I AM THE FOOT

by Pilgrim George

This past June Pilgrim George walked from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (his home base), to the Jesuit Martyrs’ Shrine in Auriesville, New York, to MH in Combermere, to the Canadian Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario and then back to Pittsburgh. While he was with us, he gave this talk.

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I have an unusual vocation. The Lord has asked me to carry the cross on the highways and byways of the world. So for the past 30 years, I have been walking. I have walked approximately 30,000 miles, through 40 countries.

Some people, when they see me walking, say, “I could never do that—walk 15 or 20 miles a day, without money, just trusting in God, sleeping in the woods in my tent, eating whatever people offer to me.” But it is possible by God’s grace and calling, and it is a life of peace and of joy.

It’s a very simple life. I have only two things to do each day: to walk and to pray. I don’t have to prepare meals or clean the kitchen or sweep the house or go to work or pay bills. So my life is what Our Lady said at Fatima: the two parts of the Christian life are prayer and sacrifice.

Prayer is our relationship with God, and the sacrifice is our relationship with our brothers and sisters. For me the sacrifice is walking.

One day someone asked me, “What good do you do on the earth? How much money do you make? How do you help people?” And I began to ask myself, “How do I help others?”

As I was walking these past couple of weeks, the answer came to me: “I’m showing the way to heaven as I walk.”

One day a little boy in India said, “Where are you going?” And I said, “to heaven.” He said, “Is this the way to heaven?” I said, “Yes, if you’re following Jesus. Jesus is the way to heaven.”

What did Jesus say? I am the Way…. No one comes to the Father except through me (Jn 14:6)

So as I walk with the cross, I’m showing the world the way to happiness, to peace, to eternal life, but I don’t say it in words. When I walk in most countries, I don’t know the language. I say it in sign and symbol, like a parable, by the cross and by my life.

I’m not called to be an evangelist, a teacher, a preacher, or a pastor. When people ask me how I got this calling, or what it means, I point out that the Church is like a body, as St. Paul says, with different members—the eye, the arm, the ear. I’m the foot. So I walk.

The whole body can’t be the foot, and the foot needs the other members. If there were no farmers growing food, how would I eat? Some are called to be the hands and to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Others are called to be the mouth and proclaim the Gospel. I’m just called to walk.

But if we do what God asks us, whatever member we are, the whole body benefits.

One day I was walking in Mexico, and a young man came by in his truck and said to me, “I had to come back and tell you something. I saw you walking as I was driving down the highway, and when I saw you, I felt God’s holiness in my heart, and I no longer want to smoke.”

God delivered him because I was obedient—just doing what God asked me to do. I didn’t see the man, I didn’t talk to him, but the Holy Spirit works. And I think this is true for all the members of the Body. If we focus on Jesus, then he works through us without our effort, without our knowledge.

So I don’t worry about how many people I’ve converted or saved or told about Jesus. That’s the Lord’s responsibility. All we’re called to do is be who he calls us to be.

When I walk in Western countries—United States, Canada, Europe—usually only three or four people a day will take the time to stop and talk with me. Others maybe wave as they pass or blow their horn or shout obscenities, but usually I come across someone who is seeking the Lord or open to the Lord and who responds to me.

One day last week, on the way up to Combermere, it was getting near evening and I was looking for a place to sleep. A sheriff pulled up to me. I thought he was going to ask for my identification, but he didn’t. He just started to talk.

“I’m thirty years old,” he said. “I have everything. I have a good job, status, a wife, children, a house, but there is still something missing. Can you tell me what it is?”

“Certainly I can tell you,” I said. “It’s Jesus!” He was a very intelligent person. He, “of course” wasn’t going to Church. Before we left he said, “Can you give me a word of wisdom for my life?” I said, “Yes, three words: `Trust in Jesus!”’ He said, “Oh, that’s a tough one.”

The answer to our need for happiness lies not in material things or in intellectual understanding but in the openness of our heart to our Savior. That’s what the cross says: Come here, surrender to this act of love, and you’ll find the meaning of your life.

This gift of love from the Father is the only thing that will make us happy now and forever.

The cross shows us the way to be a follower of Jesus. What did Jesus say? If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and follow me. (Mk 8:34) And I’ve been able to do that in a little way.

Jesus said, if you want to be my disciple, leave your father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children, lands and you will have a hundredfold (See Mk 10:29). I find that to be true. I have mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, in every land. People who say, “Can I help you? Come to my house. Stay with me tonight. Can I do anything for you?”

They want to give me money and I say, “I don’t take money, but I take food.” So they go to the store and buy me a bag of food and bring it to me. Or even just a cup of water. I never refuse an offer of water because Jesus said if you give a cup of cold water to one of my little ones, you will have your reward in heaven (See Mt 10:42). I don’t want them to lose their reward. And usually I’m thirsty. If you’ve ever walked, you know you get thirsty and tired and hungry.

But this is nothing when you do it out of love. Love makes the suffering a joy. How did Jesus endure the cross? Because he knew it was his father’s will and he did it out of love.

How could the martyrs accept the tortures? They could because they knew that God loved them, that they were his children, and they had nothing to fear.

This is the secret to being a Christian—to know that God your Father loves you infinitely, perfectly. If you are his child, what bad can happen to you? He wouldn’t let anything permanently or spiritually bad happen, though he might allow suffering. Look what suffering he allowed his Son whom he loved!

But knowing God’s love for us sets us free from fear of pain or suffering or illness or failure or rejection or all the things that the world fears.

The cross is an invitation to open our heart to God’s love. The cross shows us how much he loves us, so much so that he gave his only Son for us, to suffer for us and to save us.

When I wish you the peace of Jesus, I’m wishing you a peace that the world does not know. It isn’t the peace that you get from a nice sunset in the woods, or the peace you get even from meditation or from being with friends.

The peace that Jesus gives, that only he can give, is the peace that comes from the forgiveness of our sins. What did Jesus say when he appeared to his apostles after his Resurrection? “Peace be with you.” He was forgiving them for abandoning him. That set them free from their guilt.

The cross is a sign that our sins have been forgiven. The world cannot handle the guilt that comes from sin. The best it can do is try to explain it through psychology. It can’t solve the problem of sin. Only the cross and the blood of Jesus can do that.

So as a pilgrim I walk in the freedom of a child of God, and in the peace of knowing my sins are forgiven. I walk without fear, because I know I am loved.

I have told the Lord that I will walk until he comes back again or until he takes me home to heaven, whichever comes first. I said, “You can take me, Lord, any time, any place, any where, any way you want.”

What does it matter if it’s by accident or sickness or whatever? For a Christian death is just the gateway to heaven. So why should we be afraid? We should be looking forward to it.

If we are afraid of suffering and death, it shows that we really don’t believe Jesus has risen and overcome death. Death is not the end; it’s the beginning of eternal life.

If we are afraid of death, we need to ask Christ for the power of his love to set us free from this fear.

MH Brazil

FRIEND BOUGHT THE STAMPS

by Andorra Howard

Giving and receiving. Giving and receiving. That’s what our past month has been about.

Our tri-annual newsletter reaches close to 250 people. We had no money to mail it, but in faith we wrote it and set the mailing date. Then friends bought the stamps.

Our fridge broke down, and a priest and members of a prayer group paid for the repairs. Eliana and Fr. Tom made a five-day Focolare seminar; we had begged for the fees.

We’ve begged for magazine subscriptions, newspapers, books. Now we are putting up displays, and people sit and relax with magazines, thus using our library more.

What do we give? Food from our shelves, food from our table, food from our gardens and spiritual food from our foundress’ writings. We taught a young married couple how to make bread. (“Teach a man to fish…”) We give work to the unemployed when we can. (One young boy has been coming for over a year to help us.)

We give support to the weary of heart, to those with hearts broken from failed marriages or relationships. We pray for and with the sick, and we give friendship. One young woman comes to ask us for financial help instead of to others, even though we rarely have anything to give her. It doesn’t seem to matter. She calls us her friends.

Eliana, our applicant, is giving us lessons from a book on sacred art. Fr. Tom Talentino gives of himself and his priestly presence.

Sometimes we give and are surprised to receive back. Everyone in the house gave a little something to help an elderly nun who wanted to put out a C.D. but didn’t have the money to do so. Then when she heard we were a little bit short, she gave us back the money we had given her.

When Lena and I went to a funeral Mass of the mother of one of our friends, the husband gave us a ride home and stopped to buy us groceries.

Yesterday a young woman who comes to us for help came with her baby. She didn’t ask for anything. She spent close to four hours here. She ate lunch, chatted, and then went home. Oh yes, we gave her little son a toy from our toy box.

Sometimes we have given away what we have received. Elizabeth recently received an anonymous donation, and gave it to a priest who has been giving his all in a poor neighborhood for twenty years. (Through his efforts the infant mortality rate has dropped to virtually zero.)

Giving… We have two papaya trees. One is chock full of fruit, its leaves reaching toward

The other, which is not more than two feet away, is thin and sickly has just a few papayas on it. For months while it was sick, it continued to give. We continue to accept its fruit which now is only good to eat when cooked while still green, as a vegetable.

One day, not long from now, I will take the last fruit from this tree, and it will stand naked before our eyes. Then I will cut it down, and it will give no more.

Some of us give from our health and abundance; others from our sickness, our ugliness, our poverty, and our weakness. And one day, all of us, even those who are now able to give lavishly from abundance, will also stand bare and naked before God with nothing more to give. Our giving is like that.

The Pope’s Corner

A SIGN OF CONTRADICTION

by Pope John Paul II

This excerpt is taken from a homily given on September 18, 1987, in San Francisco, California, during the papal visit to the United States.

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Those who accept the grace of conversion and who live according to God’s word find that, with God’s grace, they begin to put on the mind and heart of Christ. They become increasingly identified with Christ who is a sign of contradiction.

It was Simeon who first foretold that the newborn Son of Mary would be for his own people a sign of contradiction. He tells the Virgin Mother, This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed (Lk 2:34).

And so it happened. Jesus met with opposition in the message that he preached, and in the all-embracing love that he offered to everyone. Almost from the beginning of his public ministry, he was in fact “a sign that people opposed.”

Simeon’s words hold true for every generation. Christ remains today a sign of contradictiona sign of contradiction in his Body, the Church. Therefore, it should not surprise us if, in our efforts to be faithful to Christ’s teaching, we meet with criticism, ridicule, or rejection.

If you find that the world hates you, the Lord told the Twelve, know that it has hated me before you. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own; the reason it hates you is that you do not belong to the world. But I chose you out of the world (Jn 15:18-19).

These words of our loving Savior are true for us not only as individuals but also as a community. In fact, the witness to Christ of the entire Christian community has a greater impact than that of a single individual.

How important, then, is the gospel witness of every Christian community, but especially that most fundamental of them all, the Christian family. In the face of many common evils, the Christian family that truly lives the truth of the Gospel in love is most certainly a sign of contradiction; and at the same time it is a source of great hope for those who are eager to do good.

Parishes, too, and dioceses, and all other Christian communities which do not belong to the world, find themselves meeting opposition precisely because they are faithful to Christ. The mystery of the cross of Christ is renewed in every generation of Christians.

WALKING TO JERUSALEM

by Pilgrim George

Like many other Christians, I made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the Jubilee year. But I did it a little differently from most, and it took me eight years.

In 1992 when the Lord put it in my heart to make that pilgrimage, I was in Anchorage, Alaska. How do you get from Anchorage to Jerusalem if you’re walking? You walk across Russia, Pakistan, India, Iraq and Iran. Just a couple of thousand milesa few years.

I got to India in 1995 but, because I’m an American, I couldn’t get a visa for Iraq and Iran. So I said, “Lord, you must have some other plan. I’ll just have to get to Jerusalem from the West instead of from the East.”

So I flew to Rome, and in Rome I got a chance to meet the Holy Father. In his instruction on the Jubilee celebration, he had said it would be significant to celebrate the Holy Year by walking in the footsteps of Abraham and Moses and Jesus. I was planning to do that, and I wanted him to know that someone was taking his words to heart. The Lord had arranged that I could share that with him and get his blessing.

And then I read that he had said to a group somewhere that we’re on the way with Mary towards the year 2000. So I planned my route so that I could visit shrines dedicated to the Mother of God.

From Rome I walked to Medjugorje and from there I had planned to go south. But when I got to Montenegro, I couldn’t cross the border because of political problems. So I went north insteada 6,000- mile detour around the Black Seaand I visited the shrine at Czestochowa in Poland. I have friends in Poland and spent the winter there.

Then, since this was only 1997, I still had two more years before the Jubilee. So I walked to the shrine of Our Lady of Knock in Ireland.

Every year, unless I am walking in hot climates, around October I stop and find a little room that I can use for a poustinia and I spend the winter there in prayer.

I have friends in Norway who had said to me, “Come any time you want and stay with us.” So I spent that winter on top of a mountain in Norway, 200 miles north of Oslo. Not too many people found me there. So I had lots of quiet time and solitude and silence.

The next winter was quite different. I walked from Norway to Ukraine by way of Sweden, Finland, Russia and the Baltic countries and on through Byelorussia to the Ukraine, and there God provided for my winter poustinia a little trailer beside a Greek Catholic Church, right in the city of Kiev.

There I was very available to people, and about twenty-five came every day (with translator of course because I don’t speak Ukrainian) to ask me questions, to ask for prayer, for counselling, for discernment and so forth.

For my life is both that of a pilgrim walking and that of a poustinik. I spend my time praying while I walk, and when I am not walking, in praying, reading the Bible, writing letters and being availablehowever much God wants to use me directly for people.

Then in 1999 I walked from Ukraine through Rumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. When I found out that I couldn’t cross from North to South Cyprus, I had to fly back to Istanbul and then to Athens to get a boat to Cyprus and then to Haifa. But I saw that all this was in God’s plan.

I arrived in the Holy Land, in Haifa, on August 15th, the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption. I had come in under the mantle of Our Lady, and that day attended Mass on Mount Carmel.

And that began my seventeen months of walking in the footsteps of Moses, Abraham, Jesus, the apostles and the prophets.

The staff that I am carrying now I cut near the cave of Elijah on Mount Carmel the first day I got there, because the one I had was broken by the Moslems in Istanbul, and I needed a new one.

So my staff has been to all the places I went in the Holy Land. It was laid on the spot where Mary said yes to the angel in Nazareth and on the spot where Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It was laid on Mt. Calvary and in the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was placed in the tomb.

So in this way, I gathered up the blessings of the Holy Land to take along on my journeys to be a blessing for whoever is open to receive it.

ONE MAN’S SCRAP ANOTHER MAN’S GOLD

If the intensity of life during this summer and fall is any indication, it looks as if we are being called to be even more involved than ever in the Holy Father’s vision of the New Evangelization.

Along with our usual fall work, we have hosted groups of young people seeking vocational discernment and spiritual formation for their roles as leaders in their parishes. Please pray for us that we have the grace and strength to give of ourselves as the Lord is calling us to do.

It is only with the help of your donations that we have been able to offer to families, groups, and individuals an environment conducive to their growing in love and service. Plus even in the simplest routines of everyday life, we are aware of all you do for us.

Those who work in the office, for example, have dozens of reasons to thank you throughout each day. Their work is accomplished with the paper, pencils, envelopes, typewriters, paper clips, etc., etc., that you have sent.

Here’s a reminder about the supplies they use the most: 81/2x 11 paper for the copy machine (even if it’s usable on only one side), envelopes (both size #10 and 9x6), black stamp pad ink, and self-adhesive white labels. Also, can you send them a few glue sticks?

Our mission shop is asking for old cigarette cases, pocket knives, and old fountain pens; and rosaries, crucifixes, medals, and other religious items. They are asking for compacts and cases, thimbles, straight razors, and old type safety razors. And they know you will keep them in mind for any saleable items that will earn money for the poor.

Gretchen, who looks after our crafts center, is so grateful to the person who sent a self-healing cutting board and the one who sent the fountain pen ink. She still needs a centering ruler.

In the process of putting our gardens to bed for the winter, we noticed some equipment that will be needed for next season: rubber work boots (both men’s and women’s), rainwear, regular work boots in large sizes, and large coveralls. These don’t have to be new. We would be happy to have any that you don’t need anymore.

Mary Davis is gearing up for her winter work with wool from our sheep and is begging for some detergent to wash the dirty fleeces. She has also run out of bonemeal.

If anyone has access to computer parts, we are in need of computer memories, 72 and 128 SIMMS.

One thing that would be well-appreciated in several corners of our apostolate is zippered pillow cases.

In general we are in good health at present, but to fortify ourselves before the season of colds and flu we are asking for these supplements: calcium/ magnesium, vitamins E, D, C, and B complex as well as multivitamins. Our nurses would also like to stock up on immodium and antacids.

Please keep our two seminarians, Denis Lemieux and Kieran Kilcommons, in your prayers. The priesthood is a gift that the world certainly needs. It is through the priesthood that we are able to have the sacraments, daily liturgy, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament here. And we offer prayers for you each time we gather for community prayer and at each Mass.

In Our Lady of Combermere,

Jean Fox

DANCING IN THE CITY SQUARE

by Irma Zaleski

The image of the fool brings to mind the great paradox of the Christian tradition and, perhaps, its greatest cross. It points to the truth, a truth very difficult for most of us to realize and accept: that the two things we consider the most important in our lives, the two things on which our faith is founded, are always beyond our grasp.

First, our minds cannot know what lies beyond the abyss which divides us from eternity. We cannot see the face of God.

Second, we cannot ever reach the perfection for which we long and to which we believe we have been called.

Our finite minds cannot grasp the Ultimate Reality. We cannot claim that we “know” who God is. We are, all of usthe clever and the not-so-clever, the educated and the ignorantin the same paradoxical situation.

We believe in a vision, a Gospel, for which we cannot offer any “proofs,” a vision whose validity the worldor even our own thinking minds would recognize. For we may find that our own hearts and minds are also dividedat war with each other.

Our hearts long to hold firm to the little faith that has been given to us, but our minds still cling to the ways of thinking that our upbringing and culture have planted in us. We are, therefore, all fools in the eyes of the world and, perhaps, in our own.

The second part of the paradox of faiththe second arm of its crosslies in our constant, daily failure to live the way of holiness to which Christ has called us. We cannot live the Gospel as purely as we wish; we cannot forgive; we cannot love.

As we struggle with the demands of our desires, with the disorder of our emotions, with the weakness of our willwith sinit is very difficult for us not to panic, not to doubt, not to retreat into cynicism or even despair. To believe in God’s mercyagain and again and againseems presumptuous, impossible, and utterly foolish.

For, in the final analysis, to be a fool means to perceive reality in a manner that to most people seems absurd, even insane. It means to embrace a way of life in which we can never “succeed,” one which the world (the world outside us and the world within our own souls) views as irrational and based on un-reason.

To be a fool is to be alone, outside the safety of commonly-held perceptions and values. It is to be outside the culture in which we must live, work, and find our proper place. For fools are an embarrassment to their family and friends. They make people uneasy.

But the foolishness we are speaking about here, the foolishness wiser than the wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1:25) does not mean that we must give up thinking, become ignorant, or embrace some kind of bizarre behavior. It does not mean we must become a sort of “religious hippie” or rebels or protesters against the rest of mankind.

The true fool, the “holy fool,” does not protest or rebel against anything. He does not think that he knows better or is wiser than others. The true fool knows that he has no claim to any special status at all. He knows that, in the eyes of God, he is indeed foolish and he is indeed a sinner. And he knows that accepting this is the only true way to wisdom, to freedom, and to love.

As a young woman, I came across a story about St. Francis of Assisi, a story that has had a profound influence on my whole life. It tells how St. Francis was once asked by God to run into the main city square of Assisi and dance before his family and fellow-citizens.

When I read this story for the first time, I, like the family and fellow-citizens, was horrified. I hoped and prayed desperately that nothing like that would ever be asked of me. I would prefer, I thought, to lose everything I had or to undergo any hardship or pain. I would rather die than have to expose myself to such embarrassment, to such shame.

But I have had to learn that there is no “unembarrassing” or respectable way to God. Sooner or later, all of us are asked, in one way or another, to dance in the city square to music no one else can hear. Sooner or later, all of us are asked to become fools.

At first, of course, we are terrified. We stagger around blindly; we stumble and fall. We appear to othersand to ourselvesto be totally absurd.

But soon, like St. Francis, we too may find that we are able to move a little more freely. We, too, begin to hear an inner soundthe music of our own souls. Our bodies loosen up; our minds relax. Our hearts expand with joy, for we understand, at last, that what God really wants is not to punish or humiliate us, but to set us free.

The freedom of the fool is the ultimate freedom. It is the freedom from fearfear of the world and of our own weakness and failure. It is the freedom of the Kingdom, the freedom of St. Francis, the freedom of the urodivoi, (the Russian “fools for Christ).” It is the freedom of the martyrs, of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and of all the prophets and saints. It is the freedom of those who know who they truly are but are not afraid.

When we become fools, we too shall dance before the face of God whom our minds cannot grasp nor our eyes see. We too shall know that perfection belongs to God alone and is always beyond our reach. We too shall know that there is evil in the world and in ourselves, but because we have experienced, again and again, the infinite mercy of God, we shall be at peace. We may be laughed at and despised, we may have no true home in this world, but we shall truly know that we are the children of God. We shall be free from fear.

When we become fools, we shall pray without ceasing. We shall knock until the door is opened to useven when it seems it will be shut forever. We shall run after him whom we cannot see or touch. We shall live and die in his presence.

We shall be like the Good Thief who, though sinful and in pain, recognized the Lord in the Man dying on the Cross and thus entered the Kingdom. So, fools that we are, we shall leap for joy, and we shall dance in the city squares.

And in the midst of sorrow and destruction, we shall sing of the dawn coming into the world.

St. Ksenia

THE MEDAL

by Deacon Jude von Mann

In 1950 during the Korean War, I was with the U.S. Marine Corps Infantry in combat in Hamhunj, North Korea. One day, as we were sweeping through the city, snipers were firing at us. We were soon engaged in street fightinghouse to house.

I ducked into a deserted shop, a photographer’s shop. All the photos in the place were of Russian soldiers with their wives and children. So the shop had obviously been owned by a Russian.

On the wall, besides all the photographs, was an icon of a Russian woman wearing an army coat and standing in the graveyard of a church. The crosses on the steeples of the church each had three bars on them.

Beneath the icon, hanging on a nail, was a religious medal on a chain. A light reflecting off the medal had drawn my attention to it. The picture on the medal was the same as the icon.

Something inside said, “Take it. It’s for you.”

So I took the medal, and for the rest of the war, I wore it. I felt that the woman, whose name I did not know, was a saint in heaven who wanted me to feel her protection.

When the war was over and I returned home to America, I put the medal in a box along with my military identification tag (“dog tag”).

Then about ten years ago, I started to read Catherine Doherty’s books and found her stories fascinating. On the cover of one of the books, I noticed a three-bar cross, the Russian cross. I knew that Catherine was Russian and had been baptized Orthodox, and I remembered my medal of the unknown saint.

Then not long ago, on February 26, 2001, I met an Orthodox priest from Ukraine. I told him about the icon and the medal, and showed him the medal. He looked at the picture on it and read the Russian words.

The woman was St. Ksenia (or “Xenia”) of St. Petersburg, Russia, he told me. He said that her husband had been a soldier and that in the picture she was wearing his soldier’s coat and was standing before his grave praying. He also told me that she is one of the saints that the Russian Orthodox call “Fools for Christ.”

My unknown saint had a name!

And then I thought about something else that had happened to me in Korea. I had been wounded and was in the hospital with frost bite and pneumonia. I had a high fever and was heavily sedated. While I was laying there, I heard the doctor tell a nurse, “If his feet do not respond to treatment soon, we will have to amputate. There are signs of gangrene.”

That day or night I had a dream. In the dream I was travelling on a train in a snow-covered country. The train stopped at a small station and a woman in a Russian soldier’s coat got on.

She smiled and said to me, “You look cold. Do you want to borrow my coat?

When I said yes, she put her coat over me, and I felt warmth and love. I asked her where she was going, and she said, “St. Petersburg.” She told me her name, but all I remembered was that it sounded like it began with an “x” or a “z.”

I did not lose my legs, or my feet, or even my toes. I believe that this was a miracle, and that it was done by St. Ksenia.

I also believe that it was she who led me to Catherine’s books. (Catherine, her fellow-Russian, also referred to herself as a “fool for Christ.”)

St. Ksenia

WOMAN IN A SOLDIER’S COAT

by Paulette Curran

In 1794, in Storona, a poor district of St. Petersburg in Russia, a very strange thing was happening. A new church was under construction, and when the workers arrived at the church in the morning, they would find that during the night someone had hauled mounds of bricks to the top of the building exactly where they were needed.

A person would have had to have super-human strength to have done this work. Amazed, the workmen posted a watchman to find out who it was. When they found out, they were even more amazed. For it was Ksenia, an elderly woman very familiar to them.

Who was this Ksenia? Not much is known about her early life. The basic facts were learned from the epitaph on her tomb stone: “(She was) the wife of the imperial chorister (member of a choir), Colonel Andrei Theodorovich Grigorievna. Widowed at age 26, a pilgrim for 45 years, she lived a total of 71 years.” She died in 1805.

From her husband’s position it is assumed that she was of the lesser nobility. So presumably she led an ordinary life, one that was materially comfortable. Though childless, she seemed to have been happily married.

But that way of life ended when Ksenia’s husband died suddenly at a drinking party.

Ksenia was shattered, not only at losing him, but also by the fact that he had died without the benefit of the sacraments.

Looking around at all her possessions and at her inane little world, she came to see the vanity and transitoriness of earthly joys and treasures. She came to realize that there is true value only in heavenly treasures and real joy only in Christ.

To the utter amazement of her friends and relatives, Ksenia began to give away her possessions to the poor.

Thinking that no sane person would do this, her relatives presumed that the death of her husband had unbalanced her mind. So they petitioned the trustees of her late husband’s estate to prevent her from disposing of her wealth on the grounds that she was insane.

But, after a long and careful examination of Ksenia, the trustees ruled that she was of perfectly sound mind and, hence, had every right to do what she wished with her property.

Soon after this, Ksenia vanished from St. Petersburg and was not seen for eight years. It is said that during that time she lived at a hermitage with a sisterhood of holy ascetics and learned from a elder about prayer and the spiritual life. It was during this time, presumably, that she discerned that she was called to what in Russia was considered the highest feat of spiritual perfection that of being a fool for Christ.

To us Catholics of the Western Church, this appears to be a very strange call indeed. Usually it is only with much difficulty that we accept the idea that living the Gospel may at times, as a side effect, include appearing to be a fool. But to deliberately do things to appear as one, and as such to invite scorn and ridicule? Why, this seems to us to be pure insanity! But the Russian fools for Christ, the urodivoi, do just that. And they do it in order to atone for their sins and those of the world and to identify with Christ who was called a fool during his life on earth.

So Ksenia returned to St. Petersburg and clothed herself in her late husband’s army coat and, refusing to respond to her own name, responded instead only to “Andrei,” the name of her late husband. It was as if, in her deep devotion to him, she hoped in some way to take upon herself the burden of his unrepented sins and of his unfortunate demise without the sacraments.

So, dressed as a soldier at a time when no woman was ever in the military, Ksenia began her long pilgrimage of wandering the streets of the poorest districts of St. Petersburg.

Of course, people thought she was a simple-minded beggar, and some of them, especially the children, persecuted her and laughed at her, and sometimes even threw stones and mud at her. But because of the example of Christ who bore his sufferings meekly and in silence, she too bore them meekly and forgave those who hurt her.

At least she did so most of the time. Some people remembered one time when the abuse became too much for her, and she ran after the children waving her cane in the air. People were so startled at her unprecedented show of anger that they took steps to prevent further offenses against her.

As time went on, people gradually began to realize that Ksenia was something more than a beggar, and they began to invite her into their homes and to offer her warm clothing for the severe Russian winter. She would not accept the clothing, but she did take pennies which she distributed to the poor.

No one knows exactly when, but somewhere along the line, Ksenia began to manifest the gift of fore-knowledge, and many stories have been passed down about this.

On one occasion, for example, Ksenia arrived at a friend’s house for a visit. “Antonova,” she said to her, “here you are sitting and sewing on buttons, and you don’t know that God has given you a son. Go at once to the Smolensk Cemetery!”

Antonova, knowing that Ksenia was saintly and that no idle words came from her lips, did not question this strange command, but left immediately for the cemetery.

When she was near her destination, the woman saw a large crowd of people and, being curious, stopped to see what was going on. Apparently a coachman had knocked down a pregnant woman who had then given birth to a child right there on the street and died immediately afterwards.

Filled with compassion for the child, Antonova took him home. When all the efforts of the St. Petersburg police failed to locate any of his relatives, Antonova kept him and loved and raised him as her own son.

Eventually the boy became an eminent civil servant and lovingly cared for his adopted mother in her old age.

As time went on, people seeing this gift in Ksenia and also her meek and humble ways began to realize that she was a fool for Christ’s sake. Many were happy to receive her into their homes, and it was noticed that some sort of blessed peace settled over any home which received her with sincerity. And if she fondled or rocked an ill child in its cradle, that child would always get well.

It is also said that when shopkeepers and merchants saw her approaching, they would run to offer her a gift or a piece of merchandise. If she accepted it or even blessed it with her touch, that merchant would have good business all day.

For a long time, no one knew where Ksenia spent her nights. But finally the local police discovered that she spent them in an open field, praying and making prostrations in all four directions as is the Orthodox custom, and she did this no matter what the season or weather. Only through a miracle of God could she have survived the bitterly cold St. Petersburg winters.

And so her life went on, and Ksenia became old. Finally, when she was 71 years of age, the time came when Ksenia was no longer seen wandering the streets of Storona. God had called her to rest from all her struggles and took her to himself.

Always compassionate and seeking to help people during her earthly life, Ksenia did not forsake them when she left this world. For truly, those who have died in Christ and we who still struggle on earth are one. And the saints are near us.

Combermere Diary

COMINGS AND GOINGS

by Echo Lewis

The late-summer events that have been leading the way into fall have been many and varied.

The hundreds of vacationers who flocked to this lake and river district during July and August have returned to the city, causing a drastic drop in population. River traffic slowed downgoing from numerous skiers, kayakers, swimmers, and canoeists to a few inveterate fishermen.

The ducks and geese came, grew, and flew. The loons born this summer have stopped riding on their mothers’ backs, and their voices have stopped cracking when they practiced the several calls of their breed. When they go, the wildlife traffic on the river will drop even more.

On Highway 517 where MH is located, though, the traffic hasn’t slowed or dwindled at all. It has merely altered. Instead of campers, cars, and trailers hauling boats and bikes, there are now the daily school buses bringing the children to and from the parish school located between MH and MH St. Mary’s. Autumn is definitely here.

Meanwhile, inside MH, there have been plenty of visitors and events to capture our interest and attention.

At one point the nations represented here included India, Korea, the Philippines, the West Indies, Mexico, Peru, Columbia, Israel, France, Austria, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and Togo, West Africa.

One of the Koreans, Fr. Kim, gave us a talk about the history of Korea and the Korean Church, and another, Seung Jung, cooked us a Korean supper.

Other guests have included Jamal Shehade (son of Kamil Shehade, a Palestinian friend and founder of the House of Grace whose story we told in the December 2000 RESTORATION), John and Audrey Creary (friends from Catherine’s Friendship House days in Harlem, New York), and family of staff. (Our roads are more user-friendly in the summer and fall.).

Included in the category of family members were the Kolyschkine family. About a dozen of Catherine’s relatives from North America and Europe gathered in the nearby area for a reunion, and one day came to have Mass and a meal with us.

We have had several visits, too, over the past while from associate priests and deacons and these have included two big events. Fr. Don Guiglielmi, here for week of research on his doctoral dissertation on an aspect of Catherine’s spirituality, made his final promises as an associate. And another of our visitors, Bishop Joseph Minj of the Simdega Diocese in northern India, made his first Promises as an associate bishop of MH. It is he who recently sent one of his priests, Fr. Birendra, to spend a year with us.

Other visitors, Richard and Patricia Payne and their son Stephen, brought the film that Richard and Stephen had made concerning the De Montfort Consecration to Jesus through Mary. The final segment contains interviews with several MH staff. This film, the second in a series of three, will be shown on EWTN and also taken to Rome to be shown to the Holy Father.

Finally, one weekend after our own summer program for young people was over, we hosted two youth groups. One, a Melkite group, had a retreat co-ordinated by Fr. David May and given by him and others. The other, composed of 16 to 18 year olds, were given leadership formation by our friends Angelina and Walter Steenstraalso with the help of others.

And besides the people who stayed with us, we also met many through the gift shop, book shop, and tours. At the peak of summer, we gave several group tours including one to a group of 62 Brownies and ten adults from the nearby Polish camp in Kaszuby. As do all our tours, they visited, among other things, the chapel, gift shop, wool shop, and museum.

Our own family retreat apostolate, Cana Colony also brought many old and new friends. Helen Porthouse who spends a good part of the year organizing these July and August weeks, was with the families again this year, along with Denis Lemieux, who was home for the summer from the seminary. As usual, MH priests took turns as chaplains for the individual weeks and a different family each week served as host family.

Another event took place not at MH but at the parish church during the hottest days of August. Fr. Robert DeGrandis, who has been in the healing ministry for over twenty years, held a “spiritual revival” at our parish. In a large tent in the school yard, he gave workshops on forgiveness, the power of the Eucharist in healing, and intergenerational healing. Many people in the area and a number of MH staff who were able to attend were blessed by the event.

And the last of our Sunday evening summer program events took placea play about pilgrimage written and directed by Helen Porthouse.

Not all of our late-summer events took place here in Combermere. Several of our staff also went out to other parts of the countryor world. Cheryl Ann Smith, our music director, returned safely from her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and soon went on to St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana for a workshop on Gregorian chant.

Mary Davis and Ruth Siebenaler, our main fruit and flower gardeners, attended the annual local Horticultural Society Show; and their entries won many prizes including the overall “best of show” for their gladioli. Their entries represented the hard work and loving care of many of our gardeners and farmers who strived so hard to produce food and beauty throughout our hot, dry summer.

And Jude Fischer and Zoyla Grace attended some of the rock jamboree (“rock” as in stones, not music) not far from Combermere.

So, there has been lots of movement recentlyboth coming here and going away and the seasonal change has also brought forth another movement in the form of a shift of energy. The numbers of staff needed for tours and the gift shop have lessened, meaning that different departments needing extra hands benefit. And the main area of current need is that of putting up our harvest for the winter.

In the carpentry and H.E.L.P. (heating, electrical, landscaping, and plumbing) departments, the many outdoor projects such as repairing chimneys and roofs have evolved into their final phases and will soon give way to indoor projects.

On August 15th, the feast of the Assumption, which for us also includes a number of other celebrations, we had a Byzantine liturgy followed by an all-day picnic. For Archbishop Raya’s birthday (one of those celebrations), we had a four-foot long birthday cake decorated as the Sea of Galilee with the archbishop’s motto, Put out into the deep (Lk 5:4), on it.

Occasions such as these have made the transition from summer to fall a grace-filled and memorable one.

MH Washington DC

SHOW UP, SHAKE UP!

by Angela Redmond

I recently attended the first National Gathering of Black Catholic Women held in Charlotte, North Carolina. From the many, many powerful words of wisdom, faith and inspiration offered there, a few specific statements became for me a sort of formula for a gift I unexpectedly received: the gift of the renewal and transformation of my spirit.

Given the state of wondering and wandering I’d been in for some time, I consider this renewal nothing short of miraculous. And I extend heartfelt thanks to the National Conference of Black Sisters who so beautifully incarnated this dream dreamt in God.

“We must be extremists in love!” These words startled me when I heard them. But I was even more astounded when I realized that what Dr. Diana Hays was saying was actually possible. “Just look around the room,” I thought. “This is a powerhouse of love.”

Imagine being in a place where invoking the Holy Spirit seems redundant! Each of the 800 women present had brought from her home, from her life of faith-filled love, the Spirit’s flame in her heart.

From the moment we arrived, the fire began to spread from heart to heart. It leapt over mountains of burdens and fruitless toil, across valleys of abuse and neglect, and through the torments of self-degradation and despair, through all of which women of African descent have traversed for so very long.

The fire burned in the unseen but very real presence of our ancestors, and it burned in the consolation of the spiritualsour mother tongue.

It burned, too, in prayer and exhortation, in silence, in “cleansing anger,” and in the challenges presented to us. That fire raged!

“Show up! Shake up! Stand up!” said Sr. Josita Colbert, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, during the workshop on vocations. Like so many African-American women, she had been “going along to get along” in the course of her religious life. Finally realizing that this was the path to self-destruction, she began to allow her dignity as a Black Catholic woman to emerge, along with its particular gifts and perspectives.

What a challenge this presents to those of us who find ourselves among the few who compose the integration factor in our workplaces, parishes, or religious communities. Though it is difficult to challenge the status quo in an atmosphere of open hostility, it is even more so when people of good willourselves includedcan’t or won’t accept the responsibility for attitudes that deepen the rifts between races or genders.

“Never forget: We were not meant to survive.” This sobering statement, again from Dr. Hayes, carries simultaneously causes for mourning, consolation, and pride. The mourning aspect is plain enough. We have been regarded as mere chattels to be used for hard work or easy pleasurereadily dispensed with at the slightest sign of inconvenience. Well, who wouldn’t weep as we have wept?

Our consolation lies in the fact that we have survived. And our pride lies in the fact that, not only have we survived what was meant to destroy us, but we have thrived despite and through it all. As the song goes, “Still we rise!”

“We are emerging!” Dominican Sister Jamie Phelps assured us and gave us this beautiful insight: When the Holy Spirit is at the center of our emergence, she said, we are like the Blessed Virgin at the moment she welcomed the Word into her womb and like the Lord himself when he came out of the Jordan to begin his public ministry.

By the power of the Spirit, for the good of the world, for the renewal of the Church, and for our own transformation, we are emerging!

“O magnify the Lord, for he is worthy to be praised!” This refrain from a song continues to resound in my memory, for the Lord was indeed magnified and this praise was explicitly the center of the gathering. Every word, every song, every tear, every outburst of laughter (and there was plenty of each) was filled with praise for the Holy Trinity and especially for the Lord whose disciples and sisters we are.

The Mother of God, too, made her presence felt. She walked among the participants, and sped along with those responsible for the many details surrounding the various presentations. She stood alongside the speakers to guide their words according to the Spirit, inspired the musicians and young dancers, and, I’m sure, just plain enjoyed herselfa Sistah with sistahs!

I have so many wonderful impressions from the gathering settling into my bones, but above them all rides one: that the love in the hearts of these “extremists” is very real, and it cannotwill notbe contained.

LANCE OF LOVE

by Mary Lynn Murray

One day in poustinia, I was praying for a deeper understanding of my place in the Madonna House family. And the word that came to me was “crucified love.” That is my vocation within my MH vocation. And I understand that to mean that I am called to become totally dispossessed so that the Lord can fill me and work through me unencumbered.

I am called to this, not only for my own sanctification but also in order that I can stand with those whom God places before me and asks me to carry in love and in prayer. It has to be his action through me that carries those people.

This calling to crucified love needs to be rooted, not only in an understanding of, but also an acceptance and even an embrace of the reality of Jesus crucified. This reality is central to Madonna House and, of course, to our Christian faith, but it is also a reality that inspires a fair amount of distress and fear. It certainly has in me.

As I look back on my life, I can see some graces that God gave me that were absolutely necessary in order for me to overcome this fear and to be open to receive this word, this call, from him.

The first one was given to me twenty years ago before I knew anything about Madonna House, when I was working as a nurse in Ottawa. A retreat was being held in nearby Aylmer, Quebec, and I had a very strong feeling that I should go to it.

During that retreat the priest said something that changed my life. He said, “The greatest lie in the world today is that God does not love me.”

I was 23 years old at the time and, until that moment, I had been unaware that I carried within me the deep and all-pervasive pain springing from this lie. And when that priest said that, I felt God’s lance of love pierce deep into my heart. That was the beginning of a healing that has been ongoing.

The reason I am making this point is that, unless I am able to see the crucifixion of Jesus as an act of love for me, I will never truly believe in and embrace that love. And if I don’t embrace the passion and death of Jesus and the love for me that it reveals, then I can never really love.

This belief in God’s love for me is the fundamental foundation of my vocation to Madonna House and also of my vocation to crucified love.

The second grace I was given to prepare me for my vocation to crucified love was given to me a number of years after I joined Madonna House. This grace was an icon of crucified lovean icon in the person of Fr. Gene Cullinane, the oldest of the MH priests.

When I was transferred back to Combermere from Winslow, Arizona in 1992, I was assigned to the nursing department. At that time, Fr. Gene needed some nursing supervision, and so he was living at St. Luke’s, the place where all the staff needing such care lived at that time.

Over the years as I nursed and worked in the office right behind his room, Fr. Gene became frailer and frailer and frailer and required more and more care.

As I watched this happen, I was awed daily by his surrender to this process of detachment and dispossession that the Lord was taking him through.

And I knew that Fr. Gene had already experienced a lifetime of such dispossession. Before he came to MH, he was a very well-educated Basilian priest and teacher, and he had been carrying a great deal of responsibility.

There is a story he often told. When he was first at Madonna House, he was not assigned any specific work, and he was trying to find what he was supposed to do. So he asked Catherine what his “contribution was supposed to be.” “Your presence, Father,” she told him. And he never forgot her answer.

When he joined MH, Fr. Gene left behind everything that he had ever known and that had given him life in order to take on a new way of being. And anyone, especially the older staff, can attest to the fact that he did that magnificently.

But, even so, when Fr. Gene became old and ill, he was not yet finished with the process of dispossession, and it was my painful privilege to walk with him in those last years when he suffered tremendously. He suffered not only from cancer but also from something that I don’t claim to understand, but which appeared to me to be an inner anguish that could not be relieved by anyone.

And what I learned, standing beside Fr. Gene during those five years, was that, when we are called to accompany someone who is walking on this path of crucified love into the heart of the Father, someone who is embracing the cross in a way that we cannot even begin to understand, all we can do is be beside that person and love him and encourage him and above all, pray for him.

What we cannot do and must not do is to try to take them off the cross. And that’s probably the hardest thing I experienced in that whole process.

Though God has not yet finished teaching me what I need to learn from Fr. Gene, I know that my experience with him was a foundation for my vocation to crucified love.

The third and final grace I want to share with you is a grace from my time in our field houses, a grace I only became aware of during the past year. In these houses, though we live in our own house and do our own work there, we are taken into the heart and homes and lives of the people we serve in a way that I think is very unusual. And those lives include a lot of suffering.

So the Lord has held up before me many, many people who are icons of suffering. These people have dealt with so much pain and suffering that I would just die for them. But what I realized last year is that what I saw most of all in them was not the pain and sorrow and suffering but an incredible love which they poured out.

And there is a quality of compassion and mercy in them that only comes from their having walked through that suffering within the context of faith.

Fr. Gene went to God, and so I have to take the fact that his suffering had fruits on faith. But these other people are still alive. And last year it hit me, “Oh, my God, this is the truth.” Their experience did not end with pain and suffering. It ended with deeper love, deeper faith, and deeper mercy.

All this connected with something that our foundress wrote in a letter to the staff in January 1968:

“I asked myself what was one of the prices, perhaps the greatest, that has to be paid for forming a community of love…. (Then) I saw myself as a channel, a chalice, a cup, a vessel, which had to be cleansed from all the things that were not of God. I imagined that these things differ in each person.

“I knew slowly, by the grace of God, what things I had to get rid of so that he could go through me without impediment. I understood that no one forms a community of love without Jesus Christ, our brother and God.

“He said, without Me, you can do nothing (Jn 15:5).

Word Made Flesh

ONE SINNER AT A TIME

by Fr. Pat McNulty

The following is a meditation on Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. It is the Gospel reading for October 28th, the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

———-

For those of you who are not acquainted with American politics, there are two major political partiesthe Democrats and the Republicans. As I remember it from my childhood, those of us who were poor were generally Democrats, and those who were not so poor were generally Republicans.

And so it was that when I was old enough to make connections between the Bible and my daily life, I thought that the parable about the Pharisee and the publican was about the Pharisees and the Republicans. (The Bible translation used in those days didn’t call the publican a “tax collector.”)

I didn’t mind that the Republicans were the “sinners,” but given what I knew about the Pharisees, I didn’t particularly like it that the Democrats were the Pharisees.

When I was in the third or fourth grade, Sister Gargonia (yes, that was her name) gently informed me of my mistake. I vaguely remember going home and proudly announcing at the supper table how happy I was to have discovered that Democrats were not Pharisees!

It wasn’t until I explained myself that my bewildered family got the message.

Of course we all know that this is not a political parable. It isn’t even really about our obvious sins. It is about arrogance, self-righteousness and judgement vs. humility and truth.

The real sin of the Pharisee in this instance was that his religion had become a tool with which he held himself excused for any sins which did not appear on his legalistic list.

And that is where I find the contemporary lesson of this parable: how is it that many of us can use religion and morality to avoid facing all the others sins we commit against the New Commandment, which is love?

It never ceases to shock and amaze me whenever I discover in a particular situation how opinionated and judgmental I can be in the name of my religion and its truths, and how remiss in the New Commandment. For that New Commandmentlovecalls me to be open to that very delicate distinction between hating the sin and loving the sinner.

But how does one who is serious about his faith know when he has crossed over that line in the temple of his heart and thus clothed himself in the sinful self-righteousness of the Pharisee?

For me I know it has happened when I did not see beyond the sin and beyond the law, and hear the cry of the sinner’s heart even if that person didn’t realize that he or she is crying out.

This happens to me when I am so busy about my salvation that I do not take the time to listen and to look beneath the action. It happens when I no longer believe that love must somehow always come first. Love, always love.

Our foundress Catherine Doherty was, I believe, a Doctor of the Church when it came to love. For her, love always came before anything else.

One of the most striking stories she used to tell about the kind of love I am talking about comes from a time when she was living with the poor in a tenement building where the third floor was inhabited mostly by prostitutes.

One in particular she befriended, and she would often invite her into her apartment for tea. Then Catherine would listen to the woman’s heart, to her poor, wounded, confused heart.

It is a long story but the essentials are short. By day Catherine listened to her and embraced her, and by night she prayed and fasted for her. Catherine loved her so much that when the young lady told her of her desire to make better money by frequenting the expensive hotels, Catherine helped her with her makeup and dresses. Of course, she spoke to her about God and love and faith, little by little and most likely with great passion, for she believed that only Love would prevail.

In the end, one day the young lady came to her and confessed her disenchantment with her way of life. She wanted, she said, to know more about the God that Catherine loved so much. Eventually the woman embraced Christ.

Tea. Listening. Tea. Faith. Tea. Fasting. Tea. Praying. Tea. Love. Catherine never thought of saving the world by one massive, evangelical, conversion program. Nor did she believe in saving it by laws or rituals. She believed with all her heart in saving it one person at a time by love, love in the flesh, her flesh.

And it was because she was not afraid of the sinner that she learned how to persuade some of the most hardened among them of the joy of Christ’s victory over their sin. And all of that was only possible for her because she, like the publican, so often found herself in the quiet of an empty church bowed down by the weight of her own sins and crying out from the depths of her heart, over and over, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner! Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Save the world one sinner at a time beginning with myself? Foolish! Very foolish, many people would say. But then, Catherine did say she was a fool for Christ.