Word Made Flesh

WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING

by Fr. Pat McNulty

The Mass readings for the Feast of Christ the King (November 23, 2003) are: Daniel 7:13-14, Revelation 1:5-8, and John 18:33b-37

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I should have known something was strange the first time I read the entire Book of Revelation without stopping. It had been, up to that time, one of my least favorite books of the Bible, not because I didn’t like it, but because I found it too complicated and too "spooky" to afford me any spiritual nourishment.

And was it not all about (quote) The End Times (unquote)? "Everybody" seemed to be getting special messages from God about "The End Times," and this seemed to me to be making this book into little more than a deck of sacred Tarot Cards.

Then about 25 years ago when I was in the Sinai desert in a little cave with nothing but the Bible to read, I had to read the last book. At that time that was a chore for me and not a labor of love. So I got the idea of reading it out loud with lots of drama and gusto. It is, after all, a book filled with both.

Well, let me tell you, neither I nor that book have been the same since. It is now one of my favorite, favorite books in all of Sacred Scripture!

No, I don’t understand the book. No, I don’t know what all those symbols and weird creatures mean. And I don’t pay much attention to all those numbers either. So why do I read it?

Given what we know because of the resurrection, it should be obvious to us that when Jesus tells Pilate he is a king, he means something much more than Pilate could possibly understand or accept, and something different from what we mean, even now, when we speak of a king.

I myself never knew a king personally. So when I thought of Christ the King I usually thought in terms of an analogy such as, "he is king of my heart" or "he is king of the universe."

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe he was the king of everyone and everything. It was just that I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of being a king of anything.

That is, until that day I first read the Book of Revelation from beginning to end in one sweep. (Actually, I didn’t read it; I acted it out. You should have heard me, all alone with the entire Sinai desert my stage as I played all the parts from the Alpha and the Omega to the dragon in Chapter 12. Academy award stuff if I do say so myself!)

When I read, acted out, the whole book, my mind got switched around. Whereas we usually think that our life and our history are real and everything else is symbolic, I began to wonder if perhaps what is portrayed in this book is, in fact, the real world and everything else we have created is symbolic.

I began to suspect that perhaps what was really going on behind the scenes, not only between Pilate and Christ but from the moment of the Incarnation until the end of time, is best told by the Book of Revelation and that even the Gospels are not complete without it.

All of which is to say that something so immense, so essential, so "real," is involved in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that perhaps the only way we can even begin to imagine it is to take the Book of Revelation more seriously and more literally than we do. Not only in terms of (quote) The End Times (unquote) but in terms of Reality itself.

That could, of course, open us up to all sorts of crazy prophecy and apocalyptic comment, but that is not what I mean. What I mean is what we might be able to see from our hearts, if we read the Scriptures for no other reason than that it is the word of God.

I mean what we might be able to see if we let go of all the hermeneutics (you’ll have to look that one up in your dictionary) and all the commentaries, and if we let go of wanting to find something special for our own need at the time. I mean if we let go of all of it, and read (out loud?) simply because it is the word of God.

All I can tell you is what happened to my heart when I did that with the Book of Revelation: I saw something about the King and the Kingdom with the eyes of my heart that I had never seen before. I understood something about the life and times of Jesus Christ that I had never understood before.

But even more blessedly, my puny, boring, seemingly useless piece of the whole pie of human history took on a depth I could never have imagined.

I saw that it’s not only that my King is the king of the universe and the king of my heart, but that everything happening to me and everything happening in the world at this very moment is also Kingdom stuff.

I began to see that all the times when I am tempted to stop believing in Christ, or in the Church, or in the love of my brother or sister, that’s not just a simple temptation because I am human. That’s the dragon in Chapter 12 lying in wait to eat the child of faith that the Holy Spirit is trying to give birth to in me!

And I saw that all those intense but short-lived moments of joy and hope in the midst of so much pain in my life are not emotional cherries on top of a romantic religious chocolate sundae but they are truly part of that huge crowd in heaven, singing, "Alleluia!"

I am beginning to wonder if my whole life is not more a fulfillment of this mysterious and holy Book of Revelation than it is anything else. Perhaps the Book of Revelation is the real stuff and what I (we) call reality is the symbolic stuff, and we’ve got everything backwards!

If so, that presents a whole different image of Christ the King! Whatever else of our earthly sense of king he is, Christ is much more. He is even more than king of my heart or king of the universe.

He is this awesome real person presented to us in the Book of Revelation under such images as "The First and the Last," "The Amen of God’s creation," "the One who lives forever and ever," "the Lamb who was sacrificed." The images are endless. This is who Jesus really is, and we would see all of that in the Jesus of the Gospels if our biblical eyes were open.

I guess what I am trying to say is that Christ is king of a world that is so far beyond our human understanding that we can miss it if we restrict ourselves to our own historical notion of kings.

And also, his world is the real world in such a way that we cannot enter the Kingdom until we let go of the language of this one and embrace the language of that one. And there it is in this awesome Book of Revelation.

Treat yourself during this time of our feasting with Christ the King: Read from the Book of Revelation and read out loud. Don’t worry about the meaning or the symbols. And be a little dramatic. After all it is a very dramatic book!

You might have to do it in the car to keep your family or neighbors from calling 911, and you may not be able to read it all in one sitting, but start and see where it takes you. I’ll wager that it will take you somewhere into the Kingdom where you have never been before to find a King you have just met!

Combermere Diary

SEASON OF CHANGE

by Paulette Curran

As I write this, it is autumn. The greens of the trees and of the rolling hills surrounding us are changing into reds and oranges and yellows, and on the best days crisp mornings mellow into golden afternoons. In our little corner of Ontario, this certainly is a beautiful time of year.

For Madonna House it is also a time of transitions. A number of our summer and long-term guests have left, and we fill fewer tables in the dining room and are fewer people to do the dishes, peel the vegetables, and do everything else as well.

Our summer program is over, and we had a staff meeting to evaluate it and to share ideas on how to improve it next year. Our Cana Colony for families, too, is ended and the cabins have been cleaned, and the toys, bedding, dishes, and pots and pans put in storage for the winter.

The ending of the vacation season also means fewer customers in the gift shop and fewer people coming for tours.

At the farm the harvest is coming inAboth ours and that of people who have donated fruit and vegetables to us. This has meant wonderful meals of fresh fruits and vegetables, and every available person picking, washing, chopping, canning and freezing the food for winter.

This is also the time of year when we receive our new applicants (our term for what religious communities call "novices.")

The ceremony is very simple, and on that day, September 8th, the Feast of Our Lady’s Birth, the applicants-to-be spend the morning working and the afternoon moving from the guest to the applicant dorms. At supper, dressed in their Sunday best, they sit at table with the director generals.

Then Jean Fox, the director general of women, shows us all the cake that is traditional for this day, a white frosted cake with a black cross on top, and tells us the symbolism of that cake: our Madonna House life is the sweetness of the cross. And to the applicants, she said, "We will pray for you, support you, guide you, and love you. This is your spiritual and supernatural family. Welcome home!"

Fr. Bob Pelton, director of priests, blessed "the brown folders" which were presented to each of the new applicants. This folder contains, in the writings of Catherine, the spirit of Madonna House. Albert Osterberger, director general of men, told the new applicants to "cherish and brood over it. It is stocked with truth that will set you free."

This year an added joy seemed present all day, for this is a very special classs, our most international one ever. Of the two men, one is from Poland and the other from Grenada, West Indies; and of the women, two are from Korea, two from Belgium, and one from the United States. (One of the Belgians, Martine Debatty, received her folder at our house in Belgium, where she will be receiving her formation.)

And now they are settling into a life that is in many ways similar to the one they led as guests, and in other ways different. Each is assigned to a work area in which he or she will be trained in both the techniques and spirituality of that work, and their classes have already begun.

Another major event of the past month was the visit of Archbishop Luigi Ventura, the apostolic nuncio to Canada.

This is the third time a papal nuncio has visited Madonna House, and each time, besides being awed by the visit and encouraged by the nuncio’s understanding and acceptance of Madonna House, we were touched by the warmth and love of the man himself.

"I am happy to represent the Holy Father among you," Archbishop Ventura said, "and in his name to share with you his love and affection and his prayer and blessing for you and your community."

He told us that one of the joys of his job is that he has the opportunity to see the work of God. "Sometimes we are tempted to be discouraged when we see the problems in the Church, but I say that the Holy Spirit is not asleep. As he worked in the beginning, he is working now."

One of the signs of this, he said, is the new movements, the new communities, that the Holy Spirit is creating to renew the Church by bringing clergy, religious, and laity into community and communion with one another. "You are one of these," he said, "one of many."

A third major event was the associate priests meetings, which we have every year at the end of September. This year over twenty of the priests and seven of the deacons attended (plus four of the deacons’ wives and several priest guests).

The theme was an eternal and essential one: "The Church Draws Her Life From the Eucharist," and was based on a line from Pope John Paul II’s recent encyclical on the Eucharist and on Catherine Doherty’s quote, "We live our life between two Masses."

These meetings are a combination of things—a time for the priests to be renewed and fed spiritually, a time for them to be together and with the Madonna House priests, and a time for them to share with and to support one another. The activities included Masses, talks by our MH priests, small group gatherings, times of adoration, a penance service, and a picnic with all of us.

It was also a time for them to make or renew their promises as associate members of Madonna House. Deacon Patrick McNulty and Fr. Jack Overmeyer made first promises, Fr. Paschal Breau renewed, and Fr. Murray Kuemper and Deacon Benoit Fournier made finals.

Smaller events also filled our days. Here are some of them: Kathleen Janet Thompson, the vice postulator for Catherine’s Cause, has been accepted as a member of the Canadian Causes for Sainthood Committee, a predominantly French-Canadian group. Kathleen O’Herin, our oldest member, celebrated her 98th birthday.

Gardeners Mary Davis and Ruth Siebenaler have once again won a number of first and second place ribbons for their flowers and vegetables at our local horticultural society.

A video about Madonna House, "The People of the Towel and the Water,’ was shown three times on EWTN. (The first time, within ten minutes of its ending, we received six phone calls about it.) St. Mary’s has inaugurated Friday afternoon exposition and adoration.

The gift shop has put in a tarmac walk and ramp thereby, making the shop handicapped accessible. We had our annual chicken bee, in which we readied for freezing as food for our sick, 234 chickens. (It was a fun time of working together, for us if not for the chickens!) We also had a potato-harvesting bee.

Yes, our lives are filled with many events. And though we are far from the centers of worldly power, we are much aware of what is happening in the world at large, and those events are much in our thoughts and prayers.

These days we are praying especially for the Middle East and for Canada. In our country, despite the fact that many people are strongly opposed to it, the government is trying to push through a redefinition of marriage so as to include homosexual unions.

God alone can know the full implications of this unprecedented legislation, though the heart and mind are deeply troubled even at the possibilities that are foreseeable.

All of us need to pray much these days for our darkening world.

The Pope’s Corner

THE TRAGEDY OF MODERN MAN

by Pope John Paul II

Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with truth.

When freedom, out of desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices, the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim….

This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the peopleTeven if it is the majority.

This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the strongest part.

In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism.

The state is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.

The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy.

Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations.

How it is possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discrimination practiced: some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity?

When that happens the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the state itself has already begun.

In seeking the deepest roots of the struggle between the "culture of life" and the "culture of death," we cannot restrict ourselves to the perverse idea of freedom mentioned above.

We have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test.

Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad and vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man.

Excerpted from the encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) n. 19, 20-21.

My Dear Family

WHAT KIND OF KING IS CHRIST?

by Catherine Doherty

What kind of king is Christ? In our mentality, democratic or otherwise, even in America, a king is a person of splendor. We see movies of the queen being crowned in England, and we are awed by all the trappings, or we don’t like the trappings as the case may be, but they are there. They go with kings.

But there is no denying that there aren’t enough trappings in the whole world to symbolize, illustrate, or express, the kingship of Christ.

What kind of king is Christ? He is a king who came to serve. Listen. Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20). I lay down my life for my sheep (Jn 10:15).

We enter into a strange paradox. This ideal—the king as one who serves—was the ideal of kingship in the Middle Ages. Of course, it wasn’t always implemented because kings are sinners like everyone else.

But at Christmastime we sing a carol about Good King Wenceslaus. Well, King Wenceslaus was the kind of king that people idealized at one time. And if all the kings were like King Wenceslaus and other saintly kings like St. Edward of England, we probably wouldn’t have democracy. But, of course, very few kings are saints.

Christ’s kingship is one of love. And so awesome is his kingship, so immense, so powerful! He is the creator of all things. We exist only because he created us and holds us on the palm of his hand.

His power is as unlimited as infinity, as long as eternity, as unweighable as immensity. It has no beginning or end, and it is so terrific and so awesome that man, if he saw it in his mortal body, would die. For if we saw just one of his attributes as it is, we would see God himself.

We use the word "king" to express this power, but it is a puny human word, this word "king." What is a king? A king is a mortal man who at one time had the power of life and death over his subjects.

The word "king" is just a picayune little word that shouldn’t even be used, in a sense, to describe Christ. But we use it because our vocabulary is so puny. We have no word to express the power, the creativeness, the immensity, the awesomeness of the Ruler of the Universe. So, since it’s the only word we have, we use it to approximate.

The Church tells us that we are a "kingly" people. So how does this word "king" apply to us? To answer that, we have to look at our Head. Have we got powers like he has? No. I can squash an ant, but I can’t squash it without the permissive will of God. Everything I do, every breath I take, I can only do by the permissive will of God.

So, by ourselves, we are not kings at all. We are puny creatures who owe everything, even our breath, to God.

But we’ve got something else. We’ve got a Head, and from that head flows the kingship of the Head. So in the Mystical Body of Christ which is we, you and I, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the Church, we are a kingly people, if we don’t stand in the way of the King’s actions.

We are a kingly people because Christ died on a cross to make us his brothers and sisters. If I am the sister of a king, I am a kingly person. We are kings because we are sons and daughters of his Father. He made us so. He made us heirs of God. So our kingship, like everything else, comes back to the Head.

How should we exercise it? We should take the virtues of kings, not their sins. We don’t go around saying, "I am a kingly person. Out of my way, you jerk. Make way for me. Why do you want to talk to me? You have to have an ambassador to talk to me." Oh, no. That is not the kind of kingship Christ means.

He means the kingship that King Wenceslaus tried to imitate. And St. Louis of France, and St. Edward of England, and other canonized kings. St. Louis wore a hair shirt under his ermines and silks and satins. He had a beautiful room, which was well-equipped with a comfortable bed for himself and his wife. They both slept on the floor. And he considered himself a servant of all his subjects.

We are a kingly people. We are like our Head. We must never forget that kingly blood flows in us and act accordingly. There is a saying, Noblesse Oblige. Nobility obliges. It means that a certain rank demands certain actions.

There are certain things a soldier cannot do without losing face. There are certain things a well-bred woman cannot do without losing status. There are certain things that we, too, must do or not do because we are a kingly people.

We must show to the world what our King wants of us and who he is. Humble. Meek. A servant of all. We must love, for he is love. And he died for those he loves.

We can lay down our life in one fell swoop for our fellow man, and if we do, great will be our reward. Or we can die to ourselves at every moment by loving and serving our brothers and sisters. Our standard is very highs as high as the cross against a darkened sky.

That is our throne. We have a King whose throne was a cross. These may seem like hard words, but do we want to cut ourselves off from that body? How are we going to sit on his throne if we do that? We will just be dead bodies.

We are the Mystical Body of Christ, and our Head was crucified. His throne was a cross.

If we go into this kingly aspect of the Mystical Body of Christ and its members, then the world will recognize Christ as a King. Because there will be no difficulty, no obstacles for the Head to work through us, and we will produce fruits. And men will know what true kingship is.

His name is God, and his other name is Love. We are a kingly people. Our throne is a cross and our life is love poured out in service. These are the attributes of our King.

Adapted from an unpublished manuscript, the transcript of spiritual reading, December 6, 1963.

My Conversion

HOW GOD SAVED ME

by Tom Kluger

Tom, one of our newest staff workers, became a member of Madonna House on June 8, 2003.

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One day when I was preparing to give a talk, I asked the Lord for a word. I closed my eyes, opened the New Testament, and pointed my finger to Luke 8:38, at the end of the story of Christ casting out devils from the Gerasene demoniac.

The man from whom the devils had gone out asked to be allowed to stay with him., but he sent him away. "Go back home," (Jesus) said, "and report all that God has done for you." So the man went off and spread throughout the town all that Jesus had done for him (Lk 8:39).

That seems to be an even better word for this article than it was for that talk. So I’m going to talk about some of what Jesus has done for me, and he has done an awful lot.

I’ll start at the beginning: I was born on April 22, 1967, in Toronto, Ontario, and was baptised Roman Catholic about three and a half months later. But although I was baptised, I was not raised in the Catholic faith at all.

Both my parents had been Catholic, and though my mother would have liked to have raised us as such, my father was against it. I went to secular schools and had no religious instruction at all. If you had said the word "mass" to me, I would have thought you meant something I’d learned about in science class something like "weight" but different.

From my earliest age, I had a very bookish, intellectual bent. I just liked reading. And it seemed to me that the better I became at reading, the more I couldn’t do anything else.

I couldn’t play sports. In my gym classes when they would split the class in two for a team sport, there would be violent arguments about who was not going to get me. And I was not good at working with my hands either.

These things left a deep wound in me because the things I was not good at were the traditional masculine fields. The result is that I became disdainful of masculinity. I retreated more and more into myself and into the world of books.

I also pushed people away. Because I read so much, for example, I had a very good vocabulary, and my peers thought I was putting on airs. If someone said to me, "Why do you use such big words?" I would sarcastically reply "Well, they’re only big words for stupid people like you."

Yes, I was retreating into a proud tower, and as you can imagine, that sort of behaviour didn’t endear me to people.

When I was about fifteen, if you had asked me what my religious beliefs were, I would have told you that I was an atheist. I was a very staunch atheist; there’s probably no other kind.

But there was a contradiction. For at the same time that I was denying the existence of God, I was really mad at him. And in conjunction with my anger and atheism, of course, I had a very cynical view of the world.

It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that my life began to turn around. I guess I began to open more to life.

I entered university, Ryerson in downtown Toronto, where I took journalism. I loved history, especially that of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and my goal was to become a foreign correspondent in Moscow.

Since I wanted to start practicing journalism, I began helping out on the school newspaper—writing articles and doing lay-out and other editorial-type things. And there, because I had to interact with the other newspaper staff, and because I had to track people down, phone them, and interview them, I was brought out of myself.

I started hanging out at the newspaper office and made friends there. I had discovered a group of people who were as "quirky" as I was.

At around that time, too, I fell in love for the first time. I really fell in love. And it’s hard to be an atheist when you’re in love because all of a sudden, the world seems to be a much more cheerful place.

I also started taking philosophy courses, and I was especially influenced by a course on Plato’s Republic. And it was through my study of history and philosophy that I began to question my disbelief in God.

In Catholic theology it is said that reason can lead you to faith. I think that’s what happened to me. For one thing, my study of history showed me that there is a transcendent moral order.

One of the great spiritual turning points in my life was my reading of the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One of the first chronicles of Stalin’s gulags, the Soviet prison camps, this book is one of the masterpieces of twentieth century history. It is three volumes in length and, I warn you, it is very grim reading.

But it is through this book that I began to arrive at a belief in the existence of God—negatively, you could say. I was seeing in the gulags and in the Nazi concentration camps a picture of what man becomes when he turns his back on God and decides for himself what is right and wrong.

After reading the Gulag Archipelago I could never again say that good or evil are merely relative terms, or that it is just your racial, social, or class background that determines good and evil. For in those pages, I saw true evil.

I began to think more and more about religion. People have asked me if I considered any religion other than Christianity, or any denomination other than Catholicism. I had a little bout with Zen Buddhism, and I read through parts of the Koran, but these had no real attraction for me.

As for other denominations, because of my deep love of history, I never really considered them. After reading the history of the Church, I saw that the Catholic Church is the one Christ founded. The other denominations were started later.

Another major step in my journey towards God and the Church happened on Christmas Day 1994. My mother, who is French Canadian, had been reminiscing about her childhood in the Gaspé region of Quebec in the 1930s.

One of the greatest events there, a deeply felt cultural event, was Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. You went to Midnight Mass and afterwards had pork tourtière and stayed up late celebrating. My mother told me how much she missed that.

On the spur of the moment, I suggested to her that we go to Midnight Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral in downtown Toronto. St. Michael’s has a beautiful choir, and I thought it would be enjoyable.

That Mass turned out to be much more than enjoyable. It was a deeply moving experience for me, and not just because of the choir. I had never heard the words of the liturgy before, and they moved me deeply. During the Confiteor when the priest and the people confessed to God and to one another that they had sinned and asked for help, I felt a sort of healing.

For though we can try to rationalise it away or slough it off, deep down in all of us there’s a part of our heart that knows we’ve done wrong and are in need of forgiveness and healing.

After that Midnight Mass my journey to God picked up speed. I began to read more about theology and the teachings of the Church.

Then in September of 1996 I decided to enter the RCIA, (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) program in my parish—the preparation program for those who wish to enter the Catholic Church. Then at the Easter Vigil in March 1997 I embraced the Church I had been baptized into, and I received the two other Sacraments of Initiation—First Communion and Confirmation.

MH Magadan

Part 1

A PILGRIMAGE FROM RUSSIA

By Sushi Horwitz

Wave after wave they came, marching bravely through the warm Mediterranean night. It was August 3rd, the fourth night of the annual youth festival in Medjugorge, and the "waves" were groups of young people processing through the village,up to 1,000 people in each group.

First came the flaming torches, then the youths carrying placards with the names of their countries, then the marchers. By my calculations, there were up to ten thousand young people making the 10 km. nighttime walk through the village.

The sight was thrilling! Two of us from our group stood on the balcony of our guesthouse cheering and waving the young marchers on. They passed by for over an hour, singing, walking with their priests, occasionally even pushing a baby in a stroller.

But I didn’t just find the nighttime procession thrilling. I found my whole time in Medjugorge thrilling. For Medjugorge is an extraordinary school of prayer. The week-long youth festival was, for our whole youth group, a time of being immersed in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, self-control.yes, all those fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22.

Five of us from Magadan went on this pilgrimage: Anya and Lisa, two of the regulars of our girls’ prayer group; 35-year-old Larissa Kostik, a parish youth leader; Svetlana Koroleva, Lisa’s mother, and myself; a staff worker of Madonna House Magadan.

First we flew to Moscow. Then the next lap of the journey was by train from Moscow to southern Ukraine. The first "excitement" of the trip occurred in Moscow while we were waiting for the train. Our two trip organizers, with all our tickets and passports, did not arrive until fifteen minutes before departure time! (Svetlana and I started to pray the rosary, and they arrived before the fourth Hail Mary.)

There were 54 of us in the pilgrimage group leaving from Moscow, and we took up a whole car. This was wonderful as it enabled us to pray undisturbed and to journey in peace and quiet.

Over twenty of us were Orthodox, the rest Catholic. Vera Varchuk, who had spent five months in Combermere, was with us. The group was really quite extraordinary. One Orthodox family of four, for example, with their love, peacefulness, and consideration toward one another, was an inspiration. And this was consistent through seven days of very difficult traveling conditions.

And Sergei, an Orthodox seminarian, cheered us all up with his service, good humor, and generosity. He was sometimes the one who gathered us together to pray the rosary when we encountered obstacles to our journey.

I was also impressed by Fr. Oleg, a priest who always wore his soutane and who prayed and served constantly in humble ways.

We prayed three times a day, at 10 a.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. Each prayer-period was led by a different person, and the type of prayer was up to that person. The first period, we prayed the Acathist (an Orthodox and Eastern Rite prayer) to St. Nicholas, and at other times the rosary or the chaplet of mercy. We also shared about ourselves.

When we were not praying, the group was quiet. People slept, looked out the window, and quietly visited. Other than that, we just sat and sweated. There was no air conditioning of any kind and it was hot!

The next morning I awoke to find us in the Kiev train station. Then we traveled all day through Ukraine.

Then at 1 a.m. our train pulled in right on time into Chernovtsi, where a huge pink and white doubledecker bus with "Moma Tours" written on the side was waiting for us. We were to be a sight no one could miss!

We boarded the bus and headed off for the Rumanian border, which was not far away at all.

The first disappointment came soon. Our drivers did not have the proper documents to cross into Rumania at that particular border! We pleaded with the officials and explained. No go. Sergei gathered us and we prayed the rosary. Still no go. The officials would not budge.

So we gave up and drove back to where the drivers had entered Ukrainee six hours away. We ended by losing a lot of time.

When I woke up on the morning of July 30th, we were in Rumania. We were looking for a place to have Mass. The sight of our driver leaning out the window of our huge pink and white elephant of a bus to ask directions of some kid on a bicycle gave me the giggles.

Next we would pull over and Fr. Oleg would run to a church to ask if we could say Mass there. We got lucky at the third church.

That church was the cathedral in the center of Ciret, a former capital city of Moldavia. It was a gorgeous cathedral, and I was happy that our group from Magadan was able to see such architectural and historic richness.

Here in northern Rumania, we passed many churches—Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran—and many roadside shrines. In fact, we seemed to pass a holy place every two or three kilometers. And these shrines and churches were well and lovingly cared for. Sometimes there were even fresh flowers at the shrines.

I fell in love with Rumania. Though life there is obviously hard and poor, it looks as if it is rich in faith and tradition.

For the most part the roads were narrow and two-lane with no shoulder. There were horse-drawn wagons, some piled high with hay, 18-wheel Western European transport trucks, fast, expensive tourist cars, small local cars, bicycles, and pedestrians—and lots of each of these. It was a recipe for disaster, and we came upon one mid-afternoon.

Our bus slowed down as we approached people standing in the road and vehicles pulled off to either side. It looked like it could be an accident, and it was. Our bus slowly passed a twisted bicycle, then an older man lying in the middle of the road, then the small truck that had hit him. The man was dead.

Our driver found a place to pull off the road, and Fr. Oleg ran back to give "grandfather" the last rites.

I was deeply affected by this death, as were many of us. "Grandfather," as I named him, had been killed no more than a few minutes before we arrived, and as we passed his body, it was obvious that five minutes before he had been a strong, healthy man peddling down the road. Suddenly he was dead.

I felt that Our Lady used this tragedy to teach me something—that life is short and uncertain, and no one knows his time or hour.

I could not get "Grandfather’s" death out of my mind. We were on pilgrimage, and I had not had much sleep or food in the last two days. All three factors made me vulnerable, and I thought about Grandfather constantly.

The next morning we crossed into Serbia. Along the narrow two-lane road came bicycling another elderly man, about the same age and build as our "grandfather." As he approached us, he gave us a huge smile and waved warmly.

I took this to be another message from Our Lady: "Don’t grieve your ‘grandfather’ who was killed yesterday. He is fine and very happy now." After that, it was easier for me to be at peace.

That night, we stopped at a roadside inn. After two nights on the bus, our little group desperately wanted some hot water for tea. Also we had run out of bread. (Tea and bread are essential items for Russians, it seems.) We had no Euros and no local currency, and the staff there refused to give us any hot water!

Later we passed through Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Though I saw no signs of the war, at the very center of the city, three buildings destroyed by American bombs had been left in ruins—as a remembrance!

Mid-afternoon, we passed into Bosnia-Hercegovina. In Bosnia, we saw lots of evidence of the war—houses pock-marked by bullet-holes, abandoned houses, and houses whose owners had had the means to repair and live in the first floor but whose upper stories were still wrecked. As we drove further away from the Bosnia-Serbia border, we saw less and less destruction.

Then after many hours of driving through incredibly gorgeous mountains, Sarajevo came into view. We collectively gasped in amazement as we crested a hill and the city lay beneath us. What a jewel of a city! Red-roofed houses covered the steep hillsides. (Though here, too, there were signs of the war, they seemed to be fewer than we had seen earlier.)

Our journey was now almost over. For me it had been absolutely thrilling to drive through all these countries. For years I had heard about them, but to see them with my own eyes was a marvelous gift.

Then at 11 p.m. that night, after days of travel, we finally arrived, sweaty, grimy, and tired, at our destination—Medjugorge.

(to be continued)

WHAT MARRIAGE IS

by Fr. David May &

The Most Rev.

Richard Smith,

Bishop of Pembroke

At the present time in Canada, strong efforts are being made to change the definition of marriage so as to include same-sex couples.

In response to this, the bishop of our diocese of Pembroke wrote a pastoral letter, which he asked all the priests of the diocese to read at Sunday Mass on August 24, 2003. The following, which contains substantial excerpts from that letter, is adapted from the homily given at Madonna House on that day.

The readings for that Sunday—Joshua 24:1-2, 15-17, 18, Ephesians 5:21-32, and John 6:53, 60-69—have much to say about the sacredness of God’s Word and our call to respond accordingly, and about covenant and marriage. The bishop’s letter shows the relevance of these themes to the critical issues facing Canada at this time.

You will get more from this article if you read the Mass readings first.

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In the Gospel today the Lord concludes the great discourse on the Bread of Life. The conclusion of many who heard him is that this is "intolerable language." The Lord counters that the words he has spoken are spirit and life. The "flesh," that is, our humanity unaided by grace, has nothing to offer in grasping the meaning of these words about Christ’s identity and the Holy Eucharist.

The other readings also highlight the sacredness and the seriousness of the word of God. I want to note here that "seriousness" does not equal "sadness" or "somberness!" But it does mean that the matters with which we are dealing are matters of life and death!

In the first reading Joshua is telling the people that keeping the covenant is a very serious matter. Given their track record in the past, they just might not be up to remaining faithful in the future! Maybe they should just forget it! "Oh no!" the people cry. "We have no intention of deserting the Lord!"

St. Paul highlights in Ephesians in another way the sacredness of the covenant between man and woman as reflecting that between Christ and his Bride, the Church.

When we speak of the sacredness of God’s word, the bishop reminds us that one dimension of God’s word to us is found in Natural Law itself, inscribed in creation. Natural Law, accessible to any person open to right reason, does not allow us to change the definition of marriage as it has stood from the very beginnings of humanity. The bishop puts it this way:

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"Reason and common sense dictate that we must not change the definition of marriage.

"Since time immemorial, many cultures used the word ‘marriage’ to define a very specific reality in human experience: the permanent and loving commitment of a man and a woman to one another, whose union in love is inherently open to the procreation of life.

"This reality may be celebrated differently in various cultures, and it may be surrounded by varying customs, but within these differing practices some common and permanent characteristics can be discerned:

"It is the union of a man and a woman, that is to say, a union based on sexual differentiation and complementarity; it is a union which is faithful for life; and it is a union of procreative openness to the gift of new life, which issues from the mutual self-gift of husband and wife.

"Now the rules of definition require that different realities be designated by different terms. Heterosexual and homosexual relationships differ from one another essentially. Therefore, they cannot be included together in the same definition. Doing so would rob traditional marriage of its uniqueness.

"The serious consequence of this would be the lessening of its role as the basic building block of human community. Changing the definition of marriage would thus damage the very foundation of a stable society."

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The second dimension of the sacredness of God’s word has to do with Divine Revelation itself. It is this Revelation that clarifies further the meaning of reality and gives us insights into reality that we could never come to ourselves without this special grace of God. The bishop continues:

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"When we allow our reason to be enlightened by God’s revelation, our perspective on this question is broadened. In the first chapters of the Book of Genesis we are taught that God is the creator of human life, and that God fashioned human nature as male and female.

"He made man and woman for one another, called by the complementarity of their sexes to be together, to be ‘one flesh’, as the Bible puts it, and to be fruitful in bringing forth new life (cf. Genesis 1:27-28 and 2:18-24).

"Jesus himself affirms the union of man and woman in marriage as the will of the Creator, a will inscribed in the act of creation.

"Have you not read, he says in Matthew’s Gospel, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and declared, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become as one?’ Thus they are no longer two but one flesh (Matthew 19:4-6).

"Revelation teaches that the call to marriage is written in the very constitution of the human being. Because God is the author of this human life, he is also the author of marriage.

"This means that the definition of marriage as the union of man and woman, recognized and honored as such through the centuries by different cultures, is ultimately a God-given definition. We ought not to presume that it can be changed arbitrarily by an act of Parliament or a judgment of the courts."

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These bodies, whatever their role may be in promoting right order in society, are not authorized by God to change the definition of human nature and marriage! That’s a bit beyond their prerogative, just as it is for any of us to live by our own "law."

In the gospel passage today, where the Lord is dealing with the reaction to his teaching on the Holy Eucharist—and more broadly, on himself as Bread of Life—we are at the very heart of what the New Covenant is all about.

In that Covenant, the Lord Jesus himself is the Bridegroom who nourishes his Bride, the Church, with his own life, to make her all new and beautiful, filled with divine life.

Every Eucharist is thus a matter of Bridegroom and Bride, Christ and his Church, Christ and each one of us. He is offering us the tremendous gift of his own life and love.

Therefore, this bridal imagery, which is in another way confirmed in the sacrament of marriage, is at the center of our faith. It is at the center of Revelation itself, because God has made it so. He has defined it in these terms.

We have here a classic example of how "grace builds on nature." Revelation confirming us in our human identity, our human reality serving as "foundation" to receive a gift surpassing what we could ever hope for ourselves.

To redefine marriage is to chip away at the very foundations of our receptivity to the revelation of who God is. It is all an interconnected whole, like a beautiful tapestry. In speaking specifically about the sacrament of marriage, the bishop puts it this way:

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"The teaching of St. Paul in today’s second reading takes our understanding of marriage to another level. Not only is it a covenant of love between a man and a woman, in which new life is created and nurtured. It also has an unsurpassable role in God’s plan of salvation.

"Marriage proclaims to the world God’s saving love, revealed in Christ. This text from Ephesians is a key one for the Christian understanding of marriage as a sacrament, by which we mean that it mirrors the love of Christ for his Church.

"St. Paul recalls the teaching of Genesis that a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. He goes on to say, This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5:31-32).

"Paul sees the love of Christ for the Church mirrored in the marital love of husband and wife. He locates this sacramental dimension of marriage specifically in the mutual submission of the spouses to each other when he says: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph 5:33).

"How might we understand this?

"On the cross, Christ sacrificed himself for the sake of the Church. By his death and resurrection, he conquered the power of sin and death and brought forth life, eternal life, for the world.

"This saving act of Christ was the perfect manifestation of God’s faithfulness to the covenant of love he had established with his people. When husband and wife express fidelity to their covenant with one another by lovingly sacrificing themselves for each other, and by allowing their love to bring new life to birth, they reflect the love of Christ for his Church.

"In this way, married love is a proclamation of the truth of God’s saving plan for the world. As people entrusted by Christ with the task of evangelization, we have the special responsibility to be the faithful stewards and protectors of marriage.

"A change in its definition would strike at the heart of the Christian understanding of marriage by altering its core symbolism. We must not tire of insisting that its proper definition be preserved."

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The readings remind us that surrendering to God’s sacred order is not easy for a fallen humanity. We have to struggle in our efforts to surrender to God. We put up resistance all along the line, regardless of the particular issue in question.

Only if the Father draws you (Jn 6:44), the Lord says, can we come to him, that is, only if we cooperate with his offer of grace, can we be drawn to him in a union of love and faith.

Even at our best, we tend to be wary of God’s order. Oh, "officially speaking" we are all for it. But actually speaking, it is mysterious and strange to us. It’s not unreasonable, but it is a mystery that transcends reason. It’s like being pulled into a very, very big world.

I have such a "nice little world"! It’s all tidy and runs according to my rules. Isn’t it lovely?! You can put it in a box. You can put it in your pocket; it is so small! But you know how it is when you put something small into your pocket—like a Kleenex—and then forget about it. Off it goes to the washing machine, and then you have a mess.

That’s our world, when we refuse to let God into it. God’s world is a sacred place filled with divine beauty and with love poured out beyond all imagining. We have to pray much to accept God’s kingdom on his terms, the way he wants it, the way it’s really meant to be. Let us listen to the bishop’s words on these matters:

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"We are all aware that various accusations are being leveled against the Church by some who oppose our position. I wish to address the one which troubles me the most, namely, the charge of hate-mongering or bigotry against people of homosexual orientation.

It is distressing, first of all, for the simple fact that our Church does not teach this. We hold that all people without distinction are the children of God. All are therefore equal in dignity, worthy of respect and deserving of love.

"Secondly, I am concerned that such charges may lead homosexual people in our parishes to think that the Church does not care for them, or may cause relatives of homosexual persons to feel that the Church is not concerned for the happiness of their loved ones.

It is precisely because the Church cares deeply for their happiness that we proclaim the Gospel. True and lasting happiness is found only in complete fidelity to the Lord.

"At times, we may find such faithfulness difficult to live and the teachings of the Gospel hard to accept. Indeed, as we hear in today’s passage from St. John, where Jesus is giving an instruction on the Eucharist, many people left him because they found his teaching too difficult.

"The disciples, however, remained with the Lord. As St. Peter said, when Jesus asked if they, too, would leave him: Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68). For the sake of their happiness, the Church calls all her members to remain with the Lord and to let go of any attitudes and behaviors that separate us from him."

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The bishop concludes by urging us to let prayer be the force that illumines and strengthens all our efforts at signing petitions, writing letters and contacting Members of Parliament:

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"Bring these intentions with you whenever you celebrate the Eucharist or pray before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Consider how you might undertake acts of penance and offer them for these needs. Finally, let us entrust this concern to the intercession of Mary, the mother of our Lord, and to St. Joseph, patron of the Church and of Canada. We ask them to pray for us and our country."

WHAT HELPED ME MOST

By Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

On my 80th birthday, someone asked me, "What helped you most in life?" Spontaneously and surprisingly, even to myself, I blurted out, "suffering," and I meant it in the sense of Hebrews 5:9: Although he was Son, he learned to obey through suffering.

By God’s grace, through suffering, I have learned that there are physical laws and psychological and spiritual ones also, which must be obeyed if one wants to lead a healthy physical, emotional, and spiritual life.

For example, I used to be a heavy smoker, so much so that my physician warned me at the age of 52 that I had about 5 more years to live. Giving up smoking was not easy, but the pain paid off and gradually I began to feel the benefits. I lost my hacking cough, I could walk for more than half a mile before becoming breathless, and my lungs gradually repaired themselves. Plus I became free of that nagging need for making sure that I always had a good supply of cigarettes on hand.

And, though so many men in my family have died of emphysema or throat cancer, I do not have either disease.

For years though, the desire to smoke remained so strong that I never trusted myself even to light another person’s cigarette.

Then there’s food. At Madonna House, since we changed it, our diet is probably the healthiest in the world. But many of us find this "health food" diet difficult. I did too for quite a while, but now thank God, I am most grateful for it, for our nurses report a decrease in illness among us since we changed our diet.

Another area in which pain became my salvation was in the disappointments, failures, and rejections of many interpersonal relationships. One day God finally enlightened my mind, and I saw that what was wrong was my attitude. I was trying, to rephrase the words of the Prayer of St. Francis, "not to console but to be consoled." That is, in my relationships, I had been attempting to fulfill my own emotional needs.

It’s true that nobody can live without love, but when I stopped looking for it, I realized how much I was getting.

Many times I’ve been helpless before my pain and was frustrated, angered, disappointed, disillusioned, or depressed by it. But what a joy to discover that it is through helplessness that one is saved from terrible arrogance, pride, and self-sufficiency, and from being hard and demanding on other people.

Gradually I learned to turn to God, and to Our Lady, to cry out to them, and to wait patiently for their action and response, which, by the way, never fails to come.

And I also learned that though God always answers prayers, he doesn’t always do it in the way we want. Sometimes he has a much better plan in mind.

For so often what we ask for would only increase our selfishness. By denying us, he heals us of a greater illness and draws us much more closely to himself.

What has helped me the most in life? Perhaps I should say not "pain," but "the acceptance of pain,"Wthe acceptance of God’s ways rather than my own.

Seeing how beneficial the acceptance of suffering is, I now pray to rejoice and praise God for saving me by saying no. Now I even pray that pain for me will be what it was for Catherine Doherty—the kiss of Christ.

When someone hurts you, I believe there are three steps to joy: 1) to stand still in the pain without even trying to make sense of it, 2) as we become calmer, to accept it, and 3) to praise God for it because it brings us much closer to him.

The life of Jesus and the life of Mary reveal this profoundly to us. Yes, Our Lady is the icon of the perfect "fiat," that perfect "yes" to God, yes to his plans, to reality, to his love which is so different from our concept of love.

When pain comes my way I still scream, I still seek ways out, but when I am helpless, I ask Our Lady to obtain for me the insights necessary to accept it all as a blessing from God, for myself and for others. I ask her for the grace to say fiat each day, each moment, so as to fit into God’s plans until my last breath. And I do this fully aware that by myself I cannot stand the least pinprick. Although he was Son, he learned to obey through suffering but having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him, the source of eternal salvation, and was acclaimed by God with the title of High Priest of the Order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:8-10).

Adapted from an unpublished manuscript (approximately 1997).

MH Raleigh

A GROUP IN OUR PARISH

by Kathy McVady

Hospitals are places where the basic realities of life are often revealed in great clarity. One evening, when I was in our house in Raleigh, North Carolina, we made a visit to one of our friends who had just emerged from surgery. He and his family were faced with a difficult and challenging diagnosis, and things were worse than they had hoped. We sensed that they would need some extra support.

As we entered the family waiting room, we were gathered into a group that included not only the three members of the immediate family, but a number of others as well.

These people were not making a perfunctory visit. Some had stayed at the side of the family throughout the long, agonizing day.

For this group had been nurtured in the Church, in the parish community, in committees, and in study groups, and in shared concern over births, graduations, and weddings, and sicknesses and other parental agonies. The bonds that had been forged over the years were deep, and all were sharing intimately in the struggle and grief.

This was not the first glimpse I had of the commitment of these people to their Church and to one another. For we had been privileged to welcome into our Madonna House home these and other couples who had not been able to be physically present at the hospital that evening.

These people had often come on Fridays during Advent and Lent to be nurtured by a spiritual teaching, by the celebration of the Eucharist, and by a simple meal shared together. At that meal, even with the chatter and teasing, the underlying commitment made the dining room table another holy place.

Often our bishop, Bishop Gossman, was the celebrant and over the years he himself had been enfolded by the prayers and loving support of this little group of faith-filled people.

Also only a few weeks before our visit to the hospital, we had witnessed another manifestation of the supportive care of these people. A young man who had moved with his mother to another area of the state wanted to return to the parish to celebrate his 30th birthday.

He is an exceptional young man with special needs. Though he struggled to read through some of the many greetings he had received, the hearts of everyone in the room reverberated with the same pride as his mother’s that he was able to do even this.

Several generations were present. Some of the people had grown up with Jeremy; some had been his baby-sitters. Others, including his godparents, were contemporaries of his parents. Even toddlers, who had been born into the embrace of the group, dashed around the room.

Lives had been intertwined and continued to be so. It was an unusual party, a joy-filled party, a blessed party. Christ himself seemed to relax in the midst of it.

So often I have listened as people agonized over the perceived difference between early Christianity and what we experience in our churches today. But what I was touching in these people was the same thing as what we read about the early Church.

In fact the scene at the hospital has become for me an icon of what was said about those early Christians: See how these Christians love one another.

For through their simple love over many years these people, like the early Christians, are now able to reveal the face of Christ Jesus the Lord to all who are hungry for a glimpse of that Face in the shadows of today’s world.

BECOME A FLAME!

By Catherine Doherty

Have you seen the pain of Christ in the municipal, state, provincial, national, and international governments? Do you feel the pain of the United Nations so divided because Christ does not sit on their councils?

Stop! Look! Listen! Behold the pain of Christ—a white-hot iron that should set your heart afire so that you might share his pain and become a flame that lights and warms the world.

At this point you might well ask, how do I propose you do this, you who are already working in that part of his vineyard that he has allotted to you, and who are already loving and serving him and others?

My answer to you is simple and direct: Love more. And to love more, pray more. Pray not only the prayers of the Mass, the Office, the rosary, which are the foundations of all prayer, but pray the prayer of the presence of God. Walk in that presence. Love every minute with every step you take.

Love him sleeping or waking, eating or working. Love. For only each individual loving God as he should be loved will bring peace to the world.

Excerpted from Dearly Beloved, Vol. 1, pp. 20-21