My Dear Family

ENTERING THE SEA OF GOD’S MERCY

by Catherine Doherty

I was praying and it came to me that Lent is a sort of sea of God’s mercy. In my imagination, it was warm and quiet and inviting for us to swim in. If we did, we would be not only refreshed but cleansed, for God’s mercy cleanses as nothing else does.

Then I thought of our reticence. I don’t know if it is reticence or fear to really plunge into God’s mercy. We really want to be washed clean; we want to be forgiven. But these desires meet with something else inside.

I say to myself that if I enter into that sea of mercy, I will be healed, and then I will be bound to practice that which Christ preaches, his law of love. And that law of love is painful, so terribly painful. There by that sea I stand and think. It will mean that if I seek mercy, I have to dish out mercy. I have to be merciful to others.

What does it mean to be merciful to others? It means to open my own heart, like that little sea, for people to swim in.

If we stand before God’s mercy and drink of it, that will mean that the Our Father is a reality, and not just a prayer that I say. "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…" We like that part and have no problem saying it.

But then we come to: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We shake our heads and say, "Yes, it’s Lent; it’s true we should be forgiving everybody."

But we don’t like trespassers. If strangers come to use our beaches, we say to ourselves: What are they doing here? Why do they come to our beach? It’s not easy to make of one’s heart a little sea of mercy for the other.

We should also be listening to God’s will. But we think: Wait a second! "Thy will:" What does that mean?

It means many things. For instance somebody is thinking of entering a convent and they say, "Well, I don’t know; I’m afraid. Maybe I won’t measure up." Silly people! Of course, they won’t measure up, but God will measure up for them. If he calls them, he’ll give them the grace.

As we look at the will of God—to go to a convent or to marry or to just live in the world in the conditions of today, to submit oneself to somebody else—our hackles rise up against authority. To submit to the will of God would be to put our toe in the sea of God’s mercy.

Lent relentlessly moves on and shows us who we are, our true identity as Christians. "Blessed are the poor; blessed are the merciful; blessed are those who hunger for justice…" We recite the beatitudes and each of them makes us move a little further away from the sea of God’s mercy, because each demands all of us.

Poverty demands all of me. I don’t have to go about in rags; that’s only kindergarten poverty. Inner poverty surrenders itself to that will that is spoken of in the prayer that God gave us: the Our Father.

The mercy that we must give to others includes that of standing up for the poor, the lonely, those who have no education and cannot stand up for themselves.

It means to engage in what we call social justice on behalf of our brothers and sisters. That involves opening ourselves to being pushed around and crucified. This always happens to those who stand up for others.

Do we want to go into that sea of God’s mercy, to be washed clean so that we begin to do the things of Christ? He was born in Bethlehem. My life is a Bethlehem in which I have to be incarnated into Jesus Christ all the time, from morning to night. Am I truly incarnated in the Lord? Have I accepted the result of his incarnation and incarnated that result in myself?

What is this Lent all about? It is to go into some strange and incredible depths of our self and there to meet the sea of God’s mercy and, having shed all garments, to swim in it. The garments are selfishness and fear.

Take for instance the fear of ridicule. Christ said to St. Francis, "I want you to be the greatest fool that anyone ever saw." Did you ever stop to think what an absolute foolishness Christ is? It borders on idiocy, not mental idiocy, but a sort of passionate foolishness.

Just think of a human being letting himself be crucified for someone elseJin this case for the world. How high can the foolishness of love go? How deep, how wide? That’s the foolishness he wants to assume.

There was a little Franciscan brother, Juniper, who used to see-saw with children; and people thought it was funny for a man to do that. He did it specifically so that people would ridicule him.

Lots of saints went about being ridiculed. The, "urodivoi,"uwhat the Russians called "fools for Christ"wloved to open themselves to ridicule. They wanted to play the fool to atone for those who had called Christ a fool.

Those are extremes of people falling in love with God so totally that they desire ridicule. But what about us? Are we going to allow Lent to give us this immense gift of the Holy Spirit called "fortitude?"

It is a gift that is little spoken of and is neglected. Fortitude is courage, the courage of our convictions. Christ said, He who is not with me is against me (Mt 12:30).

Lent is here to remind us that the mercy of God is ours provided we embrace his law of love; provided we realize that it’s going to hurt, and hurt plenty, but that the very hurting will be a healing. That is the paradox of God, that while you hurt, you heal. That’s true healing.

The sea of his mercy is open before us. Lent definitely and inexorably leads us to it and makes us think about what it takes to swim in it. Lent also reminds us that each of our hearts can be a sea of mercy and forgiveness to others. This is a very great shortcut to God’s heart.

From Season of Mercy, pp.39-41, available from MH Publications.

Combermere Diary

THE CRIB AND THE CROSS

by Paulette Curran

As I begin to write this diary, looking out the window at two bundled up people walking on the snow, I am thinking about Catherine Doherty.

For the time-span I am covering includes Christmas and the Christmas season, and this is the Lenten issue! Such are the challenges of a newspaper that must be done ahead of time!

Why Catherine? Well, for Catherine, the crib and the cross were deeply connected. She was profoundly aware, more so than anyone I have ever met, of the unfathomable mystery of God being born as a baby.

It was she who taught us how to celebrate such an event the way a Catholic culture does, and the difference is quantitative as well as qualitative. For we celebrate, in varying degrees, all twelve days of Christmas.

This year, as always, song-filled liturgies were at the heart of it, as were the spontaneous singing of "Christ is born!" at meals.

Lights and decorations were everywhere, we sang carols from all over the world after meals, and we ate all sorts of things (such as white sugar and meat), that we don’t eat much of most of the time in our simple, healthy diet.

We had, for a few days, lots of free timeWsomething else we don’t have much of most of the timesand we visited with one another, did cross-country skiing, ice skated, took walks, read, watch videos, and just relaxed.

But the first Christmas was no easy time for the Holy Family, and the twelve days of Christmas include the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr, on the day after Christmas, and the feast of the Holy Innocents soon after that.

And Catherine’s Christmas writings, filled with alleluias, also contain references to the pain of the world and the wood of the manger as foreshadowing the wood of the cross. In her joy at Christ’s birth, she never forgot that he was born in order to die.

In her life, in Madonna House, in the Christian life everywhere, pain and joy, the cross and resurrection, live side by side, and are, in fact, deeply intertwined.

Accordingly, even at Christmastime this year, or close to it, the cross was not far off. As always, there were always some among us who, for one reason or another, were struggling, and this year, there was, for more of us than usual, the cross of sickness. Six among us have been ill, with varying degrees of seriousness and discomfort. One has been in a great deal of physical pain.

And, of course, at this time when the culture of death is everywhere present and war and terrorism hover over us, what Christian can avoid experiencing, at least to some degree, the pain of all of that?

On New Year’s Eve of a year that could bring catastrophic events, our traditional praying for each nation of the world by name, had a particular poignancy. Then there was Epiphany when, according to another of our customs, we ate cake containing three pennies. Whoever found a penny in his bread prayed a holy hour for the community.

For us, this year, the season of joy was not yet over. One week later, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, one of our six Korean guests, Lee Kyung-Ah, was baptized, confirmed, and received her First Communion at our Sunday liturgy.

Lee took the name "Rita Marie." Diana Breeze and Renee Sylvain were her catechists, and Fr. Paul Burchat and Diane Kunz her godparents. And it was a glorious day.

As Fr. Gerry Wallner said in his homily, "Baptism is an unfathomable mystery. Whatever one may or may not feel at the moment it happens, the reality is that the person enters into a new relationship with his or her creator. This is a great day for Lee, the most important in her life."

When, right after her baptism, Rita Marie turned to face us in her spotless white robe, we greeted her with thunderous applause. She was radiant, her face shining evidence of the new life within her.

At the end of Mass, as we sang a joyous Ghanaian song, "We Are Walking in the Light of Christ," Jean Fox spontaneously led Rita Marie up to dance, and joy welled up as she danced with one person after another while about a dozen more of us danced in a circle around her.

At breakfast, the other Koreans and a few friends sang "As Many as Have Been Baptized" in Korean.

When asked what she was going to do now that she was baptized, Rita Marie (as she wants to be called now) said, "work to have a fully-formed conscience."

After that we settled back into Ordinary Time, only to be given shortly afterwards, another lovely event. One of our guests, Luc Dauvin, and his brother, Manuel, as part of the winter lecture series, presented to us French Canadian voyageur culture in music. (The voyageurs were the men who, in the fur-trading days of the past transported the furs by canoe across Canada.)

The lives of the voyageurs were, by our modern standards, incredibly hard. (For example, they paddled, approximately one stroke per second, for 12 to 15 hours a day.) But the songs are full of joywthe joy so often seen in Catholic cultures.

Yes, we are now in the short season of Ordinary Time between Christmastime and Lent. (When Catherine was alive, it seemed even shorter for she often began, very shortly after Epiphany, to use our spiritual reading time as a preparation for Lent.)

When you read this paper, Lent will be near or, perhaps will already have begun. And, please God, for you and all of us, as Christmastime is not without pain, Lent will not be without joy.

As nature begins to awaken around us (at least in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere), may we be alert to see the beauty of it, and may we have the spiritual eyes to see the hope that it symbolizes. And may we know the peace that is the fruit of ongoing conversion of heart.

May the thought of the coming Easter bring us joy and hope. For whatever pain and darkness there is in our own personal lives and in the world, the Light will ultimately triumph. Christ has risen from the dead, and he has told us so.

MH Ottawa

THE PRAYER CARDS IN THE CLOSET

by Martha Shepherd

Last fall, Arlene, the staff worker with whom I live in a two-person mission house, began to "sing a new refrain." "I’m determined to live in the now," she would say. Or maybe, "I want to live in the now."

In either case, the words came as an accompaniment to a vigorous assault on stuff, the kind of stuff that comes in the house and is put somewhere until we have a moment to figure out where it should ultimately go.

Usually this means paper stuff, but it also includes tapes, books, and hardware. You know the kind of thing I mean. At least I assume we are not alone in the ongoing challenge of dealing with stuff.

I can’t stand clutter myself, but if a stack of prayer cards is sitting quietly in the closet not bothering me, I’m quite willing not to bother it. Arlene, however, feels acutely the commission to steward those prayer cards, and therefore they weigh on her as a sort of burden of the unresolved past which keep her from the now.

My attitude to this mission to leave no stuff undealt with was more or less a benign detachment. Though it seemed like an undoubtedly good idea, it lit no fire in me. I was too preoccupied with my own sudden passion to start really (finally) living in the presence of God, and my certainty that to do so meant addressing the way I use time.

Somehow I was managing to get up at 5 a.m. and yet never be on time for prayers at 8, and to be on the run all day long and yet go to bed leaving lots of loose ends.

We were, at the time, having ten-minute meals and I, at least, felt burdened by a constant low-level fear of missing some very important detail in the rush and of not quite being ready for the next deadline.

Then this fall I decided quite vehemently: enough! For it struck me that my inner life had come to resemble a Dick Francis novel: fast paced, full of tension, and many races to the finish line.

And much as I like Dick Francis novels, I did not join Madonna House to live life out of one of his novels, especially since, as you other Dick Francis fans know, God is notably absent from his cast of characters.

At this point you might be wondering why stuff piles up in our house? And why don’t we, who live in a prayer-listening house, have enough time to do what we need to do? There actually is a reason, especially for the stuff.

On March 8, 2000, our landlord delivered an ultimatum: buy or move out. We had less than $5,000 and a seven-day deadline to make an unconditional offer on a $240,000 house.

It was a bit like a 1950s religious movie, and just as in those movies, the kindness of many and the grace of God saved the day and the house. But this situation plunged us into a whirl of activity which effectively left behind our weekly poustinia days, our Sundays, our scheduled prayer, and much of our usual work.

And in the intensity of making arrangements and fund-raising for a year and a half, many pieces of paper were left to wait for a better moment. Then when we bought the house, our work had only begun.

For the house was a neglected wreck that urgently needed many repairs, the worst of which we only finally finished this past summer. So it was that last fall each of us, separately, lifted our heads and instituted a private and personal reform movement.

I wanted to use time in a way that allowed God’s presence to permeate the day. Then came the moment when I suddenly realized that, at the same time, Arlene was bent on bringing God into every bit of space in the house.

Separately, we were working together to reform and reorient our use of time and space so that both of them would let us live in the present Presence, the now of God’s will, the place where time and eternity meet.

It suddenly struck me that we might actually have been living a moment of that elusive reality: sobornost. That, of course, is tremendously exciting.

As for the reforms themselves, I am happy to report that there is scarcely an inch of the house that Arlene has not evaluated. And these days there are actually moments when I find myself hanging out the wash or chopping a carrot without feeling that I should be doing something else.

It’s not perfect, of course. No sooner had Arlene sent that stack of prayer cards to where she thought they’d be better used than someone came asking for more of them than we had. And hand washing still awaits me three days after I left it to soak.

But at morning prayers today, as we read Psalm 24: O gates, lift high your heads. Grow higher ancient doors, I had an image of the gates of space and time parting that the King of Glory might come in. And that, I thought, would certainly make all our efforts worthwhile. And it would certainly be worth writing an article about.

Lent

MY FIRST LENT AT MADONNA HOUSE

by Tom Kluger

The Church challenges her children to enter deeply into the spirit of Lent, so that they may enter into the passion and resurrection of the Lord.

Fortunately for me, during my first Lent at Madonna House in February 2001, I did not have to try at all to enter the spirit of Lent, for Lent came to me. As a matter of fact it seemed to land on me like an elephant dropped from an airplane.

I was at MH in the spiritual formation program, a program that helps men discern whether or not they have a vocation to the priesthood and, in either case, to give them formation. The program begins in September or October and ends on Easter Sunday.

What I did not realize at the time was that if I was going to follow God’s will for me, I would have to be purified, if not completely, then at least more than I was at the time.

Of course, this did not happen to me in the way I would have liked it—standing on a sunny mountaintop with the wind of the Lord rushing through me, refreshing me, gently blowing away all bad habits and concupiscence and leaving me squeaky clean and perfect.

No, God seems to prefer a more "labor intensive" path to spiritual growth, and the labor started in earnest during Lent.

I was assigned to work in the auto repair department, and part of my job was to check the cars every day for windshield washer fluid level, oil, automatic transmission fluid, and so forth. To carry all these fluids I had a red wagon, which I pulled with a yellow rope.

So instead of standing on a sunny mountaintop, I walked around the flat parking lot pulling a little red wagon, the kind children have. And during Lent, instead of the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit, which I was imagining, there blew the harsh, cold wind that predominates during February in Combermere.

So every morning, when I checked the cars, because it is difficult to work on cars with gloves on, my hands would be freezing cold and cracked.

Then on one occasion the front of the car was parked right against a snow bank, so in order to peer down into the engine, I had to stand on the top of the snow bank. The snow gave way under my feet and I scraped my shinbones against the bumper of the car.

This was the time for me to start asking myself, "Am I a fool for Christ or just a jackass?"

But any difficulties with work were paltry beside my difficulties in getting along with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

At MH the great majority of us live in dormitories, and this was my first experience in not having my own bedroom, not having somewhere at night where I could close the door behind me and exhale. By the time Lent came around, I had already been living in a dorm for a few months, but Lent added a particular intensity to it.

During Lent it seemed like everyone in my dorm was too loud or too "intense." There was very loud laughing and joking, and it seemed just too much to take. I wanted the whole world to go away so that I could be left alone, and with less work to do, so that I could be more "spiritual."

There was one man with me in the spiritual formation program (let’s call him "Bill"), with whom I had a pronounced tendency to quarrel. We would get into debates over everything from "entrepreneurs" to the "grace of state" and just about anything theological.

One night in the dorm, we were having a discussion about Canadian Prime Minister Chrétien. The housefather, Peter, having had enough debates for the evening, said to Bill, "Look, just let go of it, okay?"

Bill just slumped on the bench, put his head in his hands, and said, "I feel like I’ve had a heavy weight pressing on me all day." And then I realized that Bill and I were going through the same thing. The next evening Bill apologized to me. Somewhat surprised by his show of humility, I mumbled an apology back.

That was when I had to start asking myself, why do I have to be such a know-it-all? It was also a time for me to stop running. God was not going to allow me to be left alone so that I could be "spiritual." He wanted me to see his Son right there and then in the very people who were driving me crazy.

This was not the only time God showed me how spiritually impoverished I was. Another occasion was after supper when the men prepare the vegetables for the next day’s meals. Part of my "veggie job" that week was to wash the buckets when the job was finished.

I had been washing them hastily so that I would have more time to do something "holy," like pray before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. But God taught me that his will for me at that time was to wash the buckets well and that he would supply me with more than enough graces to compensate me for the time not spent in prayer.

Finally, it was through two confessions that the heaviness of Lent began to lift for me—one I made during a penance service, and the other, a detailed two-hour confession, I made to my spiritual director, a confession made by following a detailed examination of conscience which he had provided.

I was an atheist in my teens, and I had also flirted with other religions, such as Zen Buddhism. My spiritual director had me repeat after him, "In the name of God the Father, I renounce Zen Buddhism. In the name of God the Son, I renounce Zen Buddhism. In the name of God the Holy Spirit, I renounce Zen Buddhism." Then he had me repeat the same formula in renouncing atheism.

During my time of atheism, I had a favorite quotation by Jean-Paul Sartre: "Human reality begins on the far side of despair." In a sense Sartre was correct: without God, despair is the ultimate human reality. But with God, the ultimate human reality is that in him all things are possible, even hope.

And this was the lesson God had to teach me: to trust in Our Lord, not in myself. For I believed that I was a pretty smart, level-headed kind of guy. At the bottom of my heart there was a stubborn refusal to believe that I really needed Jesus. But God in his mercy taught me otherwise.

Once he had pierced my shell of self-love and self-sufficiency and had broken my heart open, then he could shower me with his love. It was then that I felt like I was standing with Our Lord on that sunny mountaintop.

Word Made Flesh

THE DESERT: DISASTER OR BLESSING?

By Fr. Pat McNulty

The following is a meditation on Mark 1:12-15, the temptation of Christ in the desert, the Gospel for March 9th, the First Sunday of Lent.

—————-

As a child I could not remember the difference in the spelling of the word which designates a special dish after a meal—"dessert" and the mysterious place where sun and sand are king—"desert."

And because I couldn’t remember the difference when I needed to write them, they were a kind of literary albatross around my neck. "If you can’t spell ‘em," the teachers told us, "don’t use ‘em."

But at least it wasn’t as bad as, say, the word, "psychiatrist." I used to go bonkers when I couldn’t spell words like that and was told by my teacher, "look it up in the dictionary."

What I wanted to say to Sister Regina, that 4th grade teacher was, "Oh really! OK: sigh-ki-a-trist. It ain’t in my dictionary, Sister. Is it in yours?" (You can see why they didn’t always want to pass me on to the next grade!)

This little letter "s" came to my attention as I prepared to write about Christ’s time in the desert where he was tempted by the devil, the gospel event for this first Sunday of Lent. At first I thought it was just a bad spelling memory until I recalled my own journey into the Sinai Desert where I went to live for a while when I was in the Holy Land from 1975 till 1977.

And there was another "s-word," which was to be very determinative of the outcome of that strange desert journey of mine, an "s-word" which appears prominently in the gospel account of Christ’s journey into the desert. (Though I’ve read this gospel account dozens of times, this "s-word" did not register until now.)

The "s-word" of which I speak is in the very first line: The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness…and he was tempted by Satan (Mk 1:12). The important "s-word" here is not "desert" but "Spirit." And it was because of the absence of this "s-word" that my own desert journey was almost a disaster in my faith life.

Regardless of all the scary overtones of the image of desert, both in terms of geography and in our spiritual tradition which looks upon the desert as a place where evil spirits seem particularly at home, I had wanted to go there for years.

Finally I actually succeeded in getting there. And I didn’t realize until long after I was miles out into the Sinai Desert and weeks into the sun and sand all alone, that the biggest "s-word" necessary in order to survive in the desert was missing in my own desire for going there—namely, the Spirit!

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with going to the desert just to see it or for adventure or, as one mountaineer gave as his reason for climbing a mountain, "because it is there." But if we go to the desert "because it is there" for spiritual reasons, that is another story.

If that is our intent, whether it be a physical desert or any other place of intense solitude or even a spiritual/emotional state, then "going to the desert" usually translates into a very seductive unconscious agenda which plays right into the hands of the evil spirits who dwell there. At least that was my experience.

After a few days in the heat and the sun (though there was a cave there for my physical protection), the realization hit me that I was five hours (by camel) from any other human being and from any kind of help.

Then after a few more days of the absolute soundlessness and aloneness of the desert, suddenly the real reason I came there in the first place flashed before my mind, brighter than the sun and hotter than the sand: I had come to test God!

Oh, I had had all sorts of holy and wonderful reasons for having come there: to pray, to be utterly alone with God, to read the Bible, to do what some of the early Christians did, to experience the desert as Jesus did. Blah, blah, blah.

But as the days turned into weeks, I began to realize that, in return for this difficult and demanding "show of faith" I did indeed expect God to do something. Oh, nothing too miraculous. Not burning bushes or stones turned into bread or the promise of worldly power.

But "it would be nice if God would at least make me a pastor of a parish." In any case, at least something! I mean, after all, I told God, I did this for you!"

I could write a lot about my strange faith-experience as a result of that trip into the Sinai, but I would rather focus on the dessert, the blessing that I found hidden in that desert.

It didn’t seem like a blessing, a dessert, at first. It seemed like a spiritual horror movie, a total failure. For though my original intent was to stay there for a long period of time, I only lasted about six weeks.

So, what was the blessing, the dessert? I learned, the hard way, that one does not go into any desert physical or spiritualpwithout singular preparation and in response to a call from the Spirit.

How can you know if your desire to go is a call from the Spirit? You need a spiritual director. Period. For unless you are going in response to a call from the Spirit, the heat of this desert can suffocate your faith and bury your sense of God in a mountain of intellectual sand before you even realize it.

In other words, don’t go there just to discover something new and special about God or about yourself. It’s the wrong place for that kind of spiritual agenda.

Because there is no place on earth, not even a cave in the desert, that will purify you completely and seal your relationship with God by unusual or special means other than the place where you spiritually are at the very moment you are reading this article.

And this was just as true for Jesus at the very moment he was hungry after his forty days in the desert.

And if you think otherwise, if you think there is some special place, some special person, some special thing other than faith itself that is going to change your basic situation and your relationship with God, and make it perfect and total, and you go there, then you are tempting God just like the devil did in the desert.

Everything you need to live by faith is present at this very moment in your exact life-circumstances. You don’t have to go anywhere but into your own heart and listen to the truth about yourself and God.

Yes, as Christians we can and should regularly "leave the world" so to speak, go to some place where we are alone with God.

I know a busy mother, for example, who locks herself in the bathroom for an hour to pray and read every other day after her husband comes home from work, and he does the same on the off-days. It’s their moment in the desert. For others it’s in the car while they are driving to and from work. Other people go to a specific "desert" place, a "poustinia," a room set aside just for being alone with God.

But wherever that place is for us, we go there not to prove anything to God, not to manipulate God, not to convince God to do something we think ought to be done, in ourselves or in others.

No. We go there with Jesus, led by the Spirit. No agenda. No expectations. No plans. We just go because we know it is time to go. And if that is why we go then just being there will be a dessert beyond our imagination. Then the rest is God’s business.

Suddenly it is obvious to me that more should be said about this desert-desire which so many of us Christians have. Well, that is precisely why Catherine wrote her famous book on the desert, a book whose very title is a Russian word for desert, Poustinia.

I haven’t read it for a long time but I think Lent would be a good time for me to read it again. Yes, that sounds like a very good Lenten desert-experience for me and an Easter dessert!

Come Holy Spirit and purify our desires for all extraordinary and special signs so that we can find Our Lord Jesus in the very desert we now live in which, in the end, is really your special dessert for us. Amen.

LIVING IN THE SHADOW

by Irma Zaleski

For most of my life, I have lived with the knowledge of Auschwitz never far from my mind. I am from Poland and was eight when World War II started and fifteen when it ended.

Thus, most of my growing up years were spent knowing that, in spite of what I had been lead to believe as a small child, the world was not a safe place, people were not to be trusted, evil was very real and, sooner or later, it might destroy my life as it was destroying the lives of many of my relatives and friends.

And then, we began to hear the first rumors of Auschwitz, the closest concentration camp to where we lived. From then on, that place of horror and death—the place of utmost non -love—became for me the symbol—the face, as it were— of all the unspeakable evil of those years, and of all the evil and suffering that are never absent from our world nor—as every passing year makes ever more clear—from my own heart.

I realize, of course, that there are now, and have always been, countless millions of children in the world who have experienced the same tragic reality of evil’s existence, even in times of prosperity and peace. They are victims of abuse, neglect and, sometimes, of incomprehensible, diabolical cruelty.

I also realize that even for those who grow up in most ordinary circumstances, it is surely impossible to become an adult with their hope in the future, their trust in the goodness of life, their "innocence of evil" completely unscathed. We might even say that this loss of innocence is what the passage to adulthood requires, for without it, very few could survive in this world.

Nevertheless, for me, it was Auschwitz that has become the dark shadow over the reality of my daily existence. It is an inescapable part of my life, a place as real to me as Combermere where I now live, in the shadow, as it were, of Madonna House.

It is also here that I began to understand—not at once, but over many years—that Auschwitz, although it can never quite disappear from my life, can become for me, not a place of despair and defeat, but a place where the cross of Christ has been planted forever and where I can experience its victory.

It is only the cross, the sign of total, triumphant love, that can become my "anti-Auschwitz," my soul’s place of refuge from its horror: the only source of hope.

As I grow old, it becomes ever more important for me and ever more urgent, to understand—not Christ’s victory, for that is a mystery too deep for our minds to comprehend —but what this victory means for us: how it has to be lived.

It is this, as I begin to see more and more clearly, that is the heart of our Christian vocation. Christ came to defeat the power of evil that had been let loose upon the world, and, if we want to be his disciples, we must carry on this task.

The problem is that we often misunderstand the nature of the victory we must strive for. We seem to think that, because Christ triumphed over evil once and for all, we should do the same.

We seem to want desperately to believe that by some great effort, a miracle of healing or an act of heart-felt forgiveness, we can undo the damage we have done to others or that the others have done to us, free ourselves from all sin and guilt, uproot all our anxieties and fears, and never again need to ask for mercy or help.

We are always searching for perfect virtue, perfect health, the perfect society or perfect life. We all want to leave whatever Auschwitz we carry in our souls once and for all. As Catherine Doherty used to say, we are always trying to get ourselves off the cross.

We attempt to achieve this by countless means. We consult counsellors, doctors or priests; attend healing services or groups, and travel long distances in search of spiritual and psychological help.

We may come back convinced that we have solved the problem, won our victory, and left the evil and suffering behind. But, in a few months, a few weeks, even only a few days, we may well realize that the evil is still with us, that we are still anxious or depressed, we still resent: that we are still the same old neurotics and sinners we have always been.

We seem to have rid ourselves of one source of sorrow or sin, only to find ten others spring in its place. And so, we are discouraged and disappointed: with the healers, with ourselves, and with God.

It is true that there are occasional instances of such sudden healing, clear signs of God’s power and presence. They are sometimes given to us for the sake of our poverty and weakness or for the good of the Church. It is, of course, not wrong to pray for healing —even badgering God for it —for Christ has told us to pray for everything we need.

But he also, it seems to me, trusted us to know when to stop: when to accept the cross given to us and carry it with as much humility and patience as is granted to us.

There is no final solution, no final victory in this life. And, this, I am beginning to realize, is as it must be.

Why should we be exempt from experiencing the evil and pain that millions of our brothers and sisters all over the world have to bear? Is it because, we think, God loves us more?

Why do we imagine that others may suffer unspeakable evil or abuse, that disasters may strike them, that their daughters may be raped, that they may have to watch their children die in their arms, but that God should save us from every little suffering that may come our way?

Why do we think that others must struggle with their own inner darkness and need to repent of it every day, but we should become instant paragons of virtue and of mental and emotional health; that, for us, committing evil may become an impossibility and love the easiest thing in the world?

Could we really enjoy such a privileged life while millions are, every day, nailed to the cross?

It is, surely, our vocation as Christians to bear the evil of the world in our own flesh and our souls; to suffer and conquer it—in so far as the grace is given to us—not by running away from it or trying to exclude it from our lives, but by ceaseless—never ceasing, never completed or done with—repentance, forgiveness and love.

Our daily struggle with evil is our share in the work of the world’s salvation and the only "spiritual warfare" we are ever asked to wage. It is our daily task, our ceaseless work of love. It is our own, human, never conclusive, participation in Christ’s one, total and eternal victory.

Nothing will ever banish Auschwitz from my life or take away the knowledge that such evil is possible for human beings to commit. Auschwitz will always overshadow the way I think and live, the way I relate to the world. But, I no longer wish that it were otherwise.

As an old, holy nun used to say, if there were no longer any evil to struggle with, there would be nothing left for us Christians to do! There would be no darkness to dispel, no sin to repent for, no hurt to forgive, no victory for love to win.

Lent

CHRIST DID IT FIRST

by Fr. David May

Our experience in Madonna House is that it’s a long way from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. I can never quite fully explain why.

Yes, the music changes. We sing the same long, beautiful, haunting hymn every day at Morning Prayer. At Mass, song after song reminds us of our sin and the profound need to turn to the God of compassion for mercy. It’s striking. It’s penetrating. Minor keys predominate, and the pace is not rushed, but reflective.

Yes, we really do try to take a look, personally and communally, at our need for repentance each year. The scripture readings from Mass are daily proclaimed, listened to, preached upon. Spiritual reading after the midday meal is oriented almost exclusively in a Lenten direction.

A lot of people even put aside reading fiction, so as to concentrate more fully on something specifically "spiritual."

Yes, we do try to fast a bit more. The communal diet takes a turn towards something a bit simpler than usual. However, bread consumption generally goes up during meals because people are hungrier from not eating in between meals!

Yes, there is a more acute sense of humanity’s particular pain and travail at this time. There are people we know who suffer deeply from one kind of affliction or another. They beg for our prayers.

There is the travail of the Church riddled at this time with scandal and division. There is that of a world where terrorist hatred threatens to plunge whole nations into war.

Yes, there is all of that. The sum of it is an intensification of an already rather intense vocation to begin with. Catherine Doherty once told us that "we are in the atonement business," and in Lent we realize no truer words were ever spoken about our calling. (See Colossians 1: 24-29 for St. Paul’s reflection on this reality of sharing in Christ’s suffering.)

In short, very few around here breeze through Lent. It’s long, slow, and penetrating in its effects—just like our music. One day in the courts of the Lenten Spring is like a thousand elsewhere, to paraphrase the psalm!

But, one might ask, what is this slow-motion walk with Christ through the desert from Ash Wednesday to Easter?

Recently I took this question to the Lord himself: when you entered the desert for 40 days, what really happened to you?

The Gospel accounts speak of your temptations during, or at the end of that time. But if we are journeying with you in Lent, what does this journey we make together teach us about your itinerary through the human condition?

One thing the temptation accounts do make clear is that the Lord was tempted by Satan to deviate from the mission given to him by his Father.

That being the case, he must have reflected deeply during those days about what that mission must entail. How else would he have recognized so clearly, so instantly, what paths would contradict that divinely ordained mandate?

What was that mandate given to the Son by the heavenly Father? We will hear it over and over again this Lent: and he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously…. (Mark 8:31).

My question is: what happened when the Lord considered his life’s mission in the desert, before completing it in fact over the next three years? Slowly, kind of dimly, an answer has been emerging.

Did he not traverse in his spirit the desert of human sin and death, and all the suffering entailed in both? Did he not realize in some way that he was called to untie every shackle that holds human beings in bondage?

Lately I’ve been receiving from the Lord an assurance that is truly new for me. It is this: each moment of my day (I mean the one laid out for me by God to follow), has already been traversed by the Lord Jesus in his life, passion, and death.

Let me elaborate with an example. The other day I became somewhat discouraged because I did not know how I was ever going to make it from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00. It wasn’t a matter of not knowing what I had to do. I knew! I just didn’t know how to do it right.

What should I say? What should I not say? How should I listen? What to do with this sinking feeling of discouragement in the pit of my stomach? Besides I was already tired and wishing very much to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Suddenly I realized that the Lord Jesus had already "done" my 3:30 to 5 shift that day. Was it during his way of the cross? Or less dramatically, during an average afternoon in Nazareth before his public ministry began? Was it in the garden of Gethsemane, or while trying to teach his disciples?

Whatever. I "knew without knowing" (as Catherine loved to say) that the Lord had already preceded me in the task at hand. What do I mean by that?

I mean every drop of love needed. Every parcel of suffering embedded in that love. Every ounce of trust in the Father required to take the next step. All the wisdom necessary to truly be an instrument of the Holy Spirit. The "stretching out" across the chasm between desire and execution, between person and person.

He had already made that journey perfectly, the very one I was being asked to take that afternoon by my Father in heaven. I had only to listen to his invitation and obey it: Follow me!

You must realize by now that I am trying to put simple words around a pretty mysterious reality. Of course, there are passages in Scripture that throw some light on it, such as this one from Isaiah 53:

Yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed (vs.4-5).

In the end, we are left standing before a mystery too wonderful to be adequately described. Whatever journey you or I have to make this year between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday—or just between 3:30 and 5 in the afternoon on any given day—has already been tenderly and divinely embraced and encompassed by the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection.

Our Lord not only points the way through. He is the Way through, in his very person. Only he can show us how to live as he would do, in this circumstance or that. He not only shows us how, but gives us what we need to do it. That is: he gives us himself.

As I write this, suddenly I am feeling a little weak in the stomach. I just realized anew how poorly I likely receive this gift, even when I remember that it is there being offered. What prayer can ever be more appropriate than that of the publican in the back of the temple crying out: "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The conviction remains, however, that the Lord has crossed every chasm lying before us in this vale of tears. He knows its contours perfectly. He knows how to bridge it perfectly.

Whether we speak of reconciliation between faiths or among nations, the healing of ruptures in the Church, or how to traverse 90 minutes of a given day, the offer is the same: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. In the desert he "agreed" to embrace it all. Now we have only to follow him to the glory of Easter.

Yesterday

CAN IT BE THAT SIMPLE?

by Cheryl Ann Smith

Yesterday, for the first time in over forty years, I was tucked into bed. Actually, twice a day during a four -day retreat of adoration, I was tucked into a cocoon of covers, gently prayed with, and left to "rest in God."

As I lay there, arms buried beneath the blankets, I couldn’t help but think of the Christ Child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, bound yet free, born into uncertainty. Danger through Herod was already on its way, yet Jesus slept in serenity.

"Well why not?" you might ask. "He wasn’t aware of what was happening around him."

And yet we know how profoundly children are affected in the womb, by the fears, troubles and joys of the mother, and by the tensions in the world around the family.

This Child, so exquisitely sensitive, would have been aware of it all. But he had freely chosen to surrender his equality with God, and to empty himself to assume our human condition (Phil 2:6-7). And he slept in trust.

Can I do that? I asked myself as I lay in my "swaddling clothes." Can I lie in peace and entrust all the cares and concerns of my heart, the Church, and the world, to God?

Ordinarily, given any difficult or impossible situation, my compulsion is to analyze and try and understand. Then I want to do something.

My temptation is that of Naaman, the leper, in the Old Testament. When he was told he’d be healed merely by bathing in the Jordan River, he said, "That’s too simplistic!" or words to that effect. Did he think, as I probably would have, But that doesn’t take into account my will or intellect or abilities.

No, it just calls for trust and obedience.

The apostles, too, lacked trust. One day, these experienced fishermen were engulfed in a storm that threatened their lives. After expending every last bit of their considerable skills and strengths, they realized they were overpowered and were going to die. And Jesus was sleeping through it all!

In desperation they woke him up –Master, do you not care? We are going down! (Mk 4:39) Jesus calmed the sea, and turning to them said, Why are you so frightened? How is it you have no faith? (Mk 4:40).

What Christ asked of the apostles on that boat was beyond their human ability. When our lives are endangered, it is natural to panic.

But God was calling them, and is calling us, to a superhuman life, a supernatural life, a life in which we can choose to trust despite what our natural human emotions are doing. And he gives us the supernatural resources, the graces, to do it.

When we’re in humanly impossible situations, he wants us to ask for his help and to choose to trust that he will give it.

Yes, Jesus wants us to trust. This is not quietism. He wants us to pour out every drop of "sweat and blood" in love and service. But then he wants us to let it go and entrust the results to him.

Yesterday, I lay in my bed under the covers, I heard this call in my heart: Open your whole being to Me—the failures, the places of shame, the impossible situations, the darkest corners of yourself that you haven’t wanted to expose to the light. Entrust them all to me. Let them go. Surrender. Let me bring my resurrection-life to this inner death..

Can it be that simple?

St. Ben’s Farm

A STORY ABOUT A HORSE

by Scott Eagan

Nearly twenty years ago, when I was a young staff worker at the farm, an incident occurred that strongly shaped my view of working and would influence my actions right up to this day.

We were just beginning to increase our use of horses, and were having trouble with one of our mares. Black Polly, who had been working for us for about a year, had given us a nice foal, but we were having trouble getting her bred again. Trouble was, she wouldn’t come into heat, and so we gave her, under veterinary advice, a hormone shot.

The next day, when we went to bring her back from the high pasture, she started acting like a stallion. She snorted, reared up, charged at us, and then, when we grabbed her by the halter, she broke free and ran away.

What could be done? Even Sherman, who was teaching me the horse-work, couldn’t handle her. So he brought the problem to Albert, who was the farm manager at the time.

"Go talk with some of the local men who’ve worked with horses all their lives," he said. "Ask them what they do."

So off we went, driving to a local farm, to people whom Catherine had long known. When we knocked at their door, the owners appeared and looked intently as us, a couple of inexperienced teamsters.

"What do you do with a mare that’s turned ornery and charges you and breaks away when you try to lead her?" we asked. "Beat her," they said, "Beat her until she knows who’s boss and you get control of her again."

Sherman and I looked at each other, thanked the couple, and got back in our truck. Then Sherman said, "Let’s get a second opinion. Let’s go talk to Joe Peplinskie. He’s worked with horses all his life. And he has a reputation for loving horses."

So we drove to his place, parked the truck, and there was Joe. Now Joe had a reputation for folk wisdom and had raised a family of fourteen children. He was also known for being long-winded. And, as I said, he loved horses.

"Joe," Sherman asked. "What do you do with a mare that acts like a stallion, that’s turned aggressive and runs away? We were told just now by another farmer to beat her until she wises up."

A look of consternation passed over Joe’s face, and one finger went up jabbing the air to emphasize his message. "You ask me this question!" he retorted. "How would you like to be treated? First, you’re given a shot. Then they want to treat you harshly. No! Don’t beat her!

Treat her kind. Sweeten her up. No sir, don’t lay a finger on her. Whenever you go out to the pasture to get her, take some sugar with you. Or you can try salt, too. Put it in your pocket, and when you get close to her, reach out and offer her something nice. This will bring her around. Soon she’ll come running." There was a twinkle in Joe’s eye.

Well that struck a chord with us. We tried it. Yes, that’s just what we did, and little by little, Black Polly came around. She worked many more years for us, and we never had trouble like that with her again.

Joe Peplinskie died last year, just shy of ninety years old, but his words, and more importantly his wisdom, have stayed with me ever since.

Love, not anger, is the way. Gentleness, not force, should be our first response. Working with God’s nature is our model and goal.

As I write this, I am looking out the window at the snow-covered fields of this same St, Ben’s Farm on a late December afternoon. And I feel like I am walking with God in the cool of the evening, walking in the tenderness of his creation, walking with Tenderness.

God is a good Farmer. Like Black Polly we often turn ornery and break away when he tries to lead us. But he knows that we are crying out for truth and love and tenderness. He is holding out his hand, and in his hand is love. All we have to do is trust him and come running.