God for that wisdom. It’s what Catherine meant when she warned us about what would happen if we ever stopped begging!

She Is Your Sister

                                                             by Catherine Doherty

    Oh, it’s so cold! Only sixty-five degrees! Turn up the thermostat, dear.

    Do you mean to say you hesitate? Why? Oh, you cut a picture out from somewhere. Show it to me.

    Oh, I see. A woman bent in two looking at the one who photographed her. But on her back is all the energy that she can get to cook her food and heat her home.

    Do you still want to turn the thermostat up? Oh, you do! This woman doesn’t mean a thing to you, does she? You tell me you don’t belong to the Third World. Would you mind telling me to which world you belong?

    Well, since you are about to show me pictures, I’ll show you mine. This is the world you belong to. These stones are your heart. And what can I say to you that can make you change your heart?

    Stop! Stop fiddling with that thermostat. You cannot do this any more. There is no Third World. There is no First or Second World. There is either the world of brotherhood or of the stones of the devil’s field.

    Stop it right now! Because it is you who make that woman carry that heavy load. It’s you and I. But I can’t put my hand toward the thermostat. You do it. Stop it! Stop it now!

    Because her life is on your soul. Unless you want your heart to be like stone. Stop it—and stop it now! And it’s not a matter of thermostats. It’s a matter of completely changing your style of life.

    Start putting the gospel into your life. Preach it without compromise. And if you put your hand to the thermostat, you compromise. Don’t do it. Don’t do anything that compromises.

    Look around. What has she got? She’s barefoot. She is carrying a tremendous burden across stony ground. That is your sister and mine. What have you done to her? What have I done to her? We cannot go on. We have to change, unless we want to become the devil’s field.

    Here are the mountains of the Lord. But you cannot reach them, for the stones are very tall and barren. Cry out to the Lord for holy poverty. Give away not only of your surplus but of your needs.

    Oh, I know everything is expensive. There is an inflation going on. So what, my friend! There’s always room for charity.

    This cannot go on. It just can’t. Situations like that woman’s shouldn’t exist. And they exist because you and I forget that the Lord said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me” (Mt 25:40).

    If we don’t change, if you don’t stop that arm of yours from reaching toward the thermostat, tomorrow you might be that woman, God willing. Or maybe you will just die among those stones. It is too fearsome to contemplate, but not because I am afraid of being poor.

    My friend, your arm near the thermostat makes me afraid of stones, because I see that our hearts are being turned to stones by greed, pride and a thousand things. Stop! Let the thermostat be. It’s but a symbol of a whole way of life that must be changed.

    So these pictures are a symbol. But they are a symbol that cries out with a silent voice until you are deaf and dumb. For what is happening is that Christ is walking in that woman. Christ begs you to take your hand away from that thermostat, because he sees that it will lead to stony hearts.

From Journey Inward, pp. 86-88, available from MH Publications.

Stewardship

Gather Up the Fragments/Beggars for the Lord

by Diane Lefebvre

    “We are beggars for the Lord! Alleluia!” said Catherine Doherty. “We are beggars for the Lord, first for the poor whom we serve everywhere, and secondly for ourselves.”

    Everything we have in MH is donated. If you were to come to our men’s workshop, for example, you would see wrenches, nails, screws, nuts, and bolts. These are things that people had in excess. They are fragments, leftovers. But for us, they are necessities.

    It is the same everywhere else here. The oatmeal we eat for breakfast comes from a couple who regularly supplies us with it. The pot it’s cooked in and our teapots came from  restaurants that closed. The yellow dishes came from a Jewish Boy Scout camp, which also gave us a blue set. (They had to have separate dishes for meat and dairy because they are kosher.) Most of the cutlery probably came from families that bought new sets. (That’s why ours don’t match.)

    We beg for all our needs. Why do we beg? “This was God’s desire, his mandate to me,” said Catherine, “when I first started back in 1930 in the slums of Toronto, I knew very well then and very clearly as I do now, that we must remain beggars—poor men always.”

    And in begging, we `gather up the fragments’. Why do we do this? After the multiplication of the loaves, Christ said to his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves

(John 6:12-13).

    I grew up poor and `making do’ was part of our life. One winter, for example, my mother made my sister and me snow suits out of my father’s old winter army coat. She lined them with red flannel and did an excellent job. We looked like little soldiers. People laughed at us, but we were the warmest and driest kids around because the material was excellent and the snow just slid right off.

    But it wasn’t until I came to MH that the making do that I had learned as a necessity was baptized with the Gospel message. I learned to gather up the fragments as a way of taking care of the things that God has given us.

    Perhaps the best symbol of stewardship in MH is plastic bags. We don’t even throw away plastic bags! We wash them and hang them up to dry and use them until they tear. Only then do we throw them out.

    Our world is glutted with excess. I experienced the results of this when I was stationed at our house in Aquia, Virginia (south of Washington, D.C.).

    Another member of our community was sent there soon after returning from our house in the slums outside of Lima, Peru. (Both houses are now closed.)          

    Our Virginia house ran a `Cana Colony’ where families came for weekend retreats.  During this newcomer’s first week, after every meal the garbage bags were filled with such things as bread and hamburgers with only one bite taken out of them. Seeing this waste put this staff worker in bed for two weeks from culture shock!

    But we don’t need to go to Peru to see people who need what is wasted. We just need to go to any big city and see the people lying on the streets.

    Catherine taught us to handle carefully and take care of everything we touch. So we try to be humble and respectful and to handle things, as she told us, “as though every item were an altar vessel.”

    And she taught us to maintain what we have. “To maintain,” she told us, “means to keep whole, to keep intact, to prolong life and usefulness. It means to repair, to make whole again that which is broken, damaged, dented or misused. It also means to change ugliness into beauty. It means to restore something that seems useless, something that could be put to use again, by loving care.”

    Besides restoring what we ourselves use, we also restore and beautify whichever donations can be sold in our gift shop. Then we send the money from their sale to the poor of the Third World.

    Catherine taught us that each item we receive in donation is holy, that even the place where we sort the donations is holy, “because every gift in that place—every piece of clothing that you touch, every thing that goes through your hands, be it a few paper clips, an enormous chair, a handkerchief, an earring, sings, shouts and speaks of charity, which is love.”

    She also taught us gratitude, gratitude for God’s care of us, gratitude for everything that is given us and gratitude to the people who gave it to us. “Thank the giver for every package and every gift,” she told us, “be it the smallest piece of jewelry or a little box with a rosary or medal.” And this we do.

    This effort that we make to reverence and take care of what we have been given is part of our small efforts to restore the world to Christ.

Quotes of Catherine Doherty are from The People of the Towel and Water, pp. 29, 31, and 79. Available from MH Publications.

Marian Centre Edmonton

Kenny and Catherine

                                                            by Mark Schlingerman

    Kenny was his name. He was a Metis, that is, of mixed aboriginal and white blood, and on the western prairies the Metis are among the poorest of the poor. Most are Catholic. They used to hunt buffalo and, for an all-too-short period, they had their own independent country within Canada. But they were defeated by the Canadian government.

    Kenny was the great-great grandson of one of the great heroes of the Metis. He was a very poor man—crippled and addicted—but very smart. He knew why he was poor and was very much aware of the injustices his people had suffered. He drank a great deal to drown his pain and loneliness. He broke my heart.

    I tried to help him, but nothing I could do really helped him at all. One day Catherine Doherty came to our mission, Marian Centre, Edmonton, on a visitation. In all the years I had known Kenny, I had never seen him attend Mass, but for some reason known only to God, he chose that day to do so.

    He was slightly drunk and very dirty, and he was leaning on his crutches. Catherine was in her eighties at the time and did not walk easily.

    At the kiss of peace Catherine slowly went to Kenny, and he hobbled painfully towards her.  It was a moment of God as these two people greeted each other with the kiss of peace, and I was deeply moved by the sight.

    After Mass, much to my surprise, I found that I was angry at Catherine. In fact, I found myself shouting at her! I was shouting at her because I blamed her for putting me in a position, as a member of MH, where the needs of a man had touched my heart, and I could not find a solution to his problem. Couldn’t she see this!

    Of course I was shouting at God. I didn’t understand how he could cause my heart to break and then not give me a way to help this person.

    Yet I knew when I saw Kenny and Catherine meet that she had something for Kenny. I could see that, in their meeting, she gave him the best she had—herself. But not simply herself—Christ in herself. She gave Kenny Christ through her own pain and powerlessness and poverty. And she, in turn, in receiving Kenny, received Christ.

    She did not have an `answer’, but Christ touched Kenny at that moment in a way that was sufficient for his deepest needs.

    That moment I think I saw the essence of our Madonna House approach to mission: to meet the other person heart to heart in the Heart of Jesus Christ. And that is how we can be one with the poor, no matter how poor they are.

    I think the Lord takes us all to the point where we do not have any answers, any programs to offer, any justification for our role or works. At that point, we simply are in our own helplessness, our own poverty, and all we can give is ourselves. But in giving our `selves’ in our awareness of our poverty, to the Lord, we give the Lord Jesus himself. In fact, it is he who gives himself to the other through us.

    And it is in being one with Christ that we reach the goal of our own personal mission. Now we can be true missionaries because now it is Christ we give, not some thing, not even ourselves, but Christ himself.

    That is what Catherine Doherty was able to give Kenny Dumont. Some day, may I be able to do the same.

The Pope’s Corner 

Proclaim the Gospel

                                                             by Pope John Paul II 

    The following is excerpted from the Holy Father’s Message for World Mission Sunday, October 22, 2000. 

                                                                      ───────

    The annual recurrence of Mission Sunday, which will be celebrated this coming  October 22nd, is a call for renewed awareness of the Church’s missionary dimension and a reminder of the urgency of missionary activity `ad gentes’ (to the nations)….

    The Church is grateful for the dedication of all those (missionaries) who very often sow in tears  (Ps 126:6). They must know that their efforts and their suffering will not be lost. Indeed they will be leaven which causes to germinate in the hearts of other apostles a desire to give themselves to the noble cause of the Gospel.

    On behalf of the Church I thank them and I encourage them to persevere in their generosity. God will reward them abundantly….

    In this season, a season of grace and mercy, I am particularly aware that all the Church’s forces must be committed to the new evangelization and the mission `ad gentes’. No believer, no institution in the Church can avoid this supreme duty to proclaim Christ to all people (cf. Enc. Let. Redemptoris Missio, n.3).

    In this work the Christian is not alone. It is true that there is no proportion between human strength and the grand-eur of missionary activity. The most common and authentic experience is to feel unworthy of such a task. But it is also true that our strength comes from God who has made us ministers of a New Covenant (2 Cor 3:5-6).

    The Lord never abandons those whom he calls into his service. Full authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … and know that I am with you always, until the end of the world (Mt 28:18-20). The Lord’s lasting presence in his Church, especially in the Word and the sacraments, is a guarantee of the effectiveness of mission.

    Today this mission is carried forward by men and women who have experienced salvation in their own fragility and weakness, and they witness this to their brothers and sisters, knowing that all are called to the same fullness of life….

    A person who has experienced the joy of encountering Christ cannot keep it for himself; he must share it. We must answer the unvoiced call for the Gospel arising from all over the world, the same call that reached the Apostle Paul in his second journey: Come to Macedonia, and help us! (Acts 16:9)….

    We must also be deeply convinced of the fact that evangelization is also a valuable service to humanity, since it prepares it to achieve the plan of God, who wishes to unite to himself all men and women and render them a people of brothers and sisters liberated from injustices and filled with feelings of authentic solidarity….

    Vast is the field and much remains to be done. Therefore, the cooperation of everyone is necessary. No one, in fact, is so poor that they have nothing to give. We share in missionary activity first of all through prayer, during liturgy or in the secret of our room, through sacrifice and offering up our sufferings to God. This is the first sort of cooperation which everyone can offer. It is important not to neglect economic support, vital for so many particular Churches….

    The Spirit of God is our strength! The Spirit, who manifests his power in the mission of Jesus sent to announce the good news to the poor … and to proclaim a year of the Lord’s grace (Lk 4:18), has been poured into the hearts of all believers (cf. Rom 5:5) to enable us to be witnesses of the Lord’s works.

    May the Blessed Virgin, Mother of Christ and Mother of believers, a woman totally docile to the Holy Spirit, help us to repeat in every circumstance her `yes’ to God’s plan for salvation, at the service of the new evangelization.

My Story

My Life in Madonna House

                               by Mary Pennefather

    Before coming to MH I belonged to the Presidium in the Legion of Mary in Ottawa. Our work was counting the Sunday collection.

    One day at our meeting a guest priest talked about his former mission in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. He said, “If you want to help us, you can send us your used Catholic literature.” He gave us the address and I thought I’d like to do that. So I asked my friends to give me what they had, and I sent a parcel every month or so.

    Every year there was a meeting of the Canadian bishops in Ottawa in October around Mission Sunday. One year when Bishop Coudert, the bishop of the Yukon, came to the meeting, he phoned me and said he wanted to see me. So I went to the University of Ottawa where he was staying.

    He told me he had a mission house in Whitehorse where transient men and native people from the villages could stay overnight, and where expectant mothers could stay until their babies were born and then wait until they got transportation home. This mission house needed to have someone there all the time. One of his priests had been doing it, but, along with all his other duties, it was too much for him.

    Bishop Coudert asked me if I had heard about Madonna House and Catherine Doherty. He was planning to go there the next day to ask Catherine if she could send him some of her workers to staff that mission. He asked me to pray very hard that she do so. So I did.

    MH was very new then and  had very few staff. But after first saying no, Catherine accepted, and that house ended up becoming MH’s first mission.

    The bishop really loved me and had prayed that I find my vocation. He had sent me to visit a contemplative convent, but that didn’t seem to be it. Later he suggested I visit Madonna House.

    I had planned to take two weeks of my holidays at MH, but a person more senior in my job than me applied for an extension to her holidays which included one of my weeks. But another year, 1954, my holiday time worked out.

    So I went to Madonna House and while I was there, someone arranged for me to talk with Catherine Doherty. She asked me what I wanted. I said, “God!” She said, “Go outside where there are some summer chairs, and I will send a priest to you.”

    The priest who came was Fr. Gene Cullinane. He became my spiritual director and I stayed in touch with him. In February 1955, he told me he thought it would be a good idea for me to come to MH for a year. So I did.

    The government office where I worked was very good to me. They gave me a leave of absence  and a gift of a sweater and a pen and pencil set.

    I became an applicant in September 1955 and made my first promises in 1956.

    My first mission was to Marian Centre, Edmonton, where my main job was washing the dishes of the Brother Christophers (unemployed men) who ate at our soup kitchen. I also did the laundry one day a week.

    In 1959 I returned to Combermere where Kathleen O’Herin taught me to sew and mend personal clothing and linens. Fr. Callahan was my spiritual  director, and he gently led me to God.

    During the winter Catherine and Fr. Cal gave us classes and taught us many things. Among the things Fr. Cal taught us was about were the Mass and the papal encyclicals. He also played Handel’s Messiah for us on the phonograph at Christmas and during Lent.

    I was here in 1960 when the statue of Our Lady of Combermere arrived. It was such a beautiful warm sunny day, and we all gathered to welcome her.

    In September 1960 I was transferred to Whitehorse where I mainly worked in the office and did cleaning. Then in the fall of 1964, I returned to Combermere, where I worked in the sewing room doing the mending.

    In the summer, every Saturday a crew of us would go to Cana Colony, our camp for families, and clean the cabins and cook shacks for the next group of families.

    I did this for ten years. I worked in the sewing room for over thirty years.

    Now I am working in the laundry folding towels, hankies and pillow cases. I live at St. Luke’s with other older MH members—Kathleen, Edie, and Mamie, and with Kathleen Janet, our housemother.

    Every day I go before the Blessed Sacrament for an hour of adoration. I pray for everyone during that hour.

    My life in Madonna House has been a joy to me. It’s been spiritually very rich, and I have truly found God. My joy is complete.