Lent

THE CRY IN OUR HEARTS

by Catherine Doherty

Catherine usually began preparing the community for Lent immediately after the Christmas season. In fact, she often began the day after Epiphany!

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We are, strangely enough, already beginning to think about Lent. We go from one liturgical season to another. We might as well prepare ourselves for Lent because we have to connect the crib with the cross.

Both are made of wood. I have often wondered why Christ became a carpenter. Maybe it was so that he could intimately feel the wood on which he was going to die. But that’s just imagination.

Still, his incarnation preceded his crucifixion, which in turn preceded his resurrection, and in his resurrection is our hope.

In his incarnation we can be incarnated; in his crucifixion we can be crucified; then we will be part of his resurrection.

Suppose we just listen to our hearts for a while. Deep down in some corner of each heart is a cry of God: My people, what have I done to you (that you treat me the way you do)? (Micah 6:3). For he said, Whatever you do to the least of my brethren you do to me (Mt 25:40). Whatever way we treat others is the way we’re treating God. What about the way we treat each other?

As ordinary average citizens we might be concerned about the poverty in Afghanistan or in West Africa, but are we also concerned about the poverty around us? The tenements of Harlem? The poverty around Toronto? What about the little slums of New Brunswick, and the deep slums of Paris and Glasgow?

We talk about poverty. It’s fine to talk, but it’s also time to repent—even from our talk, when there is something hypocritical in it. We want to repent for the sins of omission and commission that we have so long allowed our governments to commit on a large scale, and that we have committed on a different scale ourselves, thoughtlessly. But at the same time, we are playing with words. We really are.

To repent is to make new, in a sense. It’s really a miracle. It’s as if my soul were a dirty dish that I would like to throw into the garbage can. But instead I look at it and tell myself that it can be cleaned. So I proceed to clean it, in other words, to repent. It takes a lot of cleaning because there is a lot of embedded dirt.

That cry of God in our hearts becomes louder and louder, a cry not only to wash our souls this Lent, but to change our style of living—for good. It’s not enough to have seven weeks of fasting and abstinence and cleansing. The change must be forever. Every day Christ incarnates himself in us and we in him.

The cry in our hearts for change becomes louder and louder, so that even if Epiphany (which means manifestation) is behind us, the manifestation of Jesus Christ will be continuously taking place in our lives.

The "gentiles" of today practice mortification and penance beyond our wildest imagination. Buddhists fast and pray extensively. Muslims fast during Ramadan, which is equivalent to our Lent. During that time, they do not take water and barely swallow their saliva from early morning when the light dawns until night. And they work while they are fasting. At night they eat. But are we Catholics fasting?

I remember that when the Church took away the regulations about fasting, our elderly neighbor said, "My God, what are the Protestants going to think of us? We used to be able to say to them, ‘We are fasting, if you please. You are doing nothing during Lent’."

Fasting from candy, movies, sex, smoking, drinking and so forth, are only preliminary approaches to Lent. But we have to go into them: in order to control our appetitesFthe "passions," the medievalists called themtand give ourselves to God instead of to fulfilling them.

What is our Christian faith and life all about? It’s all about love. Sometimes we do not love each other because our minds are cluttered with a thousand thoughts, most of them self-centered. So how do I, at long last, truly begin to think about the other?

How do I fast from my will and accept God’s will? For what I live out is often not the will of God, but rather my will, my manipulation, or your will, your manipulation of meHif I am a little weaker than you are.

How long does it take to say, "Lord, I don’t know anything, and without you I can do nothing. Help me to speak your words, not mine." How long does it take to do that? It takes a lifetime.

Now begins the long pilgrimage to the Passover: the abandoning of my will, the surrender of my deepest inward person to the Holy Spirit in a totality of surrender that has some kind of beginning but knows no endNthe surrender in which I really offer myself to the Holy Spirit and say, "Now do with me as you will. Cleanse me. Open my ears so that I can hear what you tell me."

Do we do that? This is the pilgrimage we must begin.

Adapted from Season of Mercy, pp 11-13, available from MH Publications.

Combermere Diary

BLESSINGS IN WINTER

by Paulette Curran

Winter in Combermere is long, cold and beautiful. And snow is very much a part of it.

The men spend countless hours snow-blowing and shoveling it, pulling it off roofs with special long-handled rakes, and sprinkling the paths with sand so that we don’t slip and fall.

That these are acts of love is especially apparent when the snow falls during the night, and we leave our dorms to find the paths to the chapel and main house already shoveled and sanded.

Snow also provides our winter asceticism, what we call "boots on, boots off." For since our lives are lived in several buildings and we use outdoor jons, we are continually putting on and taking off bootswand coats and hats and mitts and scarves!

Our first snowfall this year which was heavy and wet, bent and broke tree limbs, branches and even some whole trees. A few of these landed on power lines causing an electrical outage which lasted almost two days.

For the most part, however, snow is a blessing. It insulates the earth and provides water for all living things. It softly carpets the frozen earth and dapples the trees, giving brightness and beauty to a landscape that would otherwise depress with its grays, browns and dark greens. Yes, snow is a blessing.

God continually gives us many blessings, great and small. Though we fail to even notice many of them, sometimes we publicly acknowledge one. One of our big blessings certainly is Albert Osterberger, who has served as director general of men for seventeen years.

As the director general of women, Jean Fox said in a letter to the staff, "Albert has brought gifts of great practicality, know-how, and organization into the work of the men….. (Under his leadership) St. Mary’s and Loreto House (both of which had very different functions before we acquired them) were restored and transformed."

Now that he has "retired" from the job, the men’s department had a special supper for him. At that supper, Mike Huffman, one of the directors of St. Mary’s, paid him tribute:

"One of your greatest gifts, I think, is patience. You have stood by me during some difficult times, times when I was ready to run away or worse. You have not always known exactly what I needed, but your trust in Our Lord and Our Lady has been the underpinning, and God has turned our frail efforts into something much greater."

Another blessing is the fact that MH Publications sales got a boost during Advent. EWTN radio somehow heard about our CD of Advent music and phoned MH Publications to ask if they could use it on their station. They were told "yes" and then besides playing the music, they also did a live interview of Marian Heiberger. Almost immediately, MH Publications received 40 telephone orders for the CD!

Still another blessing is that a nearby parish at Latchford Bridge, which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year, put on an appreciation supper for our MH priests, who have been covering this mission parish for 47 years.

At the supper a parishioner, Noreen Helferty, spoke movingly of how the MH priests not only baptized their children, witnessed their marriages and celebrated their funerals, but dropped in to visit them and "laughed with them in their joys and cried with them in their sorrows."

Advent, a season we in Madonna House celebrate fully, is full of blessings, and some of these come through the feasts of Advent. One of these feasts is Our Lady of Guadalupe, and this year it was especially lovely, for it had been decided to focus it more on Our Lady.

The day began with a procession to the island chapel at 7 a.m.Ta quiet procession so as not to wake Our Lady! Then according to a Mexican custom, we sang las mañanitas* before the picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe which we had put in front of the altar and surrounded with lighted candles.

Next was a time of quiet prayer during which one after another of us spontaneously led a hymn or prayer. The atmosphere was holy.

Then we had our usual morning prayer after which we brought the picture back to the dining room so that Our Lady of Guadalupe would be at the center of our lives all day. (We mailed out the January issue of Restoration in the dining room that morning.)

In the evening we had our traditional Mexican supper followed by a fiesta, which was composed of a skit by three of our priests telling the story of the apparition, a presentation of a Mexican folk dance, and a time of playing board games.

But the biggest blessing of winter is, of course, Christmas which is, after Easter, the biggest feast of the year. For twelve days we celebrated with Masses, prayer, food, color, decorations, etc., etc., and sang over and over in many forms and languages, the joyful proclamation, "Christ is born!"

Blessings in the form of visitors included Jack and Jean Ann Sharp of the Bethlehem Community, an ecclesial community from North Dakota (a Baptist community that came into the Church). Also as a result of one of our book tables which we mentioned in last month’s "Combermere Diary," 25 high school students from Pembroke (a city over an hour away) came to learn more about MH.

We receive little blessings all the time. Here are some more of them: We saw three videos about Korean culture (borrowed from the Korean Embassy in Ottawa). The applicants had another day of recollection. Four of our farmers and gardeners attended a conference on organic farming and gardening. On St. Nicholas Day, an unidentified St. Nick put candy in our boots!

In Canada as in other countries with long winters, it’s easy to feel depressed in February when winter seems to be going on forever. But without our long winter, would we feel such joy in early spring at the very sound of melting snow? Without Lent to help make us aware of our sinfulness and utter need for God, could we rejoice in the saving miracle of the resurrection?

And our joy is not only in anticipation. For our heavenly Father, like earthly fathers, delights in giving his children little joys all along the way. What, for example, is more of a cheer-up than a cloudless winter day when sunlight fills the sky and sparkles on the snow? Especially when that day comes after a spell of cloudiness in February.

*In Mexican custom, las mañanitas are songs sung in early morning, usually by a group, to waken someone. They are sung as an expression of love to celebrate a special occasion, such as a saint’s day, a birthday, Mother’s Day, or an anniversary.

My Story

A DIVINE RESTLESSNESS

By Mary McGoff

When I look back on my life, it seems pretty ordinary. I grew up in a stable Catholic family in a suburb of Indianapolis, a Midwestern American city.

Throughout my life I have had what I call "moments of grace," experiences that have led me towards God. The first was when I was a little kid, probably around my first Communion time.

My main memory of Mass back then was of being bored and fidgetty, but one day during the Consecration, I had a moment of awareness. I knew that God was there. It only lasted a moment, but something struck my heart and remained as a spark in me.

I was a child in the sixties, right after Vatican II, when the Church was in a state of upheaval. In my Catholic school, they got rid of the Baltimore Catechism but had as yet nothing to replace it with. I don’t even remember learning to say the rosary.

In church, they took out the old hymns, and for years we sang the same sixteen songs. They were the only new ones we had. There was also a feeling of confusion and discontent, which I picked up from the adults.

What they did teach us was to love everybody. Plus it was the time of the Vietnam War, the anti-war protests, desegregation, race riots, and student riots, and our teachers tried to make our religion classes "relevant."

Indianapolis had not been legally segregated, but it had what was called "de facto" segregation. In my neighborhood, for example, everybody was white, and people started saying, "That’s wrong."

In one project that my school took part in, our eighth grade class spent a day in an all-black school while the eighth grade class in that school spent a day at ours. That was a very good memory. I felt as if I were a part of the movement going on and that I was taking part in something good.

But at about the same time we heard that a black family was planning to move into our parish, and a lot of people were not happy about this. When I saw that, I felt that the adults around me were hypocrites, that whereas they had been teaching us about love, they weren’t practicing it themselves.

That hit me hard—so hard that I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of their hypocrisy. I stopped going to church, and except for the times my parents made me go, I didn’t go all through high school.

My second "moment of grace" happened during that time, a time when a lot of unrest was stirring in my heart.

When I went to bed at night, I would pray. Well, some people wouldn’t have called it prayer. It went like this: I’d say, God, if you’re anywhere out there, look at this world. Look at this mess. Then I’d continue, We’re down here. We’re here. We’re here. Then: I’m here. I’m here. That was my cry every night for a couple of years.

I needed security and stability. I needed values I could believe in. I decided to go to the state university. That first year I did everything. I joined all sorts of clubs, and I dated, made good grades, and worked part-time. At the end of the first year, I felt good. I thought, Now I’m making my own way, making my own life.

But as I started my second year that changed to, Last year was all right. But is that what life is about? Is that where I want my life to go? Mostly I felt empty. And I wanted some answers.

In my dorm there were some really solid Catholic women who kept inviting me to go to church with them. Finally, touched by their sincerity, I did.

The Mass at the college was at midnight and then people would stay up all night playing volleyball or ping-pong. And there was a priest available to talk to.

Then these women invited me to go on a retreat. That was my third graced moment. At the retreat they gave out buttons with the words, "God Don’t Make Junk." We weren’t given them to wear right away, but were told to put them in our pockets. Then at different times during the weekend, we were encouraged, if we were ready, to put the button on.

That cry of my heart, I’m here, came back to me. And other words kept going through my heart: God knows I’m here. He wants a personal relationship with me. I’m worthy of that. He doesn’t make junk. He wants me just the way I am.

I couldn’t believe how hard it was to put that button on. After all, I didn’t think I was junk. I had a pretty good self-image.

Then I started thinking, This is God. Maybe I haven’t been the best person.

I realized that I couldn’t put that button on until I was ready to believe in and accept the tender mercy of God. So when I did, it changed my life.

After that I was fortunate that there was a strong prayer group in my college to support and encourage me to move with this new grace. For the rest of my college years I stayed very involved with the Catholic Student Center.

Finally I graduated with a degree in accounting. Ready to make my way in the world, I returned to Indianapolis, got a job, an apartment and a car. I stayed connected with my Catholic friends, and I volunteered with the youth group in my parish.

Things were going very well, but after a while, there came a restlessness.

I asked myself, When do I feel the most in God’s will? And the most fulfilled in terms of my gifts and talents? The answer that came was: when I’m working with the young people in the parish.

I was doing well at my job, and there was a possibility that I would have to go back to school to do more studying. And I thought, If I have to go back to school, I’d much rather work with young people than with finances.

So I listened to the cry in my heart and quit my job. It was a big step, but a graced one. It felt very right.

I entered a two-year pastoral studies program at Loyola University in Chicago and worked as a youth minister part-time in different parishes. Then I returned to Indianapolis and got a job as a youth minister where I worked for four years.

That was a wonderful time in my life. I had been converted by teenagers, and now I was working with them in the hope that they could have good experiences of Church and know God, and then go and convert others. And I loved working with young people.

But once again, when I had lots going for me, moments of restlessness came upon me. I knew I had to listen to them, and that I needed time and quiet to do so.

I had heard about a place in Canada, a Catholic lay community, where you could live, work and discern. I couldn’t remember the name, but when I called my old campus minister, he said, "Oh, that’s Madonna House."

So I came to MH for three weeks in the summer of `85. It was supposed to be a vacation. I thought, I can’t believe this! I could be sitting on a beach somewhere. I could be doing my discerning without mopping a floor and weeding the strawberry patch.

But I stayed. And by the third week I finally got quiet enough inside to hear what was happening in my heart. What was happening was joy! It was a joy to go to church, and it was a joy to be reading my Bible again. There was so much support, and my spirit was just drinking it in.

I said to myself, I think I may need community life. I have to look at this seriously. So I went back to Indianapolis and visited several communities of women religious.

The ones I visited were very welcoming, but I found myself comparing them to Madonna House. Wanting to learn more about Madonna House, I returned there as a long-term guest.

After about eight months, when I looked into my heart I saw there, instead of restlessness, a deep peace and great joy. That’s how I knew that God had shown me my vocation. Rejoice with me that I was able to say "yes."

Word Made Flesh

THE BEST MOVIE I EVER SAW

by Fr. Pat McNulty

Back when I was a kid in the late 1930s and early’40s we had those good "old time movies" featuring folk like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (always on the road to somewhere), Dianna Durbin, young Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, and of course, the Three Stooges. Not to mention all those wonderful Westerns!

Back then the movies were pretty simple. When our family of ten talked about them, there wasn’t much to disagree about.

As times changed and movies got "better," however, this was no longer the case. In most circles today, if you want to discuss your favorite movie, you might want to consider taking a course in cinema sanity in order to survive the intense discussion which will likely ensue.

Though at Madonna House, we’re not movie buffs and movie discussions are not at the center of our meals together, we do watch a video once in a while.

And we have learned that if the subject of movies comes up, we have to keep in mind that we vary tremendously in age and culture and, of course, in personal likes and dislikes.

So we can tell you all from painful experience that one absolute rule for the discussion of movies is: never say, "it was the best movie I ever saw." If you do, even if it was a movie of the second coming of Christ, someone will argue with you.

"Oh, it was okay, but it really isn’t my kind of movie." "It was okay, but there was too much violence." "I didn’t care for the person who played the part of Christ."

(If you don’t believe me, try it with a perfect stranger at a public coffee counter, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

And yet we can testify that astonishing things can happen as a result of intense conversations at our dinner table. (In our faith-mandate we call this, "going without fear into the depth of men’s hearts.")

Not too long ago, as a result of a table-discussion about a movie, for example, a young guest and I met later in the evening. As we "discussed the discussion," which had been something of a "disaster," the Holy Spirit guided us into another depth, which turned out to be the beginning of this person’s return to faith.

But even before I came to Madonna House I had some powerful experiences of how a "disastrous" discussion can become, through the Holy Spirit, an instrument of truth and healing.

When I was teaching religion to seniors at a Catholic high school, I had arranged that one unit of my class time each semester consist of open discussion. That meant about one class a week for six to eight weeks. Each person was free to state his or her opinion, which was then challenged or discussed by the class.

And if the discussion wasn’t "off" theologically or morally, I usually kept my opinion to myself so as not to dampen the discussion.

Between 1965 and 1975 movies were going through major change, and the class decided to use the discussion time to talk about movies and how they affected their lives.

One day the discussion turned to a movie about which I had voiced a very strong negative opinion elsewhere than in school. My obvious distance from the discussion prompted one of my students to ask, "Father, didn’t you tell my mom and dad that you thought that this was one of the worst movies of 1970? I thought it was really ‘cool’."

(Cool? Wrong word, Mr. Niezer. After all I had tried to teach in the classroom that year about our life in Christ, his comment made me hot!)

But to understand my reaction, you need to know that this was a movie about two very naïve young people (quote) falling in love (unquote), breaking away from family dependency (he had a nasty wealthy father), getting out of the North American "social caste system" (she was from the other side of the tracks).

Then making a "good" life for themselves on their own (but where did they get the money for such a plush New York apartment?) and dealing with the untimely death of the young wife (whose disease was so rare they didn’t have a name for it).

It was bad enough that nothing in the movie was real in terms of how real people live, but the clincher for me was the closing line. I think it was the last line that the young dying wife was able to "gurgle." And everybody in that classroom who had seen the movie seemed to cherish that line as if it came from Sacred Scripture: "Love means never having to say you are sorry."

"Mr. Niezer,," I said, "Love Story was not only the worst movie of 1970 but very probably the worst movie I have ever seen! And I pray to God daily that there not be a sequel!"

Well, I didn’t realize how intense their response would be in favor of this movie. By now the class was on the edge of an open rebellion!

So, I grabbed the Bible from my desk and flipped it open to the reading for the following Sunday which I had already been praying about because I was to give the sermon on that day. It was from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. My "call to attention" for the class was the first line of chapter 13.

Loud and clear, I read, If I have all the eloquence of men and angels, but speak without love, I am simply a noisy gong or a banging cymbal….

There I was, sinning against the very words I was reading, but I continued anyway until I had read the whole chapter, all 13 verses. As I read I knew something was happening to my heart. But when I finished, I was expecting that typical senior-in-high-school gastronomical response of "Yuk!"

But, to my utter surprise, from the middle of the muddle came a voice saying, "Father, would you read that again?"

Not only did I read it again, but after I read it, we all read it together, out loud. (In the good ole days all our senior high school students brought a copy of at least the New Testament to religion class.)

At the end of the common reading somebody said, "Man, that would make a really good movie!" The Holy Spirit had just taken care of the rebellion and the discussion!

And out of that intense, opinionated, fiery discussion the same Holy Spirit provided a whole unit for our discussion days the next semester.

And do you know how that unit was created? I asked for a volunteer to choose a single line from Chapter 13 of that letter by St. Paul’s and to read it aloud at the beginning of the class. Then that line became the primary focus of our discussion that day.

By the end of that unit almost everyone in the class realized that "never having to say you’re sorry" may be Hollywood’s idea of love, but if you want know God’s idea of it, start with chapter 13 of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

So when this chapter from St. Paul showed up on the list of scriptural options for my column this time, I couldn’t resist it. And as I read it over and over, out loud, it was like watching a movie of that religion class back in the high school. It was the best movie I ever saw!

And, I know you are probably tired of hearing me say this but: do not hesitate to read your favorite bible passages out loud! There is power in speaking God’s word and there is power in hearing God’s word even if there is nobody else around but you. This chapter from St. Paul is an excellent example. Very powerful! Try it! You’ll never have to say you were sorry! (Ooooops.)

1 Corinthians 13 is the second reading for February 1st, the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

MH Combermere

THE SPIRITUALITY OF A CARROT

by Denis Lemieux

If you were to take a stroll around the cemetery where fifteen or so members of our community lie in wait for the last trumpet call of the resurrection, you would see the wooden crosses which serve as their headstones. And you might notice on some of these crosses, along with the name of the person and the epitaph, a special added image.

Irene Toupin, for example, has a pysanky on her cross. Irene excelled in making these intricate Russian Easter eggs, which are symbols of resurrection joy. And Edie Scott has a rainbow on hers, the rainbow having been for her a symbol of hope in times of darkness.

Well, I’ve decided what I want on my cross. I’ve decided what symbol best expresses for me joy, hope, faith, love, or whatever other spiritual quality leaps to mind. I want a carrot! Yep, a plain, old, bright orange, garden-variety, Bugs-Bunny-chomping, everyday carrot. (Tastefully carved by one of our Madonna House artists, of course.)

Why, might you ask, would I want such an unusual and unattractive object to mark my final resting place? It’s hardly a traditional liturgical symbol. The illuminated manuscripts done by medieval monks are, to the best of my knowledge, carrot free.

Neither St. Thomas Aquinas nor St. John of the Cross composed poems with stanzas devoted to the mystical qualities of this common root vegetable, and the lover in the Song of Songs never once showered his beloved with a bushel of carrots. In fact, Scripture remains silent on the whole matter of the spirituality of vegetables.

Carrots, however, have come to occupy a privileged place in my personal symbolic universe. At a recent meeting of our community, the question was posed: What set your heart on fire for this vocation?

Well, eighteen years ago, when I first came to Madonna House, my heart was set on fire, in a manner of speaking, through peeling vegetables every evening in the Madonna House basement.

(After supper, while the women are doing dishes, the men guests prepare the vegetables for the next day. Since our diet is light on meat and heavy on vegetables, and we are 70-80 people, we’re talking lots of vegetables!)

That first summer, when I was nineteen and hardly knew which end of the paring knife went into the carrot and which into my hand, I journeyed from indifference (Who cares about carrots?) to annoyance (Why does that so and so in charge this week keep making me do the same carrot twice or even three times?) to boredom (If I see one more carrot, on my cutting board or on my plate, I’ll scream!) to acceptance (Well, someone’s gotta do it, and I do like to eat them!)

By the end of August, though, a seed (a carrot seed?) had been planted in me, a seed that in the ensuing years grew into something quite a bit bigger than any of the above-mentioned attitudes.

I had come to MH from a diocesan seminary where I had been well-catechized but poorly evangelized. I knew the content of my faith, but not how to live it.

Living the Gospel? That was what Mother Teresa was doing, and I was a long way from Calcutta in more ways than one.

But carrots? I can live the Gospel by peeling carrots? Serve God by weeding the potato patch? Become a saint by plunging into the endless tasks that life deals out: cleaning, fixing, filing, digging, cooking?

And so a little fire began to burn in my heart, a little flame of hope, of joy, of faith, and of love. Maybe even poor little old me could find a place to serve, to love and be loved at the heart of the ordinariness of human life. Carrot in hand, even poor little old me could enter the world of the Gospel.

What I finally came to understand is that there is nothing abstract about the Gospel. There is no idea or system as the heart of the Christian religion. Rather Christianity is a person, the person of Christ, who loves and gives himself to the Father for us, totally and absolutely, once for all, in time on the cross, and in an ever-present way in eternity.

And in his gift of the Spirit, he invites us to enter with him into his gift of self, to add our own selves, through grace, with him in one offering to the Father.

Because there is nothing abstract about this, we offer our gift ("through, with, and in him") in the only concrete and incarnate way we can: namely through the manner in which we live the moment we are living right now, at this moment.

Suddenly that little carrot takes on a bit more importance, doesn’t it? And for that matter, that dirty diaper, that sink of dishes, that paperwork, that person you’re talking to, that car you’re driving.

If Christ is for real, and if the gift of the Spirit is for real, in other words, if our religion is not just a pack of fairy tales and lies, then whatever the present moment holds for you is, in its deepest reality, a moment for you to unite the gift of your life with the gift of Christ’s life, all making together a gift of love and self-surrender to the Father. In fact, the Father, who loves us so much, made us precisely to do this.

And how do we do this? Through love. Love means peeling the carrot well. It means cutting carefully and with concentration so that you don’t throw away the good parts along with the peel and rotten parts.

Love means doing the task of the moment the best you can (Wash those dishes! Change that diaper!) with as generous and cheerful a spirit as you can manage. We may not always do it with the perfection of good cheer, but God does ask us to try.

Love means trying to obey the traffic laws, and not swearing at the other drivers when they don’t. It means putting people before things. It means listening as well as talking and treating waiters and salespeople like human beings rather than machines. It means being honest in our dealings, being slow to anger and quick to forgive the people we live with, and so on and so forth.

Finally, love means saying you’re sorry when you fail at any of the above.

All of this is not just "being a good person," though it certainly is that, but rather it is our life of union with Christ, in the Spirit, an offering of ourselves to our Father. It means a life which will reach its fullness in the resurrection of the dead, and will be our glorious reality forever.

Yes, I want a carrot on my cross. I want it as a symbol of the glory of eternal life, a glory which begins now at the heart of the ordinary, the everyday, the garden-variety, the ho-hum.

What symbol do you want on your tombstone?

The Pope’s Corner

GIFTS FREELY GIVEN

by Pope John Paul II

With the whole Church we begin on Ash Wednesday a 40-day journey in preparation for Easter. With the austere sign of the imposition of ashes coupled with the word of Christ, "Repent and believe in the Gospel," the Church reminds every human being of his condition as sinner and the need for repentance and conversion.

Christian faith reminds us that this pressing call to reject evil and do good is the gift of God, from whom comes every good thing for human life. Everything begins with the free initiative of God, who creates us for happiness and directs everything towards its true good.

With his grace, he precedes our own desire for conversion, and he accompanies our efforts to adhere fully to his saving will.

Lent is a providential time for conversion because it helps us to contemplate this stupendous mystery of love, on account of which Jesus exhorts us: You received without pay; give without pay (Mt 10:8).

We can see how the Lenten journey is shown in its deepest reality as a return to the roots of our faith, so that by pondering the measureless gift of grace which is redemption, we cannot fail to realize that all has been given to us by God’s loving initiative.

The apostle Paul expresses with incisive and timely phrases the free giftedness of the grace of God, who reconciled us with himself out of love. In fact he reminds us, Why one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:7-8).

That God who in his immense love created us, and who also out of love destined us to full communion with himself, awaits from us a similar generous, free and conscious response.

The journey of conversion that we confidently undertake on Ash Wednesday enters fully into this original exchange of love and free gift. Are not the almsgiving and the charitable activity which we are invited to perform, particularly during this season of penance, a response to the free gift of divine grace? If we have received a free gift, it is with a free gift that we should give back (cf. Mt 10:8).

Today’s society has a deep need to rediscover the positive value of free giving, especially because in our world what often prevails is a logic motivated exclusively by the pursuit of profit and gain at any price.

Reacting to the widespread feeling that the logic of the market’s profit motive guides every choice and act, and that the law of the greatest possible profit must prevail, Christian faith proposes again the idea of free giving, founded on the intelligent freedom of human beings inspired by authentic love.

We entrust these forty days of intense prayer and penance to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Fair Love. May she guide us and lead us to celebrate worthily the great mystery of the Passover of Christ, supreme revelation of the free and merciful love of our heavenly Father.

Excerpted from a talk at a general audience, February 13, 2002.

DO YOU REALLY WANT THIS?

by Cheryl Ann Smith

Imagine this scenario: someone invites you to speak about the thing that has consumed your heart and life for years—to neophytes, elders, spiritual masters, and everyone in between—and to do it in fifteen minutes! The topic was prayer, and this intriguing challenge was offered to me during our last summer program.

Where to start? In all simplicity, I asked the Holy Spirit to root through my own spirit, and to bring forth the three truths that have most sustained my life of prayer.

The first word that emerged was "desire," and with it, this powerful story from the Desert Fathers. A young monk approached his spiritual father with this plea: "Abba, Father, teach me how to pray." Looking at him with a penetrating gaze, the older man probed, "Do you really want this?"

"Oh yes," the young monk replied quickly. Without another word, the elder led him to a nearby river where they waded in up to their waists. Then laying his hand on the younger man’s head, the teacher pushed him under the water.

At first the young monk wondered what was going on and what this had to do with prayer. His analyzing soon stopped, however, because he needed a breath of air. He started to rise out of the water, but to his shock, the old man kept him submerged. Wondering if this was an accident, he tried again to rise, but again, he was held down.

Finally, desperate for a breath, the young monk thrashed about and, with his last bit of strength, threw off the elder’s hand. Greedily, hungrily, desperately, he filled his lungs with air. Again and again, he drew in huge gulping breaths. When he finally recovered, he looked reproachfully at the old man for an explanation.

"When you want to pray as much as you wanted that breath," his abba said quietly, "you will pray."

What about us? Do we want prayer more than life itself?

Prayer is desire, our desire and love for God meeting his desire and love for us. If we desire God, we are already united with him. If we desire prayer, we are praying. But we cannot fool ourselves: we must desire it desperately.

Otherwise we’ll find ourselves hedging: Yes, I want to pray, but today I’m too tired-or too busy-or too discouraged. Or when difficulties emerge in prayer, we will give up. But when we want prayer badly enough, we’ll do anything to "gulp in that air."

After watching Jesus lost in prayer for so many nights, after seeing him seem to need prayer more than food or sleep, the disciples asked him how to pray. But rather than teach them a technique, he drew them into his conversation with his Father. "Our Father who are in heaven….

How did Jesus pray? He conversed with his Father. He lived from his relationship with his Father. And he came to bring us into that same intimate relationship. This was the second word drawn out of my heart: Prayer is relationship. There is no prayer unless there is a meeting of persons.

So much that has been written about prayer focuses on techniques rather than on entering into a personal relationship with God. When I was young, I almost lost my relationship with God by following this approach.

As part of my spiritual quest, I lived for a few months in a semi-eremetical community which attempted to blend the contemplative traditions of the non-Christian East with those of the Christian West.

When I first arrived and spoke about my floundering prayer, the founder of the community had an answer for me: "You have been boxing God in," he told me. "You have been trying to put him into your little human compartments. You need to expand your vision to embrace the cosmic God."

He then proceeded to teach me transcendental meditation. He told me to empty my mind of all thoughts and emotions and of any images or ideas I had about God and to concentrate on one word, preferably one not known to my intellect. I tried, but I felt like I was shooting further and further away from the God I had once known.

Doubts assailed me. Perhaps what I had thought of as my relationship with God had been nothing but illusion and projection. Perhaps I never had a personal relationship with God!

I became empty, all right, but it wasn’t a fruitful emptiness. It was nothingness.

Finally, realizing I had taken a wrong turn, I left that community. But I had learned much: I had learned that I couldn’t use a technique to "find" God. I learned that I couldn’t make God come to me, that prayer is pure grace and that all I can do it open my heart to receive it.

I had lost my sense of God my Father, and I wanted that relationship back. I had to relate again, though, as the full human being he created and loved: a woman with a mind, a heart, and a body.

I had to be real before him. Otherwise there was no person for him to meet, no person for him to relate to.

I emerged from that period a much more humble pray-er, and so very grateful to be united with this Divine Person.

"Surrender" is the third word the Holy Spirit brought forth from me. Prayer is not for dilettantes or the faint-hearted. If it is real, it will lead to total surrender to the Father’s will.

After Jesus taught his disciples to address and know God as Father, he prayed, "May your Kingdom come, your will be done…."

God will draw us as deeply into his heart as we allow, but we must know that complete union calls for total submission.

Then as we hand our will and our very being over to God, he might say, "Come away with me and rest in my love". Or he may ask us to feed his sheep by pouring ourselves out in service, with hardly a minute to be still. Or he may call us to be nailed on the Cross with his Son.

Many times along the way, we will be tempted to say, This far, but no further. But it is only if we want God more than life itself that we can keep saying "yes."

As Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross, his surrender was his prayer. As Our Lady stood steadfastly beneath that cross, her surrender was her prayer. And as we utter our own fiat, our own surrender to whatever God asks—even if we hardly have words—even if it’s in fear and trembling and tears—that is our prayer. In our groping to unite our will with Our Lord’s, we are praying.

Now to tell you the truth, I said much more than this in my fifteen minute talk. I have a tremendous ability to talk fast when I want to say a lot! But really, these were the main words the Holy Spirit drew forth from my treasury.

What would you say?

With this article, we end Cheryl Ann’s column. Hopefully, she will write again from time to time, but God has other plans for her at present.

MH Magadan

Part 3

A PILGRIMAGE FROM RUSSIA

By Susheila Horwitz

This concludes the story of the pilgrimage to Medjugorge of Sushi and the girls’ prayer group from Magadan, Russia.

————-

At 11 p.m., sweaty, grimy, and tired, but also grateful to be there, we finally arrived at Medjugorge. We had spent 30 hours on the train from Magadan to Moscow, and then another 48 hours non-stop on the bus from there on. There had been no air conditioning, and it been a long, hot, uncomfortable trip, one that had included numerous "adventures" and delays.

Now after nights of trying to sleep on a bus, eight hours sleep in a real bed worked wonders! By 9 a.m. the next day our group of five had already walked the ten minutes to the open-air square behind the church where the annual youth festival is held. Thousands of people from many nations were already there! We found seats, and the program began.

We were amazed by the peace and love that permeated the area. Many of the people had brought their flags, and I saw ones from most of the countries of Eastern and Western Europe and two from Korea. Those of us from Russia also had our flag, which we waved proudly from a tree branch.

The Poles had the best one though. One of theirs was about 25 feet long, and their young men gracefully and proudly waved it back and forth.

There were also groups of Egyptians, Chinese, and Americans, though I didn’t see any of these flags. Neither did I see a Canadian flag or meet anyone from Canada.

Daily from 9 a.m. until noon there were talks, witnessings, singing, and worshipping. Then after a four hour break to avoid the mid-day sun, the program continued until around 8 p.m. At 6 p.m. we said the rosary, and at 7, there was Mass.

In the evening there were various events. On some there was adoration in the parish church, and one evening people who had been healed of drug addiction put on a program of prayer, witnessing, and music.

Medjugorge is basically a school of prayer, and whoever organized this program of evangelization for young people has honed it into a powerful channel of grace. The witnessing, singing, clapping, and arm-waving, all helped us to enter into prayer, and the talks and homilies deepened our understanding of the spiritual life. Little by little, we were led into our hearts.

Throughout the week the young and the not-so-young were deeply touched. Even this "stiff old bird" was waving her arms and clapping her hands with the best of them!

There were opportunities for confession, and many took advantage of this. There were 25 confessionals, plus priests who just sat on chairs in the open air and put out signboards telling what languages they spoke. Even so, I waited an hour and a half.

The priest I went to (a Czech who spoke even more languages than the five he listed) stressed two things. Before we began he asked me if I felt contrition and sorrow for my sins. Then a bit later he asked me if I had forgiven everyone who had hurt me. These two things are the keys that open our hearts to grace, and that confession turned out to be one of the most powerful vehicles of grace for me during my time there.

One morning four of us from our group made the Way of the Cross on Podbrdo, the hill of the apparitions. We gathered at 5 a.m. (it’s cooler then) and walked through the village to where the hill begins.

Though Medjugorge has some wonderful soil where top quality tobacco and grapes are grown, none of it was on that hill, which was just a collection of rocks. As we made our ascent, I thought of Matthew 7:13, 14: The gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction…. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And few find it.

The path was hard, and I was amazed that I stayed upright. But with care, and I’m sure, a lot of grace, no one sprained an ankle.

Though I would never have chosen such a treacherous path, through it I experienced joy, a sense of self-giving and of divine help, and great peace. That way of the cross was for me a wonderful symbol of the spiritual life.

Then on the last evening, people hiked up to the top of Mt. Krizevac to pray and sleep and wait for the dawn. And there the festival ended with a dawn, mountain-top Mass.

How to summarize the experience and graces of the youth festival? For me it did not matter whether or not Our Lady was appearing in Medjugorge. What mainly struck me was the atmosphere—an atmosphere that was holy and powerful. It was much like the atmosphere that comes into being when the pope visits.

I have been reading the account by Pilgrim George (a man whose vocation is pilgrimage) of his experiences at World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto. The following words from that account could be used to describe our experience in Medjugorge.

"Walking around the grounds," he said, "I felt as if I were in heaven. Crowds of people were all around me, strangers in one sense, yet all in a very real way my brothers and sisters…. Here there was no fear, no hesitancy, no embarrassment…. Only trust, joy, peace, unity, freedom, community all the elements we long for but figure we will only experience in heaven. Truly this was an experience of the Kingdom of God on earth."

What is the message of Medjugorge? Our Lady’s message is peace, faith, conversion, prayer, and fasting. The weapons she gives us little folk to fight against "Goliath" are (1) the rosary, (2) the Eucharist, (3) the Bible, (4) fasting, and (5) monthly confession.

May all of us know, more deeply, more clearly, and more tenderly, the care of our Mother in heaven. And may Our Lady help us to find peace. For without it, our poor world will not survive.

The End

Lent

SIMPLY FACING REALITY

by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

What are some of the sources of the problems we face in our families, communities, and work places? Many answers come to mind—anger, resentment, distrust, rebelliousness, indifference, desire to control, envy, pride, lust, self-centeredness, addiction.

It is easy to see, or think I see, these things present in others. But in myself? Is seeing them in myself a poor self-image? Is it self-hatred? No. It is simply facing reality.

Due to original sin, all these tendencies are part of human nature. And, because they are, we need to live in awareness of our ongoing capacity for sin. The spiritual battle will go on until the second coming of Christ or until we die.

At one point in my life, I began to discover my sinfulness or, as I thought, all of my sinfulness. I stood before the Lord in the tabernacle and spoke to him from my heart.

"Lord," I said, "Thank you for revealing to me my sinfulness." He seemed to answer, "Listen, that’s not the half of it." I said, "O Lord, please, just a little bit at a time."

The most holy St. John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, at one point in his life, asked God to reveal to him his sins and sinfulness. God answered his prayer. Within two weeks, St. John Vianney was kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, alone in the church, screaming, "Lord, stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! I can’t take it any more."

We are sons and daughters of apple-eating Adam and Eve. We were born in sin and disobedience.

St. Augustine, to my mind, says it best of all. "O God, help me to know myself that I may realize how much I need you."

As an antidote to these various problems, one answer comes to mind: repentance. Ongoing repentance. Repentance until death.

To repent means to turn away from sin and turn towards God. It’s the absolutely essential act necessary for us to experience any kind of redemption. For, if I consider myself perfect, I don’t feel the need of God.

When John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, preached, his message was Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand (Mt 3:2).

Then, Scripture tells us, Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him, and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, they confessed their sins (Mt 3:5-6). Those who continued to refuse to listen and to accept the Good News of salvation were the ones who later crucified the Lord.

The first step in repentance is to see what concretely I have done. The give and take of community and family living is a big help in this. So is a regular examination of conscience. Then I need to acknowledge my guilt. Then I need to ask forgiveness, of God always, and of the other person, if what I have done has hurt someone else. Finally, I need to turn to God and open my heart to his mercy, love, and help.

The Holy Spirit is constantly knocking at the door of our hearts, asking us to see the reality of what we are doing, and asking us to open ourselves to forgiveness and joy. God only wants to lead us into the fullness of love and life, but to do so he needs to clear away the darkness that gets in the way.

I am the one who reproves and disciplines all those he loves. So repent in real earnest. Look, I am standing at the door knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share his meal, side by side with him (Rev 3:19-21).

What joy repentance brings to us! And it brings joy to all of heaven, too. In the same way I tell you: there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 99 virtuous men who have no need of repentance (Lk 15:7).

Unpublished, written some time in the late 1990s.