Combermere Diary

SEASON OF SMALL FEASTS

by Paulette Curran

As I write this diary it is still autumn, and a wonderfully mild autumn it has been. The last carrot was picked today which means that the harvest has ended. And it has been a bountiful one. God continues to feed us, his children, and we are grateful.

The men, both staff and guests, picked, among other things, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, corn, squash, and green beans. Then the women joined them one day for an all-house potato-harvesting bee.

What a joy it was for me to put my hands in the earth, to uncover the big, healthy potatoes, and finally to see the baskets and baskets of this so-essential food. For after a poor crop last year, this year’s potatoes were abundant—plenty to feed us through the winter.

Then on another day as many of us as possible went to the farm once again, this time for a fish bee where we cleaned and froze 1400 trout. The men have been short-staffed, and this is the first time in a number of years that we have been able to raise trout.

Last spring Sherman Everson bought young fish rather than fingerlings, which is what we used to buy, and this has meant less work.

As the men harvested, the women put the food up for winter. And what they processed is not only what we grow here. The growing season here is too short to produce the fruit we need for our large family, but generous benefactors continue to provide, and we have been given quantities of pears, apples, and Concord grapes.

Other generous benefactors have helped us with the work. John Blum and Wilf Gravelle, for example, once more came and helped with the slaughtering and butchering.

Yes, when Thanksgiving rolled around (in Canada it comes in October), we had much to be grateful for. And one memorable part of our celebration was the displays of our harvest both in the dining room and under the altar.

Thanksgiving was not the only recent "feast." The feasts of Ordinary Time in autumn may be smaller than those of the Advent and Christmas seasons, but in a small way, we celebrate them as we do all the feasts and seasons of the liturgical year.

These feasts include those of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael; the guardian angels; St. Thérèse, and St. Francis of Assisi. As is our custom on a saint’s feastday, the library put up displays, and the leader at morning prayers told a bit about the life of the saint.

And sometimes there are some extras. This year, for our after-dinner spiritual reading, for example, we are reading The Inner Life of Thérèse of Lisieux by Patricia O’Connor (published by Our Sunday Visitor). (I highly recommend it.)

And though we only did it once, I can never come to the feast of the Guardian Angels without remembering the year when, at the instigation of Archbishop Raya, our handicraft center spread their tables with every kind of simple craft material they had—paper and fabric, yarn and ribbon and wire, metal and wood, paints and crayons, glues and pins etc., etc., etc. and we "made" our guardian angels!

For Madonna House, one of the major feasts of autumn is October 15th, Foundation Day, the anniversary of the founding of our apostolate. Besides the displays and reading about the day Catherine moved into her apartment in the slums of Toronto, we always have some sort of presentation.

This year we did something very simple. We watched the video of the play about Catherine’s life: A Woman in Love.

Then, besides celebrations, there are the little moments of joy that God unexpectedly provides. One came recently in the form of an orphaned bear cub!

Yes, there are bears around here—always have been. After all, we’re surrounded by woods. But usually they stay well away from people, and it is rare that anyone sees one. But this year, both apples and berries are scarce, and the bears are apparently going farther afield for food.

There have been numerous sightings—including the suppertime when someone spotted a huge one from the window! Fortunately the bear was across the river!

But back to the bear cub. The one I mentioned—probably an orphan—showed up in our orchard, the one right in front of the main house, late on a Saturday afternoon when lots of us were nearby enough to be called to come and see.

During our beautiful fall weather, we have had a few outings. Two small groups each made a day’s pilgrimage to the Canadian Martyr’s Shrine in Midland, Ontario, and Sandy Wood, who is director of St. Joseph’s House which works among the people of this area, took the applicants on a tour of our local area, "the Valley."

And Fr. Pat McNulty, Doreen Rousseau, Bonnie Staib, and Marilyn Grant went to Moncton to attend the funeral of our associate Archbishop Donat Chiasson.

Finally a number of us went to Barry’s Bay, the nearest town 12 miles away, to take part in a Life Chain, a pro-life event which takes place annually in towns and cities across the United States and Canada. Along with our local friends and neighbors, we lined up along the main road holding posters and praying silently for the end of abortion.

The applicants (those in training for our vocation) had a day of recollection, "Vocation and Call." Though their main formation comes through the living of our life, they are also having classes on Scripture and on MH spirituality, and those in their first year are reading the history of our apostolate.

The applicants are not the only ones in formation. We have also begun our annual spiritual formation program for men discerning a vocation to priesthood. This year there are five: Richard Glenny, Emilio Gracia, Jason Lachance, Joey Leroux, and Rick Soccio.

Other brief items of news are as follows: We have had two lectures recently: one by Dr. Jim Wilder who gave a talk about how the physical brain registers and deals with trauma, and the other by Shirley Mask-Connelly who spoke about the Polish culture of this region. The new sorting building we have been telling you about now has walls and a roof.

And so our life goes on. By the time you receive this newspaper, the brilliant leaves of autumn will be gone and the snow will have come. It will be Advent or close to it Advent, one of the richest seasons of the Church year. And with music and decoration and food, liturgy and other prayer, drama and readings, customs and traditions, we will be living that season.

(Donkey Bells, available from MH Publications, describes our Advent and Christmas customs and traditions.)

Catherine Doherty urged us to restore the world to Christ, and Pope John Paul II urges us to build a culture of life. These things are the same.

One way we try to do this is by making the effort to see Christ, to see the holiness that is there, in every part of ordinary everyday life. And another way is by celebrating and living the seasons and feasts of the Church year.

ARE CHRISTIANS INTOLERANT

by Michael D. O’Brien

Christmas is approaching as I write this. The malls are packed with shoppers. They are, like me, trying to beat the Christmas rush or tap into the pre-Christmas sales, or maybe just get into the spirit of things early. You may have noticed that life in the twenty-first century is somewhat tense, and who can be blamed for rushing the season of peace just a little.

There’s a holiday feeling in the air: the potted pines and the shop windows are all decked out; the robot Santas and the synthetic jingle on the loudspeakers are jolly in about equal portions.

As is usual at this time of year, people are more patient with one another, will allow complete strangers to enter elevators before them, will overlook the irritating behavior of the occasional aggressive bargain-hunter, and will smile more easily at mothers with small noisy children.

It is the season of tolerance. Perhaps, then, it would not hurt to be reminded that the Incarnation was, in fact, an act of colossal intolerance on the part of God. By this I mean to say that it was an act of immeasurable love. He loved us so much that he would not let us die in our sins. He was intolerant of our slavery, and he was born among us for the express purpose of doing something rather definite about it.

I realize that to use the word "intolerance" is risky, for it cannot help but conjure up visions of religious and racial hatreds or the specter of grim moralizers judging their neighbors (and who has not felt the sting of those tongues?).

Moreover, it may well be asked if such a tainted word can be properly used to describe a characteristic of God. He is, after all, rich in mercy and slow to anger. But it must be remembered that both the Old and New Testaments speak of times when God acted out of justicemfor he will not permit evil to devour everything.

The early Christians knew first-hand that sin meant death to the inner and the exterior life of man. Most of them were converts from paganism, for their world was almost entirely pagan. They had known the effects of falsehood at work in their own minds, hearts, and flesh.

They knew that they had been rescued by God’s intolerance of their bondage—a liberation paid for by his submission to a torturous and humiliating death. They exulted in the glorious, shattering good news that Christ was real. He was not a mere theological abstraction or just another deity in an idol-saturated world. He was the one, true, God and he was life!

That awareness has waned in our era, partly because most people no longer feel endangered by the world of evil, by the possibility of personal slavery to invisible forces or by the servility to their own fallen natures. Nor do they consider for a moment that a pagan state might one day re-institute an exterior form of slavery (although it would call it by a more attractive name).

A society sliding back into paganism may try to reassure itself that it is in no worse condition than a society crawling out of paganism. Like two travellers going in opposite directions on a road, for a brief moment they share in passing a common point.

But the end of the road for each is very different. The convert from paganism has known darkness and has turned towards the light. Our society has known the light and is turning back towards darkness. This is the crucial difference. It is into the heart of this difference that we must speak if we wish to re-evangelize the world.

Travellers from the realm of darkness tell us emphatically (with a startling conviction at times) that the land towards which the lapsed or lapsing Christian is naïvely travelling is in fact a place of degradation and death. They have been there. They know.

When they tell us that few leave that land, that none find happiness there, and that it is a world of shifting illusory images, they can sound, yes, intolerant.

But this intolerance is the knowledge of the physician who has seen an epidemic ravage a people. He is prejudiced against deadly viruses. It is the intolerance of a mother who fiercely protects her little ones from predators. She suffers from a bias against rattlesnakes and wolves.

This apparent narrowness is in fact the wisdom of those who have known many roads and have found only one sure route out of the regions of desolation. What such pilgrims have to tell us can sound hard. But their testimony is true.

The Christian’s task is to rediscover a firm commitment to this truth and to show how it combines with an effective love of our neighbor.

It goes without saying (although in these confused times it may need repeating) that the urgent need for truth does not mandate us to go rushing about tearing into our neighbor or our enemy, delivering harsh lectures to this or that erring soul. In the true Christian meaning of the word "tolerance," we are to love the personhood of each and every individual human being.

This does not mean, however, that we should remain paralyzed and silent regarding acts and ideas that are killing us (and are killing their perpetrators as well). That is not Christian charity.

We have a right and a duty to speak the truth with simplicity, clearly and fearlessly, without rancor or personal condemnation, wherever untruth invades the life of our family. Moreover, we have a right and a duty to work hard to defeat any social or political force that would impose untruth upon our nations.

It is difficult for many people to see the present condition of the Western world for what it is. If we are constantly rewarded for compromising with its agendas, if the love of truth is weak or asleep in us, then we can easily lose our ability to recognize those moments of testing when we must choose truth or untruth.

If we do not recognize them, then we invariably choose the line of least resistance. But how do we awake? How do we all awake, for all of us have been anaesthetized to some degree.

The remedy, of course, is exactly what it has always been: open the gates of our hearts to Jesus Christ, live the Gospels without compromise, love the Church which is the Mystical Body of Christ, live the fullness of our Catholic faith, and pray for the flowering of Love and the renewal of Truth within our communities, churches, families, and oneself.

What stands in the way? What blocks the gates of the heart? If I had to choose an image to sum up our times, I would not choose from among the usual ones, such as The Nuclear Age, The Technological Society, The Age of Anxiety, The Computer Generation, The Affluent Society or The Space Era.

I would call it, "The Age of Noise." In the entire history of mankind, there has never been such a continuous bombardment of the human brain.

The ever-present background throb of machinery, the roar of traffic, the high-pitched buzz of fluorescent lights, the Muzak in elevators and supermarkets, the Walkmans, the gaggle of talk-shows. Words, words, words! We are drowning in chatter!

A thousand voices are competing for our attention every day: the communications media, the junk mail, the candidates for political office, the telephone solicitors, the maze of the internet, the instant "communication" through e-mail, with its hastily composed, hastily read throwaway messages, and so forth. This is the long, sustained roar (and sometimes screech) of our times.

The tensions generated in us by this unnatural way of life push us to seek more and more consolations, which the society also provides through endless entertainments and illusory escapes that leave us emptier than ever.

Yes, we Christians, no less than non-believers, suffer from this exterior noise and interior noise: the clamor of our anxieties, our desires for a reasonably successful life, our fear of struggle, our confusion, our skirmishes with the seven deadly sins and a host of lesser evils.

Plus the inner debates which we conduct against real or imagined enemies; and the sweet, rotten allure of the soap operas of the fallen imagination. And of course there is the voice of the accuser, whispering in our ears about our sins and faults.

We turn quickly away from that voice, unable to endure more feelings of guilt in an already guilt-ridden society — a society which tells us (again through the media) that Christians are abusers, backward, judgmental, patriarchal, anti-democratic, overpopulating, and a menace to the ecology.

Burdened with such an array of exterior and interior pressures, we can find it extremely difficult to face the objective guilt of our fallen natures and open ourselves to the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Yet the mere thought of resisting the power of an entire culture with our own strength is utterly exhausting. Overwhelmed, we can be deluded into choosing a less demanding, seemingly more "compassionate," more "tolerant" form of faith than the preceding 19 centuries of Christianity.

We may tell ourselves that this is progress. We may reassure ourselves by pointing out that large numbers of people agree with us. We may even cite questionable theologians to justify our compromises with the spirit of this brave new world, and its offshoot the brave new pseudo-Christianity.

Thus, thinking ourselves the freest people on the planet, we become collaborators with a death-bringing social revolution.

This particular social revolution promotes a tragically stunted definition of the meaning of the human person. And it has done so with all the powers of the modern state and the genius of modern communications systems.

It has created a new consciousness in people, a disturbing characteristic of which is the willingness to make peace with evil, though many an evil is now called good, and many a good called evil.

Like a well-fed slave, contemporary man has accepted a tragically reduced definition of the value of his own life. He has accepted a comfortable bondage as his lot. He assumes that this is normal.

But when the deep internal grief that is generated by believing such a lie begins to make itself known, then he is faced with a choice. He will either listen to what the grief is telling him and learn from it, or he will increase the noise, the speed, and the volume of consumption in order to drown it out.

If we disciples of Christ are present to him at his moment of choice, and if he chooses to listen to the soul-language of his own heart, we must be ready to speak to him about the true value of his life.

We must not nod and smile "tolerantly" if he mouths the tired old lies he has been taught by this society. Our intolerance of the lie may be a matter of life and death.

But what form should this intolerance take? What is its face? What are its words? Where will we find within our own hearts the firmness of love that is necessary to stand with a person in crisis? The answer is simple. We will find it to the degree that we are living in Christ and Christ is living in us.

Is there time or space or silence enough in our lives for him to dwell within us? Silence is the natural habitat of truth. Prayer is the dwelling place of right seeing.

This is why we must reduce the noise in our lives, and open the ears of our hearts to real listening. We need to pray about, and think clearly about, the pace at which we live, the desperate gallop that is hurtling us all toward some undefined end.

We parents, especially, need moments of complete stillness. We must take great care to make these moments for ourselves and for each other, and for our children.

We cannot assume that our good intentions will save them from the spirit of this age. Nor can we presume immunity to the massive apostasy which is taking place in many particular Churches of the West.

Never in human history has there been such a wholesale loss of faith, nor one which has come about with such startling speed.

Much of its momentum is due to the unprecedented power of television, film, video, and Internet—the power of the image-to recreate our understanding of the very shape of reality—redefining everything from morality to the nature of man himself.

Thus, large numbers of Christians simply do not realize that they are apostatizing, and still larger numbers do not understand that they are being prepared mentally to follow them. This is the power of impressions; it is also "peer pressure" on a colossal scale.

How very difficult it is to resist an entire culture! And how very difficult especially for children to do so, because it is right and good for them to grow into awareness of being members of a broader community!

They need genuine culture in order to grow properly. It is one of their primary means of learning what it is to be fully human persons in a community of fellow human persons.

That is why the solution will never be simply a matter of negatively criticizing the false culture surrounding us.The absolutely essential task of parents is to give their children a true culture, a sure foundation on which to stand.

Pope John Paul II has repeatedly warned us that we are immersed in a "culture of death." At the same time he has called us to build a civilization of love, to work for a new springtime of hope for mankind.

He knows that the restoration of our world is possible—indeed that we are all called by Christ and by the Church with utmost urgency to assist in this great mission.

He has taught us, as well, that the restoration will not come about until we—the light of the world, the salt of the earth—learn to discern between true culture and false culture, and to develop a little healthy "intolerance" of the deceptions that have blinded the people of our times.

How do we learn this? Where do we go to find the material of a life-giving culture? The first step is to see the situation for what it is. Then we must ask God our Father, as little children ask a loving father for bread. The Holy Spirit will give us the answers. More and more answers will come, if we listen well and follow his promptings.

Michael O’Brien is a professional artist and the author of a series of novels published by Ignatius Press, notably the best-selling "Father Elijah." He has also authored a book examining the pagan invasion of children’s culture, "A Landscape With Dragons: The Battle For Your Child’s Mind." He and his wife Sheila have six children and live near Combermere, Ontario.

HOW JESUS CAME TO ME

by Marian Moody

Growing up as a cradle Catholic, I never questioned matters of the faith until I attended university. There new worlds, both intellectual and spiritual, opened up to me and the unchallenged foundation I had known from childhood began to crumble.

A number of experiences finally led me to a crisis of faith and to what I now know was an anguished search for Truth.

I left the Church and for two years, I floundered about judging her sins and questioning everything. I was angry, hurt, and very much afraid.

This journey led me to a non-denominational Christian church where I found solace for my pain. That church was vibrant with the Word of God, and it was clear that the people there knew Jesus as a real person. There I found true fellowship with a believing community.

However, when we got to the communion service something of that vitality was gone for me. Though the communion service was reverent and beautiful in its own way, it was simply the remembrance of an event, and it left me empty.

It was during those moments that I discovered how much I believed in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I was stunned and confused. How, with so many questions in me concerning what it meant to be Catholic, could my heart be so totally convinced that Jesus was truly present in a little host at Mass?

For months I tried to squash this question, but God kept pushing it at me. Gradually I began attending Sunday Mass. But because my unresolved questions made me feel like a hypocrite being there, I would not take part in the Eucharist. But unlike the communion service, which had left my heart empty, this celebration filled my heart with anguished longing, because I could not approach the Banquet Table.

On one such Sunday, I was sitting with friends who had small children. As they returned to the pew after receiving the Eucharist, their little boy stopped beside me and took my arm. Looking up at me with pained eyes, he said, "Marian, you didn’t receive Communion!"

It was as if a knife was thrust into my heart. I fled the church and wept. I cried until there were no tears left in me.

From that moment, all the unresolved questions melted slowly away until they didn’t matter any more.

For thirty years I’ve carried that image of a little boy with pained eyes. When I pray for him, I’ve tried to recall his name, but there’s been a veil or cover over it, and I can’t remember. Recently on a walk I thought of him again, and in exasperation, I said, " God, why can’t I remember his name?"

It was as if I were stopped in my tracks, and I heard, "his name is Jesus." And I said, "Oh!" and I began to cry.

I realized then and there that it had been Jesus himself looking at me with those little eyes, and his own pained voice saying, "Marian, you didn’t come to me!"

It’s true, I didn’t go to him, but he came to me. Jesus came to me in that child’s eyes, in his touch and in his voice. And because that child had just consumed Christ’s Body, he carried that Real Presence to me.

…for my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him (Jn 6:55,56).

Word Made Flesh

YOU CAN BE A POET

by Fr. Pat McNulty

What marvels the Lord worked for us! Indeed we were glad! (Ps 126:3, from the Responsorial Psalm for December 7th, the Second Sunday of Advent.)

————————

In my younger days I didn’t enjoy poetry. Raised in the States during the Depression, I grew up feeling that if you can say something in a way that ordinary, everyday human beings can understand it, then just say it!

You know, like, "Pass the butter!" It doesn’t have to be couched in all sorts of pastoral, bovine, mammary language. Just say, "Pass the butter!"

And I used to feel somewhat the same about opera. Why does it have to take 3½ hours for some screaming soprano to die and one tenor and one "basso profundo" to help her? Just die already. OK!

And so, in my second year high school English class, I thought Sister Antonilda was just an eccentric old lady, and that was why she made us repeat some of her favorite poems over and over and over, especially those by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (U.S. 1807-82).

Our locker-room response to her "eccentricity" was that popular poetic pun of the times: "He’s a poet and don’t know it, but his big feet show it. They’re long fellows!"

Well, one day I woke up and realized that there’s a poet in all of us, even me, and it ain’t "my big feet that show it." It’s there in all of our liturgical hearts if we give them half a chance.

This is most evident to me during the Advent-Christmas season, if I don’t try to "make a movie out of the book." You know what I mean?

I mean that if we would just let the season be the season, it would make its own way into our deepest hearts, and our hearts would find their own carols. And these carols would be taken from the best words of the whole season—the biblical readings of the Sunday Masses.

And we don’t have to go into ecstasy over every word. One or two words every Sunday will do.

This is what happened to me when I read the Scriptures from all the Sundays in Advent in preparation for writing this article.

There it was, in the responsorial psalm of the Second Sunday of Advent: What marvels the Lord has worked for us! Indeed we were glad (Ps 126:3). These few words made their way into my heart and came out often during the day in a kind of poetic repetition.

"That is not what we mean by poetry," you might say. Well, a poet is someone who ponders, and repeating words from the Bible over and over is a simple way of pondering.

That’s what the Mother of Jesus was doing all during that first Advent and thereafter. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart (Lk 2:19).

In fact, according to Luke’s Gospel, Mary is the poet laureate of the early years of Jesus. Though it seems that we don’t have many of her "poetic" words, if we understand how the Gospels were put together, we will know that we do.

For what we read of the early life of Jesus, including the magnificent Christmas story, could well be what Mary told Luke after years of "pondering these words in her heart." If so, much of what the Holy Spirit revealed about the mystery of the Incarnation and much of the real poetry of Christmas and Advent, have come through her.

At one time Advent was not my favorite season either to live or to write or to preach about. I used to think that this was because of how commercialized the holy season of Christmas has become, and also because so much is crammed into those few short weeks.

But recently I began to read the poetry of Catherine Doherty, and I discovered the real reason I once had problems with Advent and Christmas. I had forgotten what good ole Sr. Antonilda was trying to teach us by her "eccentric" poetic ways. She was trying to open us up to one of the great gifts that lie within every human soul, the gift of poetry.

Not the gift for writing poems or playing with words, but the gift of being able to be moved and nourished by the sounds and sights of words, and the capacity to "ponder" things in our hearts—not just in our minds and emotions. Things such as, What marvels the Lord has worked for us! Indeed we were glad!

And the only way Sister Antonilda could possibly have gotten us to understand was to have us repeat poems over and over.

These days I sometimes think that we who have to live in this suffocating culture of death can easily lose our sense of faith-poetry, our ability to hear the sounds and absorb the meanings of the words and to see the sights of Advent and Christmas.

And there’s another thing. Even though Christ’s love is the only answer for modern man, in these Godless times, it may be that the only way that non-believers can be touched by the Christian vision is through the sounds and sights and biblical words all alone by themselves. So we need to find new ways to put words and sounds and sights on that proclamation of love.

And if our great faith-feasts are to survive, we may all have to become pondering poets of one kind or other.

I was once an Advent Scrooge: all concerned with the preparations for Christmas the decorating, the playing of Christmas music, the giving of gifts and the sending of cards. And indeed we serious Christians do need to be very careful about our seasonal behavior.

But, at the same time, we dare not lose sight of the holy and poetic fullness of what we are celebrating

Let us be focused on Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And on the shepherds, the kings, and the angels. Let us find the music which enables us to truly ponder the mystery of this holy season. (We can at least listen to it in the privacy of our cars and homes.)

Let’s put up lots and lots of lights. (Start in July if you want to, but don’t tell anyone I said so.) And in every major room in your house, put up a crèche, a crib scene. Send your cards as if you were sending them to someone in Nazareth 2000 years ago. And open the ones you receive as if they were a personal "thank you" from the Holy Family.

Exercise your poetic heart.

Instead of defending the season, ponder it. Instead of dreading it, take control of the way it unfolds in your life. Instead of bemoaning it, rejoice in it.

Poetically speaking, perhaps it isn’t a matter of "putting Christ back into Christmas," but of putting our Christmas back into Christ.

We Christians are meant to be the real Christmas poets, artists, and musicians, for without our liturgical pondering, this great celebration of the birth of the Son of God will soon be only one of the many holidays during the winter season. God forbid! Poets arise!

My poetic contribution to the season? Mary-Christ-Mass to each and every one of you and a blessed feasting all the way to Epiphany.

The other readings for the Second Sunday of Advent are: Baruch 5:1-9, Phil 1:4-6, 8-11, and Lk 3: 1-6.

MH Magadan

A PILGRIMAGE FROM RUSSIA

Part 2

by Sushi Horwitz

In this article we continue the story of the pilgrimage of the girls’ prayer group from Magadan to Medjugorge. But though part 1 ended with their arrival in Medjugorge, and the plan had been for part 2 to be about their experience there, we are going to backtrack a bit to tell another story first.

Why? Because, after the November issue was all finished, Sushi e-mailed me saying, "Something wonderful happened to us in Serbia that I didn’t write about in that first account. I think we really need to tell that story as well." I agreed with her, and I think you will, too. (We’ll tell you about their time in Medjugorge in part 3.)

————————-

We were at our lowest ebb of the whole trip—exhausted in body and spirit. Eight to ten hours behind schedule, we had spent two nights on a hot, stuffy, cramped bus. We were out of bread and had no local currency to buy any, and had no hot water for tea. (And for Russians, bread and tea are food for the soul as well as for the body.)

Our food had been what we could prepare sitting in our seats, and our toilets were the woods. We were hungry, dirty, tired, and disheartened.

That morning, as we traveled through Serbia, one of the group leaders took a poll. "Do you want to stop for Mass today or skip Mass and get into Medjugorge an hour earlier?" To my surprise and dismay, the "skip Mass" group was by far the majority.

About 1 p.m., however, our bus pulled over and stopped at St. Ann’s Church in a town named Shabbas. The church was plain but pleasant inside. Our group filled almost a third of it, and our priest, Fr. Oleg, celebrated a prayerful, peaceful Mass with us.

At the end of Mass, the pastor stood up and asked if he could say a few words to us. So a smiling Fr. Jerome addressed us, though doing so was not all that simple for he spoke only Italian and Serbian, neither of which we knew. But, fortunately, a deacon who had studied in the United States spoke English.

So Father spoke in one of his languages, the deacon translated into English, and Tatiana, one of our group, translated into Russian. The system worked fine!

Fr. Jerome told us how delighted they all were that we had chosen to stop at their church. He said what a privilege and blessing it was to welcome pilgrims. Shabbas has many bigger and more beautiful churches than St. Ann, so it was a joy that we had chosen their church.

There are 130,000 people in Shabbas and only 300 Catholics. And being Italian, Fr. Jerome said, he liked nothing better than a big family. So it gave him great joy that, for once, he had such a big congregation!

He made us feel as if we were doing him a favor instead of the other way around.

He said that we had a wonderful young priest and told us to pray for him daily. And he asked us to pray for the people at St. Ann’s when we got to Medjugorge.

If we had notified him ahead of time that we were coming, he told us, they would have had a real Italian meal ready for us. And please phone ahead if we were coming back that way.

During the whole talk, the other priest in the parish, tall, lanky Fr. John Paul, stood silently beaming. Both priests are members of the Neo-Catechumenate, one of the "new communities" in the Church.

Then Fr. Jerome asked if they could offer us a little refreshment. They led us through their garden to the backyard. Then while we waited, the priests and altar boys rushed back and forth carrying out platters of steaming sausages, sliced fresh tomatoes, and fresh, crusty rolls from the bakery. And on the tables covered with plastic tablecloths stood bottles of pop and water.

The "feast’ revived our spirits perhaps even more than our bodies. An hour before, we had been strangers in a strange land, and had felt downtrodden by life. During Mass our fifteen year old Anya, for example, had felt like she was going to faint, but now, after our welcome at St. Ann’s, she felt fine.

Added to this was the fact that for us from the north of Russia, such as Magadan, meat and fresh tomatoes are luxuries, which for many are too expensive to enjoy more than a few times a year.

The only disappointment came after Lena, our guide, phoned ahead to Medjugorge. She talked with our contact and benfactor, Teresa, who told her that if we were not in Medjugorge by midnight, she would not be able to hold our accommodations.

So asking forgiveness of our hosts, we clambered back on the bus clutching our hotdogs.

The last eight hours of our trip were fine. Brought back to life by the hospitality of Frs. Jerome and Jean Paul and friends, we found the last part of the trip light and easy. Truly it had been a remarkable experience of the life-giving power of Christian hospitality.

For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you made me welcome (Mt 25:35).

We remembered our benefactors in Medjugorge and we remember them still. May God reward them.

(to be continued)

Advent

SEASON FOR FOOLS AND PILGRIMS

by Fr. David May

There is a portion of our souls which cries out from the depth of some profound emptiness. All of us who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free (Rom 8:23). Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God (Ps 42).

As we enter once again the Advent season of the Church year, something in my heart says, Do not fear to stand in that place. Cry and cry again, Maranatha! Come, Lord! Come and set us free!

It was at this time of year, 31 years ago, that I first left everything to seek the face of the Lord. Now I am a priest and a member of Madonna House and, through the mercy of God, I have tasted some of those "first-fruits of the Spirit" that St. Paul mentions.

And yet, in some way, the emptiness remains. In some way, I am still a pilgrim, poor and restless, seeking the face of a Child.

Is it the early winter wind that races so wildly at times through the trees? It presses searchingly against our house as if trying to suck out all warmth and comfort. Is it the chill rain and dull, unsmiling clouds that sometimes drift over our valley for days on end at this time of year?

Or is it a more profound conviction that catches me unawares when I am still enough inside: no effort at loving, no friendship, even the most spiritual and deep, has ever been complete—no victory over my own inertia has ever been definitive.

My life is a complex tangle of victories and failures, confidence and fear. And even that reality is steadily passing away, drifting towards dissolution. "My life," and I really mean "our lives" individually and in community.

Why is it that I need to rest here in this place today? And what is it about the early winter desolateness that soothes my soul somehow? Yes, I think I’ll rest here today and search this question out.

Rest? Here? But how, you might ask, can we rest here? The air is chill and damp. The afternoon light is fading rapidly into an early darkness. The trees rattle with menace or moan in a way that revives shadowy memories that I thought had long been laid to rest. As my folks in Maryland would say when the wind blew east off the cold ocean, "that air goes right through you."

But I’ve always loved those biting gray days. I would go down to the shore to meet them head on. I would wander along the beaches and gaze out into the mist and the dark churning ocean. I liked letting it "go right through me."

For I felt and heard there something that I never want to forget (even though I often do). Let’s call it "emptiness" or, better yet, "thirst for God." This emptiness, this thirst for God, is both bitter and sweet. Bitter, because we long with a terrible longing for what is not yet seen. Sweet, because of the sense and the promise of an infinite joy, a joy which is beyond what anything created could ever give.

No doubt these days are busy ones for you as well as for me. For besides our regular work, we, or many of us at least, are engaged in a thousand preparations for the great feast of Christmas. Rest? How? How, you might ask, can we rest here?

The air is filled with music and our minds are abuzz with plans and promises and the things that simply must be done in the next few days. Parties and get-togethers abound, and there is rarely a free evening. Commercialized or Christianized, a sense of festivity is in the air.

But I am thinking about a Child. When we were little children, my sister and I would kneel before the crèche on Christmas morning and sing "Happy Birthday" to the Christ Child. Then we would rush out to the sun porch where our toys and other gifts lay under a Scotch-pine Christmas tree.

Good memories. Warm memories. But what does the Child teach us as he lies there on a straw bed?

We usually picture a stable around that manger, but in the Byzantine Rite, they sing of a cave where the splendor of Jesus shines forth.

"O little Child lying in a manger, by means of a star, heaven has called and led to you the Magi, the first-fruits of the Gentiles, who were astounded to behold, not scepters and thrones, but extreme poverty. What, indeed, is lower than a cave? What is more humble than swaddling clothes? And yet the splendor of your divinity shone forth in them resplendently. O Lord, glory to you!" (Prayer from the Divine Liturgy for Christmas).

The Child teaches us not to be afraid of the barren winter of our wounded hearts, of our human emptiness. For, by grace, these have become an Advent for usba time of waiting for the Desired One.

He encourages us during this season with a Child’s guileless smile. He awaits us there where we are most in need and most afraid: in the dark cave of our poverty.

Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: He was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty (2 Cor: 8:9).

One time, many years ago, when I visited home, the central attraction was a two-baby circus consisting of my nieces, Angela (aged 22 months) and Theresa (8 months). Of course these two babies were exceptional in every respect, as anyone in my family would readily attest! And of course we were all captivated by their charm. We doted, doted, and doted some more.

I read recently that "to dote" comes from an ancient word that means "to be foolish." Anyone watching us watch those two babies would have had no doubts about that!

Christmas is the time to be foolish about the Child. May we let ourselves be won by his beauty! He alone is "the Desired One" who can satisfy the longing in our hearts for something more: peace, joy, eternal love.

Every biting wind and lonely, stripped tree speaks of the groaning of all creation for his advent when creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom 8:21) Maranatha! Come, Lord! Come and set us free!

My Dear Family

CHRISTMAS WITHOUT CHRIST

by Catherine Doherty

What was your most memorable Christmas? Was it when you were very little? Was it when you did not receive the gift you wished for? Was it when you were together or apart from your loved ones? Did you have an unexpected guest or event one Christmas?

Catherine was once asked about her most memorable Christmas. Her answer is told in the following story.

————————-

When people read about revolutions, they sometimes foolishly wish that they lived in a country and at a time when such exciting events took place, for it all seems packed with great excitement and adventure. But take it from me, who went through one of the most tragic revolutions of history, the communist one in Russia: there is little excitement in them, and less adventure.

Revolutions are composed of tiny little things, which gather together like many little dark clouds to form a huge black one that blots out the sun and the moon and the stars. This leaves you utterly alone in a darkness so dark that you feel you would give your whole life for just one ray of sunshine.

Take streets, for instance. Old familiar and beloved streets, that you walked all your life. Why yes, at this corner stood your mother, holding your hand to cross the intersection when you were starting kindergarten. And here is the corner store where you bought candies with the hot dirty little pennies that you had clutched so carefully all the way from grade school.

And there is the familiar alley that you always took from high school, because it was a short cut, and because there was a big lilac bush that smelled so nice and made you think of spring and vacations. And a little further was that puppy that you played with, and which now is a nice big wooly dog that still knows you and comes out slowly and sedately to greet you.

Would you believe that all these familiar streets, which you love and remember from almost babyhood, can change overnight into sinister frightening places where death stalks and life is cheap? Yes, that is just what happened after the communist revolution came to my streets in Petrograd.

I was barely 21 when I found out the change. Mother had sent me to see if I could buy some food somewhere. It was early evening. I walked the familiar streets without fear. I loved them, even then when they were dark (the electrical power was off in the city, due to the revolution).

Then I stumbled over something. And when I bent down to see what it was, it was a dead woman with a knife in her back, and blood all over the pavement. That was the beginning of the change on my streets.

Then the edict went out that anyone found worshipping God in any church could be arrested or shot on sight. And my streets became jungles to be crossed carefully, slowly, hiddenly, hugging the walls of buildings so as to melt with their shadows in the early morning when going to Mass.

As soon as that edict went out, church services became the center of all life. How long would it be before there would be no Mass? People asked themselves that question, and the thought froze all Christian hearts. For what is life without Mass, without the sacraments? Men, women, and youth arose and went to Mass daily. So did I.

We all went. But we first blessed ourselves in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, because we all knew that maybe this was the last time we might walk the familiar yet now unfamiliar streets.

We walked as native people in America must have walked when stalking their preyWsoft-footed, alert, listening for any loud footsteps. Only communists walked loudly through the fearsome streets.

We walked in human fear, in trembling, but we had to go where we were going. To church! To Mass! Because, without it, we would not be able to face another day of wondering, fearing that it would be our last day.

This is another fact about revolutions: they bring eternity into every hour of every day. You peel potatoes in your kitchen and hark! There are heavy footsteps on the stairs. Are they for you? Or for those you love?

NoNthey passed your door.

With a trembling hand, you go on peeling potatoes, listening, listening, and wondering about life and death. God is very near then. In fact, God alone matters, and so does the Mass.

So we went at dawn, like the Christians of old, softly, hugging walls, watching, now melting with the shadows, now moving, inch by inch, into a dark church.

One day, it happened! It happened in church. It was an old church with a cold stone floorywithout lights, except for the tabernacle light and two slender candles.

It happened right after the Consecration, while the priest’s hands were still raised high to allow us all, who were living under a "sentence of death" as it were, to behold him who died for love of us, and to give us courage if the need arose, to try to die as gallantly for the love of him.

White were the hands of the priest. White was the Host, shining white were the candles dark and dim the churchdwhen suddenly the side door opened with a bang, and rough voices shouted, "Stand still!"

The priest froze with the Host still lifted high. We became statues of immobility lost in the dimness of the church. Soldiers!lfor that is who they were. Red Army soldiers.

One of them slowly lifted his rifle and slowly took aim. One shot rang out. Only one. The priest quivered, swayed, and fell sideways. The consecrated Host rolled down, down the steps, onto the floor, coming to rest, still and white, on the dark floor by the altar railingmin two pieces.

Silence took over, only to be broken and shattered by the rhythmic steps of the hobnailed boots of the soldiers walking toward the tabernacle, then vaulting over the railing. Triumphantly their voices suddenly rang out while one of them crushed the consecrated Host under his heel: "There is no God! We have crushed him."

Silence wrapped up his voice and killed it. Silence. The silence of Golgotha entered the church. It hungSeven like Christ on the crosseonly to be broken again by the thin, reedy voice of an old, old man who spoke from the intense shadows of the church.

"Father, forgive them, even if they know what they do."

The silence came back once moreTa new silence of mercy and pardon. The Red Army soldiers shivered a little and slowly slunk away through the sacristy. Their hobnailed boots made dragging sounds that were like a dirge. A door slammed in the back. A moan went through the churchcour moan of pain and horror.

Slowly, the old man arose. He was a patriarchal figure, with a long white beard and flowing hair. Reverently he gathered the crushed pieces of the consecrated Host. Slowly he bade us to come forward and to receive them in our last communion. Maybe our viaticum. We did.

Then we got holy water and scrubbed the floor. And we stayed on, to pray in reparation. We buried the priest secretly. He was the last priest in town; there would be no more Mass, no sacraments.

The familiar streets were still filled with danger and death for us. We didn’t mind them anymore, because we ourselves were filled with such desolation, a desolation that no none knows in countries where there are so many churches and so many priests.

All this happened just before Christmas. And so it was a Christmas without Christ in the tabernacleswithout Masswwithout confessionwwithout communion.

Just the same, it was my most memorable Christmas. Since they had closed all the doors against his coming, he chose the humble stables of our pain-filled hearts in which to be born anew that strange, lonely, cold Christmas of the first year of the communist Russian Revolution in 1917.

Sometimes it seems to me to have been the most blessed Christmas of all because, from that day on, I knew that, when all the rest had been taken away from me, nothing mattered but his inner presence in my heart.

I wishIoh, how I wishothat I really could tell all this to all the youth in North America. To so many of them, going to Mass on Sundays seems, at times, too dull and hard. Mass on Sunday? Oh, my friends, go to Mass every dayewhile you can!

Yes, we would have crawled on our knees that ChristmasYthrough the strange and fearsome streets, filled with dangers and deathtif only we could have participated in just one more Mass.

Thank God each day that, as yet, your most memorable Christmas is not without Christ in all the tabernacles of your many churches.

Adapted from Donkey Bells, pp. 123-129, available from MH Publications.

Christmas

THE BAR THAT JESUS BREAKS

by Fr. Bob Pelton

One day at a Sunday liturgy close to Christmas, Archbishop Raya talked about snowflakes. He had been reading about them, and he was bemoaning the deterioration in their production, both quantity and quality. Everything is getting poorer and poorer; even snowflakes aren’t what they used to be!

The point is that the archbishop loves the sky, everything in it, and everything that comes from it—sun, moon, stars, clouds, wind, snow, and rain. He loves to marvel at it all, and I thought of the Preface for the latter days of Advent: "May he find us watching when he comes, our hearts filled with wonder and praise."

During the week before Christmas, the Church tells us over and over, "The Lord is near." Then at Christmas he is very near. In fact he is nearer than near, he is here! And he is ever closer than "here" because he is here-for-us, here-united-with-us.

The Scriptures tell us that from all eternity, before the world was made, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit knew that the eternal Son would come into the world. So every bit of creation was in some way made, not only through him and by him, but for him and in his image. Now he is here with us and for us.

He is here to break the yoke, the bar across our shoulders, whatever it may be, however enormous, however heavy, however strong. He is here to break it.

What is this yoke? What was it for Israel? It was partly that they were beset by enemies on all sides. But beyond that, they were burdened by their sins, by their inability to love the Lord their God with all their hearts with all their souls, with all their minds, and with all their strength (Dt 6:5, Mt 22:37).

This is where we can identify with Israel and with all those living at the time of Christ’s coming, whether we feel beset by enemies or not. And greater than the reality of sin and the lack of perfect love was their inability to abide in God’s all-holy presence.

More and more the words of Adam after his and Eve’s disobedience echo in my mind and heart. "Where were you?" God asks, and Adam answers, I was naked and I was afraid and I hid (Gen 3:10). This is the bar that Jesus, the Son of God, breaks.

We know how this bar, this yoke, weighs upon us—this fathomless shame that makes it almost unbearable to be fully in God’s presence. And we also know how it is an enormous iron rod that our real Adversary uses to beat us with. "If the All-holy saw you," the Adversary sneers, "he would cast you out in disgust before you could blink."

My brothers and sisters, this is a lie. The presence of Jesus, the eternal Word made flesh here with us, here for us, breaks that bar, shatters that lie.

But—and it isn’t really a "but." It is simply a necessary step so that we can claim the truth: to receive our freedom, we must receive Jesus. We must take him to our hearts. We must ask him to come in.

Those with childlike hearts, whether they are 3 or 8 or 32 or 76, do it very simply. They just reach down to the crib and take the Infant to their hearts. Probably most of us don’t do it that simply.

Most of us do it another way. It is a beautiful way, just as beautiful as reaching in and grabbing the Baby to one’s heart. That way is to kneel down, to kneel down before the crib in Our Lady’s presence and in the presence of the angels and all of heaven. Maybe we can grasp the corner of his robe in our hand. Perhaps we can’t even do that.

Probably we can look at his face, this Baby’s face smiling, delighted to make his home among us.

But maybe we can’t even do that. Maybe, like the Magi, we have to bow our faces right down into the straw. And if we do this, the Lord will enter.

He saysHas he is both before us and within usathe most extraordinary word that God could say and that the human race can hear: He who sees me, sees the Father (Jn 12:45). And he says it not just in the upper room, hours before he would be crucified and two days before he would rise again, and not just after the illumination of Pentecost. But at this very instant when Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, is only a tiny baby, he says, He who sees me, sees the Father, and He who receives me, receives the Father (Mt 10:40, Jn 13:20).

The bar is broken. The lie is shattered. We are restored to the heart of the Father.

Now what does this say about the heart of the Father? I can’t begin to say it all, of course, but it very clearly says this word of eternal truth: the heart of the Father, the All-holy, is infinitely tender and gentle toward us. And the more we are sinners, the more we are helpless, the more truly he is infinitely tender to us.

This eternal word of truth also says to us that this infinitely tender, gentle love of the Father for us is relentless. But it is relentless in the way that a baby’s grip is relentless. You know how a baby will grab your finger and hold on with all its might.

It’s true that there is another side to this: when we resist, God’s grip doesn’t feel so gentle. But it is! The Father is infinitely patient with us. His humility before us is boundless.

There probably aren’t too many human beings who don’t have, either very deeply or to some lesser degree, what we call a "spirit of nonpersonhood," the lie that says that I am of so little account, so little worth, that I’m not even a person.

This is the lie that Jesus has broken, that he breaks on Christmas, that he breaks at every moment of time until he comes again visibly. The Father not only reveals himself in the face of the Infant: he embraces us.

My brothers and sisters, I pray that this Christmas will be a time of true illumination of our hearts—an illumination telling us what our sins are so that we can repent because we need to do that. But even more that it be an illumination that will show our hearts the reality of the love that Christ’s coming into them has brought there, and the reality that it abides there.

The truth is that the Father embraces us in infinitely tender, merciful, joyful love. May we receive him in Jesus and be glad with a joy no one can take from us.

The Pope’s Corner

THE GOD WHO COMES

by Pope John Paul II

With the First Sunday of Advent we begin a new liturgical year. The God of the covenant revealed himself in history, and in history the Church celebrates the mystery of salvation: the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, the journey of believers is continually renewed, extending between what Christ has "already" realized and the "not yet" of his full revelation.

God is the future of the human person and of the world. If humanity loses the meaning of God, it will close itself to the future and inevitably lose the perspective of its pilgrim journey in time. Why birth, why death? Why sacrifice, why suffering?

To these questions, Christianity offers a satisfying answer. For this reason, Christ is the hope of humanity. He is the true meaning of our present, because he is our sure future.

Advent reminds us that he has come, and that he will come. The life of believers is a continuous and vigilant waiting for his coming.

The invitation to watch and wait is underlined with insistence by St. Mark. In Mk 13:31-37, he points out the final meaning of history and of creation and exhorts us to make of our lives an unceasing quest for Christ.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father. Be on your guard and stay awake…. If he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all. Stay awake. (13:31-33,36,37).

It is from our being with him and from the contemplation of his countenance that will come the missionary vigor that will help us to leave our gray daily routine in order to be his courageous witnesses.

On this journey of conversion and of apostolic dedication, Mary, the bright dawn and the sure guide of our steps, accompanies us. She does it in a special way by inviting us to contemplate the joyful mysteries of the rosary. We look to her with confidence.

Excerpted from the pope’s Angelus talk, December 1, 2002, the First Sunday of Advent.

ARCHBISHOP DONAT CHIASSON

by the editor

On October 8th, Archbishop Donat Chiasson, age 73, retired bishop of Moncton, New Brunswick, was killed instantly in a car accident. He was an associate priest of Madonna House.

At the same time as he asked to become an associate, or close to it, he invited Madonna House to open a house in his diocese, and this we did in 1978. He soon became very much a part of that house, and I think it’s safe to say that every staff worker who has ever been assigned there has wonderful memories of him.

He loved the poor, and we accompanied him every Saturday when he visited the people and said Mass at "his parish"—a nursing home for Alzheimer patients. And when time allowed, he often dropped in and relaxed with us and would on occasion take us on outings. A loving, pastoral priest, he was far more than "our bishop;" he was family. And we loved to be with him.

He also visited Combermere regularly. He often came for promises day or for a few days and would "drop by" for a short visit whenever his duties brought him to Ottawa. He was the main celebrant at the funeral Mass of our foundress, Catherine Doherty.

He embraced Madonna House spirituality and after retiring after 23 years as bishop of Moncton, he moved to Rogersville where he became chaplain to a Trappestine monastery and where he spent more time in prayer. He died as he had lived. When his car was struck, he was on his way home from visiting someone.

THE DANCING LIGHT

by a staff worker

This is a poem but too long to print as such in our newspaper format. We suggest you read it slowly and with pauses.

———————

It seems like worlds ago and centuries. And it seems like yesterday, yesterday when I walked in darkness.

The darkness of city streets, concrete beneath my feet, concrete around my heart. Darkness inside me, darkness outside me. Everlasting darkness that the brightest neon lights and screams of music and dying people could not pierce.

The darkness of questions, and the twisting routes to answers that were no answers at all.

Darkness. Darkness walled by concrete, darkness that smothered human light, darkness that crushed human love. Darkness everywhere. Darkness forever.

But no. Hovering somewhere—where?—was a tiny light. Where? I searched. I tried to hold it. It was gone. I searched for it, longed for it. Where was it? It was gone. Forever? Yes, forever.

But no. There it was again. Flickering. Fragile. Was it real?

Maybe, just maybe, darkness wasn’t everywhere. Maybe, just maybe, the little light was real.

And the light was gone. And all was darkness again.

Then one day the light came back. It grew and danced and filled the darkness. And the light leapt and entered my heart. I danced with the light and in the light. And the darkness was gone.

The flames drew me and said, "Come… Come… Come…"

I pulled back. "But… but… I don’t know how… I don’t know… I cannot… You are so strange…"

But the light just burned and danced and laughed and said, "Come."

And I came.