A MODERN WOMAN’S STORY

by Angelina Steenstra

“ `Sex,’ said the baroness in a loud voice, `is the chalice of the sacrament of matrimony.’ ” That is the opening line of Tumbleweed, Eddie Doherty’s biography of his wife, Catherine.

When I read this, I was startled. I read it again. I didn’t get it. And I had been married for twelve years!

I went on to read some more “…Without sex there is no sacrament. There is no marriage. Sex is beautiful. God made it for us to enjoy. It is holy. Of course, like all holy things, it can be and is profaned. You profane it when you say it is dirty or when you think it is evil.”

It took me a long time to read those words. I began to ponder them and to ask myself, “What do I believe about sex? Do I believe it’s dirty? Do I believe it’s evil?”

I went on reading. “…People think that sex is dirty. I can understand that about the pagans, but we are supposed to be a Christian people. We are supposed to know that sex is clean, joyous, natural, a glorious gift from God.”

This was certainly not my understanding of it. Why not? What was wrong?

I started thinking about my experiences of sex.

The first one was probably the day I was watching my mother change my baby brother’s diaper. I must have been four or five. I said, “Mommy, he’s different than I am.” My mother didn’t know what to do with my question. I felt a moment of shame and then she said, “I’ll tell you about it when you are older.”

My next sexual encounter was with a male baby-sitter who was curious and attempted to molest my sister and me.

Then my next memory is of my brother, sister, and I being violated by a gang of boys.

All this happened before I went to school.

I remember as a child having a very vivid sense that both sexuality and being a girl were not good. It was imprinted on my mind that sex is dirty, and you don’t talk about it.

As I grew older I learned about sex, not at home in the safety of my parents’ love, but on the street. I heard teens talking on the bus, and I saw older kids doing things together that I will leave to your imagination.

Then I became aware of my own attraction to the opposite sex. I was exposed to romance novels, television, pornography, and sexual violence in magazines, as well as to teen magazines that tell you that you must dress a certain way and be a certain shape to be lovable.

My first job was at a late-night pizzeria. I began to receive male attention, and I discovered that the tighter my clothes, the more attention I received. That’s when I learned that my body was an object that has power.

I had grown up in an alcoholic home, the oldest of seven children, and my father was frequently away. Though I wasn’t aware of it, I hungered for his love. So at the age of 14 or 15, when I began to receive male attention, it fed that hunger.

So what was the equation I came to? Sex equals love. And I was desperate for love.

The first time a fellow paid attention to me, I became glued to him. A high school teacher warned me, but I just heard what he said as control and power and I didn’t listen.

One night I went to a party. I knew I shouldn’t be there, and I was afraid. To drown out my fear and to shut out the voice of conscience, I drank.

What was I looking for? Belonging, acceptance, relationship, even my vocation. I was looking for meaning and security. I was looking for intimacy. What I was really longing for was God.

That night I had my first sexual encounter, an encounter that ended in the abortion of my first child. Driven by self-hatred and longing for love, I went downhill into promiscuity.

Again and again I tried to stop this downhill slide. Just prior to meeting Walter, the man to whom I have been married for 21 years now, I had decided again to stop having sex.

At first our relationship was celibate, but it wasn’t long before we fell. Though I had heard that sex outside of marriage was wrong, that wasn’t enough. I needed to know why, and I had never been taught. Also, I had been away from the sacraments since I was 13, and so I did not have the grace to live out my desire.

According to the standards of others around us and of the media, our behavior was supposed to be all right, but deep down we knew that something was wrong. And we were not at peace either in ourselves or with each other.

One day I learned that Walter had gone to a strip bar. I became angry. Somebody else had entered our relationship, and I felt betrayed. This made me realize that I was looking for a monogamous relationship —one man forever. We broke our relationship over this.

During our separation, I received the grace to ask God what he wanted for my life.

I had begun to journal; and one evening as I was journalling, I heard in my heart, “Angelina, trust me. Walter is the one for you.”

When Walter came back and asked me to marry him, I knew with certainty that marriage was my vocation and that Walter was the one for me.

That was a tremendous grace, one that was to carry us through some very difficult years.

We began going to church on Sundays and enrolled in the pre-marriage course in search of truth.

One night in that course a guest speaker, a priest, told us that we need to move out of the emotional wasteland of recreational sex and come into the full meaning of what sexuality means for marriage.

After that talk, Walter and I decided to refrain from sexual activity until our marriage. I went to confession and this time we managed to be chaste. (Walter was not Catholic at that point.)

We got married in 1979, but it wasn’t long afterwards that it became clear that something was still not quite right. Life was difficult. We were dealing with an ectopic pregnancy, post-abortion aftermath, and infertility.

It wasn’t until 1991, twelve years into our marriage that the healing of our sexuality began. That was when Catherine Doherty’s words equating sex and the chalice challenged me to think about the marital embrace in a way I never had before. What was it that I was not understanding about the sacrament of matrimony?

Gradually I was led to see that we were both carrying the emotional baggage of our pre-marital sexual experiences.

The act of coming together binds two people together as it is meant to in marriage. The problem is that, when it happens outside marriage, that same bonding or imprinting happens when it’s not meant to. So then when you get married, those earlier bondings get in the way of your bonding with your spouse.

While we were going through the process of seeing this, the Lord called Walter and me into a period of continence within marriage—not short-term but for a very long time. And we discovered that the Holy Spirit can do some very powerful things through continence. If it’s not coming out of frigidity or prudishness but is led by the Spirit, continence in marriage can be a means of restoring what was broken and lost.

It can restore purity to the language of the body. And by allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal what needs healing and inviting him to heal us, we can come know the truth that Catherine was speaking of.

Once we were living as brother and sister, we became aware of our inability to keep our hearts open to each other and thus our inability to enter into intimacy. Let me tell you how hard it was to face this reality! And when we first tried to work this out, I couldn’t hear Walter and he couldn’t hear me.

For we were just beginning what we were meant to begin in courtship—communication. It is communication that builds relationship and leads to heart-to-heart closeness. Pre-marital sex clouds our vision and replaces deep communication.

There’s a physical reason for that. When a woman has sex, a chemical called “oxytocin” is released in her. And do you know what that chemical does? It makes her a little forgetful.

So this guy who you didn’t see as so wonderful a few hours ago, before you had sex with him, you now see as very wonderful. God made it that way so that in marriage, you want to keep going back to each other.

But if you’re having sex during the courtship, that clouding prevents you from really looking at one another and seeing the faults and problems and things you need to talk about.

And at the same time that this communication is not happening, you become bonded to the other (this person with whom there is no commitment)—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Then you are no longer free, and these bonds need to be broken.

One day while visiting Madonna House, I went to poustinia. I was awakened during the night and I heard the Lord say within me, “Get up. Get on your knees, light the candle, and pray the rosary.”

So I did. And then the Lord brought to mind all the men I had been with.

When I came out of poustinia, I went to my spiritual director. He prayed over me, and the Lord broke all the remaining bonds with former sexual partners.

No wonder our marriage bed had been defiled. How could it be sacred when we were both bringing into it all the baggage of our past sexual relationships?

How many people these days come to marriage without this baggage? Please God there are some. But there are so many of us who have not been chaste. How can marriage be restored?

I see Madonna House, a community where people live in poverty, chastity, and obedience as part of the answer. Our Lady created Madonna House, a family where men and women are called to live together in chastity, so that people can see what it looks like.

And there is another thing that I experience at Madonna House—intimacy in relationship. There is a leaflet entitled 99 Ways to Develop Relationship. And when I read it I thought “Wow! That’s Madonna House.”

I’ve been hugged there, and I’ve held hands there. I’ve baked cakes there, and I’ve browsed in a museum there. I’ve been to picnics there. I’ve given compliments and received them there, and I’ve gazed into someone’s eyes there. I have been brought back to life in Madonna House.”

What is the hunger of the human heart? Intimacy. With whom? God, ultimately. But we’ve never seen God. So we need to experience that intimacy incarnated in our relations with one another.

And what about sex as the chalice of the sacrament of matrimony? If the comparison is true, and something so incredibly holy happens in the chalice on the altar, is not what happens in the marriage bed very holy, too?

But if I don’t know who I am, and my husband doesn’t know who he is—if we do not know that we are sacred because God dwells within us —then how can we know that our coming together is holy?

So before I can have an intimate relationship with Walter, I must first have an intimate relationship with God.

Then marriage is communion, a communion between two people who know their incredible worth as children of God.

So the most important question when I evaluate my marriage is not how am I doing in relationship with the children, but how am I doing in relationship with my husband?

It is out of our communion, out of our oneness, that new life—spiritual and physical—is both brought forth and nourished.

In The Catechism of the Catholic Church, entry #1654 states: “Spouses to whom God has not granted children can nevertheless have a conjugal life full of meaning in both human and Christian terms. Their marriage can radiate a fruitfulness of charity, of hospitality, and of sacrifice.”

Knowing this has helped us make sense of our marriage that has not brought forth children.

For that is still another consequence of our pre-marital sex. Infertility. When I was eighteen, I contracted a sexually-transmitted disease which destroyed my ability to bear children.

Bodies must be used for the purpose for which they were created. What we are hearing “out there”—that “anything goes”—is not true. Actions have consequences, and when we go against God’s law, the results are horrific.

But there is good news, too. The good news is that, if there is a way to sin, a way to “leave home,” there is also a way to come back.

And step by step, God is showing us how and is continuing to heal us. In his incredible love and mercy, he is doing even more than that with our repented sin. He is even bringing forth good from it.

———-

Yes, God is indeed bringing forth much good from it. Using her own experiences and encouraged by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Gospel of Life, Angelina gives talks across Canada about post-abortion aftermath and chastity. Co-founder of Second Chance Ministry, she also provides prayer ministry to those who have undergone abortions.

Combermere Diary

FEEDING OUR SPIRITS

by Ellie Pettersen

Greetings in this Year of Our Lord 2002. It seemed fitting to end the last very difficult year with the celebration of the Lord’s Incarnation at Christmas. Since his birth, all of life is shot through with his presence. It is precisely in the midst of our lives that we meet him, in the tragedies as well as in the joys, in the little events as in the big ones. That is what the Incarnation is all about. We need only the eyes to see.

In what specific ways has the MH family responded to the world situation? First, we have, of course, continued all those activities which feed our spirits: daily Mass and communion, rosary, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Scripture reading, the reading together of different spiritual writers every day after lunch, and (individually) regular days of prayer or poustinia.

Secondly, knowing that the battle is in the spiritual as well as the physical realm, we have added to these practices. We are praying together the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, and as further helps to keep our spirits free from the footholds of the evil one, we have been encouraged to seek a priest’s blessing whenever we experience any difficulty, to examine our consciences daily, and to go to confession frequently.

Recently, the “senior citizens” in our community had a day of prayer and reflection on how to respond in faith to the events in the world. The word from these wise elders was “trust in your vocation.” Our vocation is the same as every other: to live fully the sacrament of the present moment and to trust that a loving Father has us all in his care.

One source of spiritual solace for many of us was a pilgrimage to a nearby city to venerate the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. As many of you know, the relics of this contemplative sister, who never left her monastery have already travelled to twenty different countries around the world.

As I gathered news for this Combermere Diary, I was suddenly overwhelmed at how much happens in every corner of these few acres in just one month. No one person here could possibly know more than the barest facts about everything, let alone be involved in it all.

A new walk-in freezer and cooler was recently installed adjacent to the main kitchen. This happened just in time to receive a year’s supply of meat from our own livestock—seven beef cattle and forty sheep that, with the generous help of some friends, were recently butchered at the farm.

This is not a great deal of meat for the 150 or so people we feed here, but we generally eat meat only on Sundays and feast days.

In winter, activity increases at St. Raphael’s, our handicraft center. A few staff are assigned to work in this department, but most people do their crafts in their free time. Our potters continue to make beautiful dishes and vigil light holders, and others carve, paint on wood, or restore religious statues. Both staff and friends spin, weave, knit, and make quilts from our own wool or other donated materials. Then all of these very popular items are sold in our gift shop, the proceeds of which go to help the missions throughout the world.

As in any household or village (which is what we are), maintenance, repairs, winter-related work, and carpentry are ongoing. Much of this is done by the laymen of this family. The “bush crew” is in full swing, cutting trees from our forest for firewood. (Most of our buildings are heated with wood.)

The kitchen, schola (or choir), and the sacristans were especially busy over the holiday season. And we continue with our several work bees each month. Recently, we made a new contact in Toronto through which we can ship clothing overseas to areas in need. The first shipment went to Cuba, to the victims of the hurricane.

More and more, God seems to be calling us forth from “Nazareth” into different types of apostolic outreach. The play about Catherine’s life, A Woman in Love, continues to tour North America, often in combination with a retreat. Several staff spoke on an inspirational T.V. channel about Marian spirituality, and others have spoken to young people about vocation. MH is involved with the planning for World Youth Day Toronto 2002, and two of our members regularly attend Canadian Mission Council meetings.

Our priests and lay members are called upon to give retreats and parish missions. And, more and more, we are realizing that it is our life as a family that best witnesses to God’s activity in our midst. As a result, we are going out more as teams of three—a layman, a laywoman, and a priest.

Several Church events requested book tables, where we have MH books and information about MH available. These are also good opportunities to make contact with people.

MH Publications has been producing some wonderful booklets, the latest of which is about marriage, as well as books on tape, C.D.’s of MH music and stories, and two videos—one of Catherine speaking about Sobornost and the other, of our choir singing, is interspersed with photos taken around MH Combermere.

Also recently published is a biography in French of Fr. Emile-Marie Brière by Monique Beaulne. Associated with it was a special book-signing event at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, an event at which a team from MH was asked to speak (in French).

Our winter `Christian Culture Series” continues. The latest lecture was by Fr. Peter Galadza on “Tales from Ukraine: An Outsider’s Inside View of Church and Society in the Former U.S.S.R.” He is with the Sheptytsky Institute in Ottawa and was the commentator on the Holy Father’s visit to Ukraine for EWTN T.V.

We continue to have an influx of guests from all around the world, especially young adults who come to live and work with us for anywhere from a week to a year. Classes on liturgy, spirituality, Church teachings, and other topics are made available to them, mostly in the evening.

The above description of our life attests to how MH responds in crisis times: We do the same things as at any other time, but possibly with greater love and attention. And we trust in the Lord’s promise: I will be with you always, even to the end of time (Mt 28:20).

LOVE IN A MIXED COMMUNITY

by Teresa Reilander

During a discussion among our applicants, one of the young men, full of enthusiasm, said how happy he was to be able to be of service “in all the events and non-events of our life.” We were puzzled, and someone asked him what exactly he considered a “non-event” in Madonna House. “Sex,” he said.

We had a good laugh about that, but later I was thinking: He was right, and he was wrong. Though the physical expressions of sex are not present in a celibate community like ours, we are still passionate sexual beings. Sex is not really a “non-event” in a mixed community.

For in his plan to bring us into the fullness of life, God created us male and female. He did not do that and then ask us to repress or deny part of our human identity, even if he called us to celibacy.

St. Irenaeus, a Church Father, said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Being fully alive means accepting and entering fully into being who God created us to be. And since he created me as a woman, he wants me to glory in my femininity. Being fully who I am is a way of praising and thanking God for his creation.

Yes, God made us male and female, and we are very different from one another. We differ, not only physically, but also psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. We were created to be complementary to one another. This is God’s plan, and it is good.

But there is a movement in the world today to merge the sexes. Hair-styles, fashions, jobs, and so forth are more and more “uni-sex.” For in the name of equality, the world is denying the differences between men and women. It is confusing equality with sameness. The truth is that men and women are of equal value and dignity at the same time as they are very different.

The world says we need sex. God says we need relationship and intimacy.

Human beings were not created to be alone. We need each other. Not understanding that it is love that we need, we try to assuage the pain of our loneliness in many ways. We eat too much, shop too much, play too much, work too much. And we sometimes we indulge in forbidden sexual activity.

So many today have a badly distorted understanding of the word “love.” If we have been abused physically, emotionally, or psychologically by someone who was supposed to love us, then it is natural to distrust love. And too often, too, in society today, the word “love” has been equated with sex.

But love, though within marriage it includes sex, is not the same thing as sex. So those of us who are called to a life of celibacy are not called to a life without love.

Let me clear up another confusion—between celibacy and chastity. To be celibate is to refrain from sexual activity. Obviously, not all are called to celibacy.

But all baptized persons are called to chastity. Chastity means respecting and loving my own body and loving and respecting others in the same way, because God lives in each of us.

So what does it mean to love another person? Love is less an emotion than a choice to want and to do what is best for the other person, even at my own expense.

Real love is selfless, sacrificial. Jesus gave us an example and told us to follow it. If we want to see what love looks like, we need only to look at a crucifix.

So how do we, who are sexual beings, love in a mixed community? There are tools, The New Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us: self-knowledge, self-discipline, obedience to God’s commandments, the practice of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer.

How can I gain self-knowledge? In order to know myself, as well as to be healthy emotionally, I need one or more persons with whom I can be myself, persons to whom I can go at my weakest and most vulnerable moments. I need people who will affirm me, but who will also speak the truth and help me live it.

There are men in my community whom I find attractive. If I wasn’t a member of Madonna House, and if I met them somewhere else, I might want to pursue it.

But I know that this is my vocation and that it is also theirs. If God has called us both here, then he must be providing a way for us to live holy and happy lives together here.

If I really love someone in the true sense of the word “love”, then I do not want to impede the action of God in his life, the action that is ultimately for that person’s good.

God has a specific plan and work for that person to do. If I am instrumental in causing his heart to become divided, that is a very serious thing. That person will have to answer to God for that someday, and so will I.

Each of us is responsible for his or her actions, for his body language, for how he or she dresses, for his conversation. I have no right to arouse sexual feelings in another person, desires which I am not prepared to fulfill. According to God’s plan, such arousal is only appropriate in marriage. And obedience to God’s commandments is one of our tools in the struggle to lead chaste lives.

If I want to live according to God’s will, I want to live that way in every aspect of my life—in how much I sleep, how I eat, how I spend my time. How much more so must I want it in my relationships!

In a celibate community, exclusive relationships are out of order. I have learned over the years not to trust myself too quickly in this area.

It can begin so subtly, so innocently. I can slide into an exclusive relationship without my being aware of it. After all, I think, I really can help this person, especially a member of the opposite sex, because we seem to connect so easily and can talk about anything.

I have to be ruthlessly honest with myself and with my spiritual director, What am I really doing in this situation? What do I really want? What will be the end result of my behavior?

Am I too dependent on this person? Am I manipulating or using this person for my own emotional ends? Am I expecting X to fill a need for which I should be turning to God? Where am I looking for my life? Who or what are my idols?

Do I really believe that God is sufficient for me?

I remember at one point being very attracted to someone. I talked with a responsible person and was advised to love this man not less but more!

What my advisor meant was that I should take the necessary steps so that that person would be more free to live out his vocation and relationship with God without my interference or my drawing him to myself. If I really loved him, I would want to further his vocation, not impede it.

Living honestly in community involves self-denial. It is a choice not to play little games. We need to know ourselves and to recognize our limits.

I don’t, for example, watch movies that are provocative, even if the acting or the story or the scenery is interesting. I have to choose whether I want to put on that mind or Christ’s mind. We become what we contemplate.

In Madonna House we are called to live as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called to loving understanding of the sensitivities of the other and to giving each other warm, loving affection which is supportive and sustaining because it is appropriate.

It is exciting and wonderful and sometimes frustrating to be part of a mixed community. But how wonderful it is to be able to have real and truthful and lasting friendships with both men and women.

Jesus wants us to have fullness of life. And he asks us to live chastely no matter what our vocation. That means he will give us the means and the help to do so. We need to believe God’s promises to us.

I expect I will always be attracted to men. It is part of my femininity. My femininity is a precious gift; and when it is expressed in the way God designed it to be expressed, it is life-giving and joyful for all.

As the psalmist says, I praise you, O Lord, for I am wonderfully made (Ps 139:14).

My Dear Family

CAN I LOVE EVERYBODY?

by Catherine Doherty

Our world is certainly experiencing the storms of national and international turmoil. How tragic and pitiful it is that people, especially Christians who are grafted onto the body of Christ, cannot experience that inner peace which is our heritage from Christ.

How simple and how timely the Gospel is. In it lie the answers to our problems. The Gospel is like a light shining in the darkness. Why is it then that we who are Christians refuse to even try the clear answers of the Gospel? Why do we wish to constantly compromise, water down, and eliminate from the Gospel whatever is too hard for us? Why settle for such a pale reflection of the strong words and loving teachings of God?

We seem to have tried everything that our intelligence and genius can come up with. But so far, if we are to be judged by the fruits of the tree, we certainly have not succeeded. Nor are we leaving our children a better world to live in. On the contrary, we are leaving them a more chaotic world than even the one we inherited.

Why then do we not try the way of love, the way of the Gospel? Why do we not apply the Gospel without compromise to our personal, national and international life?

Love could bridge the gap between Christians and Jews; after all, we Christians are spiritual Semites and the Old Testament was the forerunner of the New. The love of the Father became incarnate for us, and Jesus was a son of Abraham.

Love could bridge the gap between Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. We all believe in one God, the God of love. Why then could we not live by the law of his love? What is stopping us?

Why can’t we believe that only Love, who is God, can walk upon the stormy waters of our times and quiet them? Love is the only answer, and it has to

Leadership in love must come from those who profess to be followers of Christ, of the God of Abraham, of the one Lord. Yes, let us cry the Gospel with our lives and the whole world will enter into its springtime. The storms will be hushed, and peace will reign among us.

But is it possible to love all humanity? Does God want us to love all humanity? Individually? Should Christians, men and women religious, for example, break up into smaller groups? It seems, they say, that one can love better in smaller groups.

Aren’t we confusing words today as well as their meaning? When we talk about small groups, large groups, loving better, etc., do we mean loving or liking?

Obviously, Christ didn’t mean “liking,” for he told us to love our enemies whom we obviously don’t like. His commandment also obviously means to love all people, because he told us to love one another as he loved us. He loved all people. We, too, are called to love all peoplethose we like, those we dislike, even those who positively wish us evil.

“Liking” is an emotion, while “loving” is a Person. God is love, and where he is, there is love. But if we allow “liking,” the emotion, to guide us in the choice of whom we are going to love, then we end up loving no one, except perhaps ourselves, and that in the wrong way.

If a few people come together in a small group because in some natural way they “like” each other, then they will merely be fulfilling the needs of one another. There will be no need to turn to Christ. There will be no need to fulfill the one need for which we have been created our union with him.

Yes, for our wholeness, for our mental health, each person must have a friend. But what is friendship? It is never exclusive. It is two people, hand in hand as it were, going to God but never forming a closed circuit and simply feeding on each other. They always have one hand free to hold the hand of anyone who comes into that friendship.

Even marriage is subject to this rule. Husbands and wives will have happy marriages if they are also friends. But their circle will increase very quickly, and they will have to have two hands open to clasp the hands of their children. The familyhusband, wife, and childrenwill have to have, at both ends, open hands to grasp their neighbors’ hands. Eventually, then, all will form a community.

Is it possible to love all humanity? Indeed it is, and the sooner we begin, the sooner the global village will become a nice place to live in.

From The Gospel Without Compromise, pp. 76-77, 95-96,

available from MH Publications.

Word Made Flesh

WHEN GOD LEARNED ABOUT GOD

by Fr. Pat McNulty

This article is not so much about a particular Sunday as about the whole Christmas Season (emphasis on “season”) which ends with the baptism of the Lord on Sunday, January 13th. But, if this paper reaches you after that, no problem. Its message is very pertinent to Ordinary Time as well.

———-

Ever hear the line from that old Christmas carol, “On the 20th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…?” No, probably not, because it hasn’t been written yetthough I am seriously considering it.

Every year, unless we live in a monastery or Christian community (some of them) or perhaps some other fairly “out-of-the-way” place, we experience, both in terms of decorations and celebrations, how difficult it is to avoid being swallowed up by the secular focus of that season. It is easy to forget that Christmas is not just a day but a season during which we Christians are called to meditate on the whole childhood and hidden life of Christnot just his birth.

The Church’s Christmas Season (which, unlike the secular Christmas season, begins, not ends, on Christmas Day) is the time of the year when the Church, in its liturgical vision, focuses on those early years from Bethlehem to Nazareth. It ends, this year, with the 20th day of Christmas, the Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, the event which began his public life.

And so it is that we celebrate the birth and childhood and early hidden life of Christ fornot one, not even twelve but twenty days. And this takes us well into the month of Januarythis year, up to January 13th.

There is a very good reason for this. Whatever visible sickness secularism brings into the season of Christmas, the greatest injury it leaves behind is a year-long hidden one. It further blinds us to one of the greatest mysteries of the Incarnation and one of its greatest blessings, namely, the value of the ordinary, simple, humble years of the life of the Son of God on this earth.

It blinds us to those thirty years he lived, first as a child, then as an adolescent, and finally as a young adult. And these were perhaps the most important years of his life.

Some of us Christians only spend on those hidden years the time we spend meditating on Christ’s birth.

But, though we don’t realize it, ignoring Christ’s hidden life does something to our whole Christian life. It makes it into a Christianity of the extraordinarya Christianity of major healings, miracles, conversion experiences, and other dramatic events in one’s life. It puts the ordinariness of everyday Christian life out of the reach of ordinary, everyday people.

When faith is seen only according to the extraordinary aspects of the earthly life of Christ, being a Christian is then all about feeling glorious and resurrected.

Certainly a longer period of time focusing on the childhood of Christ during the Christmas season would not heal that illness. Certainly the remedy is not as simple as celebrating 20 days of Christmas instead of one or even twelve at least not for most of us.

But one does often get the impression that even those of us who are blessed with a liturgical experience of the mysteries of the Incarnation, those of us who are committed to meditating on the whole life of Christ every year, do not see clearly enough why we do that or the marvelous blessings that can come from it. And how we approach the 20 days of Christmasall the way to the baptism of Jesusis but a sign of that.

How long has it been since you spent a few moments meditating on the massacre of the Holy Innocents, the coming of the Magi, or the difficult years when Mary, Joseph and Jesus were refugees in Egypt? And how about the time when Jesus was “lost” in Jerusalem to the chagrin of his parents and then went back to Nazareth and was subject to them as Scripture says.

How long has it been since you spent any time thinking about those years in Nazareth, about mere human beings teaching the Son of God how to walk and talk and read? About holy rabbis teaching God about God, about Joseph teaching the creator of the world how to cut and shape a piece of wood? About the Son of God falling down and skinning his knee while playing with the neighborhood kids and having the pain kissed away by Mary? About the Son of God emptying slop jars and burying the garbage?

How long has it been since you looked seriously at the first 30 years of the Son of God on earththe years which taught him the earthy images he used in the parables and the Hebrew Scriptures he used to highlight them? How long has it been since you embraced the whole mystery of the Incarnation and not just its one-day Christmas or one-day Easter side?

It is this wholeness which gives our faith such awesome power, such simple holiness, such great hope.

After my own neurotic desire for the extraordinary in my faith-life finally died and there was no place else to go spiritually but to the Nazareth life of Christ, I was amazed at how much nourishment I found there. I was amazed at how much I had been missing by focusing only on the public life of Christ.

But I was even more amazedno, humiliatedto discover that I had sold my birthright. I was not some kind of angelic creature because of my baptism-conversion experience; I was a wonderful, sinful, holy, arrogant, lovely, faith-filled fickle human being.

And after I was baptized, I still had to learn to read and write and talk. I had to learn how to shape a raw piece of wood into a useful piece. I had to have my injured knees kissed by my mother to take away the pain. I had to clean the toilet and carry out the garbage. And if I listened closely to my elders, I learned the stories which would make sense of my life for many years to come.

How long has it been since you looked at your whole life and discovered the many mysteries of faith there? And if you never have, why not? I think we have forgotten the power of the mystery of the childhood of the Son of God. We all want to be in Jerusalem for “Big Time Religion” and have forgotten that even Our Lord Jesus Christ spent over 90 per cent of his whole life in Nazareth.

Why? So that He would be a full human being; so that His life and salvation could touch every human heart; so that everyday life itselfthe kind the majority of all human beings have to livewould be holy; so that we would know that Easter cannot be complete without Christmas just as it cannot be complete without Good Friday; so that we would honor God’s own choice to be like us in all things except sin; and so that we could learn to live a full human life in a most ordinary and everyday way.

This is why living the fullness of the Christmas season is so necessary, why the Church puts such emphasis on it and celebrates it until the Baptism of Jesus, and why its demise is so deadly. This is why it is so important for us to meditate on the whole life of Christ and not just on His public life which begins with His baptism.

If we don’t, sooner or later, most of our life will not seem to fit into the mystery or the message of the Incarnation, and our Christian faith will become an ordeal instead of an everyday, ordinary, extraordinary blessing from God which can bring hope and life wherever we are, whoever we are, and whatever our human situation.

“On the 20th day of Christmas my True Love gave to me Nazareth.” Since then, not only Christmas but the whole year has not been the same. I pray that this blessing will be yours as well.

MH Brazil

OUR AUDACITY

by Lena (Raandi) King

Every night at our house in Natal at about a quarter to nine, we all stop what we are doingwatching the news on TV, writing letters, studying, drawing, listening to or playing music, sitting outside with the dogs, or nothing in particularand gather in the chapel for ten minutes of silence.

At the end of that time, we always sing the same song, which begins with these words: Beginning with me, break our hearts so that we may all be one as you are in us.

There is moreabout replacing coldness with love and hatred with pardonbut what I have been acutely aware of this last while is our audacity in singing those first four lines.

Beginning with me: Even if it looks like God is not breaking anyone else’s heart, even if it looks like everyone else in the house is going from glory to glory, even if everyone else is, in fact, going from glory to glory, their hearts having already been broken open, O God, begin with me.

Break our hearts: Catherine told us that each of us in MH is called to have a “wounded heart,” a heart broken open to receive first the Lord and then him in each person. Personally, I sing this line in both fear and longing, for I don’t like painpain as in “break.” Yet I want to be who God wants me to be.

So that we may all be one: It seems that a bunch of broken hearts is the condition for unity. Well, for many years I thought that an alternative would be that we all change, get modified, open up to each other’s ideas, and so forth. I thought maybe we could do this without getting a broken heart.

But having sung this line probably 800 times in the past four years, I’m facing reality. The unity we’re praying for is a unity “as you (God) are in us.” Of course, that can only be achieved by God. And it seems that the best entry place for God into our hearts is through those places that have been weakened by being broken.

Unity of heart and mind in God, sobornost, is a special call and mark of this house, and so we hope and pray and do what we can, and sing too, that we may all be one as he is one in us. And we continue to offer him the nitty-gritty of our daily lives for him to use to form us into one.

HEALED BY THE TRUTH

by Helen Hodson

At birth all men and women receive a human name. But even before that, each one has a divine name, the name by which the Father knows and loves them from eternity and for eternity. (Pope John Paul II, Kiev, Ukraine, 2001)

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“What do you do at Madonna House anyhow?” visitors often ask us. Sometimes Jean Fox, the director general of women, answers: “We are healing the wounds of original sin.” She’s in good company. In his book, The Theology of the Body, the pope calls this “the task of every human being.”

If we go back to the beginning, Genesis shows us a time when man and woman were clothed in their true dignity and were in right relationship with their Creator and with one another. Then came the fall, what we call “original sin.” This resulted, we are told in the encyclical Dominum et Vivificantum, in the falsification of the truth about man and woman and the truth about God. In fact, Satan sowed in man and woman the lie that God was their his enemy.

The great wounds of original sin are shame, fear, and loss of dignity. These are overcome, according to the encyclical, by hearing and believing the truth about ourselves and God.

Often we are not conscious of this estrangement from the Father. As a young adult I became aware that, though I had a strong relationship with Jesus and occasionally prayed to the Holy Spirit, I never prayed to the Father. He was, for me, off beyond some distant galaxy somewhere.

This began to change when, as a young staff worker in our MH house in Edmonton, I met a man named Ryan. Ryan, who was charming and well-dressed, often helped out at the house and always joined us for Sunday Mass.

Then, for about a month, he didn’t come, and no one seemed to know where he was.

One night, when I answered a knock at the door, a very dirty and dishevelled man was standing there. He was bruised, there was dried blood on his face, and he had obviously been doing some hard drinking. Looking at the floor, he muttered, “Sandwich, please.”

I did a double-take. It was Ryan! I said, “Hello, Ryan,” and he dropped his head even further. I didn’t know what else to do, so I gave him a sandwich and coffee. He walked off and I closed the door.

I don’t think I could ever describe the impact this had on my life. As I thought about the incident afterwards, I realized that, whereas I had always liked Ryan, at that moment at the door, I loved him.

I had not known how to bridge the gap and reach out to him, but at that moment, I would have given anything to be able to do so.

And with that realization came another one. If I loved Ryan in that state, how much more did God the Father love him! And then came the revelation: If God the Father could love Ryan like that, well, maybe he could love me, too, when I was at my worst.

It had cost Ryan an incredible amount to come to Marian Centre that night and be seen in the state he was in. Oh, it was easy to come on a Sunday when he looked good, but like that… But he had come.

But it had been too much of a risk for him to make eye contact. He was carrying so much shame. Maybe I would reject him as he was rejecting himself.

Then I saw that this was the way I operated with the Father. I would sin, and instead of running to him for mercy and forgiveness, I would run away. Eventually I would go to him but so full of shame and self-hatred that I couldn’t look him in the eye.

Seeing this made a profound change in my life.

Adam and Eve did the same thing. After they had eaten the forbidden fruit, they hid themselves. The wound of alienation from the Father entered humankind collectively then, with the sin of our first parents. But each of us believes our own version of the lie and takes our individual stance against life, God, and others accordingly.

I was blesse

Then after her death, I discovered that mum and dad were not my birth parents, that they had adopted me when I was four months old.

So I had arrived on earth with a deep wound of abandonment and shattered trust. Certainly mum and dad’s love had stopped those wounds from getting any deeper, and certainly it had brought healing, but that little one had still believed some lies.

My birth mother was young and unmarried when she became pregnant with me. Her father and my father, too, greeted the news of her pregnancy with anger. My birth father abandoned her, and her father sent her away.

Imagine the guilt and shame she carried. And somewhere deep inside, the fetus believed she had done something wrong (simply by being) to cause that anger in her father and her mother’s father, and that they had judged, condemned, and abandoned her.

The shame and fear that this brought on was transferred to God the Father. If I got too close to him, if I felt he could really see me, I would experience only anger, judgment, condemnation, and abandonment. So I kept the Father at a safe distance.

I’ll skip ahead to some more recent history. One day, I went to poustinia. I was tired and not on speaking terms with God and not interested in anything he had to say. So I read a novel, The Heart of the Family, by Elizabeth Goudge.

In this book, a little boy is just learning how to run. His father had been working outside the country since before his birth and they had never seen each other:

———-

“He was running, aware of nothing else except that something he had lost when he came into the world was over there, beckoning, and that if he ran hard enough and fast enough and long enough, he would find it.

“But that he could never do. With the buckling up beneath him of his inadequate legs, there also came the fear. He was going to fall into the black pit, that horrible blackness that was interposed between him and the strong thing to which he was running.

“Yet he could not stop his stumbling run. It was always the same. He came to the brink of the pit and fell into the blackness and the fear.

“But today was different…. As the first onslaught of terror came upon him, he looked up and saw an immense figure striding towards him, a rescuing figure of glorious and victorious power. A man. If only he could get to him….

“The man was holding out his arms…. He struggled on…. He was there. No, he wasn’t. The worst had happened…. He was falling.

“ `Got you,’ ” said a triumphant voice from the sky, and… he was lifted and locked into complete safety.

“ `Daddy,’ ” he said, without knowing in the least what he meant by that word, and with eyes shut he burrowed…into the warm strength that encompassed him. This was the source of his being. This was the thing toward which he ran.” (Elizabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family, [London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1953], pp. 53-54. [Reprinted by Servant Publications, 1991])

———-

As I read this, I began to cry. And I heard myself say, “That’s how I want to die. I want to run into the arms of my Father. That’s what all my stumbling runs have been about!”

One of my favorite travelling companions, a good friend on my spiritual journey, has been the woman bent double from St. Luke’s Gospel, a woman whom God healed. I like to think of her as bent double from fear and shame and loss of dignity.

He laid his hands on her. And at once she straightened up and she glorified God (Lk 13:12-13). Now she was able to do what she was created to do.

Pope John Paul II calls Jesus “the great promoter of women’s dignity…who in so doing at times caused wonder and surprise even to the point of scandal” (Dignity and Vocation of Women). The pope points out that Christ called this woman “a daughter of Abraham.” In the whole Bible the title “child of Ab

For me, part of the call to stand upright has been to renounce the inner lies I have believed, the inner vows I have made because of them, and the judgments I have made against those who hurt me.

I’d like to finish with the words of an ancient Holy Saturday homily.

“Christ has gone to free the captives Adam and Eve. He took their hands and said:

“ `Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the death, and Christ will give you light. Out of love for you and for all your descendants, I now command all who are held in bondage to come forth. I did not create you to be held prisoner in hell. Rise up, work of my hands. You were created in my image. Rise. Let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you. Together we form one person and we cannot be separated. The enemy led you out of an earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven! The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.’ ”

The Pope’s Corner

THE PURPOSE OF SEX

by Pope John Paul II

The following is from a short talk given at the Vatican in June 1994.

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Sexuality belongs to the original plan of the Creator, and the Church cannot but hold it in high esteem. Neither at the same time can she refrain from asking each of us to respect it in its deeper nature.

As a dimension inscribed in the totality of the person, sexuality is a specific “language” in the service of love, and must not therefore be lived as mere instinctuality. It must be controlled by us as intelligent, free beings.

This is not, however, to say that it can be manipulated arbitrarily. For it possesses its own typical psychological and biological structure, directed either to fellowship between man and woman or to the birth of new persons.

To respect this structure and this indissoluble connection is not “biologism” or “moralism.” It is concern for the truth about human beings, about being a person.

It is by virtue of this truth, which is even evident to the light of reason, that so-called “free love,” homosexuality, and contraception are morally unacceptable. For these are types of behavior which distort the deep significance of human sexuality, by preventing it from being at the service of the person, of fellowship, and of new life.

The Church is sometimes accused of making a “taboo” out of sex. The truth is quite the opposite. In the course of history, in contrast to its Manichean trends, Christian thought has developed a harmonious and positive view of human nature, by recognizing the significant and valuable role that masculine and feminine play in human life.

The biblical message is unequivocal: God created man in his own image…. Male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27). Into this statement is sculpted the dignity of every man and every woman, in their equality of nature, yet in their diversity as well.

It is a datum, a “given,” deeply affecting the constitution of the human being, “for from its sex, the human person derives the characteristics which on the biological, psychological, and spiritual planes make it man or woman” (Persona Humana 1).

I stressed this in my Letter to Families. This is what I said: “Human beings were created `from the beginning’ as male and female. The life of all humanityof small communities as of society as a wholeis marked by this primordial duality.

“From it there derive the `masculinity’ and the `femininity’ of individuals, just as from it every community draws its own unique richness in the mutual fulfillment of persons.”

Love One Another

YOUR HOME IS LOVE

by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

Your home is love, and without love, you gasp and die like a fish out of water. Without a friend and without the healing mercy of God, you will not have the strength to forgive yourself or others. We need each other, and we can heal each other.

We exist to love and be loved. And, if we stop long enough to listen to our hearts, we know it. When we are without love, we sense that something is missing. Without love, there is a dull ache or a passionate yearning or a dead hope inside of us.

One day a woman came to me with many theological questions. She had spoken to other priests, too. I gave her what I thought were adequate answers, but none of them satisfied her.

Her real question was, “Do you respect me? Am I lovable?”

Similarly, a man loudly discussed the problems of the world with an attitude of assurance and competency, and he severely criticized everybody else’s opinions. When I asked him what he was really after, he cried out, “One person who will love me.”

We can heal each other. The love we carry in our hearts is a precious ointment for which others are yearning. So often that love remains unused, and unused it diminishes. As a result, the loneliness of those around us is unassuaged.

Sometimes we feel that our love is not good enough. It’s true that we are poor, weak sinners, but God lives within us and shares with us his power to love.

Every day we are challenged to love. Every day the forces of life struggle against the forces of death within us. Every day we have to make choices.

In the ping-pong game of giving and receiving, we miss the ball over and over. But let us pick it up and keep playing.

It takes faith to believe that love is the very fabric of reality. It takes courage to keep on loving when our love is rejected. It takes hope to believe in love when shame, fear, and depression attack us from within.

Will there ever be unity among people? Will we ever know peace and be able to rest in one another’s love and in the love of Christ?

All our lives, we struggle for hope, hope in the power of love.

The saints had to struggle for it, too, and they brought comfort and strength to many.

Let me tell you a little story: A man put on a lavish banquet for his friends. The table was laden with choice meats, seafood, salads, and desserts. But the only available utensils were long spoons.

Some people tried to feed themselves, but the spoons were so long that they couldn’t get them into their mouths. So they remained hungry. Others used their long spoons to feed one another. These were lavishly fed.

May we Christians fully believe in the power of the love Christ has given to us. May we seek to love and serve others. Then we will be truly living. Then we will be crying the Gospel with our lives. Then we will be affirming to the world that God is alive and that he is our savior.

Adapted from The Power of Love, pp. 56-59,

available from MH Publications.

MH Ottawa

MERCY US, LORD

by Martha Shepherd & Arlene Becker

Both of us in our two-person house have a weakness for the upbeat story, the satisfying moment, the happy ending. Arlene usually looks for hers in Readers’ Digest, while I rely on mysteries. We both rejoice on those occasions when life presents us with a true story in which truth or goodness prevails. Here are a couple of these—one from each of us.

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From Martha: One of our friends, Carol Barrett, teaches ballet. On September 15th, four days after the terrorist attacks, she had her first class of the year with the five and six-year-olds. When she arrived, she found the children all sitting on the floor in their leotards talking about what they had seen on TV.

Thinking that she couldn’t just ignore this, she asked them how they felt about what they’d seen. Some said they felt sad; some that they felt scared. After they all had spoken, Carol, thinking it was about time to get to ballet, started to wrap it all up by saying, “But no matter how we feel, there’s nothing we can do about what happened right now.”

But one of the children objected. “There is something we could do: We could pray.” All the other children agreed with her. Yes, they could do something about what had happened. They could pray.

Carol agreed. She was rapidly searching in her mind for a non-denominational prayer suitable for this group when another child piped up: “We can dance a prayer.”

So the entire beginning ballet class of five and six-year-olds got up and danced a prayer for the people who were killed, the ones who were hurt, their families, and everyone who was sad or scared.

———-

From Arlene: I was impacted in a fresh and delightful way the other day at the 7:30 a.m. Mass at our parish. An immigrant woman who couldn’t speak English well was robustly praying the Agnus Dei.

This is what she said, “Lamb God, who take way sins of the world, mercy me. Lamb God, who take way sins of the world, mercy me. Lamb God, who take way sins of the world, peace me.”

In my heart, her prayer became a new song: “Peace me, Lord. Mercy me, Lord. Peace and mercy us, Lord, in these challenging days.”

MH REGINA

THE ART OF KISSING

by Veronica Wanchena

Kissing is my favorite topic, and I think all Catholics need to learn the art of proper kissing. Kissing—both literal and symbolic— is something that touches all our lives.

I have many memories of being kissed as a child, especially by my mother and grandmother. Then the night I arrived in Madonna House in 1980, Catherine Doherty kissed me. She grabbed my face and covered it with kisses —literally. That was the beginning of my resurrection.

I had never seen people kissing icons before I came to MH, but I watched them do it there; and I prayed, and I learned something about kissing the holy. You see the same thing if you watch a priest vesting for Mass. He kisses the stole, and then just before he begins Mass, he kisses the altar. And after Mass, he kisses it again.

And if every person is Christ, what more beautiful thing can we do to return his love than to kiss him in one another—however we do it. That’s how we assuage the loneliness of Christ, and how we console one another. And it’s not only with our lips that we kiss people.

Often it’s by handing someone a cup of coffee, or by remembering that Charlie drinks herb tea and Doreen drinks real tea. That, too, can be kissing Christ.

Our house is in a terribly violent neighborhood. Sometimes an act of tenderness can be a powerful exorcism. One day someone came in who was seething with rage. I said, “Good morning, Randy. Gee, I like that shirt.” The rage vanished.

“Thanks, sister,” he said. “I stole it from Walmart.”

If we really believe that each person is an image, an icon of Christ, we will desire to kiss Christ in one another. And we will desire it especially with those most desperately in need of being touched.