MH Roanoke

SHE WAS GORGEOUS!

By Beth Holmes

A few years ago Fr. Brière, a Madonna House priest who died recently, asked an old friend from his early days in the lay apostolate what she saw as the primary work of the lay apostolate these days. She answered, "to console people because everybody suffers so much."

These words have stayed in my heart and mind, and over and over I see that this is true. For the Lord allows us to experience it in the often quiet life of our house in Roanoke.

Yes, everyone suffers so much. But one challenge, for me at least, is that sometimes people don’t look it.

One day, for example, I received a phone call from a woman we’ll call "Melanie." She said that she worked for a home for delinquent boys and that she was trying to find a place where they could do some volunteer work one day a week. Could she come and talk to me about it? I immediately agreed, and we set up a time.

At first I thought this was a possibility, but when I talked about it with the other staff, we came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t work. The difficulty wasn’t that they were teenage boys, but rather finding something they could do every week and organizing it. It just didn’t seem that their coming would fit into the flow of the house.

I felt badly then that I had made the appointment because I was going to have to disappoint her.

The day came, and Melanie rang the doorbell as expected. She was a gorgeous young woman, bubbling over with enthusiasm for her work. She spent about an hour telling me about their house, their program, and their problems, and what they wanted to do for the boys.

I was glad to listen, but eventually I told her that I was sorry but I didn’t think we could provide what she was asking for. She accepted this, and when I suggested another place she could try, she was grateful.

Then I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden she was talking about her personal life. This bubbly, enthusiastic, intelligent young woman was going through hell!

She had been married for five or six years and was going through an excruciating divorce. She talked and talked and cried and cried. And like most people who do this in our house, especially on a first visit, she said, "I don’t know why I’m telling you all this."

But I know why. (Melanie’s wasn’t the first story of suffering I had heard in the sitting room next to our chapel.) It’s because God honors us with his presence in our house, and it was he who touched her and freed her to talk.

As for myself, I had been wondering why I had invited her over. After all, providing volunteer work for delinquent teenagers wasn’t exactly the sort of work we usually do! Now I knew.

We weren’t meant to do anything with those teenage boys; somebody else would do that. We were meant to let Melanie pour out her heart and soul, pour out her tears, so that she would know consolation in her suffering.

Later I received a beautiful note from her, telling me that she continued to be grateful for our time together. Her visit, she said, was a small turning point in her journey. I never saw or heard from her again.

It seems a small miracle to me that the Lord allows us to do this apostolic work so succinctly described by Fr. Brière’s old friend. I am grateful that God allows us to see and share in his work of consolation, even if it is only once in someone’s life. And I never forget these persons.

MH Ottawa

A DAY IN A POUSTINIA HOUSE

by Martha Shepherd

Life starts early in MH Ottawa, at around 5 a.m. on good days. Both AJ (the other woman in the house) and I find the silent hours just before and after dawn the best time to pray. And prayer, contrary to appearances on some days, is what this house is all about.1

So by a little after 8 last Thursday we had prayed alone, said lauds (our morning prayer) together, and gone to Mass. After that I had put several pans of barbeque-flavored chicken in the oven, and was now concocting several quarts of pasta with sauce.

AJ was doing the dishes that all this cooking had generated. It smelled great in the kitchen though it wasn’t exactly the coffee and toast type smells usually associated with that hour. This was more like a Tex-Mex restaurant during the dinner rush.

"You know," I said as I drained the pasta, "something struck me this morning."

"Yeah?" said AJ reaching for the pot I had just emptied.

"I was reading John’s prologue (Jn 1:1-18). You know, In the beginning was the Word… And when I came to the part about the light shines in the darkness, it just hit me: That is what it’s all about.

That explains why Christians belong in the hard places, why we do inner work, why we go to slums and war zones, and also why we have monasteries, places dedicated to fighting our sinfulness. After all you don’t light a candle and put it in the sun. What would be the point?"

"That’s true." AJ actually stopped washing and looked at me. This was real audience response! Encouraged, I warmed to my subject.

"I mean, isn’t that the whole idea of "poustinia in the marketplace?" We carry Christ the Light into the dark places. But even more than that, we bear witness to the fact that he’s already there. That’s what comes next in John. The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it.

When I read that this morning I thought of Laura (no names used in this article are real) and of Blaine and Carrie. No matter what hell they are carrying around inside them, they carry light too. The darkness has not overcome it. And really, the best thing we have to give them is showing them that." I handed her the last chicken pan and returned to the pasta.

"And then it says, There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness to the light.

"That made me think of Mother Teresa. I think that’s why almost everyone loves her so much. She bears witness to the Light. Those pictures of her bathing dying people with joy in her eyes, they bear witness to the light. They say so much: that God exists, that she loves him, that his love moves her, and that she sees him in each person. But that’s us too. It’s every Christian."

The dish drainer was full, so AJ reached for a towel and started drying.

"That," she said, "is a ‘word.’"

"Really?"

"Of course. It makes me want to cry."

One element of poustinia is receiving a "word." For oneself or others God sometimes highlights a passage of Scripture or perhaps a single word whose resonance and meaning then develop in the heart. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but those lines from John had in fact been like a door opening into clarity—clarity about Christianity as a whole and about our Madonna House life as it relates to the whole.

This is indeed what a "word" does. And without realizing I was doing so, I had done what the poustinik is supposed to do with a word: I had shared it. And it had lifted our hearts.

We packed the pasta into cottage cheese containers and the chicken into anything we could find, and then called Brian to wake him up and let him know we were on our way over.

Brian loves barbequed chicken, and once a month or so we stock his freezer with it and take him shopping for bread and eggs and such. MH Ottawa and Brian have been friends for nearly thirty years now.

Long ago his psychiatrist explained to him that his schizophrenia was incurable. "Then what happens now?" he asked. "We grow old together." A wonderful man, Brian’s psychiatrist! I often think of that as we’re driving over to visit Brian.

We too are growing old together. We’re not going to solve any of Brian’s problems. We just share our lives in big and little ways.

After we put the food away, we perched on his chair and hassock and chatted with him.

"Hey, Brian," AJ asked. "You know that Italian soup someone brought you. Are you going to eat it?" This soup had been in his cupboard for a couple of months now.

"I’m not sure."

"Well, we know a woman who’s really broke right now."

"Oh, take it. Do you want to take anything else to her?"

"No. Just what you’re not using. Your certificates look great on the wall."

He nodded. "Yes, they do."

Last month we brought frames for Brian’s two awards from the correspondence school he’s been studying with for years. At 56, he is only four courses away from his high school equivalency diploma. One of the certificates is for perseverance.

After an hour we reluctantly got to our feet. He walked us down to the street and we hugged him good-bye. As always he seemed refreshed by our time together.

From there we spun around a few blocks to the house where Josie, a young friend of ours, has been sleeping on her friend’s couch. We’d offered to help in her move to a place in our neighborhood.

Loading all her worldly goods, plus the three of us, into our little sub compact car turned into a comedy scene which had us all laughing (also praying as something seemed to be scraping the tire all the way home!).

We dropped AJ off at our house and continued on the Josie’s new place. "Could I just say something?" she asked after we’d brought everything in."

"Of course."

"It’s not you. You guys have been really sweet. But I feel sort of humiliated."

"You mean because we drove you over and gave you lunch?"

"Yeah, and the money. It’s just…. It just makes me feel really small somehow, weak or less or…"

She faltered to a stop.

"I understand. Everything we have someone gave us too. Sometimes you do feel small. But some day you’ll be able to give it to someone else."

She brightened a little. "That’s true. And I already have actually. Anyway, I just wanted to say that." She gave me a hug and I left.

On the way home I found myself thinking that the saying that it is more blessed to give than to receive has a flip side which is seldom commented on. Someone has to do the dirty work; someone has to receive, or the blessing of giving is impossible. Josie had just reminded me how much harder it is to receive than it is to give.

By the time I got back home AJ was already in one of our "talking rooms" listening to someone. I only had time to swallow a handful of nuts before the bell rang for me as well.

As we do most afternoons, we spent about five hours listening, talking, and praying with people. One of the lines of the Little Mandate—which is most lived in this house is: "Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts. I will be with you."

That inner place where the light shines in the darkness is always a place of tension, of conflict, and of paradox. It’s in the places of greatest suffering and inner death that the light of the resurrection is most welcome.

And so that afternoon as AJ and I each walked into the dark places of a few hearts, our own hearts were lightened by the word I had received in the morning—that reminder that the light was already there.

By the time the last person had left, it was nearly dark. And it must be said that those who start their days around 5 a.m. often feel the worse for wear by 5 p.m. We at least are usually exhausted by then.

We welcomed a woman who had come to "make a poustinia," that is, to spend 24 hours of prayer in one of our poustinia rooms.

Then we grabbed our things and headed off for a swim, where the water washed away the tensions and fatigue of the day. After that we were ready to pray our evening rosary, the time when we throw everything that happened during the day at the feet of the Mother of God.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here instead is a thousand-word picture of MH Ottawa, a poustinia in the marketplace. The light does shine in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. Like John’s our life is all about bearing witness to that.

1Madonna House Ottawa is what MH calls a "poustinia in the marketplace." Poustinia is a Russian word which means "desert." It is also the word used to describe a desert spirituality of solitude, prayer, silence, and fasting.

The Russian poustinik is not a hermit. His door is always open to those who want to come closer to God. And because MH Ottawa is in the "marketplace," we live in the tension between the two. And sometimes our life seems more involved with people than with solitude.

2The Little Mandate is a 3x5 card which expresses the particular accent of the Gospel, the particular way of life, which Our Lord gave our foundress, Catherine Doherty, and which we of Madonna House strive to live.

MH Magadan

A HOUSE IN RUSSIA

by Miriam Stulberg

Ten years ago Marie Javora, Alma Coffman, and I arrived in Magadan, Russia. The founding of this house in Catherine’s homeland seemed a landmark in Madonna House history.

All three of us had a sense of adventure, of launching out into the unknown, of being in the hands of God and in the footsteps of our foundress. In addition, we each had a strong sense of personal pilgrimage, of a turning point in our lives.

In a letter congratulating us on our tenth anniversary, Alvina Voropayeva, the woman from Magadan who was instrumental in the opening of this house, wrote, " I remember how it all started, how people couldn’t believe that Madonna House could come to Magadan. And then it happened. Everyone brought somethingna frying pan, a pillow, a set of curtains.

"Marie, Alma and Miriam laughed and cried as they learned to deal with stores, markets, and an indescribable service that I can only call ‘the Housing Authority’"all so completely unlike their Canadian counterparts. They learned to eat salted herring and cook Russian borsch and pelmeni.

"It all started with everyday life"but that was only on the surface. In actual fact, it all started with prayer.… In apartment 19, ulitsa Proletarskaya, a lamp was hung before the icon of the Mother of God, and from that day, prayer has never ceased."

It was instant immersion. We were plunged into people’s lives and they filled our life. It felt like a privilege and was a determining factor in the way things evolved. We learned from everything and everyone.

Visiting someone’s house, we absorbed a lesson in generosity when we recognized the set of dishes to which two of our little donated crockery bowls belonged. I was convicted of my North American mentality when a good friend complained, "I can’t say anything to you without you wanting to fix it!"

Another time, when we were feeling a bit battered by the strong personalities around us, we were startled to hear one of those personalities tell us, "We’ve always been told how bad we are. That is why we need so much gentleness and affirmation."

We were stretched to the utmost limits and stripped of pre-set boundaries we didn’t know we had. We sensed these people were showing us how to live our own Madonna House spirituality, how to live "the Gospel without compromise."

We wanted to be able to love the way they loved. What we learned was that this quality of love had been forged in a fire of suffering, the scope of which we would never be able to fully appreciate.

Each of us then, and every one of us who has since lived in this house, have been confronted with this mystery of love and pain. How could it be otherwise in Magadan, considered by many to be the Auschwitz of Russia, where the spiritual battle continues with particular intensity even today?

I personally believe that it is this constant, hidden dimension, more than anything else, which has shaped our life and apostolate here.

As Jean Fox, our director general put it during her visitation here in December 1996 when she clarified for us our priorities: "Many, many people can do the distribution of goods, but very few can stand like a holocaust before the face of God and plead for mercy."

Not one of the staff who has ever been here is forgotten, and our friends would love nothing better than for the "whole family" to be united, even if only for a short while!

Just a few weeks ago, Olga Alekseyevna and Bronislava were remembering "gentle Katya" (Catherine Lesage) and Trudy Moessner, and Alma "who was right there with us" and Marie, "a kinder person I have never seen." Dr. Alexei and Inga asked for Raandi King.

To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we invited parishioners and other friends to an open house from 3-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, September 13th and 14th.

Galya Zyukova, a professional cook, showed us how to make inexpensive but delicious layer cakes from pre-packaged layers, spread with jam and sweetened concentrated milk. Saturday she made a fish pirog and on Sunday other friends helped us put together platters of cheese, salami, and bread. We also ordered a big "tort" for the parish tea after Sunday Mass.

Though we actually arrived in Magadan on September 23rd, we had chosen the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14th, for our Foundation Day. This feast expresses more about the relationship between our house and Magadan than we ourselves could ever articulate.

At the end of the liturgy, Fr. David Means , one of our parish priests, movingly thanked us for our life and our prayer and for our support of the priests and the parish.

Then Sushi Horwitz, Beth Holmes (who had just arrived the previous week) and I came to the microphone to express, each in her own way (and in Russian) our gratitude to God for bringing us to Magadan, and our gratitude to the people who have given us their hearts. "There is no greater gift," said Sushi.

At our open house and also at the parish tea, we tacked up big cardboard panels of photographs from each year from 1993-2003. These were instant hits. Most people who came to the house began by touring the display and then sat down to pirog or open-faced sandwiches, cake, tea, and visiting.

About 30 people joined us the first day and 25 the second, with some overlap. Most of the time they were spread out enough that we had the chance to visit with each.

Sushi had had the inspiration of setting up in the bedroom the 15-minute MH Magadan video (made for us in Novosibirsk, mainly from footage taken here last Christmas), and this helped to keep things flowing. Given the fact that we’ve been a threesome for less than two weeks, we moved surprisingly well together.

The people who came were a nice mixture of parishioners and non-churchgoing friends and neighbors. We were really happy to see Dima and Zhenia, who had helped us set up the apartment at the very beginning. An unexpected joy both days was the presence of a number of young people.

Our friends visited with us and with each other. When Galya Knol said apologetically, after she and two of her friends had been chatting away for half an hour, "We feel like this is our own home!" I remembered Marie’s words at the house blessing in 1993: "This house belongs to Our Lady, which means that it belongs to everyone!"

In the years that followed, we sometimes wondered about the prudence of those words, but we continue to do our very best to honor their spirit!

MH Windsor

A HOUSE AMONG REFUGEES

by Mary Beth Mitchell

Our house in Windsor, Ontario, a city across the river from Detroit in the States, is what we call "a prayer-listening house." This means that we are here mainly to pray for the people in the area and to be available to listen to them.

Over the past eight years or so, we’ve come to know many refugees from Sudan, where a terrible war is going on. In Sudan the north is generally Arab Muslim, and the south is black AfricanOChristian and Animist. The south is lush and rich in minerals, and the north is a desert. The north wants these resources and wants to eliminate the people who live there.

About 25 years ago, the Muslims started a "holy war" against the south. They believed that if they could get the people there to become Muslims, they could put them under Islamic law and then gradually take over their country.

But many of the Christians refused to deny Jesus, and so they’ve lost their homes, their opportunities for education and work, their health, their land, and in many cases, their lives. In fact, a systemic depopulation is taking place.

Plus oil has been discovered in the south. The Muslims of the North are taking this oil and using the profits for weapons to bomb hospitals, schools, and churches in the south.

Crucifixion has been reinstated for the death penalty, and men who refuse to become Muslim are crucified. Women and children are sold into slavery, and young men are inducted into the army, where the conditions of child-soldiers are horrendous. They are, for example, sent out without any protection to clear mine fields.

Most of the Western world is ignorant of this war.

Among the Sudanese refugees we’ve come to know well is a family we met six years ago. On their wedding day they were attacked, and they had to flee for their lives. They didn’t even get to open their wedding presents. After that they spent eighteen years on the go and in refugee camps. Finally they came to Canada.

We are now in contact with more than 65 families and 90 singles. These people do not speak to us about vengeance, but rather they thank God for their safety and pray for their families and friends who are still in Sudan.

They also pray for those who have persecuted them and driven them from their homes, because Jesus has told them to forgive their enemies and to do good to those who hate them. We learn an awful lot from them.

Renate Zanker, the other member of our two-person house, is from Germany and as a child, she herself suffered as a refugee. So her heart is especially open to the needs of these refugees.

She has spent days and days and daysSif you added them all up it’s probably months on endion the phone contacting people and trying to get Christian churches, especially Catholic ones, to help support these peopleoto "walk with them," to "partner" families, and to help them get settled here. But she hasn’t gotten a lot of response.

A couple of parishes have been extremely generous, but for the most part, people don’t get it, and there is still a lot of racism and discrimination in Windsor.

We’ve gone on job searches and job interviews with people. We walk in and say, "I’m from Madonna House. I phoned and you said that there was a possibility of a position for this man." Sometimes when they look at the man, they say, "I think that position has been taken."

Some people come and tell us that they’ve just received word that their father has died or their mother has been murdered, or that their uncle has been carted off to prison simply because he refused to renounce his belief in Christ. When this happens, we weep with them.

We’ve gotten to know two young men very well, and they have become a joy to us. One wonderful Canadian family has taken them on, is paying for their education, has them over for dinner and family events, and incorporates them into their family in many ways.

At a retreat for young people, these young men told their stories, and great things have happened as a result. The Canadian youth at the retreat had never met people who had suffered so much for their faith.

One of these young men will graduate soon with a degree in chemical engineering, and the other is in a nursing assistant program in college. They were both catechists in Nairobi, and they are absolutely horrified at the morals in Canada.

We do a lot of explaining. For example, the refugees watch a lot of television. and many of them don’t know the difference between reality and fiction in what they are seeing. They think that what they see is real. They have no use for liars, and so we we tell them that the television is a liar.

Another thing is that the Sudanese refugees don’t understand why some parishes are helping Muslim refugees. "The Muslims are killing Christians!" they say. We explain that these Muslims have been suffering, too, and are refugees in their own right.

And hearts are opened. One afternoon, for example, an eleven-year old who was attending one of our craft classes saw us stacking canned goods which were to be delivered to refugee families.

When the boy asked us how we would eat if we gave away all our food, we explained that people had given us this food and that it would help 35 Sudanese families. Amazed he went back to work on his craft. A little while later, he came back, and reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet. He gave us a five-dollar bill and said, "They need this more than I do."

One day the leader of the Sudanese community came and said, "I have a great burden. So many people are coming." We decided to sponsor a big Christmas party. We found an African priest, himself a refugee, to celebrate Mass and talk with them, and one parish paid for buses to bring people. Over 200 came, and for many it was the first Christmas celebration they had had in as many as eighteen years. When we saw how many people in need there were, we understood the leader’s burden.

On the practical level, there really isn’t a lot we can do for our friends. Oh, we’ve rounded up furniture and appliances and things like that, and we’ve tried to get other people involved, but mostly what they see as their great need is friendship.

But one of the difficulties with that is that Canadian people generally don’t have a lot of patience. Western people, forever in a hurry, usually don’t understand the importance of just sitting with people and learning about their culture. We spend a lot of time doing that.

Our Sudanese friends tell us that they’ve talked with many Sudanese who live in other Canadian cities, and "it’s only in Windsor that we have found a heart to come home to and that’s Madonna House.’

From our point of view, we see how impossible it is to fill their needs. But they say, "We’ve been in camps, we’ve lived in the forest, we’ve been hiding in Egypt, and we’ve been in Ethiopia. Thank God we are here now. We have food and a roof over our heads. We have heat in the winter, and we are safe."

One day I was agonizing: Lord, why are these people such victims? Why have they suffered so much abuse? Why is there so much abuse throughout the world? Why? Why? Why?

Deep inside I heard: Every selfish act leaves one or more victims.

Wow! Every selfish act leaves one or more victims. But on the other hand, every "yes’ to Jesus, every generous act done for love of him, sends a healing light throughout the universe, flooding it with glory.

I have a choiceIselfishness or generosity. What will it be today?

THOUGHTS FROM OUR HOUSES

About a year ago a local soup kitchen and drop-in center was closed for a few days. One of the men who visits us regularly came during that time in a state of great anxiety and said, "You know, when your whole daily schedule is around a place, it throws everything off when they’re not there."

That closing was unavoidable, and the place was soon reopened, but that man’s words got me thinking. How important it is just to be there!

Sometimes it’s hard for me to accept that the simple things we do every daySthings like answering the doorbell and telling someone what day it istare paths for God’s love and grace to touch people. I would like to do something more dramatic.

But I’m not anyone’s savior. There is a savior alreadyBJesus ChristJand he doesn’t need my agenda. He can reach anyone he wants.

He just needs my "yes," my surrender, to whatever person, situation or event he puts before me every day. My call to love God and my neighbor is all about surrendereto the duty of the moment, the person of the moment, the struggle of the moment.

Christine Herlihy

Maryhouse Yukon

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The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until it was leavened all through (Mt 13:33).

Yeast is hidden involvement, and that means all of us Christians. At Marian Centre, for example, anywhere from 60 to 130 men come here every day for stew. And there’s a lot of hidden involvement in those mealsrlike the lady who brings pickles to the back door, and the fellow who sends us $20 every month.

And I was thinking today about Linda Lambeth, who was my director of training (the Madonna House equivalent of "mistress of novices"). I was thinking about how Linda is part of the yeast of Marian Centre because she formed me. When she taught me to give my whole heart to the duty of the moment, whatever it is, she taught me how to feed the poor.

Our volunteers, too, are part of the yeast, obviouslyOthe people who chop the vegetables and make the sandwiches. Many of them are retired people.

And there are people who pray for us and offer their suffering for our work. It’s so humbling when they tell us that.

The people who are eating the stew don’t know it, but that stew is just packed with generosity and love. We staff also eat that stew, and if we could really see what we are eating, I think we would feel like we were at Mass.

Veronica Wanchena

Marian Centre Regina

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One of the lines of our Madonna House Little Mandate is "Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts."

That’s the hard part, the really hard part, of living this life at Marian Centre. It’s not comfortable to go into people’s hearts. We feel unworthy to go there, and we are. Sometimes we’re not welcomed. And if we find our way in, will we be able to get out? Going into someone’s heart is usually messy.

What deeper canyon or ocean can we find than the heart of a brother or sister? Whose heart isn’t or hasn’t been hurt? Whose heart isn’t an infinite, lonely hollow longing to be filled with love? And whose heart isn’t tentative or afraid or skeptical or even closed to receiving that which it most longs for?

And believe me, it’s not just the men, women, and children of the street, those whom we have come here to serve, who have these needy hearts. It’s also the members of Madonna House who live here, every one of us. And it’s every volunteer who comes to help us, every benefactor who comes with donations or sends gifts in the mail, and it’s our friends and those who pray with us and for us.

So how do we begin to go into the depths? Mostly we do so by the multitude of little acts we perform, and the words and prayers that we say in hidden love: giving a sandwich at the door, listening for a moment or for an hour, apologizing after a blow-up. And crying to God from our hearts for the thousandth time for blessings on the family member who annoys us the most.

The line of our Little Mandate at the beginning of this article finishes with the words, "I shall be with you." "Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts. I shall be with you."

Without that promise of God, we’d be fools to try to enter the heart of another. Even with it, we are fools and weaklings who depend on the Lord’s mercy and great blessing to cover us and all those whom we are trying to love.

*For an explanation of "Little Mandate," see the end of Martha Shepherd’s article

Patrick Stewart

Marian Centre Edmonton

My Dear Family

DO I REALLY LOVE?

by Catherine Doherty

I was once asked to speak to a group of religious about "forming a community of love." What I had to say was simple and pertained to what I consider to be the essence of things.

That essence is summed up in St. Paul’s beautiful hymn of charity: Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited. It is never rude and never seeks its own advantage

It does not take offence or store up grievances. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds joy in the truth. It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes (1 Cor 13:4-7).

No matter how long or how many times I meditate on that passage, I am awed by it. God seems to ask the impossible. We who are called to be his disciples, his followers, are asked to love one another with his heart. How can an ordinary person love with the heart of God?

Nevertheless this kind of love is the essence, the cornerstone, the foundation. It is the answer to all the questioning, confusion, turmoil, and unrest which are presently shaking us.

But first, foremost, and last, before we talk about our services to others, we need to ask ourselves: Have we begun to love the people in the community in which God has placed us? It may be a family, a lay apostolic community, a religious community, a parish, a village, a neighborhood. Have we begun to love the people we live with?

Communication must lead to communion. Before I can communicate lovingly with anybody, I have to be in communion with that person. Communion is a form of love. Do I really love? Do I really believe?

Unless we start with the conviction that we shall be recognized as Christ’s disciples only through loving as he loved us, all will be chaff in the wind.

From Living the Gospel Without Compromise, pp.47-48, available from MH Publications

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Men and women today are crying out for recognition. They want to be persons among other persons. They want to be noticed, not in an ostentatious way, not because they have money or don’t have money, but just because they are human beings, persons.

Each one is on a pilgrimage, seeking others like himself, others with the same needs. Factually, the need of people today is to be loved.

But we do not respond to this need in others. We pass by without even noticing one another. Without stopping. Without the slightest sign of recognition. That is why people come daily closer to despair, and why they frantically continue to search for the one who will give them love.

The search is for God. But God isn’t easily found if he isn’t reflected in the eyes of another. It is time that Christians began to take notice of everyone they meet. For each of them is their brother or sister in Christ.

Each must be "recognized." Each must be given a token of love and friendship, be it just a smile or just a nod of the head. And sometimes it may require the total availability of one person to another to fulfill a particular person’s hunger for God.

Such love must be given with deep reverence, irrespective of the status of the person encountered. Reverence, understanding, the hospitality of one’s heart—these are the immediate, intense needs of people today.

Are we Christians going to wake up and act as Christians, incarnating the laws of love, of Christ, into our daily lives, in real depth?

Or are we going to compromise and allow people to continue plunging into the dark of night, searching for someone to say, "My brother… my sister… I am here. Come. I have water and a towel. Sit down. Let me wash your tired feet that have pilgrimaged for so long. Yes, I am here. I know you. I revere you. I recognize you as my brother. I love you."

These meetings are the true crossroads both of time and of history. When we meet there, are we going to act like Christians or not?

Adapted from The Gospel Without Compromise, pp. 92-93, available from MH Publications.

MH Toronto

A HOUSE IN THE HEART OF A CITY

by Trudi Cortens

All of the mission houses of Madonna House have the same spirituality and way of life, but each is also unique—a different facet of the diamond. Our house in Toronto is one of the more active houses.

When people ask me what we do here, I answer, "We’re a house of hospitality or a friendship house"—depending who asks me. Some people can’t understand a house of hospitality, but they can understand friendship, and that is what we try to provide.

There are about four million people in Toronto, and 140 languages are spoken here. It is a city with many immigrants and refugees, some of whom need very practical help. They are away from their fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and that’s what we try to be for them.

Social agencies can provide certain things but not others, such as friendship. Sometimes it means helping them to open a bank account or showing them how to get around the city on the subway.

One day we got a phone call from a young woman who said, "I’m pregnant and have no money, no medical insurance, and no place to go. Will you help me?" I said, "Okay," and phoned Birthright. They, who never turn anybody away, said, "Sure, we’ll help her."

When I phoned her back and told her, I said to her, "I have one question: how did you get our number?" "I just arrived in Canada," she said, "and needed help. So I looked in the yellow pages of the phone book under Catholic organizations, and your number was the first one on the list. I knew that no Catholic organization would turn me down."

Other ways in which we help are mysterious. One night at about 11 o’clock a girl phoned and asked, "Is it a mortal sin to commit suicide?" I said, "Well, I don’t know. Who would want to commit suicide?" She said, "Me."

So I started to talk with her and I asked if we could go over and visit her. By then it was midnight, but she said, "Okay." Two of us went over and stayed with her until about 3 a.m. By that time she had talked herself out and had decided not to commit suicide.

I asked her how she knew about us. She wasn’t Catholic, she told us, but "Every time I passed your house, I said to myself, ‘good people must live in that house. Some time I must go there.’"

It must have been the Holy Spirit telling her that. Anyhow it saved her life.

People from all over the world pass through our doors, and some come because we are Madonna House. They’d like to go to Combermere, but Combermere is a little too far away.

We’re also a resource center. When people have a problemWwhen they need a lawyer, a doctor, a food bank, whateverowe try to connect them with whom or what they need. And we try to do it in a warm, friendly way.

Over the years we have gotten involved with a few groups and communities of people. Every Monday, one of the staff, Carol Ann Geiske, attends a prayer meeting with a group of about ten seniors. Fr. Jim Duffy, our chaplain, has become a spiritual father by mail to a community of Traveling People (Gypsies), and Irene, also on the staff, has learned sign language and is involved with the deaf community.

Many West Indians visit us. Since Irene De Roche is from the island of Carriacou, and both Fr. Duffy and I spent many years in the Caribbean, we are well known among the Catholics there, and we try to keep in touch with them.

Young people also come to our house. It’s hard for them to meet other young people, and our house has become a place where they can do so. They come, talk, once in a while have a meal with us, and are happy to have somewhere to go where they are able to talk about God and the things of God.

Fr. Duffy spends every morning before the Blessed Sacrament, thus providing a prayer power in the house. At noon we join him for the rosary and Benediction and then at 5:30 for Mass. A strongly Marian priest, Fr. Duffy has inspired many to consecrate their lives to Mary.

We see ourselves as evangelizers, and everybody who comes to our house goes out with something. We also mail books, tapes, and religious articles all over the world. Whenever priests visit from distant places like India or the Philippines, we load up their suitcases with those items.

So what do we do? Basically, like all our houses, we try to love and serve each other and every person who comes to our door.

The Pope’s Corner

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

by Pope John Paul II

Without genuine mutual love the family cannot live, cannot thrive, cannot develop as a community of persons. Such love brings the living gift of children and builds up mutual loyalty and fellowship with other families.

All this demands a great spirit of sacrifice and a generous willingness to understand, to forgive, to be reconciled, so preventing selfishness, discord, and tensions from striking root within the family circle.

Love is essentially a giving of oneself to others. Far from being an instinctive inclination, love is a conscious decision of the will to go out to others.

To be able to love properly, one must detach oneself from many things and above all from self. One must give freely; one must love to the end. This stripping away of selfpa long jobais laborious and exciting. It is the source of equilibrium. It is the secret of happiness.

Excerpted from Address to Families, May 24, 1987

———————-

Love is the constructive force for humanity’s every positive road. The future does not gather hope from violence or collective selfishness.

Deprived of love, we fall victim to an insidious spiral forever contracting the horizons of brotherhood while prompting each of us to make ourselves, our own ego, and our own pleasure, the only criteria of judgment. The egocentric point of view, the cause of the impoverishment of true love, gives rise to the worst snares present today in the world of the young.

Lack of love means yielding to indifference and skepticism. Lack of love means becoming enslaved to drugs and a disordered sexuality. Lack of love means surrendering ourselves to organizations based on violence and operating by illegal and high-handed means.

Excerpted from Address to the Young, May 24, l987.

One Man’s Scrap

Walking in the soft silence of our snow-covered woods, as I ponder the beauty of the world around me, I also carry the pain of the world in prayer. Of this I can be sure: "Christ is in our midst. He is and he always will be" (Byzantine Liturgy).

This faith is what makes it possible for us to carry on, to attend to the myriads of ordinary, sometimes monotonous, duties that are essential to our apostolate.

We are grateful that you are with us in our walk of faith—you who support us by your prayers and donations. And you cheer us by your own sometimes heroic lives. We are certainly in this together.

Your donations have been much appreciated in our mission shop where they earn money for the poor. The staff there would be very grateful to receive collectible chinaware, silver, brass or copper pieces, and religious goods such as statues and rosaries. Plus winter is polishing time in the shop. So if you have any Silvo or Brasso to spare, they would certainly make use of it.

The cooks have a few requests this month. They are wondering if you might have an extra thermometer or candy thermometer you could send. They would also like a couple of earmuff-type ear-protectors to wear when they use loud machinery. And lastly, they are asking for something quite specific: a replacement metal blade for their Cuisinart DLC-7 food processor.

The men’s winter work of cutting firewood, finishing the building of our new sorting building and just generally keeping things in working order, is progressing well. They are in great need of chainsaw safety pants, sizes 38, 40, and 42. The ones they are using have been patched so many times that they are almost a hazard themselves!

Other items needed by the men are square 6-volt lantern batteries, axe handles (single blade) and a small supply of self-adhesive vinyl tile flooring to line the shelves where we store our large cooking pots. Any color or pattern would do.

Do you still have a Kodak carousel projector around your house? We continue to use them at our archives. So if you have moved on to newer technology and would be willing to send us your projector, we could make good use of it, probably for years to come.

This is a reminder to keep our Cana families in mind. Last summer we began to collect large plastic storage boxes to store the gear and supplies out the reach of mice. We still need several more. Cana could also use some zippered pillowcases.

I’m sure that those of you who have been reading this column know by now that our office has an ongoing need for 81/2 x 11 paper. (They can use paper that is still good on one side as well as new paper.) They also need #10 envelopes (91/2 x 4) And they would like to try out a Presto jumbo correction pen.

The nurses who care for our elderly members are asking for large or extra-large incontinent briefs and medical examination gloves (medium or large). The more ordinary nursing needs are: plain expectorant, cough drops, and supplements: B-50 complex, high-potency multi-vitamins, vitamin D (400 I.U.), and vitamin C.

In this coming year, knowing that the light of Christ has come and can never be extinguished and that that light lives in our hearts, let us live in hope. Let us remain firm in our faith, and let us be generous in our love for one another.

In Our Lady f Combermere,

Jean Fox

Stella Maris House Portland

GO OPEN A POUSTINIA HOUSE

by Jean Fox

In the early 1970s Catherine Doherty, pointing to a poustinia on the island in Combermere, said to me, "Now you know about it. Go open a "poustinia in the marketplace."*

That is how she sent me to open the first "poustinia in the marketplace." At that time her book, Poustinia, had not yet been published, and few people had ever heard the word, "poustinia," let alone had any idea of what that kind of house was about.

I was sent to Portland, Oregon, a city where we had recently closed a house, to a neighborhood that was not interested in my mission. I went in obedience, trusting that this was God’s will.

But fear was brewing in me. It cast a chill through me those first few days. So much was this the case that at night as I crawled into bed, I turned up the heat on the electric blanket even though the weather was warmer than the Canadian winters I was used to.

I wondered if I could somehow find the faith that Catherine had, the faith that moved her to throw somebody like me into a situation like this.

But many people were praying for this mission, and little by little, doors opened.

The first few days, I stayed at a local convent. Then one day someone from the diocese took me to lunch and asked what I was about. Over a hamburger and coffee, he listened to the cry of my heart, and then he asked for my credentials.

I showed him my only credential—a 3x5 card called "The Little Mandate."*

He found us an ideal house for $82.50 a month, and the rent never changed. I found out later that he was a former Friendship House person. (FH is a community Catherine founded prior to Madonna House).

We who live in an apostolate that gives everything away soon began to realize that whatever we needed mysteriously showed up. Linens, food, a toaster, cleaning supplies, everything to make a home, appeared without us specifically begging for them. But only what we needed came.

We received, for example, one spatula, not two. The fact that these household items came from the poor, the middle class, and the not-so-middle class, floored me. I stood in the middle of that house one day and cried out to God, "Forgive me for not having faith."

One day, in those early days, I said to my fellow staff worker, Kim, "We need our lawn cut. We don’t have a lawnmower. What are we going to do?" Then I heard myself say, "I know what we are going to do!" We went to the chapel, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, and we prayed like little children, "Jesus, we need our grass cut. Please help us."

Some men who ran a soup kitchen had invited us to breakfast. We didn’t know them. When we met, the head of the group asked, "Do you need anything?"

"We need our grass cut," I said.

"This afternoon," he responded, "I’ll send two fellows out to do it."

I have never forgotten how God provided for us even in our most miniscule needs. God takes care of everything if we trust him. I believe with all my heart that God is bending over each of us and asking, "What do you need?" Not "What do you want?" but "What do you need?" God is saying, "I am here. I am your Father. I have promised you. Come to me. Ask me. Trust me."

*For an explanation of "poustinia in the marketplace," and "Little Mandate," see the end of Martha Shepherd’s article.

Adapted from Inflamed by Love, pp.36-38, available from MH Publications

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

Christ laid down his life for us. We too must lay down our lives for our brothers (1 Jn 3:16).

A tall order. An impossible order! It can only be possible through the power of the risen Christ.

Instinctively everything in us rebels, recoils, and shrinks from any kind of death. So naturally we rebel, recoil, and shrink from the death to self which happens when we live for others. In moments of clarity—when we see what is asked of us—we want to run away, to hide, to forget.

Then even if, for love of God, we choose to act in love, our own immense need of healing and of love can rise to the surface to overwhelm us. Prostrate before the Lord, we ask: "How can I feed others, I who am so hungry myself? How can I show compassion to others, I who am so in need of compassion myself? What can I give to others, I who am so empty myself?"

Paradoxes. Mysteries. And the clear voice of Christ continues to pierce our hearts like a sword: The man who loses his life… shall find it (Mt 10:39). I am with you until the end of time (Mt 28:20).

It is in the very experience of our weakness that we come to experience the presence of the living Christ and come to know his healing power. As St. Paul put it: And that is why I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ’s sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong (2 Cor 12:10).

Through faith, though we may not feel it, we know that the power of Christ is within us. And it is through the power of Christ that we very weak people can bring love and compassion to others.

We know God in mystery, and often it is only in the darkness of faith that we stutter, "God is love. God is light. God is power."

How God works in us we hardly know. We just receive light and strength for the next step, and like trusting children, we hold God’s hand and follow, follow, follow.

We are little, weak, and sinful, but great is our God and great is the power of his love in which we live and move and have our being.

Adapted from The Power of Love, pp. 79-81, available from MH Publications.