My Dear Family

WHY DO I FEEL HOPEFUL?

by Catherine Doherty

God writes straight with crooked lines, and I remember the passage from Scripture that says, My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8).

There is much that appears hopeless, but what appears hopeless to us may be exceedingly hopeful to God.

We in the developed countries have sinned. Lost in our affluent society, we have given generously of our surplus but scantily of our necessity. Because we have sinned against our brothers and sisters, we have sinned against ourselves. It is said that faith and hope will pass away, but charity will remain. But I wonder, will there be any charity left? What will we find, we who have despised anyone different from ourselves?

We have sinned in not fulfilling the second commandment, which tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. We haven’t loved ourselves in the proper way, and thus we haven’t been capable of loving our neighbor. We present-day Christians have sinned by not showing the face of Christ to the world at large.

The early Christians, on the other hand, showed his face to such an extent that the pagans said of them, "See how they love one another."

Why, then, do I feel hopeful? I feel hopeful because the Lord has plowed a field, harrowed, and seeded it. I feel hopeful because green shoots of prayer are rising from the hearts of people everywhere, not only in those dedicated to religious life, but in men and women of all vocations.

People are praying in their hearts, and they are taking time to go to quiet places to reflect. They are being drawn inwardly toward him who poured himself out in the service of others.

I see quiet service being rendered by one person to another in great simplicity. It isn’t a frantic thing, where people rush to the ghettos to become social workers, or leave their ministries to become psychologists.

No, it is a quiet service, person to person, and that is what Christ desired. His life was spent in prayer and service, and so must ours be. We must not only love our neighbor; we must take the time to listen to him, to have a personal relationship with him or her.

This is possible for everyone, wherever you live. In high-rise apartment buildings, in private homes, and in condominiums, you can reach out to your neighbors.

You seek community? The greatest and most fundamental community is the Trinity who dwells in your heart since the day of your baptism.

I touch the Trinity within me. I extend one hand toward God and the other toward my brother and sister. This is community.

If I don’t reach out toward them, the hand outstretched toward the Trinity will fall limp, because God will not grasp it. God and humanity, humanity and God. I am now cruciform.

In his inimitable way, God continues to bring forth this prayer from our hearts. In this prayer of love and service, all arrogance, enmity, desire to manipulate must disappear. Unless we love each other as Christ loved us, we can pray and read Scripture all we want, but nothing will happen. At the core of our prayer must be love.

We must strive for hospitality of the heart. Without it, hospitality of the house is nothing. We must accept those who come to us just as they are, without judging them, and with deep respect.

The traditional Russian greeting to the neighbor says, "My brother is my life, and my sister is my joy."

When you meet your brother or sister, do not probe and do not ask questions. If you stand there like Christ, accepting the person as is into your heart, God will reveal what he wants you to know about that person.

This attitude of always and everywhere opening one’s heart to the other requires spiritual warfare. We must fight against all that is not God within us. This is the kenosis I have talked about, the emptying of oneself in order to be filled with God.

This is true poverty. People are asking questions about poverty, but it is very simple. When you touch God, you serve others, and you are crucified. What can you hold on to? Nothing. Not even your will. That is poverty! The things of God are so simple. We are complex.

When I am cruciform, I am free. I am holding on to nothing. Now I can be a carrier of the towel and water, a person who wipes the feet of my brother and sister. This, my friends, is the answer to all our social and political problems. This answer is based on my forgiveness and love of you, and your forgiveness and love of me. Until this takes place, we can expect nothing to happen.

From Soul of My Soul, pp.87-89, available from MH Publications.

COMBERMERE DIARY

by Paulette Curran

As I write this article, it is late summer. Already it is cooler and the quality of light is changing. It was a cool summer, one with more rain than usual, but also one wonderfully containing many days of mild, pleasant temperatures and brilliant sunlight.

Many young men and women came this summer for varying lengths of time to participate in our summer program and to share our life. It would give you joy and hope for our world to see their clear, bright eyes and commitment to God.

Our summer program includes, as our life does, quite a variety of activities a balance of talks, manual work, the Mass and other prayer, and recreation. It is total immersion in a Catholic culture.

In our recent Combermere Diaries we told you about the talks and the work. This time I’ll tell you about some of the activities.

Recreational activities included two picnics. The second one featured what is becoming a tradition: our rather unique version of a softball game. Everyone can play (though not everyone chooses to).

If you can’t run, you can ask someone else to run for you. If you can’t hit, you can keep trying until you accidentally do. And if you’re a strong young man who teethed on a baseball, the pitcher throws you a soft spongy ball that can’t go very far.

But except for the softball game and the food, most picnic activities seem to just happen. There are lots of games including active outdoor ones, cards, and board games, and since a number of people play instruments, there is almost always music.

Our first picnic included cricket. (We have a couple of English staff and had, at the time, some English guests.) The second, picnic included beautiful Russian and Ukrainian guitar and singing. We had, at the time, two visitors from Russia, one from Ukraine, and two Ukrainian-Canadians.

Another summer school activity which is still continuing is a weekly evening weeding bee. Well, actually, in the beginning of summer it’s planting, then it’s weeding, and now it is harvesting.

During the summer school, each bee was followed by another activity. One evening it was a short hike to a cross planted on top of the highest hill at the farm, and other evenings, open house at our archives and handicraft center, and an evening of singing led by Trudy Moessner and her Exalt band.

Summer school also included another activity which has been going on for many yearsethe Saturday Evening Seminar, at which the guests can ask questions of our three director generals about Madonna House life and spirituality, the teachings of the Church, or anything else connected with God and the Church.

Not surprisingly the questions vary tremendously and included such topics as dogma, homosexuality, forgiveness, and the vocation stories of our directors.

The major feast of the summer (and at Madonna House we really celebrate feastdays), was August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption. Our celebration began on the vigil with the Acathist, a long and beautiful Eastern Rite prayer sung to Our Lady. Small groups of staff and guests had practiced together and each group sang one stanza.

The day includes for us many anniversaries such as ordination and promises, and Catherine Doherty’s and Archbishop Raya’s birthdays, and has also become for us a day of flowers everywhere and of the celebration of women.

Before Mass, for example, the men give each of the women a corsage (which is always a lovely surprise for the guests).

Fr. Pelton’s homily during the festive liturgy touched on many of the events in Mary’s life and concluded by saying:" "This moment of the Assumption is like the bursting into bloom of a flower that had been growing for a whole lifetime and whose fragrance bathes our hearts with the tenderness, beauty, joy, peace, goodness and mercy of Jesus and the Father, making it possible for us to rejoice."

This year on the Feast of the Assumption we also celebrated the 50th anniversary in promises of staff workers Trudi Cortens, Mary Davis, and Laurette Patenaude. They are only the second group of us to have reached this milestone.

Laurette and Mary were already here in Combermere, and Trudi, the director of MH Toronto, along with the five other staff at that house and a few members of her family, came up for the occasion.

It wasn’t a huge celebration as 50th anniversary celebrations go. One of the facets of our vocation is hiddenness, and it’s unusual for any of us to be put in the spotlight. (At least not while we’re alive!) But we did do a few things.

The library put up three posters—one for Trudi, one for Laurette, and one for Mary—each filled with photographs representing their fifty years in the apostolate, each reflecting the uniqueness of their lives here.

Mary’s included photos of gardening, tanning a hide, pruning an apple tree, her time in MH Israel, and one with our new puppy whom she is currently training. Mary has been our head gardener for most of her fifty years.

Laurette’s had several photos of her cooking, for she was, among other things, the head cook in Combermere for many, many years. Trudi’s photos were mainly from Carriacou in the West Indies and Toronto. She was director of each of these houses for many years.

At breakfast on the 15th Susanne Stubbs, acting director general of women, paying them a little tribute, said, "I am not making a speech because your presence here and your lives speak volumes." We gave them a standing ovation.

In the evening we all got together for an evening of listening to their sharings. I don’t think anyone knew exactly what to expect, but Susanne Stubbs had given each of the three a few questions ahead of time to start them off.

First they told us very short versions of their vocation stories.

But it was the second question that really got them going. What were their impressions and memories of Catherine Doherty? For each of them it was Catherine’s passionate faith and love of God that had set them on fire, and they told story after story some inspiring and many sending us into gales of laughter. These three stalwart women certainly painted a picture of the early days of Madonna House.

Which brings us back to Madonna House of today. After August 15th, the food processors, led by Diana Breeze, went into their busy season. For it is harvest time, and in a mixed farm such as ours, the crops ripen one after the other, and it is a race for the men to pick them and the women to preserve them while they are fresh.

And there is always lots of other work to do as well. Yesterday we did our first sorting of the donated clothing in the new building built for this purpose. Working with more space was wonderful.

I’d like to end with a tiny story that Susanne Stubbs told us. One day she decided to spend her day off praying in Jean Fox’s cabin. It hadn’t been used since Jean’s death, and Susanne thought it would be nice to "warm it up" a little by using it.

To her delight she discovered that a robin had built its nest on one of the window sills. Susanne watched the four fledgling birds reaching up with open mouths while, all day long, the mother robin brought them worms. "It was not only delightful to watch them," said Susanne, "but I took it as a sign that Mother Jean is still around caring for ‘her chicks.’"

Guatemala

THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE

by Kathy Snider

The author, a former guest at MH, spent six years as a lay missionary in a remote village in Guatemala

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I got used to seeing his face—half of it only a gaping hole. Sometimes that hole was filled with some kind of medicinal herb grass; sometimes it was covered with a blood-soaked piece of gauze. Sometimes it emitted a putrid smell.

When we spoke I always concentrated my gaze on his left eye, the only one he had left. The other one, in fact the whole right side of his face, had long ago been eaten away by cancer.

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he had been sent home to his small village to die.

I grew to love him. I even grew to love his face.

Our first encounter came via an invitation to "please come and pray." Since much of my pastoral ministry involved visiting and praying with the sick, this was not unusual. What was unusual was the nature of this man’s illness. "Part of Don José’s face is gone," one of the women in our group had told me.

So it was with sinking heart, trepidation, and a prayer that I, as part of a group of women from the parish, made our way to the home of this suffering man.

Huffing and puffing from the climb up the steep hill, we slowly entered the yard of a very poor, very rundown wooden home. Chickens scurried around the yard.

We entered the house. There in the midst of all the squalor was a small table with a candle, flowers, and a Bible, an "altar" which had been lovingly prepared for our visit.

Thus began my friendship with fifty-year old José, his wife who is deaf and mute, and their children, Suzanna 10, Pedro 7, and Henri, 2. Henri is an abandoned child they are raising. The family is extremely poor.

Suzanna and Pedro soon became regulars at my house. Sometimes they would even carry Henri all the way down the hill to see me and then back again.

"You must sit down and eat with us," I was exhorted during one visit. I seated myself at their small wooden table. The floor is dirt and there is only this one room.

Not one but two hard-boiled eggs were placed on my plate. My eyes filled with tears. I knew I could not refuse their gift of food, but I also knew that the eggs of this family are treasured and saved for José to eat.

It is their main source of protein, and he is sick and so takes precedence over other members of the family.

In this home of the poorest of the poor, I was treated like a royal guest. That morning I ate eggs while the rest of the family had only tortillas and a few black beans.

I was profoundly moved that day by José’s incredible love and generosity. But his greatest gift to me came later. It came the day I left his village, Santiago Ixcan, after almost six years of life and mission there.

On that day, October 1, 2003, approximately a hundred people from the village—children waving small flags emblazoned with words of love and encouragement, youths holding banners, women with babies on their backs, and men young and old—accompanied me in procession to the village of Kaibil Balam.

I rode a mule, but they walked. That trip, the first lap of my long journey home, took an hour and a half.

When we arrived, faces flushed, hearts beating fast, a parked four-wheel drive truck waited to carry me to the town of Playa Grande, the next lap of the journey.

As I was about to climb into the back of the truck, my heart stopped. There was José Eulalio. Unseen amidst the crowd accompanying me, he had walked all that way from his village. And he is dying of cancer!

We looked at each other, tears streaming down my face, tears welling up in his one eye.

All I could say was, "It’s you." He nodded, "Yes." "You came," I sobbed. "Yes." "You’re here." "Yes." With that, we embraced.

I pushed myself collapsing into the back of the truck, which left immediately. As I sped away, his face forever imprinted itself on my heart and life. And in that face I see the face of Jesus.

The Pope’s Corner

CALLED TO BE WITNESSES

by Pope John Paul II

The following is excerpted from the homily for the Mass for the Feast of Christ the King, November 26, 2000, for the Jubilee of the Apostolate of the Laity.

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I extend my greetings in particular to you, my lay brothers and sisters, who are actively dedicated to the Gospel cause. I am also thinking of all the members of the (lay) communities, associations, and movements of apostolic action.

I am also thinking of the fathers and mothers who, with generosity and a spirit of sacrifice, see that their children are raised in the practice of human and Christian virtues. I am thinking of those who offer their sufferings, accepted and lived in union with Christ, as a contribution to evangelization.

To you the Second Vatican Council opened extraordinary perspectives of commitment and involvement in the Church’s mission. In a special way the Council Fathers entrusted you with the mission "of seeking the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will" (Lumen Gentium, n. 31).

Since then a lively season of associations has blossomed, in which, along with the traditional groups, new movements, sodalities, and communities have arisen. Today, more than ever, dear brothers and sisters, your apostolate is indispensable if the Gospel is to be the light, salt, and leaven of a new humanity.

However, what does this mission entail? What does being a Christian mean today, here and now?

Being a Christian has never been easy, nor is it easy today. Following Christ demands the courage of radical choices, which often means going against the stream.

"We are Christ!" St. Augustine exclaimed. The martyrs and witnesses of faith yesterday and today, including many lay faithful, show that, if necessary, we must not hesitate to give even our lives for Jesus Christ.

In this regard, the Jubilee invites everyone to a serious examination of conscience and lasting spiritual renewal for ever more effective missionary activity.

Here I would like to return to what my venerable predecessor, Pope Paul VI, wrote in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 25 years ago towards the end of the Holy Year of 1975: "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses" (n.41).

These words are still valid today in the presence of a humanity full of potential and expectations, but threatened by a multitude of snares and dangers.

One need only think, among other things, of social advances and of the revolution in genetics; of economic progress and of underdevelopment in vast areas of the globe; of the tragedy of hunger in the world, and of the difficulties in safeguarding peace; of the extensive network of communications, and of the dramas of loneliness and violence reported in the daily press.

Dear lay faithful, as witnesses to Christ, you are especially called to bring the light of the Gospel to the vital nerve centers of society. You are called to be prophets of Christian hope and apostles of the One who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty! (Rev 1:4)

Holiness befits your house says Psalm 92.5. Holiness continues to be the greatest challenge for believers. We must be grateful to the Second Vatican Council, which recalled how all Christians are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of charity.

Dear friends, do not be afraid to take up this challenge: be holy men and women! Do not forget that the fruits of the apostolate depend on the depth of spiritual life, on the intensity of prayer, on continual formation, and on sincere adherence to the Church’s directives.

Today I repeat to you, as I did to the young people during the recent World Youth Day, that if you are what you should beTthat is, if you live Christianity without compromisetyou will set the world ablaze.

You face tasks and goals which may seem to exceed human forces. Do not lose heart! He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion (Phil 1:6). Always keep your gaze fixed on Jesus. Make him the heart of the world.

And you, Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, his first and most perfect disciple, help us to be his witnesses in the new millennium. Let your Son, King of the world and King of history, reign over our lives, our communities, and the whole world!

Praise and honor to you, O Christ! By your cross you have redeemed the world. At the beginning of the millennium, we entrust to you our efforts to serve this world which you love and which we love, too. Support us with the power of your grace! Amen.

Haiti

JUST THIS ONE LITTLE BOY

by Loretta O’Donnell

The coup d’etat in Haiti last February and the violence that ensued there led my husband and me to a decision that few understood.

We had just returned from Haiti on January 30th with a group from our parish who had visited a parish there, the parish with which ours is twinned.

My husband and I were concerned about the people we had met there and wondered if the presence of two white faces might make a difference to groups who might want to harm them. We wanted to return.

We consulted the pastor of that parish and our pastor, and both encouraged us to do so. So did the leaders of the Diocese of Richmond (Virginia) Haiti Twinning Program. So we went.

Since Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, was not secure, we returned through the Dominican Republic. It was a long trip, but we arrived to find that the area where we were going, the eastern central plateau region , was calm and for the most part untouched by the violence.

Before we left home, a member of our January group had given us a present for a child named Ymetal, who is seven years old. She had been impressed with him.

On our third day I asked the pastor about him as I had not seen him around. Shaking his head, Father told me that Ymetal was no longer in school. He didn’t have any shoes, and besides that, Father said, "He’s a vagabond."

We asked what that meant. "He’s been getting into trouble," Father said. "He was found throwing rocks at the church."

It seems that Ymetal was being raised by an elderly father who had asked if he could give Ymetal to the priest. The father had very little food for him, and Ymetal was basically raising himself.

We asked if we could see him, and Father sent for him. Ymetal arrived in dirty clothes four sizes too big for him.

We asked him if he wanted to go to school and in his tiny voice, he answered, "Oui."

After he left, we asked Father if he would take us to a larger town not too far away to find shoes for him.

The next day we headed out on our shopping expedition. This consisted of Father stopping several times to ask people if they knew where he could find shoes. After many "no’s" someone finally pointed to the house of a woman who they said sold shoes.

When we approached her, she at first denied having any shoes. Then when Father told her he was a priest, she told her son to take us around the corner to a large metal box, something like a dumpster or a sea container. It had four padlocks, but when they were opened, we saw a pile of shoes.

It seemed that anyone who had anything "good" was hiding it from any gangs who might be coming into town.

We had traced Ymetal’s foot and found a pair that we prayed would fit him. Then we asked the young man if he had any socks. He said "no," so off we went on the same kind of search for socks.

After some time we found one pair of socks. The trip took four hours in the blazing sun. (I now have a new appreciation for Walmart!)

When we arrived home we summoned Ymetal again and gave him the shoes and socks, which, thank God, fit him. We told him he would have to go home and wash his uniform and present himself to us the next morning at Mass.

At 5:30 the next morning he was there all ready for school. I asked him if he had eaten and he said, "No." (Apparently it is not unusual for a Haitian child to go to school without breakfast.)

I asked Father if perhaps he could feed him at least once a day if we gave him the money to do so.

Father looked at us sadly and said, "I cannot save every child like Ymetal. There are too many of them in my parish." I told him that I understood, but could he just help this one little boy? He said, "Yes."

Every day Ymetal showed up for 5:30 a.m. Mass all dressed in his uniform, shoes, and socks.

The day before we left was a Sunday and after Mass Ymetal was outside the church sobbing because he knew we were going to leave the next day. I held him a while and assured him we would come back.

Then it was time to go to one of the mission chapels for the next two-hour liturgy. It had rained the night before, and the road was almost impassable. Though it was difficult to drive through the mud, rocks and streams, we made it.

As we pulled up to the mission church, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Ymetal! He had walked the whole distance and sat through another two-hour liturgy just to be with us!

How little it takes to try to save a Haitian childla little concern, a pair of shoes and socks, a little food, and the offer of hope for tomorrow.

Word made Flesh

WHO ME?

by Fr. Pat McNulty

The following is a reflection on the story of the Pharisee and the publican (Lk 18:9-14), the Gospel for October 24th, the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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When I read the Gospel about the Pharisee and the publican, it reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Don Juan in Hell, in which, in my very active thespian college days, I played the part of the arrogant, self-righteous devil. (Actually it was Act III from Shaw’s larger work, Man and Superman. Just Act III took two hours to stage.)

Before we put on the play, we listened to the professional recording of the Broadway performance of it featuring Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead, Sir Cedwich Hardwick, and Tyrone Power. Even in audio it was an awesome theatrical experience.

But even so, as a Catholic I knew that for Shaw, the avowed atheist, it was a bit of a self-righteous commentary on the Christian teaching about hell.

Why does this play come to mind when I read this Gospel? Well, self-righteousness in any form is usually a moral or social cover-up with which to judge everyone else except ourselves. I believe that this is what the Pharisee was doing, and I believe that it is what George Bernard Shaw was doing.

Shaw, by belittling what the Christian community believed and taught about hell, was making things "right" for himself by judging everyone else who had different beliefs from himself.

The same thing often happens when we speak about hell.

Who of us, when talking about people going to hell even consider the possibility that we could go there, too?

But most people in the Bible who end up there are both surprised and religious people. (That kind of worries me because I am one of those religious people myself, and I don’t take surprises very easily.)

It seems to me that when the topics of judgment or condemnation come up, it’s always about somebody else:

"They are condemned if they don’t watch out! But, thank God, I am not like them." Yes. And thank God I don’t think that way. Right? Right!

Well, I don’t know about you, but there are times when I think that way!

I can recall very distinctly "going up to the cathedral to pray," and during Mass with my bishop I had thoughts like this running through his mind:

Thank God I am not like this bishop, Lord. He’s locked into the "business" of the chancery office. He’s not willing to confront any of the contemporary issues. He believes everything bad anyone says about me and yet you and I both know that I am perfect. Yes, thank God I’m not like him!

I don’t know what my bishop was thinking those many times we were together in the cathedral for Mass, but now that he is dead I can look back and see that he was much kinder and more generous to me than I was to him. So I suspect he was doing the publican-thing while I was doing the Pharisee-thing.

Indeed our faith-life is about more than "not going to hell." And I’m not implying that if we struggle to live the Gospel and take moral responsibility for our lives we might "accidentally" end up there anyway.

But given the tone of Christ’s own words on the subject, if I find myself condemning others in order to justify myself, then my red flags go up!

I know something is off just as clearly as anyone who hears this gospel about the Pharisee and the publican knows that something is off about the Pharisee’s attitude and behavior.

We have to pray constantly to be healed of the temptation to self-righteousness.

One of the greatest healings in this area I have ever experienced happened at that moment in my life when, without any reservations or excuses, I had to admit, "Lord Jesus, I am going to hell. Be merciful to me, a sinner."

It was perhaps the most painful but most blessed moment in my whole life of faith since my baptism.

For those of you who are acquainted with me, personally or through this column, I can imagine you are thinking: It’s no wonder they have that old fool hidden away in a poustinia up there in Canada. It sounds like he’s losing his mind! Maybe. But just hear me out.

All I am saying is that one way to get around all those religious and intellectual self-righteous traps is to start out clean and clear: I am going to hell unless God is merciful to me!

That cuts through all the evangelical nit-picking, all the End-Time marches and sign-carrying, all the neat moral categories and lists of sins and sinners. Everything.

Because until the subject is all about me and hell, it is never safe to talk about anybody else and hell.

It is when it is about me and hell, that something wonderful and holy can happen to my intellect through my heart. Then I can see clearly what has to be changed in my life and how much I must depend on the wonderful, holy mercy of God every moment of every day to do so.

From that deep knowledge of my need for God’s mercy comes the capacity to be merciful to others. And from that comes Christ’s compassion which brings life and hope to others even if those others seem to us to be "on the way to hell."

And, as long as the moral restrictions of our Faith are taught and used primarily to conjure up something "hellish" enough to balance out all the injustice that we find in everyone else, then something essential is missing from our faith.

In its place is our own myopic and warped sense of justice – justice for them but not for me! At that point we don’t even realize that most people on this earth have already seen enough merciless "justice" in their lives to last them for all eternity.

What they need to know now are the depths of God’s mercy, not an excuse to sin, but as a sign that God’s love is greater than any of our sins. And there is nothing we cannot change in our lives if, through our experience of the love and mercy of others, we know that God loves us.

When this dependence on mercy becomes an essential part of the soul, whether in saints or sinners, then self-righteousness loses its attraction and its power. Then, once again, real love is possible, and sinners will be "saved."

I never really understood all of that until I reached that moment in my life where there was nothing else for me but God’s mercy. That moment when I knew, with all my heart that I am going to hell unless God is merciful to me.

Only after that could I stand in the center of these mind-boggling parables, where the truth is so obvious nobody can miss it, stand there and not lose hope, and not fall back on the lie of self-righteousness in order to avoid the truth about myself.

What a marvelous grace! And the Lord is so willing to give it to any old non-self-righteous sinner who really wants it!

Incidentally, our production of "Don Juan In Hell" at our little Midwestern university was a smashing success. Of my role as the arrogant, self-righteous devil, the campus reporter wrote, "McNulty was by no means a Charles Laughton, but Mr. Laughton would not have been embarrassed by McNulty’s performance."

Oh! The short-lived accolades of this world’s glory! (Sigh.) Would that in those university years I had been as concerned about my role in Eternity as I was about my theatrical role in Time.

But eventually I did learn something valuable about the sin of self-righteousness through it all which I hope gets me a better role in Eternity. (Gulp!)

P.S. Mr. Publican, please pray for the original Broadway cast of Don Juan in Hell and for Mr. Shaw, too. Ask the Lord to give them better roles in Eternity than they seemed to have chosen in Time. After all…

Marian Centre Regina

AN EXCHANGE OF GLANCES

by Kathy Rodman

Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you (Jn 1:48).

The Holy Father drew on this passage from the Gospels on February 22, 2004, "The most sublime aspect of human dignity is precisely [our] vocation to communicate with God in a profound exchange of glances that is life transforming. In order to see Jesus, we first need to let him look at us!"

This "exchange of glances" means we allow Jesus to gaze into our eyes, and we look into his.

When does this happen? It can happen when we place ourselves before the tabernacle or an icon or a statue and simply look at the Lord and allow Him to look at us. We know intuitively that it happens when a mother looks at her new baby or when lovers look deeply into each other’s eyes.

Our Archbishop Raya has frequently exhorted us to, "gaze, my dear children, gaze at the mist on the river, at the leaves on a tree. Gaze at them. Contemplate them."

There is a secret here of learning how to love. And this "exchange" can happen anywhere, in unexpected places.

Some years ago I was assigned to be the director of Marian Centre, a house of hospitality on skid row in Regina, Saskatchewan. I was not eager to go. It seemed overwhelming, and I suddenly felt very tired and discouraged.

I had been in the apostolate for almost 25 years, and I knew enough to know that I was not going to change the world. I knew, in fact, that I would probably not be able to help very much.

I was afraid that the poor would drain me of every bit of energy I had, and I feared that the disorder of poverty would drive me crazy. For on skid row a person faces many aspects of systemic injusticenracism, addiction, violence, and ignorance just to name a few.

In the face of such overwhelming suffering, it seemed to me that there was little anyone could do.

But God is merciful, and to my complete surprise, the few years I lived at Marian Centre Regina were some of the happiest in my life. And it was the poor, particularly the men who came daily to eat in our soup kitchen, who were the main source of my happiness.

It was the poor who relieved me of the burden I had put upon myselfIthe burden of feeling that I ought to be able to relieve their pain.

They taught me that what they really wanted was someone to "exchange glances with them," someone who would look at them and accept them in their brokenness.

And, I discovered, that was exactly what I too was seeking! They accepted me far more totally and more readily, in some ways, than I accepted myself. I slowly discovered that in our hearts we were saying to each other, "Do not hide your face from me" (Ps 27).

One young man, long addicted to drugs, would come time and again after hours and ring our bell asking for a sandwich.

One day after I had once again told him that it wasn’t a good time to come, we chatted for a minute or so. He turned to go and then handed the sandwich back to me. "Don’t you want it, Bryan?" I asked.

He paused and then he looked straight at me. "I don’t need it today," he said, "but I need to know that you are here."

I will never forget that experience or forget his eyes which were filled with too much pain and suffering for one so young. They were pure eyes even though he had seen and done so much that is ugly and dark. I felt in that moment the eyes of Jesus gazing upon my soul.

I remembered this incident when I read the words of the Holy Father. It is this profound exchange of glances of love that all of us are seeking.

Russia

ONE CHILD AT A TIME

by Fr. David Means

The author is the assistant pastor at Our Lady of the Nativity Parish in Magadan.

——————-

I am realizing more and more what a legacy was left to Russia by communism, and what it did to people’s lives and is still doing today. This legacy is one of broken, dysfunctional families, drunkenness, people without hope or faith, and a broken economy with high unemployment, crime and theft.

I have been working with one family, for example, a family composed of a couple, their three children, and a grandfather—all of them living in one apartment in Ola. (Ola is a mission parish about 25 miles east of Magadan.)

A few months ago the grandfather, age 57, had a stroke and was taken to the hospital but received no real care there.

One of his sons, who lives in Magadan, came to take care of him in the hospital. He fed his father, massaged him, and changed his bedding and clothes. Within a week, the father died.

The family, having no money to bury him, sought assistance from the local government. A bare minimum was available but was slow in coming.

With some money from Mission to Magadan (an organization in the diocese of Anchorage, Alaska), I covered the cost of having his body washed and prepared for burial.

Then I waited to see if the family wanted me to say some prayers and bless their father at his funeral. A week went by and I heard nothing.

So I visited them to see what progress had been made. The man’s son-in-law had no idea at all what was happening, and the daughter was drunk and incoherent. The son who had come from Magadan was at the hospital with his nephew, Alosha, who had fallen and hit his head on a radiator and needed stitches.

Later I found out that all the paperwork for government assistance for the burial had been completed earlier that day, and that the father had been buried in the local cemetery without a prayer, without even his family gathering for a final farewell.

Despite all of this, thirteen-year old Alosha is a wonderful kid. He is one of the most faithful members of the parish and has been a dependable Mass server ever since I’ve been here.

Even if there isn’t much to do for the family except buy them groceries once a month, maybe I can help Alosha.

So I have told him that any time I am in Ola he is welcome to come and spend time with me. I’ll talk with him, feed him, and give him a safe place to do his homework.

Perhaps the only way to help Russia is to help one kid at a time.

Reprinted with permission from Mission to Magadan, a newsletter from the Russian Desk of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska, which oversees and financially supports the Church of the Nativity in Magadan.

A PAIR OF SHOES

by Karen Van De Loop

Karen takes care of the Madonna House Bookhouse where we sell second-hand books.

——————-

Not long ago two hearts encountered one another in a most unexpected way in the bookhouse aisle. It began when a woman named Maria brought me a book called Wildflecken which she had found on one of the shelves. She had a copy of it at home, she said. Had I read it?

Wildflecken, she told me, was a Polish refugee camp after World War II. She and her mother and brother had lived there before they were reunited with her soldier father and came to Canada and a new life.

As she told me more about it, we discovered that we were born the same year—she in Poland, I in America. We talked on, sharing memories. Then suddenly we were taken aback. When we were ten years old, our paths could have crossed!

That year my parish had a drive to collect clothing for the displaced persons of Europe. That clothing drive set my heart on fire, and I became an enthusiastic "little miss gatherer of treasures." That fire was so firmly fixed in me that, for the rest of my life, I was to remember those who had less than I did.

Maria could have received my shoes! Silent tears filled our eyes. There we were, two women deeply moved in the midst of the busyness of the bookshop sone because she now had a face for the invisible little girl who had sent her shoes over sixty years ago; the other, a face for the invisible little girl who had needed her gift.

MH Russia

THE DEATH OF A SURVIVOR

by Sushi Horwitz

"Please don’t ever forget me," Maria Andreevna begged. "I have no one "no children, no brothers or sisters, no family. You are the only family I have." Deeply moved, I promised her that we would not forget her.

It was August 22, 2003 and I had called her for her birthday which was also the Feast of the Queenship of Mary.

Two weeks later I stood praying the rosary by her body. It was the eve of September 8th, the birthday of Our Lady, and Maria’s words were coming back to me.

Ten days after her birthday, she suffered a massive stroke, and three of us from the parish went to visit her in the hospital after Sunday Mass.

When we arrived, we discovered that she had died fifteen minutes earlier. Zhenia and Larissa went to tell her husband while I stayed with the body.

Maria had not only shared feastdays with Our Lady; she had also shared her cup of suffering. Born in 1922 in western Ukraine to a deeply Catholic and loving family, Maria was torn away from her people and her land at the age of 23. Exiled to Magadan at the far eastern end of the Soviet empire, she spent the rest of her life here.

She had broken no law, committed no crime, but Stalin wanted to mine gold in the north and, at the same time, to rid himself of those whom he feared or despised. Maria was just one of millions of such innocent victims.

Harshly treated, barely fed or clothed, many of these people died. But Maria, being young, survived, and she outlived both Stalin and his labor camps.

After her release, though poor and marginalized for the rest of her life (former political prisoners were looked upon as "enemies of the people"), she managed to create a home in Magadan. She had seemed in good health when she suffered the stroke. She had just turned 81.

Maria came to our weekly rosary whenever she could. In a photograph we have of her, she is sitting in our chapel after the rosary. On the altar is the Ukrainian embroidery she had just finished.

Though she had lost part of her right hand in the stone-crushing machine she ran in the camps, Maria still managed to create needlework of museum quality. The year before her death, Maria embroidered a number of religious articles as gifts to us.

How could I ever forget you, Maria? You will always be in my heart and prayers.

Catherine’s Cause

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

by Fr. Bob Wild, postulator

A question people frequently ask me is, "How long is it going to take before Catherine is canonized?" At this point I say, "Don’t hold your breath!"

The other day I scanned a list of holy men and women who were born in the 19th century and became either "blessed" or "saint" in the 20th. Though there were some exceptions, especially with the martyrs, and a couple of people who seemed to be "rushed through," the average time it took was 40 to 50 years.

However it is also true that the process has been speeded up in recent years. There are several reasons for this, and the most significant one is the pope himself.

After John Paul II was elected pope in 1978, the pace of canonization increased so dramatically that in the two decades following his election, almost exactly the same number of people 2802were made saints as had been during the previous four centuries.

The pope feels that the Catholic Church has had many more saints than it has recognized to date, and that most of the saints it has recognized reflect a piety too dated, too European, and perhaps too passive to provide the models of heroic faith that this generation of Catholics needs.

He wants to canonize contemporary lay people who responded to the needs of society. And Catherine certainly is in this category.

A second factor presently speeding up the causes of saints is technology. Within the last 20 or 30 years advances in computer technology has made information much more easily available to those responsible for investigating the lives of candidates.

In relation to this, Madonna House is blessed with excellent archives, and thanks to the work of a number of staff, more and more material is being made accessible in preparation for the inquiries of the future.

So even though Catherine lived a long time (1896-1985), and wrote voluminously, the new technology will speed up the investigation significantly.

A third factor is how soon after Catherine’s death her cause was introduced. In terms of time, canonists distinguish between two types of causes: recent causes and older causes.

A recent cause is one in which people who knew the candidate are still alive and able to testify. An older cause is one in which such persons are no longer living and so only written testimonies and other sources are available. Older causes usually take longer because the fama sanctitatis, the reputation for holiness, is harder to establish.

Catherine’s cause was opened as soon as the five-year waiting period was over. Very many people who knew her are still alive, and I have been interviewing some who might not be when the bishop begins the official questioning of witnesses.

The fourth factor in how long it will take is the amount of time and energy the people appointed by the bishop will have to give to these investigations. Competent people with the proper theological and historical credentials are often very busy people.

How long will it take for Catherine to be canonized? Only God knows the answer to that one.