A Tour of the Madonna House Training Centre
Doing Little Things Well for the Love of God
As Madonna House began to grow, Catherine Doherty began to organize it as she had learned long ago from her parents: the laundry, the garden, the farm, the office, the library, the handicraft area, the kitchen, and the sewing room all follow the basic idea of what she had learned at an early age: that manual labour was a foundation for everything else, and that the duty of the moment is the duty of God.
“God developed Madonna House, and we grew from a single house to many,” Catherine said. “In each of these houses the staff learn how to become fully integrated persons, to bloom like flowers before the face of the Lord.”
Catherine's vision of manual labour, coupled with learning new skills and practical, “feet-on-the-ground” spirituality all comes together at Madonna House. Our tour, then, is about how Catherine's spirituality applies to the different departments of Madonna House — and about the spirit with which we try to live every aspect of life so that the whole person might be restored to Christ. The meditations we will share as we move through the tour were originally written for members of Madonna House. But you may enjoy and receive benefit from them as well. Catherine's original “vision of the whole” is key to understanding Madonna House—we share some of her writings here:
The very essence of our vocation — so hidden, so humble, so glorious — is to love God passionately by loving others. God loved us first; that is what our faith is all about. We must respond to that love and love Him back! Our houses should be hospices of love and service to others.
Love is a fire. It must spend itself in service. Service is the dry wood for the fire of love that makes it burst into a bonfire that reaches into eternity and burns there. It is to love, to burn, that we have come together! The very word 'love' implies sacrifice and surrender.
Our vocation is to do little things well for the love of God. This means monotonous things, eternally repeated. But if we have the ‘vision of the whole,’ we will connect doing these little things, these monotonous things, with spiritual truths. The vision of the whole is that every task, routine or not, is of redeeming, supernatural value because we are united with Christ. But we must be recollected and stay aware of this truth. God speaks to us, then, in the duty of every moment.
As we love Christ in our neighbour, everywhere and always, he will draw us unto himself. For our vocation is to be contemplatives, to contemplate God in the depth of our souls. It is given to us to touch him, converse with him, serve him — in others. Christ always comes to us in others.
To love God passionately is to die to self. We can only see the vision of the whole if we allow ourselves to be crucified on the other side of his cross.
Our vision of the apostolate is the whole world as seen from that cross. We must constantly seek to expand our vision. We must review the means to our goal and choose the ones that best fit our fast-changing times. We must be flexible and open to change, by observing, thinking, research, prayer, and by ‘folding the wings of our intellect’ and letting God tell us what he wishes our apostolate to be.
We must constantly try to read the signs of God for today and ask ourselves what they mean. At one time God may ask us to forget that we have a Ph.D and wash dishes. At another time he may ask us to use that talent. We do whatever is needed to restore the world to Christ.
But we must be careful not to evaluate ourselves and our apostolate on activity more than on spirit. We need to take care that we are not living in a deadly routine of work. Work is prayer, true. But we should not be satisfied simply with work accomplished. Action should be the fruit of the spirit. It should not be the essence that replaces the spirit. Our greatest contribution to all apostolates that we undertake is our being united to Christ inwardly, to contemplate him in the depths of our souls.
This vision of the whole is really staggering. Through the motley crowd that we are, filled as we are with all sorts of emotional and other wounds, the Lord wishes to restore his Church. Perhaps restore is too big a word. But nevertheless, it seems he is moulding us, shaping us, healing us, blessing us, guiding us toward that end.
How is anyone to achieve this miracle of grace? How can it be done? The same answer comes again and again, unmistakably: through prayer. What is impossible to man is possible to God and man. Prayer brings together, in a mysterious way, the mystery of the person and the mystery of God. Above all, there is a place to which we must go to replenish ourselves. To be filled with the strength of the Lord, we must go to the house of the Lord which is the Church. There we will participate in the Last Supper. There we will receive the Christ of passion and glory, of death and resurrection. There we will enter into communion with Christ.
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