My Dear Family

THE APPLE OR THE STABLE?

by Catherine Doherty

In our midst there is an apple tree. Its apples are golden. There is still a voice crying or whispering, "Take and eat. You will be like God" (cf. Gen 3:4).

In our midst there is a stable. In this stable there is a Child. Witnessing the birth of the Child are animals and two people.

The apple or the stable? The choice is before us. The shape of the future lies in our hands and in our hearts.

Shall we pluck again from an apple tree (be it a symbolic one) the things that our minds desire? Shall we go into the depths of that mind and decide that we are God?

Or shall we in humility and simplicity enter into a stable and recognize the Incarnation, the Incarnation of the Son of God, who came to bring light and wisdom in our midst?

Will we follow him across Palestine? Will we listen to the wind pick up his words and bring them to us in our century? Are we ready to bear his passion for the sake of love?

For why did he come into that stable? Why did the evangelists write about him? Why is Jesus Christ so important?

Because he is love, the Second Person of the most Holy Trinity, incarnated to bring us love, love the like of which the world had never seen before and had never even dreamt of.

Are we ready to pass through the crucible of the cross and to live in the resurrection of the Lord? Do we realize that we are, in fact, living in his resurrection, and do we act accordingly?

This is the shape of the future. Where will it lead us?

There are two points: love of God and love of neighbor. Jesus Christ has shown us these points in his person.

Are we going to love God passionately? The question is passionately, and not just partway.

You either love God or you don’t. You either fulfill what he calls you to fulfill, or you should resign from calling yourself a Christian, if it’s possible to resign.

Anyhow the shape of the future lies in your answer. Will you or won’t you? Which way will you choose?

We think we can do an awful lot of things without God, but Christ tells us, Without me, you can do nothing (Jn 15:5).

We have to believe this, because, alas, the shape of our future is already fragmented because we do not.

When you love God passionately (when you fall in love with him if you want to put it simply) then you understand that you can do nothing on your own and so, of course, you understand what prayer is.

And he who said, "Pray always," washed the feet of his apostles and said. "I have come to serve." And this is what we must do.

An atomic bomb in the hands of St. Francis is a peaceful affair. An atomic bomb in our hands is far from peaceful.

We have to think. We have to decide. Will it be the apple tree again or the lowly stable?

Will we choose belief or unbelief?

We are crying out for answers that indeed will shape the future, but our cries are lost in the traffic jams of the world. We do not believe enough to fall in love with God and with man. The two are inseparable.

Shaping the future doesn’t begin with someone else. It begins with me and with you. Am I shaping myself to shape the future of those whom I love—and those I love should be everybody.

What is the answer? One hears thousands of answers. I heard some of them at a weekend conference and I said to myself, How simple is God and how complex is man!.

Words, endless words, and little silence—that’s us. We each want to put across our ideas and we should, but on one condition: that our ideas indeed are helping and not hindering.

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

Do I really believe, for on this earth, faith is the mother or father of love and of hope. In the next world, we are told, faith disappears, hope vanishes, and love alone remains. But right now, it isn’t so.

The shape of the future lies with me. What am I going to do? Will I give you the golden apple or will I take you by the hand to the stable? Will I use a lot of verbiage, or will I take myself and you to the foot of the cross?

The greatest of all dialogues is between two crucified people. But crucifixion is not the end. It is the beginning.

Do you realize that right now we are living in the resurrected Christ?

That alone changes the whole idea that we have regarding the shape of the future.

We have to put our future, we have to put today and tomorrow into God’s hands and mean it, because if we take it back, there will be no future.

It is such a simple thing, such an utterly simple thing, my friends, to be in love with God and man.

How many of you are lonely? How many of you are not? Do you communicate with those who are?

Love is a strange thing. It listens. God listens to us. Now you must listen, too, and so must I.

Shaping the future means changing yourself constantly so that you become the icon of Christ. Then when I look at your face while you are looking at me, I will know that I am loved. I will see love in your eyes and through your eyes, I will see the eyes of Christ.

And thus comforted—and God knows we need to be comforted—I am ready to shape my today and my tomorrow.

It’s as simple as that. The future is an apple, golden, attractive to hold in your hands, but terrible. Or it is a child that you can hold in your arms. Which will it be?

Unless you become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:3).

With all my heart, and with my very humble prayers, I wish you the Child!

Adapted from a talk given to the Conference of Concerned Scientists and Christians, Deep River, Ontario, October 10, 1976.

COMBERMERE DIARY

by Cheryl Ann Smith

One day recently, along with everyone else who could be spared from his or her usual work, I went up to the farm to help harvest our potatoes.

We drove through a blaze of glory. Never have I seen the autumn leaves so brilliant. As of this writing, they still bedeck the hills and overhang the meandering highway with iridescent orange, fiery red, and royal gold.

Our cool weather crops did marvelously well this year, for our summer was just that – cool! Yet September ushered in the gentlest, warmest autumn we can remember, and the fall sun kissed not only the leaves, but the remaining crops. So they too received all they needed in order to mature well—corn, tomatoes, apples, and potatoes.

The day of our potato-harvesting bee, I knelt in the warm earth and pulled out potato after potato—treasures hidden in the soil and now ready to be harvested—an abundance, not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors as well, and a sign of God’s providence and glory.

After several years of hidden, constant and loving toil, Donna Surprenant is also seeing the fruits of her artistic labor. The Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville featured several of her still life paintings, and Bancroft’s Art Gallery had a month-long solo exhibit of her figure and still life paintings. Also this past month, The Catholic Register, the Toronto diocesan newspaper, published an article about Donna and her work.

As Qoheleth insisted in Ecclesiastes, There is a season for everything…a time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted; a time for mourning, a time for dancing… (Eccles 3:1-4).

Though our mourning of Jean Fox will continue for some time to come, we also needed to discern God’s choice for our next director general of women. We were in no hurry, as each of the women needed time to let go of Jean’s twenty years of wise, Spirit-filled guidance.

But on October 6th, six months to the day of Jean’s death, it was announced that Susanne Stubbs had been elected to this position by sobornost (total unanimity). So at this point in time, all three of our director generals (of men, women, and priests) are relatively new, so a time of change has clearly arrived.

Other lesser changes are also coloring this time. Our carpenters are doing major renovating in the much-used kitchen of the main house. They are stripping the floor down through six layers to the original floor built in 1955—and then rebuilding it. (a time for knocking down and a time for building—Eccles 3:3).

The adjoining walled-in "back porch" also needed major work, since the steam from the dish-washer had seriously damaged its ceiling. So the men are taking down the old one and replacing it with one that includes a vapor barrier.

For the six weeks (at least) needed for these jobs (as well as some other more minor renovating and repair work), the community at the main house, consisting of from 60 to 120 people, is without a kitchen.

These people are now joining the 40 plus people who form the community at St. Mary’s a half mile down the road for meals, liturgies, community prayer, and evenings!

(St. Mary’s is a house of MH that was formed over ten years ago when we outgrew what we now call the main house or training center. It is a separate community in a similar way that the mission houses are, though there is a fair amount of mixing of various kinds and two communities get together for some things such as staff meetings and Sunday Mass.

Fortunately for this time of renovation, the St. Mary’s building, which was formerly a convent boarding school, is quite large.)

The organizing of this combining of two houses was a little formidable, and there are some inconveniences, but this is proving to be a wonderful time of being together.

One thing we did to make the arrangement more livable was to convert the room where we sorted donations (before we finished the new sorting building) into a combination recreation room-dining room-music room.

Plus special events are often being offered for evening recreation, such as learning new music and a weekly story night (various people reading stories aloud to whoever wants to come).

So from the arduous labor of organizing and moving and combining two households has come a building up of community.

Guests continue to come, us usual from far and wide: Lizie-Anne Badosdos Santos, to give one example, journeyed from Brazil to spend three months with us. And Fr. Frank Nyanleh, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Cape Palmas in Liberia, to give another, spent two weeks here and shared with us about the effects of the civil war on his country.

Also, three young men have joined us for the spiritual formation program, a program for young men considering priesthood. The young men this year are Brandon Belinsky from the Boston Archdiocese, Neil Patterson from our own Pembroke Diocese, and Paul Sanders.

Kathy Skipper, a long-time friend whom we know through her time at our Cana Colony, opened the 9th season of the Winter Lecture Series on Christian Culture with her lecture, "Hope in Difficult Times: Working Through Grief." This topic was timely, not only for us, but obviously for our many local friends who attended it. It seemed as if the poignant questions after the talk could have flowed for hours.

Then shortly after that talk, Sally Fallon, author of the book, Nourishing Traditions (containing nutritional information and recipes), and a member of an organization that promotes Dr. Weston Price’s work on nutrition, came and gave us a daylong workshop.

It was open to the local people, and all the MH cooks and some others from here also attended all or part of it. This information-packed day was one more step in our ongoing education in how to have a healthy diet in this time of denatured, chemical-filled foods.

One other guest, now permanently with us, is a statue, Our Lady of All Grace, whose title comes from her stance: one hand raised to heaven receiving grace from God, and the other pointing down pouring graces on all her children.

Our replica was crafted by a Little Sister of Jesus for our cemetery, which is now called "Our Lady of All Grace Cemetery."

Over 30 priests, deacons, and wives of the deacons, attended the associate priests’ meetings. This year the theme was "Evangelization Through Contemplating the Face of Christ."

During the meetings one priest, Fr. Pierre Champoux, made his first promises thus becoming an associate. He is also a brand-new priest, a classmate of Fr. Denis Lemieux, our own new priest. Fr. Blair Bernard and Deacon Pat McNulty renewed their promises, and Fr. Brian McNally and Deacon Gary Miller took their promises as associates "forever."

Please pray for Archbishop Raya, who is the founder of the associate priests as well as our Melkite Rite archbishop, who has been living at MH Combermere since 1974. He is recovering from surgery due to a fractured hip.

Soon after this surgery we displayed a whimsical photograph of him peeking through foliage aflame with autumn fire—the sun dappling his face and lighting up everything around him. In its small way, it captures some of the intense love of life and beauty that continues to blaze in his heart.

My Story

LIVING A LOVE STORY

by Emilio Gracia

People sometimes ask me why I am so happy. I tell them it’s because I know the Lord. I know what it’s like not to know him, too, for I was an atheist until I was 33 years old.

I was born and raised in Communist Cuba. Though my parents had been baptized and raised Catholic, they took part in the Revolution and stopped going to church. My mother did go sometimes, but it was hard. The government watched you and neighbors might report you. You could lose your job if you were seen going to church.

The same was true for having your children baptized; so I was not baptized. As a child I heard almost nothing about God or religion at home, and in school I was taught atheistic Marxism.

When I was thirteen or fourteen I started reading Marx and Engel on my own, and by the time I was sixteen I no longer believed in Communism. I came to the conclusion that, though Communism was good as an idea, how we got there wasn’t. We had no freedom. A good end wasn’t enough if the means were bad.

But that didn’t upset me too much. My life wasn’t politics; it was my family and friends. My parents were very loving, and all I had I received from them. And I had good friends.

My first connection with religion was when I was a university student. There was a church next door to the university, and often if I was early for my classes I would go and sit there because I found it very peaceful. But I never connected this with God.

When I graduated with a degree in graphic arts, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I knew I could get a well-paying job (well-paying for Cuba anyhow) with that degree and I did, but it was boring. What was my future, I wondered. What was it all for?

I was very dissatisfied. I was angry that I had been lied to, and that information had been withheld from me, and I wanted to know the truth. Friends who traveled got hold of books from Spain and Columbia and I read them.

New information opened itself to me, and I wanted to learn more. I wanted to be able to read whatever books I chose. More and more, I wanted to travel and see for myself what it was like in other countries.

By 1997, when I was 32 years old, things were easing up in Cuba. You could travel for up to a year if you had the money. I had the money and applied for and received a permit to travel in Europe for a year as a tourist. Since I had a good friend in Madrid and knew the language, I went to Spain.

At first it was wonderful. I was free to go anywhere and to read anything. There wasn’t the sense of someone watching me all the time like there was in Cuba. I was free.

I was also meeting people and talking freely with them. This was what life was about! This was living!

But after a few months I started seeing other things. At first people I met had seemed happy, but as I got to know them better, I could see that they weren’t. People who were single weren’t happy, and people who were married weren’t either. People with good jobs weren’t happy. They had freedom and things seemed perfect, but they weren’t happy.

So I learned that freedom wasn’t enough. I became sad. What was life about? It had no meaning.

After I’d been in Spain eleven months, I decided to return to Cuba. My family was in Cuba, and they loved me. Maybe love and family were more important than freedom. Maybe that was the meaning of life.

But before I left a Buddhist friend told me about NGO’s, (non-governmental organizations) that helped people. That sounded good. I got in touch with one of them and decided to stay in Spain and work with them.

They sent me to work at a soup kitchen run by the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s Sisters). I went and there, helping the poor, I found the deepest joy I had ever known in my life.

After I’d worked there for a time, they asked me if I would work at a nursing home for AIDS patients. They had enough help for the soup kitchen, and I would be more needed at the nursing homeAif I could stand that kind of work.

I loved that work and stayed for a year. One day I thought to myself, I am a good person working here, but I don’t believe in God like everybody else here does. I had made no friends at the nursing home. All my friends were non-religious.

One day when I was talking with a friend about history, he mentioned that the emperor Charles I of Spain (or Charles V of Germany and Spain) from the 16th century had a palace built beside a monastery. He then gave the Spanish throne to his son and the German one to his brother and retired in that palace to live like a monk.

This struck me powerfully. "Why?" I asked. "He had everything. He was the most powerful person in the world!"

Something really big must have happened to him to make him do this, I marveled. The question was inside me all day and as I went to bed I was still marveling and wondering why. I lay awake much of the night.

Then it struck me: the thing that struck him must have been Jesus Christ!

When I woke up the next morning, I was not the same person. Suddenly I not only believed in Jesus. Suddenly I wanted to become a monk!

When I told my friend, he was angry, "Forget it," he said. "You’re crazy. Religion is just a bunch of lies."

"I can’t," I said. "I’ve found something. I’m so happy."

After that, I was filled with joy, but I was also lonely. I wanted so much to share what I had found, but none of my friends believed in God.

I went to church, a church I had visited as a tourist. There were nuns there behind a grill, and they were the closest thing I knew to monks. I sat as near the grill as I could to feel their presence, and I sat there looking at the Blessed Sacrament for hours.

I was working only part-time, and for the next two years I prayed in that church for four or five hours every day. I knew no prayers but just sat looking at the Blessed Sacrament, trying to have an open heart, and feeling very peaceful.

I had heard of St. Teresa of Avila from my reading of history and bought three of her books. I also bought a Bible. Happy to have found someone who was so in love with Jesus as I was, I spent my evenings reading St. Teresa.

I often woke up during the night, and would read the Bible then.

One day as I was leaving church I ran into one of the women who worked at the nursing home. We were both surprised to see each other, but we just said hello. I ran into her a second time and then a third. The third time, she said, "Emilio, why are you here?!" She knew I was a non-believer.

So I told her my whole story. It was the first time I could talk to anyone about my conversion. I told her I wanted to be baptized, and she helped me find a priest. This priest, a holy Carmelite, prepared me during Lent, and at the Easter Vigil 2001, I was baptized.

Eight months later, on Christmas Day, I entered a monastery as a postulant. It was a time of struggle and graces, and after about eleven months, the prior and I came to the decision that I did not belong there, at least not at that time.

One of the graces of that time was something that led me to the next step. The prior loved the book, Poustinia, by Catherine Doherty, and gave it to every new postulant to read.

But when I saw the cover, I decided that I would not read it. The word, poustinia, was Russian, and the picture on the cover of the Spanish translation looked like the Kremlin! Like many Cubans, I hated everything Russian.

But two or three months later one evening when I had nothing to read, I picked it up. I had to obey the prior, after all, and I wanted to get it over with.

I loved the book! Then not long afterwards, I came across another of Catherine’s books, Gospel Without Compromise, and loved that one, too.

Months after reading them, when I left the monastery, I looked for more information about Catherine Doherty and her community. Was she still alive? Where was the community? I asked people and no one I asked had ever heard of her.

Finally, I looked on the internet and found the Madonna House website. I copied the address and other information, and put it all in a drawer to sit and let the idea mature in me. I didn’t want to move on it right away. If it’s God’s will, I told myself, one day I’ll go there.

I started working at a shelter for the homeless with just one priest and one woman. The priest was holy and I wanted to learn from him. Plus there was prayer and poverty. It was a good place but I felt the need for community.

That summer, 2003, the three of us went on a pilgrimage. It was a grace-filled time for me.

One thing that happened was that I got an infection in my leg and ended up in bed for a week at Emmanuelle, one of the new communities in France, a charismatic community. While I was there I spent a day before the Blessed Sacrament.

That evening at a prayer meeting, a woman said, "Someone here is called to be a priest." At the same time that she said that, I felt that call in me.

I talked with the priest from the homeless shelter and decided to ask to join the spiritual formation program at Madonna House Combermere both for community and for discernment about a priestly vocation.

I went last year and there I received graces, which is a sign to me that this is where God wanted me at that time. One of these graces was surrender. I said to God that whatever he wants me to do, I will do.

After I left Madonna House, I returned to Spain. So far God has not shown me what my vocation is.

But God is the meaning of my life, and I am very, very happy. I am living a love story.

P.S. Both my parents are back in the Church.

A CHALLENGE AT CHRISTMAS

by a Madonna House priest

It was Christmas Eve in the 1960s, and the families of a large suburban parish had filled their beautifully decorated parish church for the midnight Mass.

I had proclaimed the Christmas Gospel and preached a homily about Christ’s birth as a fulfillment of the Father’s promise to send a Savior, and about Christ’s promise to be with us as we tried to live his teachings to love God and our neighbor.

The ushers had just begun to take up the collection and a soprano voice was filling the church with a haunting Appalachian carol.

"I wonder as I wander

Out under the sky,

How Jesus the Savior did come for to die

For poor ornery people

Like you and like I.

I wonder as I wander

Out under the sky."

Suddenly a roughly dressed man appeared in the center aisle and, rushing towards the altar, shouted, "What has this got to do with poor orphans dying in Vietnam?"

The ushers, I regret to say, acted very quickly and, before I could stop them, had escorted him, still shouting this message, out of the church.

I wished I could have had a chance to give him an answer. And I knew that, even though he was not there to hear it, his question had to be addressed. So I stopped right then, and tried to do that.

What did this celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass have to do with the poor orphans in Vietnam?

Everything!

For each and every celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is the presence of Christ himself, acting through the priest, continuing to offer to the Father the sacrifice of his life on earth, the very same sacrifice which he offered to the Father on the cross.

And it is this sacrifice of his entire life on earth that redeemed the entire human raceAboth those who have been baptized into the mystery of God’s plan for our salvation, and those who have not yet come to know of it.

Those who were present in that parish church that evening, and every Christian, with our varying degrees of faith and understanding of this reality, are called to live our lives in such a way that our faith shines forth in the darkness of this world so brightly that those who do not know Christ are moved to ask:

Why are your lives so filled with meaning and purpose? How can you be so peaceful in times of such difficulty and pain? Why are you so concerned about the needs of the poor and of the victims of war and of other disasters? How can you be so filled with joy and peace and love when everything seems to be going wrong? What do you know that we don’t know?

This is the challenge of Christmas. Do we really believe in what Christ has done for us? Do we really believe that he is alive and present in each and every Mass continuing to offer himself for us and calling us to offer our lives "through, with and in him" for all who do not know Christ?

The celebration of Christmas is not just a celebration of what Christ did 2000 years ago. It is a celebration of what he is doing now in every Mass.

And as he became present on earth at the first Christmas, he is calling on us now to make him present in the world today, and to spread the knowledge of him to whoever does not know and believe in him.

As Pope John Paul II says in article 22 of his new encyclical on the Eucharist: "By its union with Christ, the people of the New Covenant, far from closing in on itself, becomes a ‘sacrament’ for humanity, a sign and instrument of the salvation achieved by Christ, the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth, for the redemption of all."

The mission of the Church is a continuation of the mission of Christ: As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you (Jn 17:18).

It is from the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the cross and her communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist that the Church draws the spiritual power she needs to carry out her mission. The Eucharist thus appears to be both the source and the summit of all evangelization.

And every year Advent is an ongoing reminder of God’s promises to us, and Christmas is proof of his faithfulness to those promises.

Yes, the Christmas Mass has everything to do with our caring for the orphans in Vietnam, and for all the poor and suffering whoever and wherever they be, in the 1960s and now.

May the Savior who was born to redeem us help us to enter more and more into God’s great plan for us and for all the members of the human race.

Word Made Flesh

BUT THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO JESUS!

by Fr. Pat McNulty

I suspect that a reflection on the genealogy of Christ (Mt 1:1-17) is a challenge for most writers and homilists. Here Fr. Pat tackles it in his own unique way.

—————————

I found a Mother’s Day story to help me focus for the Advent-Christmas Season this year.

Those of you who are acquainted with me by way of this column realize that I often begin my article with a somewhat strange story! I hope this one helps you as much as it has helped me.

Many years ago I preached a homily on Mother’s Day with special emphasis on the Mother of Jesus and a little bit about my own mother. (A fine homily if I do say so myself!)

After Mass a young lady asked if she could see me for a few moments. I met her at the side vestibule after I had taken care of the sacred vessels and put away my vestments. She seemed intent on staying in the church, and so we ended up in front of the altar of the Blessed Mother.

Without more ado, she said to me straight out, "The problem with you priests and bishops who do all the preachin’ is that you have all led sheltered lives, and you think that everybody else has too."

I could tell this was not a time for me to interrupt her. And she didn’t intend to let me anyway as she continued, almost without a breath, "Unlike your mother, my mother used to get me drunk when I was only nine years old and make me pimp for her instead of going ta school."

Though she surely saw the shocked look on my face, she didn’t wait to allow me any verbal response.

"That went on until I was 14 and old enough and smart enough to get the hell outta there. I’d like to give one of them Mother’s Day sermons to you priests and bishops and to His momma," she said pointing to the statue of Mary behind us, "and see how you guys would like to sit there and hear about my momma!"

Then she turned around, and before I could compose myself, she was halfway up the aisle. By then it was too late to pursue her.

In no time she was out of the church, and I was left alone before the statue of Our Lady.

I went up to Our Lady and said to her, "What was that all about?"

Though I didn’t get an audible answer, over the years I have learned that it all happened in order to lead me deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation with and for that young lady and others like her.

On the Fourth Sunday of Advent the Gospel is from Matthew 1:18-24. But, whenever I read this section of Matthew’s gospel, I always have to go back and start with verse one: This is how Jesus Christ came to be born…. And then I go on to read that long genealogy of Christ: X begot Y and Y begot Z and Z begot A and so forth.

Taken as a whole, chapter one of Matthew’s gospel is about the holy and messy ancestry of Jesus Christ. And this genealogy reveals something very important to us about the Incarnation itself—about God becoming man—which is the focus of Advent and Christmas.

Many people, including me and that young lady, do not yet understand just how human the divine Son was.

If the truth be known, I wonder if there are not a lot of people who have the same problem with the Incarnation that she had and I once had.

Problem? Yes. And even if we never say it out loud like that young lady did to me that day after Mass, it rattles around in our hearts in similar words.

It is as if we are really saying, "It was indeed a wonderful thing you did for us, Jesus, becoming man and dying on the cross for our salvation. But your suffering is not really like mine."

And most of us do not say this through arrogance or lack of faith. For there is a kernel of truth in that statement.

It’s true that Christ’s mother never did to him what that young lady’s mother did to her. Christ was not from an alcoholic home. Christ was never sexually abused as a child. Christ did not have an incurable childhood disease nor was he born emotionally or physically "challenged."

That’s the truth. But for a long time I was afraid to say such things to Christ. After all he was God, and we were told that anything God experienced as man was more than any of us could ever bear, more painful than alcoholism or sexual abuse or muscular dystrophy.

Nevertheless, those thoughts about what did not happen to Christ as man made me feel more separate from him. But I didn’t realize that I felt that way until that strange encounter on Mother’s Day.

And once the door of my soul, my psyche, was forced open by those words coming from my own mouth—but, Lord, your family wasn’t—I could not close it again.

I started going around telling my sad tale a million times to a million people, until I was finally worn out from the compulsive repetition. And then there was nothing to do but shut up and let Christ and his Mother give me the answers.

The journey from that vestibule in church to the poustinia some 36 years ago has been a long and painful one. But it has been life-giving and hopeful too.

For it was in poustina that I finally spoke my honest heart to God about many things, including childhood sexual abuse and a terrible emotional wound which translates into an on-going dislike for Life itself, even to this day.

It was in poustinia that I finally asked God the burning question in my heart, the question which had been so well hidden behind a one-sided spirituality for so many years, a question about his sufferings.

Finally one day it just came out: "Where were you when all of that was happening to me? Where were you?"

I don’t know how many years I asked that same question in one form or another seemingly without any answer from Christ.

And then, little by little, after the emotional boil was finally lanced, the spiritual scars put right by time, and the fear gone, he began to show me that we do not have to experience the same human difficulties in order to know each other’s pain and suffering.

In the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of Christ, we can, if we want to, "become" the other and be led into the very depths of their pain and suffering without ever leaving our house, our room, or even our own hearts.

True enough perhaps. But doesn’t that sound a bit like the same romantic spiritualism, the same weak answer to the dilemma of pain and suffering that we give to people like that young lady in the church, because we don’t have a better answer for them?

What about the fact that nothing like that ever happened to Jesus? And, if he is so close to us and so concerned about us, why didn’t he seem to have been around when it all happened to me!

I don’t have an easy answer to such thoughts. I only know some things from within the vast life-giving storehouse of Catholic tradition and spirituality about suffering and pain and our union with Christ in and through it all.

But I can tell you this: if we are tranquil enough in our hearts and focused enough in our faith, the slightest suffering or pain can be like a fuse on our spirit.

If we allow our own human condition to turn us to Christ’s suffering and pain immediately, then, through the mystery of Baptism, his pain and our pain meld together and explode into something far beyond anything we mere human beings can imagine or experience.

Catherine Doherty used to talk about things like that. Sometimes late in the night when her heart was lonely, she would "go" to the poorest of the poor, sometimes in India.

How? She would begin by using her own very real loneliness to go into Christ’s loneliness. And there she could "see" Christ’s loneliness or poverty through her own.

Suddenly she was one with him, and through him, one with those in India.

She said she could "taste" the dust of the streets there and that she actually experienced the pain of a mother who had nothing to feed her child. And she said she could "hear" the clamor and condemnation by the poor of those who have everything and will not answer their cry.

I used to think she was being over-dramatic. Not anymore.

I believe that Christ and Our Lady "took her to Nazareth" and taught her one of the most joyful and life-giving secrets of the Incarnation, namely, that if we go deep enough into our own wounds by faith, not by feeling, we can eventually "see" that we and Christ and the other are one.

What happens to each happens to all because, in the Incarnation, Christ has become fully man though he remains fully God!

And thus, in a way that we will never understand this side of eternity, even now Christ is somehow in our suffering and pain to the same depths that we are.

As a matter of fact, he has always been there; we just didn’t have the "incarnational eyes" to see.

The young lady in my story was not left alone by Christ when her mother abused her. Her mother was, in some very mysterious, hopefully inculpable way, abusing Christ and her daughter.

How is that possible? Somewhere in the mystery of the Incarnation, we will all find the answer to that question.

But to do so, we must come out of the darkness of our obsession with our own pain and suffering and let that pain and suffering take us into the pain and suffering of those around us as Christ did and does even now.

Then he can turn the darkness of all our legitimate questions into the light of the Incarnation. And, as astounding as it sounds, he can turn our suffering into joy, a joy that will bring peace to us and, through us, good will to all.

I never had the chance to respond to that young lady after I found some of the answers to her dilemma. But if I could I would say to her today:

"I know plenty about your pain and suffering even though I did not come to it in the exact way you did. How? As a result of your pain that you told me about that day, I went to Christ, and in my poverty of not having an answer for you, he took me, ‘in the flesh,’ over the years, somewhere into the depths of his pain. And as I got to know his pain, I came to know yours.

"That’s when I realized that it was he who was being abused so many years ago. And he invited you into his pain as he did when I was being abused too! That’s how much he "needs" us and loves us!

"I know that is hard to believe, but don’t you think that this would be a much better place for us to take up our conversation than where we left off?

"I pray even now that the darkness of your long, long Advent has ended, and that he has brought you into the fullest light of his Incarnation. And, thank you so much for helping to lead me there."

P.S. Mary-Christ-Mass to all of you.

MH Ottawa

WHEN THE LIGHT BEGINS TO DAWN

by Martha Shepherd

As Advent begins, I feel some apprehension. My years of experience in this city have taught me what to expect.

The commercial hype begins to play on emotions in November. By December people’s reactions are in full swing.

It really does seem that as the year darkens, the powers of darkness grow stronger. Depressions multiply and deepen. The sick weaken and die. There are more suicides. And the loneliness and fears which were always there grow suddenly intolerable.

This is all thrown into particularly stark relief because it takes place against a background of Santa Claus, tinsel, and everyone’s childhood memories of Christmas joy and wonder.

There is a question in the minds of many people, unspoken but felt: Will "Christmas" (that magical, delicate, essential Christmas) happen for me this year? Where will I go? What will I do? Will anyone love me, want me, give me "Christmas"?

Because one of the basic qualities of Christmas is that it is something you cannot give yourself.

You cannot really make it on your own, not at Christmas. And never mind the obvious platitude that "Christmas is a time to give." Part of the poverty is not knowing how to give or to whom.

All through December we move into these gathering clouds of fear, loneliness, weakness, mortality, and yes, selfishness. The clouds gather. The night deepens and intensifies in counterpoint to Christmas parties and hilarity, until the apex, the 25th of December.

Then the city forgets Christmas.

It is all over.

And the real Light begins to dawn.

Unwittingly, the city has prepared for his birth. It has provoked and evoked need and sin, darkness and pain, till once again the old proverb is proven true: it is always darkest before the dawn.

The birth in Bethlehem passed unnoticed in the midst of the noise and crowds of a market town engulfed by official business. Only the shepherds and three strangers knew what had happened. Yet that unmarked event would gradually change the world.

And when Christmas Day finally dawns over Ottawa, when the apprehension is over and a sort of sigh of relief goes rippling across the city, a pinpoint of light, tiny and defenseless, has come. The tide has turned. Something of the reality and significance of the birth of Jesus the Savior has, after all, penetrated our lives.

He came into the world as hope into dark places.

May these seasons of Advent and Christmas deepen our gratitude.

THE PATH TO GOD GOES DOWN

by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

This is adapted from a homily given on New Year’s Day 1962. Apparently the preceding year had been a difficult one in MH.

———————————-

If we consider the past year, I think we could say that what the Holy Spirit tried to do was to make us understand our own personal poverty, so that we might be ready to experience the mercy of God.

This is what he tried to do within us individually and collectively, and it has been a tremendous experience. Certainly it has been a tremendous experience for me—to see how simple the spiritual life is in its essence—to see how the movement towards God is basically a movement down—not a movement up as we had thought it was, perhaps, in our own spiritual lives.

For it is by going down into our nothingness, by experiencing that we are creatures, by experiencing that without God we can do nothing, that we meet at the bottom the mercy of God. And this mercy sustains us as our right hand sustains the left.

When we experience who we are and how we need God’s mercy, how immense that mercy is! When we see and appreciate all that God is doing for us, and how we are truly loved by him, how grateful we must be, and how joyful our hearts! For he truly takes care of all our needs, way beyond our desires and dreams.

The way to God is the way down—not the way up. It isn’t the way of strength. It is the way of weakness. It isn’t by becoming the top person that we will find God. It is by becoming little children. It isn’t by trying to be good. It isn’t by trying to control others. It isn’t by trying to prove that we are greater than someone else.

It is by realizing that within us are the seven capital vices and that, without the grace of God, we are capable of any sin.

It is by realizing that we are creatures and therefore incapable of even keeping ourselves in existence one moment without the pulsating activity of God—unable to flick an eyelash, unable to move a little finger.

The way to God is the way down. It is when we are lying flat on our faces that we will experience his mercy. It is within the dust that dust is transformed, and like the mythical bird, the phoenix, which rises from its ashes, we, too, rise transformed. We become new creatures.

And this is the simple truth, my dear brethren. May you, this year, look at these two things: on the one hand, your own misery, and on the other, the mercy of God. And I pray that daily your misery will meet his mercyiand not your pride and your "greatness" meet some other god. I pray that you know your poverty so that you may experience a little more fully the joy of God’s mercy.

The Pope’s Corner

THE HUMAN FACE OF GOD

by Pope John Paul II

On this Holy Night the ancient promise is fulfilled: the time of waiting has ended, and the Virgin gives birth to the Messiah.

Jesus is born for a humanity searching for freedom and peace. He is born for everyone burdened by sin, in need of salvation, and yearning for hope.

On this night God answers the ceaseless cry of the peoples: Come, Lord, save us! His eternal Word of love has taken on our mortal flesh. The Word has entered into time: Emmanuel, God-with-us, is born.

In cathedrals and great basilicas, as well as in the smallest and remotest churches throughout the world, Christians joyfully lift up their song: Today is born our Savior.

Mary gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger (Lk 2:7).

This is the icon of Christmas: a tiny newborn child, whom the hands of a woman wrap in poor cloths and lay in a manger.

Who could imagine that this little human being is the Son of the Most High (Lk 1:32)? Only she, his Mother, knows the truth and guards its mystery.

On this night we too can join in her gaze and so recognize in this Child the human face of God. We tooothe men and women of the third millenniumtare able to encounter Christ and to gaze upon him through the eyes of Mary.

Christmas night thus becomes a school of faith and of life.

The apostle Paul in his letter to Titus helps us to understand the Christ-event which we celebrate on this radiant night. He writes: the grace of God has appeared, offering salvation to all men (Ti 2:11).

The "grace of God" appearing in God’s merciful love, dominates the entire history of salvation and guides it to its definitive fulfillment. This self-revelation of God, who humbled himself to come among us as a man, is the anticipation, here on earth, of his glorious appearing at the end of time.

But there is more. The historical event which we are experiencing in mystery, is the way given to us as a means of encountering the glorious Christ.

By his Incarnation, Jesus teaches us, as the apostle observes, to reject godless ways and worldly desires, and live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age as we await our blessed hope (Ti 2:12-13).

O birth of the Lord, you have inspired saints of every age! I think of St. Bernard and his spiritual ecstasy before the touching scene of the Crib. I think of St. Francis of Assisi, the inspired creator of the first live crèche scene. I think of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who by her "little way" suggested anew to the proud modern mind the true spirit of Christmas.

The Child laid in the lowly manger: this is God’s sign. The centuries and the millennia pass, but the sign remains, and it remains valid for us, tooathe men and women of the third millennium.

It is a sign of hope for the whole human family; a sign of peace for those suffering from conflicts of every kind; a sign of freedom for the poor and oppressed; a sign of mercy for those caught up in the vicious circle of sin; a sign of love and consolation for those who feel lonely and abandoned.

A small and fragile sign, a humble and quiet sign, but one filled with the power of God, who out of love, became man.

Lord Jesus, together with the shepherds, we draw near to your crib. We contemplate you wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. O Babe of Bethlehem, we adore you in silence with Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother. To you be glory and praise forever, Divine Teacher, Divine Savior of the world. Amen.

Excerpted from the Holy Father’s homily at the Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica,2003.

Christmas

AN UNEXPECTED CHRISTMAS GIFT

by Fr. Eddie Doherty

Compiled by M. Sullivan

The snow was light, invigorating. The wind was man-sized. But the day wasn’t really cold. Let it be recorded that December 21st of that year was a pleasant sort of day. You kept sifting Your flakes upon me like a storm of blessings. It whispered of You. It smelled of heaven and of pine. I kept trudging on and up, thinking about the way we prepare for Christmas.

We make a fuss about it, and we want the whole hostile world to feel deeply about it. We try to "keep Christ in Christmas." Some of us seem to think that we are doing You a favor in celebrating the birthday of Your Son.

We forget that You give us infinitely more each morning in the Mass than we can ever repay. We forget that, in the Mass, You did not simply hand us the Baby, as Mary did when she put Him into the arms of Simeon the prophet. You fill us with Him. Every day, really, is Christmas to us!

I wish I could be something like the fir trees that edge the road, the cedars and the spruces and the pines. They are wide and full and proud in the hems of their flaring skirts. But they taper—and they dwindle in self-importance—as their heads rise nearer and nearer to You.

Lord, give me some sense in my old age. And if I am proud of all the lovely pinecones in my crown, let me keep remembering that You put them there, not I.

The snow stopped. So did the wind. And so did I. And at that moment, the sun, which had been skulking somewhere in the dull dim south-southeast, sent the gray clouds sprawling out of its impatient path, and showed me a world of radiance and glory!

The road up which I had heaved and hauled my hefty hulk turned into a land of powdered amethysts and sapphires and emeralds and diamonds. The hieroglyphics my feet had carved into the snow sparkled and gleamed and glittered.

The evergreens, which had looked so grim and gloomy in the grayness, now were coy, and black rather than green. They stood out boldly, and their ruffles were trimmed with ermine. They looked like a scattering of black and white striped pyramids.

The pines and spruces and cedars in the full glare of the sun were not just striped. They rippled with ropes and hoops and loops of pearls and rubies and hyacinths and fire opals and tiny blazing zircons. These were the candy-sprinkled Christmas tree cookies of our kitchen, transformed and brought to life.

Sun-happy blue jays shrieked their appreciation and their thanks. I was too full of words to speak, too full of thoughts to think. I was the only silent jay.

This was a Christmas present I had not expected, Lord, and it was wrapped exquisitely, even divinely! How could I adequately have thanked You?

Advent

LOVE IS NOT IMMATERIAL

by Susanne Stubbs

A while back I came across a book that had come out many years ago. It was called the I Hate to Cook Book. It’s a collection of recipes which are simple and designed to take as little time in the kitchen as possible. There are some helpful ideas in this book, but there is something about the title that I found offensive.

My Christian parents always taught us that there were very few things that you could really hate, so the word was always used judiciously in our home. Having thought about hating to cook, I guess it’s permissible. But I wonder if as Christians we can really hate cooking.

As Christmas approaches, I am reminded of many people I know who have the problem, "I hate to decorate for Christmas."

They might be afraid to say it aloud for fear of sounding like Scrooge, but the dislike is there. I am very aware of the problem because for many years when I was responsible for our handicraft center, I had to try to motivate both newcomers and old-timers in our community when they were asked to help prepare the house for Christmas.

One year I found an answer to this perennial Christmas problem, but it wasn’t at Christmastime. I was preparing a friend for her profession of faith, and I read in one of our catechisms that the most profound difference between Catholic Christianity and that of other denominations is that we believe our salvation comes to us through ordinary, material things.

No doubt the author was primarily referring to the material things used in the sacraments—to the water, the oil, and the bread and wine through which comes our sacramental grace. But the book simply said that our salvation comes through material things.

I meditated on this reality for many months, and when Christmas came that year, I had a new view of what Christmas decorating (and a lot of other things) is all about. It is about matter.

On the Christmas feast we celebrate the fact that Our Lord took on flesh, that he touched the earth, and that he thereby blessed everything on the earth and of the earth.

He blessed the evergreen tree that we would cut for the dining room. He blessed the flax that would become the linen tablecloths for our Christmas table. He blessed the bees’ wax for our many candles that light the house during their twelve days of burning.

And he blessed us, that we might have the love in our hearts to trim that tree with care, and iron the tablecloths well—all this so that this blessed matter might reflect the beauty in God himself. Christmas decorating is taking matter and arranging it with great love to celebrate the fact that on Christmas Christ embraces our material world with love.

To do this our faith in the Incarnation must be deep. Perhaps to deal well with matter we have to come to a point of awe before the mystery of the fact that God came to earth: Perhaps we have to have awe before the humility of God and the holiness of things.

Christmas decorating has more to do with faith than with creativity. It is a great gift to be creative, and at Christmas the artists in Madonna House (as well as the "non-artists") have limitless opportunities to use their talents. And beautiful creations abound.

But without faith where would their inspirations come from? Without faith where would they get the energy to carry them through the hard work of creating?

In an outline about Christmas decorating Catherine Doherty wrote:

"Let all our love and talents, our research"personal and collectivepas well as our constant consultation with one another go into the decoration of the house (as well as our hearts!) on this great feast of Christ’s Birthday. For it is quite obvious that this work of love is the work of everyone, of all hands at Madonna House.

"What we are doing is singing our love song to God through beauty, the understanding of which is a gift, a ‘special talent.’ Let us then pour ourselves out, returning this gift to him, the Christ Child."

CELEBRATION

by Catherine Doherty

Celebration is a very beautiful thing. It is a resurrection of the spirit. Sometimes we’re drooping. We see the world as going to pieces, and we don’t feel very much like celebrating unless as a way of running away from everything. That’s not celebration; that’s escape.

True celebration begins with communion with God, and from the unity we achieve in Christ, we overflow into song, into dance, and into food that is different from everyday food.

We celebrate. We make new again part of our life, and we are refreshed. We come from the celebration not as people who have escaped from something, but as ones who have found something.

What we have found is, first, a closer unity with God, and secondly a closer unity with one another.

From spiritual reading, October 31, 1975

TRUTH IS A CHILD

by Catherine Doherty

Truth is a child, born in Bethlehem.

Mary is the lock, the latch, the key.

You will not see the child,

Unless you pass through her.

Perhaps you think it dwells on mountains high,

And you a mountaineer of great prowess.

Do not ascend; descend in humility.

Then when you have walked its narrow road—

A lane, you will find a crossroad. Turn right.

The trail is faint, but, oh how bright!

For you are walking the way of simplicity.

Come, I will show you where truth dwells.

It is a Child. Fear not, if you have sinned.

If you walk in humility, simplicity, and with

The staff of poverty of spirit,

All you have to bring is tears.

But if you go with me, let us start

In search of Truth in Palestine.

There in a cave, behind an inn, with door quite low.

(But poor folks are used to bowing quite low.)

There we will meet her, not very tall but stately.

She will ask us what we seek, and we will say

Quite simply, "God, your Son, to know, to adore,

To love, to serve, to live, to die, for him."