THE SAINTS: STORIES, IMAGES, MEDITATIONS

Revisiting the Mystery:
The Sanctity of Mother Teresa
by Sandro Magister


Magister here presents a translation of an article published in Avvenire August 26 by Fr. Cantalamessa. It appears to be the long version from which was derived the article from National Catholc Register posted higher up on this thread by Benefan.



ROMA, September 4, 2007 – Three days ago, speaking to three hundred thousand young people gathered in Loreto, Benedict XVI recalled that even a woman as holy as Mother Teresa, "with all her charity and the power of her faith," nonetheless "suffered from the silence of God."

And he added: "A book has been published containing the spiritual experiences of Mother Teresa, in which what we already knew is displayed even more openly."

The book to which the pope refers is entitled "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light." It is on sale as of September 4 in its English edition, edited and with an introduction by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk of the Missionaries of Charity, the postulator of the cause of Mother Teresa's canonization.

It presents some of the letters that the religious sister, who died ten years ago and is now beatified, wrote at various times to her spiritual directors. These letters attest to the long period in her life during which she experienced the "night of faith."

The mere announcement of the book's pending publication, even before it was released, stirred up a hornet's nest of debate in various countries throughout the world, as if it contained unprecedented revelations shocking enough to demolish Mother Teresa's image.

But everything in it was already well known, as Benedict XVI pointed out. The letters now published, together with other similar writings, were already contained in the eight volumes for the cause of Mother Teresa's beatification. And when she was proclaimed blessed , on October 19, 2003, these were the exact words printed in her official biography released by the Vatican:

"There was an heroic side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death. Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life marked by an experience of a deep, painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience, 'the darkness.' The painful night of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever more profound union with God. Through the darkness she mystically participated in the thirst of Jesus, in His painful and burning longing for love, and she shared in the interior desolation of the poor."

Mother Teresa recounted this interior darkness, which lasted half a century – just as the entire world was admiring her radiant Christian joy – to no one but her spiritual directors, instructing them to destroy her letters after reading them. But they didn't.

This darkening of faith marks the lives of many other saints, even the greatest. But there's always something unique in each of them. In Mother Teresa, too.

In the commentary that follows, an outstanding author tries to address Mother Teresa's uniqueness, precisely in relation to her doubts on the faith. He is Franciscan Father Raniero Cantalamessa, an historian of early Christianity and the official preacher of the pontifical household.

His commentary was printed in the Sunday, August 26 edition of "Avvenire," right in the thick of the discussions following the announcement of the book.

In it, Fr. Cantalamessa maintains a bold hypothesis: he identifies in Mother Teresa the ideal companion for the many "atheists in good faith" who inhabit today's world. He calls them the most beloved of Jesus, who on the cross experienced abandonment by God more than anyone else.


Mother Teresa:
'The night' accepted as a gift
by Raniero Cantalamessa


What happened after Mother Teresa said 'yes' to the divine inspiration that called her to leave everything in order to serve the poorest of the poor?

The world learned a great deal about what happened around her – the arrival of her first followers, ecclesiastical approval, the dizzying expansion of her charitable activities – but until her death, no one know what happened inside her.

This is revealed by her personal diaries and the letters she wrote to her spiritual director, now published by the postulator of the cause of her canonization. I do not believe that the custodians of these letters, before deciding to give them over to be printed, had to overcome the fear that these might disturb or even scandalize their readers. Far from diminishing Mother Teresa's stature, they instead increase it, placing her beside the greatest Christian mystics.

"With the beginning of her new life in service of the poor," writes Jesuit Fr. Joseph Neuner, who was close to her, " an oppressive darkness came over her."

A few brief passages are enough to give us an idea of the weight of the darkness in which she found herself: "There is so much contradiction in my soul, a deep longing for God, so deep that it hurts, a constant suffering – and with this there is the feeling of not being wanted by God, rejected, empty, without faith, without love, without zeal... Heaven means nothing to me; it seems a hollow place."

It is not hard to recognize immediately in Mother Teresa's experience a classic case of what the scholars of mysticism, after Saint John of the Cross, usually call the dark night of the soul.

Johannes Tauler gives a startling description of this state: "Then we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any awareness of God, and we fall into such anguish that we no longer know if we were ever on the right path, nor know if God even exists, or if we ourselves are alive or dead. And so an anguish besets us that is so strange, it seems as if everything in the entire world were joining together to afflict us. We no longer have any experience or awareness of God, but everything else seems repugnant to us as well, and it seems we are trapped between two walls."

Everything indicates that this darkness stayed with Mother Teresa right up until her death, with a brief pause in 1958, when she was able to write triumphantly: "Today my soul is full of love, full of inexpressible joy and an uninterrupted union of love."

If at a certain point she almost does not speak of this night anymore, it is not because it was over, but because she had learned to live within it. Not only had she accepted it, but she recognized the extraordinary grace that it held for her. "I have begun to love my darkness, because I now believe that it is a part, a tiny little part, of the darkness and suffering in which Jesus lived on earth."

The most fragrant flower of the night of Mother Teresa is her silence about it. She was afraid that by talking about it she would draw attention to herself. Even the people closest to her suspected nothing, right until the very end, of her interior torment.

According to her instructions, her spiritual director was supposed to destroy all of her letters, and if some of these were spared, it was because with her permission he had made a copy of them for the archbishop and future cardinal Trevor Lawrence Picachy, and these were found among his papers after his death. Fortunately for us, the archbishop refused to comply with the request to destroy them, which was even made to him personally by Mother Teresa.

The most insidious danger for the soul that is in the dark night is that of realizing that she is, in fact, in the dark night, in what the great mystics before her had experienced, and that she is therefore part of a circle of privileged souls. With the grace of God, Mother Teresa avoided this danger, hiding her torment from everyone under an ever-present smile.

"Always smiling, is what the sisters and the people say of me. They think that inside I am full of faith, trust, and love... If they only knew how true it is that my joyfulness is nothing but a cloak I throw over my emptiness and misery!" A saying of the desert Fathers says: "However great your sufferings may be, your victory over them lies in silence." Mother Teresa put this into practice in an heroic way.

But why did this strange phenomenon of the night of the soul last practically her whole life? Here there is something new compared with the experience and accounts of the spiritual masters of the past, including Saint John of the Cross.

This dark night cannot be explained solely through the traditional idea of passive purification, what is called the "purgative way', the preparation for the illuminative and unitive way. Mother Teresa was convinced that in her case, her ego was particularly hard to overcome, since God was constrained to keep her for so long in this state.

But this was certainly not the case. The endless night of some modern saints is the means of protection that God has invented for the saints of today who live and work under constant media attention. It is the suit of asbestos for those who must walk amid the flames; it is the insulation that prevents the electric current from surging and causing short circuits.

Saint Paul said: "Therefore, that I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me" (2 Cor. 12:7). The thorn in the flesh that was the silence of God was shown to be extremely effective for Mother Teresa: it shielded her from any sort of elation in the midst of the great noise the world was making about her, even at the moment she received the Nobel peace prize.

"The interior suffering that I feel is so great," she said, "that all the publicity and all the talk of the people has no effect on me." How far from the truth is Christopher Hitchens in his vituperative essay "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" when he makes Mother Teresa out to be a product of the media age!

And there is an even deeper reason that explains these nights that extend through an entire life: the imitation of Christ, participation in the dark night of the soul that enfolded Jesus in Gethsemane, and in which he died on Calvary, crying: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"

Mother Teresa came to see her trial more and more clearly as a response to her desire to gasp, together with Jesus on the cross, "I thirst": "If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation from you give you even a drop of consolation, my Jesus, then do with me what you will... Impress the suffering of your heart upon my soul and my life... I want to quench your thirst with every last drop of blood you can find in me. Don't be concerned about returning soon: I am ready to wait for you for all eternity."

It would be a grave mistake to think that such people's lives are nothing but gloomy suffering. In the depth of their souls, they enjoy a peace and a joy that are unknown to the rest of mankind, arising from the certainty - stronger in them than their doubts - that they are living according the will of God.

Saint Catherine of Genoa compares the suffering of souls in this condition with that of Purgatory, and says that it "is so great that it can be compared only to that of Hell," but that there is in it a "tremendous contentment" that can be compared only to that of the saints in Paradise.

The joy and serenity that radiated from Mother Teresa's face was not a mask, but rather the reflection of the profound union with God she experienced within her soul. She was the one who was "deceived" about her condition, not the people.

Today's world has hatched a new category of people: atheists in good faith, those who experience the silence of God as a painful burden, who do not believe in God and yet do not boast of this, experiencing instead existential anguish and an absolute lack of meaning; they too, in their own way, live in a dark night of the soul. In his novel "The Plague," Albert Camus calls them "saints without God." The mystics exists above all for them; they are their companions on the road and at table. Like Jesus, they "have sat at table with sinners and have eaten with them" (cf. Luke 15:2).

This explains the passion with which certain atheists, once they have converted, have thrown themselves into the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Leon Bloy, the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, and many others plunged into the writings of Angela da Foligno; T.S. Eliot, into those of Julian of Norwich. Here they found the same landscape that they had left behind, but this time illuminated by the sun. Few know that the author of "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett, read Saint John of the Cross in his free time.

The word "atheist" can have an active or a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God, but also someone who is rejected by God - or at least feels himself to be. The first case is one of culpable atheism (when it is not in good faith), while the second is an atheism of suffering or expiation. In the latter sense, we can say that the mystics, in the night of the soul, are a-theists - without God – and that on the cross Jesus, too, was an a-theist, one without God.

Mother Teresa wrote words that no one would have expected from her: "They say that the eternal pain that souls suffer in Hell is the loss of God... In my soul, I experience precisely this terribly pain of damnation, of a God who does not want me, of a God who is not God, of a God who in reality does not exist. Jesus, I beg you to forgive my blasphemy."

But one realizes that her a-theism was of a different character, marked by solidarity and expiation: "In this world that is so far from God, that has turned its back on the light of Jesus, I want to help the people by taking on some of their suffering."

The clearest indicator that this atheism is of a completely different nature is the inexpressible suffering that it provokes in the mystics. Ordinary atheists do not go through this kind of agony because of their atheism!

The mystics have come within a step of the world where people live without God; they have experienced that dizzying plunge. Mother Teresa again writes to her spiritual father: "I was on the verge of saying 'No'... I feel like one of these days something inside me will have to snap." "Pray for me, that I do not reject God in this hour. I do not want this, but I am afraid I could do it."

For this reason, the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the postmodern world, where people live "etsi Deus non daretur," as if God did not exist. They remind the honest atheists that they are not "far from the kingdom of God," that in just one leap they could be on the side of the mystics, passing from nothing to everything.

Karl Rahner was right when he said, "In the future, Christianity will be mystical, or it will not exist at all." Padre Pio and Mother Teresa are the response to this sign of the times. We must not underestimate the saints, reducing them to channels of grace, or merely good examples.

This article was written in 2003. It said what TIME magazine just printed that has caused a flap around the world but it tells the story from a perspective of faith.


The Dark Night of Mother Teresa

by Carol Zaleski
First Things (May 2003).

On October 19, 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) will be beatified in Rome. During the three-and-a-half-year investigation into her cause, no less thorough for having been hastened by the waiver of the customary five-year waiting period, every nook and cranny of her life was studied for evidence that she is the great saint, the Christian Mahatma, that the world already believes her to be. The date chosen for her beatification, Mission Sunday, is the Sunday closest to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the pontificate of John Paul II and to the end of the Year of the Rosary. This may be taken as a sign of how close Mother Teresa’s cause is to the Pope’s heart. In any case, the beatification of Mother Teresa makes a fitting colophon to the era of turbulence and grace that will always be associated with his name. Since the pontificate of Gregory the Great (590-604), nearly every generation of Christians has felt itself living in a Church too old to produce heroic saints. If during the days of John Paul II we are inclined to a similar despondency, we have only to consider Mother Teresa to be reminded of how young the Church really is, how capable of fidelity and passionate witness to Christ.

One would expect the canonization process to be steady and sure and, aside from a few marginal detractors, uncontroversial, for no saint has ever been more in the public eye. In her life-long service to Christ in the poorest of the poor, and her simple and consistent teachings on the law of love, she was an open book. She tried always to be transparent to Christ, and in that very transparency her inner life was hidden, making her a difficult subject for biographers. Malcolm Muggeridge observed that when the eighteen-year-old Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu left her family to join the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto, it was “the end of her biography and the beginning of her life.” It is only now with the end of her life, and the beginning of her cause, that the biography resumes, and new dimensions of her character are revealed.

During November and December of last year, the ZENIT News Agency published in four installments a study of The Soul of Mother Teresa: Hidden Aspects of Her Interior Life, by the Postulator of Mother Teresa’s cause, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. In this study a new portrait of Mother Teresa’s interior life emerges, drawn largely from letters she sent to her spiritual directors. She had wanted the letters to be destroyed, not intending to leave behind any record of her spiritual life (“I want the work to remain only His”), but they were preserved nonetheless; and who among us would willingly dispatch them to the shredder? Fr. Kolodiejchuk’s study is just the tip of the iceberg-the documentation submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints runs to eight volumes—but what it shows us is Mother Teresa as a classic Christian mystic whose inner life was burned through by the fire of charity, and whose fidelity was tested and purified by an intense trial of faith, a true dark night of the soul.

Fr. Kolodiejchuk sees Mother Teresa’s life as unfolding in four phases:
Her childhood and youth, when from the time of her First Communion at age five and a half she felt her heart captivated by the love of Jesus and of neighbor, and discovered her call to join the missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto. While it was difficult to leave her family, she found her time as a Loreto nun, teaching in the convent school in Calcutta, immensely rewarding. She was by all accounts a happy though not particularly brilliant nun (she is remembered, among other things, for having fumbled the candles at Benediction). The keynote of this period is youthful zeal and joy.

The Vow of 1942. At age thirty-two, at the end of her annual retreat, with the permission of her spiritual director, Mother Teresa made a vow to give herself utterly and unreservedly to Christ: “To give God anything that He may ask . . . not to refuse Him anything.”

The Call within a Call. On September 10, 1946, the day celebrated by the Missionaries of Charity as “Inspiration Day,” Mother Teresa was traveling by train from Calcutta to a retreat house in Darjeeling. During this trip, the realization came to her that Jesus was calling her to serve him radically in the poorest of the poor. Only in private letters to her spiritual director, Fr. Celeste Van Exem, S.J., and (under Fr. Van Exem’s cautious instruction) to Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J., did she reveal that this call was more than just an inner prompting. Jesus appeared and spoke to her, in a series of interior locutions and visions.

“Wouldst thou not help?” Jesus asked her. “How can I?” Mother Teresa responded, expressing her fear of incurring ridicule, loneliness, deprivation, and failure should she leave her happy life as a Loreto nun, exchange her habit for a rough sari, and take up the uncertain life Jesus was demanding of her. Repeatedly he asked her, “Wilt thou refuse? You have become my spouse for my love. You have come to India for me. The thirst you had for souls brought you so far. Are you afraid now to take one more step for your spouse, for me, for souls?” And again: “I want Indian nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying, and the little children. . . .” The chief motivation for the Missionaries of Charity, as she would often say, was not to do social work, but to adore Christ in the littlest and weakest of his children, and to bring Christ the souls for which he thirsts.

The Dark Night. Throughout 1946 and 1947, Mother Teresa experienced a profound union with Christ. But soon after she left the convent and began her work among the destitute and dying on the street, the visions and locutions ceased, and she experienced a spiritual darkness that would remain with her until her death. It is hard to know what is more to be marveled at: that this twentieth-century commander of a worldwide apostolate and army of charity should have been a visionary contemplative at heart; or that she should have persisted in radiating invincible faith and love while suffering inwardly from the loss of spiritual consolation. In letters written during the 1950s and 1960s to Fr. Van Exem, Archbishop Périer, and to later spiritual directors, Fr. L. T. Picachy, S.J., and Fr. J. Neuner, S.J., she disclosed feelings of doubt, loneliness, and abandonment. God seemed absent, heaven empty, and bitterest of all, her own suffering seemed to count for nothing, “. . . just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”

The dark night of Mother Teresa presents us with an even greater interpretive challenge than her visions and locutions. It means that the missionary foundress who called herself “God’s pencil” was not the God-intoxicated saint many of us had assumed her to be. We may prefer to think that she spent her days in a state of ecstatic mystical union with God, because that would get us ordinary worldlings off the hook. How else could this unremarkable woman, no different from the rest of us, bear to throw her lot in with the poorest of the poor, sharing their meager diet and rough clothing, wiping leprous sores and enduring the agonies of the dying, for so many years without respite, unless she were somehow lifted above it all, shielded by spiritual endorphins? Yet we have her own testimony that what made her self-negating work possible was not a subjective experience of ecstasy but an objective relationship to God shorn of the sensible awareness of God’s presence.

In the history of Christian theology and spirituality, there have been many accounts of divine darkness, with a host of different implications. It is an ancient doctrine, emphasized by apophatic theologians and mystics, that God dwells in inaccessible light, a light so searingly absolute that it cancels out all images and ideas we may form of Him, veiling the divine glory in a dark “cloud of unknowing.” This tradition owes much to the Christian Neoplatonist Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and his liturgically inspired vision of ascent to the divine throne; as such, it says more about divine transcendence than about human desolation.

Among the monastic writers who flourished during the sunlit years of the twelfth century, divine darkness was an essentially cheerful idea. William of St. Thierry positively delighted in our mind’s incapacity to see that God is present, for he counted on love to make good the deficiencies of our feeble intellect. Love is the eye with which we see God, William said; love itself is understanding. But love is not to be confused with mere feelings. Feelings burn out too easily; they can be manipulated or seduced. The love by which we see God must be an act of the will rather than a passing affection of the heart.

Later generations of Christian mystics dwelt upon the more desolate kinds of darkness to which the spiritual life can lead: the darkness in which all modes of prayer and spiritual practice become arid, and all consolation in the love of God seems lost. Even in the desolate dark night of the soul, indeed especially there, St. John of the Cross taught, God is present, purifying the soul of all passions and hindrances, and preparing her for the inconceivable blessedness of divine union. Along with dark knowing, there is dark loving, no less ardent for being deprived of all sensible and spiritual vision of the beloved. Therefore St. John can say, “Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!”

Yet only in the modern period has the dark night of the soul taken the form of radical doubt, doubting not only one’s own state of grace, but God’s promises and even God’s existence. A wise Benedictine, John Chapman of Downside Abbey, made this point in a 1923 letter to a non-monastic friend: “n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most pious souls seem to have gone through a period in which they felt sure that God had reprobated them. . . . This doesn’t seem to happen nowadays. But the corresponding trial of our contemporaries seems to be the feeling of not having any faith; not temptations against any particular article, but a mere feeling that religion is not true.”

For this annihilating temptation, Chapman wrote, “the only remedy is to despise the whole thing, and pay no attention to it—except (of course) to assure our Lord that one is ready to suffer from it as long as he wishes.” The “feeling of not having any faith” is painful because it is an authentic purgation, during which “faith is really particularly strong all the time,” and one is being brought into closer union with the suffering Christ.

This was exactly the way Mother Teresa learned to deal with her trial of faith: by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God. It would be her Gethsemane, she came to believe, and her participation in the thirst Jesus suffered on the Cross. And it gave her access to the deepest poverty of the modern world: the poverty of meaninglessness and loneliness. To endure this trial of faith would be to bear witness to the fidelity for which the world is starving. “Keep smiling,” Mother Teresa used to tell her community and guests, and somehow, coming from her, it doesn’t seem trite. For when she kept smiling during her night of faith, it was not a cover-up but a manifestation of her loving resolve to be “an apostle of joy.”

One can better understand, having read The Soul of Mother Teresa, why she insisted that adoration of Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament should occupy the center of the Missionaries’ daily work; and why she felt it imperative to establish purely contemplative communities that would make the Missionaries of Charity an order of adoration as well as apostolic service. Adoring Christ in the Sacrament is also a way of dark knowing and dark loving. To all appearances he is absent, as Aquinas says in the Tantum ergo Sacramentum, so faith must supply what is lacking to our feeble senses. Humanly, there were times when Mother Teresa felt burnt out, but faith supplied what was lacking even to troubled faith; spiritually she was often desolate, but her vow endured and her visible radiance—to which everyone attests—was undiminished. This lifelong fidelity should not be confused with a Stoic determination to keep going in the face of defeat. It was something else entirely: objective Christian joy.

Mother Teresa is not the only modern saint to have undergone such a trial of faith; one thinks also of precursors like St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), founder of the Passionists, and St. Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641), foundress of the Visitandines, but above all of Mother Teresa’s namesake, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the French Carmelite famous for her “Little Way.” The parallels between Mother Teresa (Teresa of the Child Jesus) and St. Thérèse (Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face) are really quite remarkable. Thérèse also made a vow, informally as a young child, and formally on two occasions as a professed Carmelite nun, to refuse nothing to Jesus. Like Mother Teresa, she had longed to be sent forth in the missions as a herald of God’s love; since her frailty prevented this, she rejoiced in being assigned missionaries for whom she prayed and whom she regarded with great affection as her spiritual brothers. She, too, felt multiple calls; indeed, she felt all calls at once: “I feel the vocation of the warrior, the priest, the apostle, the doctor, the martyr,” she wrote. “I feel within my soul the courage of the Crusader, the Papal Guard, and I would want to die on the field of battle in defense of the Church.” Not for feminist reasons did she say, “I feel in me the vocation of the priest,” but rather because of a youthful desire to be all in all for Christ. The “Little Way” was her solution: “I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything . . . my vocation is love! . . . In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love.” If love were dependent on mere feelings, however, her vocation would have foundered, for as Thérèse wrote, “Do not believe I am swimming in consolations; oh, no, my consolation is to have none on earth.”

From Easter 1896 until her death from tuberculosis on September 30, 1897, at age twenty-four, Thérèse endured a trial of faith of the modern kind, which she described as like being enclosed in a dark tunnel. She seemed to hear the darkness mocking her: “You are dreaming about the light, about a fatherland embalmed in the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these marvels; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.” According to tradition she died trusting and loving God in the very grip of this doubt, and promising to spend her heaven doing good on earth.

Is it fanciful to consider the possibility that Mother Teresa, who died in the same month one hundred years later, who experienced the same ardent call, made the same vow of surrender, suffered the same desolation of faith, and embodied in the face of that dark night the same teaching of fidelity in small things, may have in some way been completing the mission of St. Thérèse? Could it be that this missionary contemplative and this contemplative missionary are companions in a joint work of grace?

However that may be, it was the same objective Christian joy that made Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu become a Saint Teresa for our time, and a saint-maker for our future. When we consider her life and the ongoing life of her community, the Church seems young again, and everything seems possible. If these days are in any sense a dark night for the Church, then Mother Teresa shows the way forward: faith that we are undergoing a purification rather than a free-fall, and fidelity, in small things as well as big, to the vows that bind in order to set free.


Carol Zaleski is a professor of religion at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts

The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness, Part 1


Father Kolodiejchuk on Unity With Jesus

ROME, SEPT. 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Feeling or not feeling love, Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew that she was united with Jesus, for her mind was fixed on him and him alone.

The founder of the Missionaries of Charity expressed this in a letter written to a spiritual director, now published with many other letters in a volume titled "Come Be My Light," edited and presented by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Kolodiejchuk, a Missionary of Charity priest and the postulator for the cause of canonization of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, discusses his new book and the interior life Mother Teresa kept hidden from the world.

Q: The extraordinary interior life of Mother Teresa was discovered after her death. Aside from her spiritual directors, how was this life, especially her suffering of spiritual darkness, kept from all who knew her?

Father Kolodiejchuk: No one had any idea of her interior life because her spiritual directors held onto these letters. The Jesuits have some, some were at the archbishop's house, and Father Joseph Neuner, another spiritual director, had some.

These letters were discovered when we went looking for the documents for the cause.

When she was alive, Mother Teresa asked that her biographical information not be shared.

She asked Archbishop Ferdinand Perier of Calcutta not to tell another bishop about how things had begun. She said, "Please don't give him anything from the beginning, because once people come to know the beginning, like the locutions, then the focus would be on me and not on Jesus."

She kept saying, "God's work. This is God's work."

Even the closest sisters had no idea of her interior life. Many would have thought that she would have had a great intimacy with God to keep her going in light of the difficulties of the order and the material poverty she suffered.

Q: The book discusses Mother's secret vow that she made early in her vocation, where she promised not to refuse God anything on pain of mortal sin. What role did this play in her life?

Father Kolodiejchuk: Mother Teresa made this vow, in 1942, to never refuse God anything.

Her inspiration letters from Jesus soon followed. In one of them, if not both of them, Jesus says, picking up on her vow, "Wilt thou refuse to do this for me?"

So the vow is the background to her vocation. Then you see in the inspiration letters where Jesus makes her call clear.

She then pushes forward because she knows what Jesus wants. She is motivated by thought of his longing and his pain because the poor don't know him, so they don't want him.

This was one of the pillars that kept her going through the trials of the darkness. Because of her certainty of her call and this vow in one of the letters she says, "I was at the point of breaking and then I remembered the vow, and that picked me up."

Q: There has been a lot of discussion about Mother Teresa's "dark night." It is described in your book as a "martyrdom of desire." This element, her thirsting for God, has largely been missed. Can you describe this?

Father Kolodiejchuk: A good book to read to understand some of these things is Father Thomas Dubay's "Fire Within."

In Father Dubay's book, he speaks of the real pain of loss and a pain of longing, with the pain of longing being more painful.

As Father Dubay explains, in the path to authentic union with God, there is the purgative stage called the dark night, after this a soul then goes to a stage of ecstasy and true union with God.

The purgative stage for Mother Teresa seems to have been during her time of formation at Loretto.

At the time of her profession, she said her companion was most often the darkness. The kind of letters that you read there, in the dark night, are typical letters you would read of someone in the dark night.

Father Celeste Van Exem, her spiritual director at the time, said that maybe in 1946 or 1945 she was already close to ecstasy.

After that, there is a reference to when the inspirations and locutions came, when the difficulty against faith stopped.

Later she wrote to Father Neuner, explaining: "And then you know how it worked out. And there, as if our Lord just gave himself to me to the full. The sweetness and consolation and union of those 6 months passed but too soon."

So, Mother Teresa had six months of intense union, after the locutions and ecstasy. She was already in the real transforming union. At this point, the darkness returned.

But now, however, the darkness she experienced was within that union with God -- so it wasn't that she had the union and then lost it. She lost the consolation of the union and alternated between the pain of loss and a deep longing, a real thirst.

As Father Dubay said, "At times the contemplation is delightful, and at other times it is a strong thirsting for him." But in Mother Teresa's case, apart from one month in 1958, she did not have this consolation of union.

There is one letter in which she said: "No Father, I am not alone, I have His darkness, I have His pain, I have a terrible longing for God. To love and not to be loved, I know I have Jesus in the unbroken union, for my mind is fixed on him and him alone."

Her experience of darkness within union is very rare even among the saints because for most, the end is union without it.

Her suffering, then, to use the Dominican theologian Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's term, is reparatory, much more for the sins of others, not purificatory, for her own sins. She is united to Jesus in enough faith and love to share in his experience in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross.

Mother Teresa made the comment that the suffering in the Garden was worse than the suffering on the cross. And now we understand where that was coming from, because she understood Jesus' longing for souls.

The important thing is that it is union, and as Carol Zaleski pointed out in her article in First Things, this kind of trial is a new kind of trial. It is a modern kind of experience for the saints over the last 100 years or so, to suffer the feeling that one does not have any faith, and that religion is not true.

====================================================================

Reuters filed these photos today from Kolcata (Calcutta) with the following caption story:

9/5/07, KOLKATA (Reuters) - Volunteers, slum dwellers and nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order gather beside the tomb of Mother Teresa for a special prayer during the tenth anniversary of her death in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata September 5, 2007. Mother Teresa, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun who died in 1997, was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003, but has not yet been canonised by the Vatican. (Jayanta Shaw/Reuters)








Across India, rich and poor
remember Mother Teresa
by Nirmala Carvalho


Kolkata, Spet. 5 (AsiaNews) – Hundreds of people gathered at the tomb of Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity’s Mother House, Kolkatta from early morning, to pray to Blessed Teresa on her Feast Day (ten years after her death).

Special prayers were held at the tomb of Mother Teresa which were attended by hundreds all religions, caste and creeds, in a special service the Archbishop of Kolkatta, Lucas Sirkar, urged the authorities to speed up the process of a canonisation; “Our expectation is that she be soon declared a saint because she lived as a saint. Saints are not only for themselves. Saints are for others, the church and all mankind”.

At Shishu Bhavan, Kolkatta, the house where the MC welcomes abandoned children, orphans and babies saved from abortion, dawn mass was celebrated.

Mother Teresa consistently battled against abortion, asking mothers to “gift” her their unwanted children.

“I think – she said in ’94 – that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion….if we can accept that even a mother can kill her child, how can we tell people not to kill one another?”.

Fr. Bosco, the priest who celebrated mass in Shishu Bhavan, tells that after the celebration the flock of children dressed in festive costumes sang for Mother Teresa “the happiness of these little ones is infective – he adds – they bring such joy to us”.

In Bhadra, near Ahmedabad (Gujarat), many people gathered in the square dedicated to Mother Teresa to offer Shraddhanjali, a special tribute in her honour. Gujarat is infamous for the bitter religious and ethnic tensions which prevail there. The MC’s opened their first mission there in ’75. Today they have a home which hosts orphans, children of single mothers, lepers, disabled, the dying and the abandoned.

“We have 415 leprosy patients in Surat”- says Sr. Meena the local Superior – “Many of them have been cured but do not have any place to go”.

In Bangalore (Karnataka), in another children’s home (Shishu Bhavan), Msgr. Bernard Mores, the Archbishop, unveiled a statute dedicated to the blessed.

“Mother Teresa" – he told AsiaNews – "became a mother to all because of her special Love for the poor without any thought of herself. In Indian society today, with the increasing anti-Christian sentiments and violence against Christian Missionaries, certain segments of society- are spreading false propaganda that her charitable works were only an allurement to conversion. This is totally a perverted vision of the work and compassion of Mother Teresa for the poorest of the poor.

"Mother Teresa never ever sought to convert any one through her tireless service: her own desire was to give dignity and love to the unfortunate brethren. Mother Teresa had great respect for all religions and had many friends among the people of other religions. Yet she never compromised her own faith. Wherever she went, she went as a 'missionary', as a Catholic nun, and she was accepted and respected as such”.

Slum dwellers celebrate
feast of 'blessed' nun
who served ‘poorest of the poor’

By Anne Nigli
September 5, 2007
UCANews (www.ucanews.com)

KOLKATA, India (UCAN) – It was still dark, almost an hour before sunrise on Sept. 5, but the freshly decorated white marble tomb of Blessed Teresa gleamed as the feast day of the saintly nun began.


SUPERIOR OF MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY PLACES FLOWERS ON TOMB – Sister Nirmala Joshi, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, places a flower basket on the tomb of Blessed Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, Sept. 4, the eve of the 10th anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. Scores of people from different walks of life, including orphans, joined a peace march to the tomb of Mother Teresa to mark the anniversary. The peace march included Muslim and Sikh leaders, seen behind Sister Nirmala at the tomb. (CNS)

Activities began early in the morning with the arrival of more than 150 women, men and children from slum areas where Blessed Teresa had begun her mission among "the poorest of the poor."

They moved, each with a lighted candle, praying the rosary in the local Bengali language and singing Bengali and Hindi songs praising God and Blessed Teresa. Some played percussion instruments, some swayed to the music, while others clapped as they walked past the tomb that sits inside the house where the Nobel Peace Prize laureate once lived.

The program of activities that day marked the 10th death anniversary of the world-renowned nun, who lived in this eastern Indian city formerly called Calcutta. Her tomb sits inside the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity congregation that she started in 1950.

The tomb, adorned with flowers and the words "Happy Feast, Mother" formed with yellow marigold petals, was lit up by the glow of candles held by people who came for the morning program.

People sang, some breaking down, as they besought the help of the nun many considered a saint even before her death in 1997.

Archbishop Lucas Sirkar of Calcutta led the 6 a.m. Mass in the motherhouse chapel with 12 priests. The chapel was crowded with Missionaries of Charity novices, all in white, professed nuns in their blue-bordered white saris, religious brothers, priests and people of various religions.

The archbishop asked the congregation to meditate on the words Blessed Teresa spoke or wrote. "They were very simple," but revealed a person of great depth, he added.

After the Mass, the Missionaries of Charity novices walked down to the courtyard and sang "Happy feast day, mother, and may God make you a saint" before a huge picture of Blessed Teresa. The picture had been displayed at St. Peter's Square when Pope John Paul II beatified the nun on Oct. 19, 2003, at the Vatican.

Sister Nirmala Joshi, Blessed Teresa's successor, told the gathering she was "overwhelmed with joy" and "a great feeling of gratitude for what God has given to each one of us, especially in Kolkata," through Blessed Teresa.

She wanted all to "pray to mother to instill in us love for God and all his children, especially the neglected, poor and those who have nowhere to go."

In an August interview with UCA News, Sister Nirmala said the Vatican has cleared most formalities for declaring the Missionaries of Charity founder a saint. All that is required is "one more miracle" through Blessed Teresa's intercession, she added.

When a reporter asked Sister Nirmala if everyone experiences the "crisis of faith" revealed in a recently published book of Blessed Teresa's private letters, she answered in the negative.

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, a collection of some of the nun's letters to confessors, has stirred controversy.

"Only those of an advanced level of spirituality" experience this, Sister Nirmala said, calling it a sign of being close to God. It is like being close "to the sun and so blinded by the brilliance," she explained.

At the tomb, people continued to pray. Harihar Sahu, who was born blind and a Hindu but later became a Protestant, sang his own composition at the tomb. The nuns said he regularly visits on her birthday and feast day.

Also seen around the tomb were people from Motijhil, the slum area where Mother Teresa began her work. One of them, Polly Ghosh Roy, told UCA News she believes the saintly nun is still with them.

Namita Biswas wailed loudly as she asked Blessed Teresa to assist her in her needs. Agatha Stevens, another woman from the same area, told UCA News she is always grateful to Blessed Teresa, whom she had known since childhood.

The Missionaries of Charity nuns prepared for the feast with a special novena, nine days of prayers, and daily Mass at the tomb starting Aug. 27. The archdiocese celebrated Mass in English and in Bengali at Blessed Teresa's Christ the King Parish.


SOURCE: www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?...

Remembering Mother Teresa

Events Mark 10 Years Since Her Death

ROME, SEPT. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Missionaries of Charity started their commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of Mother Teresa's death today at the general audience with Benedict XVI.

At the end of the audience, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk presented to the Holy Father a copy of "Come Be My Light," the book of Mother Teresa's private letters that he edited. Father Kolodiejchuk is the postulator of Mother Teresa's cause of canonization.

The book was released Tuesday in English, German and Italian editions. It will be available in Spanish in November, while a French edition is under way.

Rome

In Rome, the Missionaries of Charity are marking the anniversary with a week of events.

Mass was celebrated today at the Basilica of St. John Lateran by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, president of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the office in charge of construction matters relating to St. Peter's.

This Thursday through Sunday, the Pontifical Seminary of St. John Lateran will host an exhibition that will include a documentary and photos of Mother Teresa's life, work and message.

A conference on Thursday will focus on the theme of "Jesus in the Eucharist and in the Poor" given by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the Pontifical Household preacher.

The anniversary events will conclude on Saturday, feast of the Birth of Our Lady, with a rosary featuring meditations written by Mother Teresa, followed by a final profession of vows by the contemplative brothers of the Missionaries of Charity.

India

Commemoration of Mother Teresa's anniversary started in Calcutta on Aug. 26, Mother Teresa's birthday, followed by a novena from Aug. 27-Sept. 4 in all of the city's parishes.

Archbishop Lucas Sirkar of Calcutta led an early morning Mass today attended by nuns and volunteers at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters.

Special prayers were said at the tomb of Mother Teresa and a candlelight procession of the rosary concluded the day.

And in Bangalore, in a Missionary of Charity's children's home, Archbishop Bernard Moras unveiled a statute dedicated to Mother Teresa.

United States

Priests for Life prayed a novena that started on Aug. 28 and ended today with a prayer asking for the intercession of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, whom God "raised up [as] a voice for the voiceless, and a friend to the poorest of the poor, the unborn child."

St. Vincent College, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, plans to host an Oct. 5-7 gathering of Mother Teresa's family and close friends to celebrate her life's work.

The event will include an address by Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor as superior general of the Missionaries of Charity; Mother Teresa's only niece, Agi Guttadauro; and Father Kolodiejchuk.

Part 1 of this series was posted on this thread yesterday.


The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness (Part 2)

Father Kolodiejchuk on Joy in Suffering

ROME, SEPT. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Without suffering, our work would just be social work, not the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption, said Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The founder of the Missionaries of Charity expressed this in a letter written to a spiritual director, now published with many others letters in a volume titled "Come Be My Light," edited and presented by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Kolodiejchuk, a Missionary of Charity priest and the postulator for the cause of canonization of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, discusses his new book and the interior life Mother Teresa kept hidden from the world.

Part 1 of this interview was published Tuesday.

Q: The name of the book, "Come Be My Light," was a request Jesus made to Mother Teresa. How did her redemptive suffering for others in such extreme darkness connect with her particular charism?

Father Kolodiejchuk: During the 1950s, Mother surrendered and accepted the darkness. Father Neuner [one of her spiritual directors] helped her to understand it by linking the darkness with her charism, of satiating Jesus' thirst.

She used to say that the greatest poverty was to feel unloved, unwanted, uncared for, and that's exactly what she was experiencing in her relationship with Jesus.

Her reparatory suffering, or suffering for others, was part of her living her charism for the poorest of the poor.

So for her, the suffering was not only to identify with the physical and material poverty, but even on the interior level, she identified with the unloved, the lonely, the rejected.

She gave up her own interior light for those living in darkness, saying, "I know this is only feelings."

In one letter to Jesus, she wrote: "Jesus hear My prayer -- if this pleases You -- If my pain and suffering -- my darkness and separation gives You a drop of Consolation -- My own Jesus do with me as You wish -- as long as You wish without a single glance at my feelings and Pain.

"I am your own. Imprint on my soul and life the sufferings of Your heart. Don't mind my feelings -- Don't mind even, my pain.

"If my separation from You, brings others to You and in their love and company -- you find joy and pleasure -- why Jesus, I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer -- not only now, but for all eternity, if this was possible."

In a letter to her sisters, she makes the charism of the order more explicit, saying: "My dear children, without suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption -- Jesus wanted to help us by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony and death.

"All that He has taken upon Himself, and has carried it in the darkest night. Only by being one with us He has redeemed up.

"We are allowed to do the same: All the desolation of Poor people, not only their Material poverty, but their spiritual destitution must be redeemed and we must have our share in it, pray thus when you find it hard -- 'I wish to live in this world which is far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them -- to take upon me something of their suffering.'"

And that captures what I consider her mission statement: "If I ever become a Saint -- I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven -- to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth…"

This is how she understood her darkness. A lot of the things she said make more sense and have a much deeper meaning now that we know these things.

Q: So what do you say to those who call her experience a crisis of faith, that she didn't really believe in God, or somehow imply that her darkness was a sign of psychological instability?

Father Kolodiejchuk: It wasn't a crisis of faith, or that she lacked faith, but that she had a trial of faith where she experienced the feeling that she did not believe in God.

This trial required a lot of human maturity, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to do it. She would have become unbalanced.

As Father Garrigou-Lagrange said, it is possible to have seemingly contradictory feelings at the same time.

It is possible to have "objective Christian joy," as Carol Zaleski called it, while at the same time going through the trial or feeling of having no faith.

There are not two people here, but one person with feelings on different levels.

We can really be living the cross in some way -- it is painful, and it hurts, and just because we can spiritualize it does not take way the pain, but one can be joyful because one is living with Jesus. And that is not false.

This is how and why Mother lived a life so full of joy.

Q: As the postulator of her cause for canonization, when do you think we might be able to call her St. Teresa of Calcutta?

Father Kolodiejchuk: We need one more miracle -- we have looked at a few, but none has been clear enough. There was one for beatification but we are waiting for the second.

Perhaps God has been waiting for the book to come out first, because people knew that Mother Teresa was holy but because of her ordinariness and simplicity of expression, they did not have an understanding of how holy.

I heard about two priests talking the other day. One said he was never a big fan of Mother Teresa because he thought she was just pious, devout, and did nice, admirable works, but then when he heard about her interior life, it changed everything for him.

Now we have more of an idea how developed she was spiritually, and now something of her deeper characteristics are being revealed.

Once the miracle comes in, it could take a couple of years, although the Pope could do it faster if he wanted to.

Q: What has happened to the order since Mother's death?

Father Kolodiejchuk: The order has grown by almost 1,000 sisters, from around 3,850 at her death to 4,800 today, and we've added over 150 houses in 14 more countries.

God's work goes on.

Mother Teresa's Torment

A 12-minute interview on Vatican Radio with Fr. Kolodlejchuk, author of "Come Be My Light," the new book about Mother Teresa that is causing an international stir:

www.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=153060

The link worked with RealPlayer on my Mac.

September 8
FEAST OF THE NATIVITY
OF THE VIRGIN MARY



Pietro Cavallini, NATIVITY OF THE VIRGIN MARY, 1291, mosaic.


Nine months ago, Mary was immaculately conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, by her father St. Joachim. The Feast of that Immaculate Conception, 8 December, is a much greater Feast than today's (it's a Holy Day of Obligation, in fact); but we recall Mary's birthday, too - the birth of the woman destined by God from the beginning of time to be born of the House of David and the Tribe of Judah, the women whose enmity toward Satan was spoken of as far back as Genesis, the woman whom St. John saw crowned with stars and with the moon at her feet, the woman whom God chose to bear His Son and bring life to the world. With today's Feast, the line between the Old and New Testaments has been crossed; the New Covenant is imminent!

Today's Feast is one of the only three birthdays honored in the liturgical year (the others being that of St. John the Baptist and that of Jesus Christ Himself, all three born without original sin, though only Mary and Jesus were free from sin at the moments of their conceptions). We know little about Mary's birth and youth, most of our information coming from the apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary (translated from the Hebrew by St. Jerome, A.D. 340-420), the Protevangelium of St. James (dated to ca. A.D. 125), and the visions of various mystics through the years.

As to prayer, this one to Maria Bambina (the Baby Mary) is most apt:

---

Hail, Infant Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou forever, and blessed are thy holy parents Joachim and Anne, of whom thou wast miraculously born. Mother of God, intercede for us.

We fly to thy patronage, holy and amiable Child Mary, despise not our prayers in our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, glorious and blessed Virgin.

V. Pray for us, holy Child Mary.

R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us Pray: O almighty and merciful God, Who through the cooperation of the Holy Ghost, didst prepare the body and soul of the Immaculate Infant Mary that she might be the worthy Mother of Thy Son, and didst preserve her from all stain, grant that we who venerate with all our hearts her most holy childhood, may be freed, through her merits and intercession, from all uncleanness of mind and body, and be able to imitate her perfect humility, obedience and charity. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
There is also this marvelous prayer in honour of Our Lady's Nativity, written by St. Anselm:

Vouchsafe that I may praise thee, O sacred Virgin; give me strength against thine enemies, and against the enemy of the whole human race. Give me strength humbly to pray to thee. Give me strength to praise thee in prayer with all my powers, through the merits of thy most sacred nativity, which for the entire Christian world was a birth of joy, the hope and solace of its life.

When thou wast born, O most holy Virgin, then was the world made light.

Happy is thy stock, holy thy root, and blessed thy fruit, for thou alone as a virgin, filled with the Holy Spirit, didst merit to conceive thy God, as a virgin to bear Thy God, as a virgin to bring Him forth, and after His birth to remain a virgin.

Have mercy therefore upon me a sinner, and give me aid, O Lady, so that just as thy nativity, glorious from the seed of Abraham, sprung from the tribe of Juda, illustrious from the stock of David, didst announce joy to the entire world, so may it fill me with true joy and cleanse me from every sin.

Pray for me, O Virgin most prudent, that the gladsome joys of thy most helpful nativity may put a cloak over all my sins.

O holy Mother of God, flowering as the lily, pray to thy sweet Son for me, a wretched sinner. Amen.

---

Esteban Murillo, The Birth of Mary


Reading
Sermon I on the Dormition of Mary
By St. John Damascene (John of Damascus), (A.D. 676 - 754/787)

The birth of her, whose Child was marvellous, was above nature and understanding, and it was salvation to the world; her death was glorious, and truly a sacred feast. The Father predestined her, the prophets foretold her through the Holy Ghost. His sanctifying power overshadowed her, cleansed and made her holy, and, as it were, predestined her.

Then Thou, Word of the Father, not dwelling in place, didst invite the lowliness of our nature to be united to the immeasurable greatness of Thy inscrutable Godhead. Thou, who didst take flesh of the Blessed Virgin, vivified by a reasoning soul, having first abided in her undefiled and immaculate womb, creating Thyself, and causing her to exist in Thee, didst become perfect man, not ceasing to be perfect God, equal to Thy Father, but taking upon Thyself our weakness through ineffable goodness.

Through it Thou art one Christ, one Lord, one Son of God, and man at the same time, perfect God and perfect man, wholly God and wholly man, one Substance from two perfect natures, the Godhead and the manhood. And in two perfect natures, the divine and the human, God is not pure God, nor the man only man, but the Son of God and the Incarnate God are one and the same God and man without confusion or division, uniting in Himself substantially the attributes of both natures.

Thus, He is at once uncreated and created, mortal and immortal, visible and invisible, in place and not in place. He has a divine will and a human will, a divine action and a human also, two powers of choosing divine and human. He shows forth divine wonders and human affections - natural and pure.

Thou hast taken upon Thyself, Lord, of Thy great mercy, the state of Adam as he was before the fall, body, soul, and mind, and all that they involve physically, so as to give me a perfect salvation. It is true indeed that what was not assumed was not healed.

Having thus become the mediator between God and man, Thou didst destroy enmity, and lead back to Thy Father those who had deserted Him, wanderers to their home, and those in darkness to the light. Thou didst bring pardon to the contrite, and didst change mortality into immortality. Thou didst deliver the world from the aberration of many gods, and didst make men the children of God, partakers of Thy divine glory.

Thou didst raise the human race, which was condemned to bell, above all power and majesty, and in Thy person it is seated on the King's eternal throne. Who was the instrument of these infinite benefits exceeding all mind and comprehension, if not the Mother ever Virgin who bore Thee?

Realise, Beloved in the Lord, the grace of today, and its wondrous solemnity. Its mysteries are not terrible, nor do they inspire awe. Blessed are they who have eyes to see. Blessed are they who see with spiritual eyes. This night shines as the day.

What countless angels acclaim the death of the life-giving Mother! How the eloquence of apostles blesses the departure of this body which was the receptacle of God. How the Word of God, who deigned in His mercy to become her Son, ministering with His divine hands to this immaculate and divine being, as His mother, receives her holy soul.

O wondrous Law-giver, fulfilling the law which He bad Himself laid down, not being bound by it, for it was He who enjoined children to show reverence to their parents. "Honour thy father and thy mother," He says. The truth of this is apparent to every one, calling to mind even dimly the words of holy Scripture.

If according to it the souls of the just are in the hands of God, how much more is her soul in the hands of her Son and her God. This is indisputable.

Let us consider who she is and whence she came, how she, the greatest and dearest of all God's gifts, was given to this world. Let us examine what her life was, and the mysteries in which she took part.

Heathens in the use of funeral orations most carefully brought forward anything which could be turned to praise of the deceased, and at the same time encourage the living to virtue, drawing generally upon fable and fiction, not having fact to go upon. How then, shall we not deserve scorn if we bury in silence that which is most true and sacred, and in very deed the source of praise and salvation to all ? Shall we not receive the same punishment as the man who hid his master's talent ? Let us adapt our subject to the needs of those who listen, as food is suited to the body.

Joachim and Anne were the parents of Mary. Joachim kept as strict a watch over his thoughts as a shepherd over his flock, having them entirely under his control. For the Lord God led him as a sheep, and he wanted for none of the best things.

When I say best, let no one think I mean what is commonly acceptable to the multitude, that upon which greedy minds are fixed, the pleasures of life that can neither endure nor make their possessors better, nor confer real strength. They follow the downward course of human life and cease all in a moment, even if they abounded before.

Far be it from us to cherish these things, nor is this the portion of those who fear God. But the good things which are a matter of desire to those who possess true knowledge, delighting God, and fruitful to their possessors, namely, virtues, bearing fruit in due season, that is, in eternity, will reward with eternal life those who have laboured worthily and have persevered in their acquisition as far as possible. The labour goes before, eternal happiness follows.

Joachim ever shepherded his thoughts. In the place of pastures, dwelling by contemplation on the words of sacred Scripture, made glad on the restful waters of divine grace, withdrawn from foolishness, he walked in the path of justice.

And Anne, whose name means grace, was no less a companion in her life than a wife, blessed with all good gifts, though afflicted for a mystical reason with sterility.

Grace in very truth remained sterile, not being able to produce fruit in the souls of men. Therefore, men declined from good and degenerated; there was not one of understanding nor one who sought after God.

Then His divine goodness, taking pity on the work of His hands, and wishing to save it, put an end to that mystical barrenness, that of holy Anne, and she gave birth to a child, whose equal had never been created and never can be. The end of barrenness proved clearly that the world's sterility would cease and that the withered trunk would be crowned with vigorous and mystical life.

Hence the Mother of our Lord is announced. An angel foretells her birth. It was fitting that in this, too, she, who was to be the human Mother of the one true and living God, should be marked out above every one else. Then she was offered in God's holy temple, and remained there, showing to all a great example of zeal and holiness, withdrawn from frivolous society.

When, however, she reached full age and the law required that she should leave the temple, she was entrusted by the priests to Joseph, her bridegroom, as the guardian of her virginity, a steadfast observer of the law from his youth.

Mary, the holy and undefiled, went to Joseph, contenting herself with her household matters, and knowing nothing beyond her four walls.

In the fulness of time, as the divine apostle says, the angel Gabriel was sent to this true child of God, and saluted her in the words, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee."

Beautiful is the angel's salutation to her who is greater than an angel. He is the bearer of joy to the whole world. She was troubled at his words, not being used to speak with men, for she had resolved to keep her virginity unsullied. She pondered in herself what this greeting might be.

Then the angel said to her: "Fear not, Mary. Thou hast found grace before God." In very deed, she who was worthy of grace had found it. She found grace who had done the deeds of race, and had reaped its fulness. She found grace who brought forth the source of grace, and was a rich harvest of grace.

She found an abyss of grace who kept undefiled her double virginity, her virginal soul no less spotless than her body; hence her perfect virginity. "Thou shalt bring forth a Son," he said, "and shalt call His name Jesus" (Jesus is interpreted Saviour). "He shall save His people from their sins."

What did she, who is true wisdom, reply? She does not imitate our first mother Eve, but rather improves upon her incautiousness, and calling in nature to support her, thus answers the angel: "How is this to be, since I know not man? What you say is impossible, for it goes beyond the natural laws laid down by the Creator. I will not be called a second Eve and disobey the will of my God. If you are not speaking godless things, explain the mystery by saying how it is to be accomplished."

Then the messenger of truth answered her: "The Holy Spirit shall come to thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. Therefore He who is born to thee shall be called the Son of God."

That which is foretold is not subservient to the laws of nature. For God, the Creator of nature, can alter its laws. And she, listening in holy reverence to that sacred name, which she had ever desired, signified her obedience in words full of humility and joy: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word."

"O the depth of the riches, of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God," I will exclaim in the apostle's words. "How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways." O inexhaustible goodness of God! O boundless goodness!

He who called what was not into being, and filled heaven and earth, whose throne is heaven, and whose footstool is the earth, a spacious dwelling-place, made the womb of His own servant, and in it the mystery of mysteries is accomplished.

Being God He becomes man, and is marvellously brought forth without detriment to the virginity of His Mother. And He is lifted up as a baby in earthly arms, who is the brightness of eternal glory, the form of the Father's substance, by the word of whose mouth all created things exist.

O truly divine wonder! O mystery transcending all nature and understanding! O marvellous virginity! What, O holy Mother and Virgin, is this great mystery accomplished in thee?

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Thou art blessed from generation to generation, thou who alone art worthy of being blessed. Behold all generations shall call thee blessed as thou hast said.

The daughters of Jerusalem, of the Church, saw thee. Queens have blessed thee, that is, the spirits of the just, and they shall praise thee for ever.

Thou art the royal throne which angels surround, seeing upon it their very King and Lord. Thou art a spiritual Eden, holier and diviner than Eden of old. That Eden was the abode of the mortal Adam, whilst the Lord came from heaven to dwell in thee.

The ark foreshadowed thee who hast kept the seed of the new world. Thou didst bring forth Christ, the salvation of the world, who destroyed sin and its angry waves.

The burning bush was a figure of thee, and the tablets of the law, and the ark of the testament. The golden urn and candelabra, the table and the flowering rod of Aaron were significant types of thee.

From thee arose the splendour of the Godhead, the eternal Word of the Father, the most sweet and heavenly Manna, the sacred Name above every name, the Light which was from the beginning. The heavenly Bread of Life, the Fruit without seed, took flesh of thee.

Did not that flame foreshadow thee with its burning fire an image of the divine fire within thee? And Abraham's tent most clearly pointed to thee. By the Word of God dwelling in thee human nature produced the bread made of ashes, its first fruits, from thy most pure womb, the first fruits kneaded into bread and cooked by divine fire, becoming His divine person, and His true substance of a living body quickened by a reasoning and intelligent soul.*

I had nearly forgotten Jacob's ladder. Is it not evident to every one that it prefigured thee, and is not the type easily recognised ? just as Jacob saw the ladder bringing together heaven and earth, and on it angels coming down and going up, and the truly strong and invulnerable God wrestling mystically with himself, so art thou placed between us, and art become the ladder of God's intercourse with us, of Him who took upon Himself our weakness, uniting us to Himself, and enabling man to see God. Thou hast brought together what was parted. Hence angels descended to Him, ministering to Him as their God and Lord, and men, adopting the life of angels, are carried up to heaven.

How shall I understand the prediction of prophets ? Shall I not refer them to thee, as we can prove them to be true? What is the fleece of David which receives the Son of the Almighty God, co-eternal and co-equal with His Father, as rain falls upon the soil? Does it not signify thee in thy bright shining?

Who is the virgin foretold by Isaias who should conceive and bear a Son, God ever present with us, that is, who being born a man should remain God? What is Daniel's mountain from which arose Christ, the Corner-Stone, not made by the hand of man ? Is it not thee, conceiving without man and still remaining a virgin?

Let the inspired Ezechiel come forth and show us the closed gate, sealed by the Lord, and not yielding, according to his prophecy - let him point to its fulfilment in thee. The Lord of all came to thee, and taking flesh did not open the door of thy virginity. The seal remains intact. The prophets, then, foretell thee.

Angels and apostles minister to thee, O Mother of God, ever Virgin, and John the virgin apostle. Angels and the spirits of the just, patriarchs and prophets surround thee to-day in thy departure to thy Son. Apostles watched over the countless host of the just who were gathered together from every corner of the earth by the divine commands, as a cloud around the divine and living Jerusalem, singing hymns of praise to thee, the author of our Lord's life-giving body.


Thanks to Argent by the Tiber for this:


Andrea del Sarto, The Nativity of Mary

On Our Lady's birthday the Church celebrates the first dawning of redemption with the appearance in the world of the Savior's mother, Mary.

The Blessed Virgin occupies a unique place in the history of salvation, and she has the highest mission ever commended to any creature. We rejoice that the Mother of God is our Mother, too. Let us often call upon the Blessed Virgin as "Cause of our joy", one of the most beautiful titles in her litany.

Since September 8 marks the end of summer and beginning of fall, this day has many thanksgiving celebrations and customs attached to it. In the Old Roman Ritual there is a blessing of the summer harvest and fall planting seeds for this day.

The winegrowers in France called this feast "Our Lady of the Grape Harvest". The best grapes are brought to the local church to be blessed and then some bunches are attached to hands of the statue of Mary. A festive meal which includes the new grapes is part of this day.

In the Alps section of Austria this day is "Drive-Down Day" during which the cattle and sheep are led from their summer pastures in the slopes and brought to their winter quarters in the valleys. This was usually a large caravan, with all the finery, decorations, and festivity. In some parts of Austria, milk from this day and all the leftover food are given to the poor in honor of Our Lady’s Nativity.

~Excerpted from The Holyday Book by Fr. Francis Weiser, SJ

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time


In today's Gospel, Luke tells us about when Jesus chose his twelve disciples.

---

Gospel - Lk 6:12-19
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself, a
nd from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas,
James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
And he came down with them
and stood on a stretch of level ground.
A great crowd of his disciples
and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.

---

Not by chance, the Vatican Publishing House came out today with the Italian edition of the initial lectures in Benedict XVI's catechetical cycle on the Apostles and early Christian personages, drawn from his Wednesday general audiences starting in March 2006.



On Sunday, Avvenire had a story about where the Apostles are buried. Here is a translation:





WHERE THE 12 APOSTLES ARE BURIED
By Gian Maria Vian



There is nothing more human - or more Christian - than attachment and reverence for those who have gone before us. Veneration for the dead and the care of their burial places are traditions that go back to remote antiquity and are so profoundly rooted that they have resisted even the dehumanizing process of secularization today.

In the Jewish tradition, and especially in the subsequent Christian culture, an essential and radically new element was added: belief in the final resurrection of the flesh - a firm and decisive doctrinal element which, unfortunately, has often been neglected in catecheses - anticipated by the resurrection of Christ.

In the Old Testament, we learn that Abraham buried Sara at Qiryat-Arba (Hebron)(Gen 23, 1-2), in what eventually became the 'tomb of the patriarchs', in which Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, are also buried. Joseph remains in Egypt, installed in a sarcophagus, as described in the closing passages of the Pentateuch.

The interest in the burial places of the heroes of biblical history is even greater in apocryphal texts, from the so-called Lives of the Prophets (later Christianized, but stories probably known to the evangelists) to a fascinating and complex Judeo-Christian text of teh fourth century entitled Cavern of treasures, which has survived in Syriac.

Central to Christian belief is the empty tomb of Jesus - 'rediscovered' in the time of Constantine who erected the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre over the spot and considered it 'the ideal center of the world' (Eusebius of Cesarea, Sulla vita di Costantino, III, 33).

In his Storia ecclesiastica (II,25,7), Eusebius refers to some words by the Roman priest Gaius, who shortly before 200, wrote these words about the 'glory of Rome': "Go to the Vatican hills or along the road to Ostia, then and you will find the mortal traces of those who founded this Church," starting with Peter and Paul who shed their blood in testimony of Christ.

Early in the 7th century, all available information on the tombs of 22 New testament figures and some 64 Old Testament figures were catalogued by Isidore, bishop of Seville, in De ortu et obitu patrum ("Sull'origine e la fine dei padri").

Thus a new booklet by Lorenzo Bianchi, which the magazine 30 GIORNI distributed with its June 2007 issue, is in the tradition of that literary genre. The booklet is entitled Ne scelse dodici. Dove sono sepolti gli apostoli di Gesù e alcuni loro amici (He chose 12: Where the 12 Apostles asnd some of their friends are buried). in the Middle Ages, it would have been entitled, following Isidore, De obitu apostolorum.

Bianchi is an archeologist and researcher with the National Research Council of Italy, as well as an author and expert on historic Roman topography. One of his books is Ad limina Petri: Spazio e memoria della Roma cristiana (To Peter's boundaries: Spaces and memories of Christian Rome).

In his well-illustrated 90-page booklet, Bianchi summarizes in clear and accessible language the principal available data on a subject that has always been difficult to research. It has the added value of quotations from Benedict XVI's recent catecheses on the Apostles and early Christian figures.

In addition to describing the 'traces' of the Twelve, Bianchi's book describes the resting places of Paul, the evangelists Mark and Luke, as well as Timothy, Titus and Barnabas, Paul's principal disciples.

So where exactly do we venerate the remains or relics of the first witnesses to Christ?

Obviously, in Rome above all, where relics of all the apostles (starting with Peter and Paul) have been venerated for centuries, but also in every corner of the ancient world: from India in the east (St. Thomas, in Madras) to the Western edge of the European continent (St. James the Greater at Santiago de Compostela, Spain) - passing through Turkey (St. John in Ephesus), Cyprus and Crete (Barnabas and Timothy), Germany (St. Matthew in Trier), and Italy (Andrew in Amalfi, Matthew in Salerno, Bartholomew in Benevento, Thomas in Ortona, James the Lesser in Ancona, Luke in Padua, and Mark in Venice).

To trace what happened to the apostles - whether authentic or presumed by tradition - is to retrace the history of Christianity. From the historically ascertained presence in Rome of Peter and Paul to the construction of the 'second Rome' (Constantinople) by Constantine whose empire spanned both Europe and Asia, up to the pillage of Constantinople by Christian crusaders who were Christian only in name.

Just as the 'trophy remains' of Peter and Paul played a major role in Constantine's Rome and several decades later when Pope Damasus constructed 'Christian Rome', at the time of the Emperor Constance II, relics of Andrew, brother of Peter and the Protokletos (first-called), as well as those of Luke and Timothy, arrived in Constantinople.

The Byzantine capital accumulated more relics with time, but most of them were lost or dispersed (mostly back to the 'West'), starting with the Crusader sack of 1204 till the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

Half a millennium later, Paul VI came to Constantinople (Istanbul) to mark the ecumenical reunion with the Orthodox Church (formed after the Great Schism of 1054) and returned relics of Andrew, Timothy and Titus to the Orthodox Church.

Avvenire, 9 settembre 2007

Her darkness was a warning

9/11/2007
National Catholic Reporter --

Biographies are supposed to plumb the depths of a person’s life, ask hard questions about how someone saw meaning and experienced motive. Letters are windows into these subjects. Mother Teresa has left us a legacy worth probing as we, and the world, again assess her remarkable life.

Her straightforward commitment to serve the poorest of the poor did not spare her controversy. She was criticized by the left for not pushing for greater social change. She was faulted by the right for not proselytizing more explicitly, saving souls as she cared for bodies. She understood the uses of influence and how to raise money, but she did not engage in politics or protest to accomplish her goals.

Because of this, Mother Teresa was useful to politicians who welcomed her faith-based initiative approach to social inequities without any direct challenge to the systems that caused them. She was also welcomed by church leaders who liked her example and spirituality of women devoted to charitable work who do not challenge religion’s complicity with the status quo or question the structures of authority. Revelations that she experienced a prolonged dark night of the soul in the midst of her years of service may even raise her status as a selfless servant whose faith was not dependent on respites of consolation and encouragement.

She is beyond actual diagnosis by those who suggest that she was clinically depressed or simply exhausted, or that she suffered what many celebrities experience as the gap between adulation and ordinary reality. It is hard to imagine Mother Teresa feeling like a hypocrite, but recall that her life as an icon of holiness was as besieged by paparazzi as any Hollywood star’s, and the burden of expectations must have been enormous. She is a saint because she pressed on in the midst of doubt to be present to those abandoned by the rest of the world – those who still die each day by the thousands at the outer rim of every support system and safety net.

What if her legacy was not to demonstrate that God rewards extraordinary servants with extraordinary prayer lives, but that God shares the darkness of the world’s desperate poor with anyone willing to go there? What if her apparent silence about the causes of poverty was her way of letting the obvious speak for itself, the way Lazarus and his dogs make their case by their presence at the rich man’s doorstep? What if Mother Teresa’s darkness was a warning? We made one of the world’s prophets into a celebrity, but ignored her message and her example. We wanted to believe that she lived on a higher plane, motivated by miracles and visited by angels. She had her reward.

But what if she was just like us, saw problems, responded, and got deeper and deeper into the suffering of others because there seemed no end to it? She spoke of a “call within a call,” successive invitations to pursue God’s beloved poor to the bottom.

We who by birth and luck live higher on life’s economic pyramids wish that poverty and its consequences could be resolved, but it all seems so complicated and predictable, beyond our control. We suffer the fatigue of seeing things we don’t know how to change without disturbing the larger systems that sustain us. Mother Teresa is at last disturbing the world in a way her wonderful works did not seem able to. The question she poses is the starting point everyone can make, however far they take it and wherever they come out in the end: What is

Author of new Mother Teresa book responds to Time Magazine article
Mother Teresa “lived a trial of faith, not a crisis of faith”

Madrid, Sep 13, 2007 / 09:55 am (CNA).- In an interview with the Spanish daily “La Razon,” Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, author of the book “Come Be My Light” and postulator of Mother Teresa’s cause of canonization, said the revered nun “lived a trial of faith, not a crisis of faith,” and that she overcame it showing that the love “is in the will and not in feelings.”

“Come Be My Light” is a collection of letters Mother Teresa written about various aspects of her life, some revealing that she suffered spiritual darkness for decades. Father Kolodiejchuk expressed regret that Time Magazine twisted the meaning of the book, whose title comes from “the words Jesus spoke to Mother Teresa in 1947. Time Magazine, even with the cover photo (of a Mother Teresa who appears depressed), has greatly manipulated world opinion. The book is about a trial of faith that Mother endured for 50 years, which is very different from a crisis of faith. This is not something new in the saints. This phenomenon of the dark night is well know in spiritual theology,” he said.

A Modern Trial
Father Kolodiejchuk recalled that Mother Teresa “always said the greatest poverty was to feel unloved, unwanted, alone, rejected…She felt that in her soul. Therefore her dark night could be called a ‘dark night of love.’ That was specifically hers.”

Her trial “is very ‘modern’,” he continued. “The saints of previous centuries loved the dark night as a questioning of their own salvation, as a trial of faith. Mother lived interior poverty, the ‘spiritual bareness.’ Jesus lived that [same] poverty and Mother was a pure instrument in his hands so that by living that darkness she might be a light for others.”

“She had no feelings,” Father Kolodiejchuk noted. “Thus she teaches us that we should not base our faith and love for God and others on what we feel. Today it’s popular to say: I don’t love anymore because I don’t feel anything. Love is in the will, not in the feelings,” he explained.

Dark Night
Father Kolodiejchuk explained that the dark night “is a moment in the spiritual life in which the person is purified before experiencing an intimate and transforming union with Christ. In fact, what we understand as the dark night was experienced by Blessed Mother Teresa when she was still in Loreto, the religious congregation where she began her surrender to God. The years of 1946-47 were a time of joyful and sweet intimate union with Jesus. ‘Jesus gave himself to me,’ Mother says in one of her letters. Mother’s union with Jesus was sort of ‘violent,’ deeply felt and experienced. Later, after beginning her work with the poor and founding the congregation, this new and prolonged darkness came upon her (it lasted 50 years, the rest of her life) which was no longer a preparation for another spiritual stage. She speaks about this darkness in the letters to her confessors and spiritual directors.”

“Mother lived her religious consecration as a union of love, as spousal surrender to Jesus, a union in which she shared everything with her beloved, with Jesus, the love of a spouse and a redeeming love: a love that is especially identified with the suffering of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the abandonment of the Father which Christ experienced on the cross,” Father Kolodiejchuk stated. “In 1942, Mother vowed to never deny Jesus anything. It was soon afterwards when she heard Jesus say to her: ‘Come, be my light.’ At first Mother brought the ‘light’ even to places that were physically dark: many poor people did not have windows. She accepted her interior darkness in order to bring light to others. The Jesuit priest Father Neuner (one of her confessors) explained in 1962 that this dark night was the ‘spiritual side of her apostolic work’,” Father Kolodiejchuk said.

“In the book, through letters and writings collected for the process, you see her great story of love with Jesus, her falling in love from the beginning to the end, her ‘martyrdom of love,’ the immense care that nothing of her intimacy with Jesus would be made known [to others]: ‘Jesus is the only protagonist’,” Father Kolodiejchuk said.

Canonization
Asked about her eventual canonization, Father Kolodiejchuk said it would be “the heroic proclamation of holiness, of heroic love. Mother Teresa wanted to ‘love Jesus like he had never been loved.’ There is still no miracle, a cure that doctors clearly see as unexplained by science. Since her beatification more than 1,800 people have reported receiving special favors. We still have to wait,” he said.

I Saw Mother’s Joy Before Her Death


BY Father Benedict J. Groeschel

September 16-22, 2007 Issue | Posted 9/11/07 at 3:15 PM
National Catholic Register

The excitement bordering on hoopla generated by the publication of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday, 2007) causes me to want to let people know that there was clearly another side.

I knew Mother Teresa for more than 30 years — half my life — and always found her to be a deeply prayerful, gentle and extremely compassionate person. She also had a wisdom that was not of this world, and it was obvious to me that she was inwardly directed in the work she did.

The darkness she experienced is part of the mystery of God’s dealing with human beings, but my opinion is that that darkness made her one of the strongest people I ever knew.

The general secretary of the United Nations referred to her as the most powerful woman in the world.

What makes a person powerful? The ability to struggle long and hard through difficulties.

There is another side. A few weeks before her death, Mother Teresa was in New York. The sisters very kindly invited me to offer Mass for her the day before she left for Calcutta. It was obvious that she was dying. She attended the Mass lying on a cot, unable to stand.

After Mass, I met a person I had never known.

She was bubbly, exuberant, joyous, and telling Father Andrew Apostoli and me of the wonderful growth of the Missionaries of Charity. She was not bragging, but triumphantly rejoicing in the Lord. It was most remarkable, and we talked to her for quite some time.

As we were leaving, I commented to Father Andrew that we would never see her again, that she was obviously beginning to go through the gates of eternity. This is not an unknown phenomenon in the lives of certain mystic saints. They begin to enter eternal life while they are still in this world.

I want many people to know of this triumphant exultation of Mother Teresa in the last days of her life. Why did God permit her to experience his absence while she was profoundly motivated by his presence? Why did he permit her to be in darkness while she gave so much light to others? These are questions that we should perhaps not ask.

How do we know how God deals with his most chosen souls?

But it is perfectly obvious to me that Mother Teresa was not only a saint but a prophetess. She was given to us like the prophetesses of the Old Testament to remind us of the absolute transcendence of God, whom we must follow obediently wherever He leads us.

Father Benedict J. Groeschel, is a Franciscan Friar of Renewal.

Mother Didn’t Doubt

Author Explains His Book


BY Edward Pentin

September 16-22, 2007 Issue | Posted 9/11/07 at 2:32 PM
National Catholic Register

FATHER BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK served as principal advocate for Mother Teresa’s cause of beatification. His new book collects Mother Teresa’s previously unpublished writings. Called Come Be My Light, its content has been the topic of much media speculation about Mother Teresa’s faith.

He is also the co-founder of the priestly branch of her Missionaries of Charity. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He met Mother Teresa in 1977 and was associated with her until her death in 1997. He joined the Missionaries of Charity Fathers at the time of their foundation in 1984.

Father Kolodiejchuk is postulator of the Cause of Beatification and Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and director of the Mother Teresa Center.

Register correspondent Edward Pentin interviewed him recently in Rome.


The recent article in Time magazine, which focused on passages in your new book where Mother Teresa reveals her spiritual difficulties in letters, was widely publicized. What was your reaction to the article? Was it a major misinterpretation of her letters?

The article itself wasn’t so bad; it was all right, it was pretty good. The only thing I didn’t like was the picture, or the title, which I guess is the work of the editor. But it’s wrong to say it was a crisis of faith. “A crisis of faith” is one thing and a “trial of faith” is another.

So it’s not whether Mother Teresa doubted God existed — only the second half is about the documents. The first half kind of sets up the context of the commentary between the letters so the reader does not misinterpret what’s going on. If you take a sentence out of its real context, you can read, “I have no faith, no love, heaven means nothing,” and you will say, “Oh wow!”

But it has to be taken in context.


What is the context?

There are three main parts to the book, and the documents are in the third. The first is about Mother Teresa’s private vow in 1942 never to refuse Jesus anything under pain of mortal sin. Then four years later, Sept. 10, again Jesus gave her the inspiration to begin the Missionaries of Charity. Jesus spoke clearly by interior locution, and there are two letters in the book in which Mother Teresa writes to the archbishop what went on. She had notes, she used notes for both her letters.

But in the second letter she presented the dialogue between Jesus and her. It’s actually beautiful to see the interplay between her and Jesus and her response.

Jesus says, “No, I want this.” So she says: “Maybe you should go and find someone else more worthy than I,” and he replies: “Don’t worry. I know you’re the most incapable one.” So there’s one context.

And in those years, in 1946 and 1947, Mother Teresa experienced real intimate union, real contemplative union with God. Her confessor, Father Van Exem, spoke of her being very close to the state of ecstasy.

She then wrote, years later, letters to Father Neuner, about this inspiration of Jesus speaking to her. She was moved from Calcutta to a place called Asansol in January 1947 and she says: “There it was, as if Our Lord gave himself to me in the full. The sweetness and consolation of those past six months passed but too soon.”


After that came the darkness.

When the work started in 1949 or 1950, there was this terrible sense of loss, this untold darkness, this loneliness, this continual longing for God.

So the union she had was gone, and even more painful was this infinite longing. For example, Father Thomas Dubay, in his book The Fire Within, speaks of three characteristics of contemplative prayer.

One of them is the consolation of this union, another is dryness and a third is this deep longing. Mother Teresa’s language would be “thirst.”

In her contemplative prayer, she had more than dryness and longing, and not the consolation except in one month in 1958, as far as the record goes. But in one of the letters, she says she knows this is just feelings “because in my mind and my will there is this unbroken union.”

Then in another letter she says she can’t be distracted because “my mind and heart are continually with him.”

So that’s why it’s not a crisis of God not existing; it seems to her, “Where did he go?” He was there, and now, desolation.

She’s feeling rejected and unwanted by the one she loves. So you have to see everything in the context of a love relationship between Jesus and her. She often describes herself as the spouse of Jesus, and even for the sisters, she speaks of them being the spouse of Jesus crucified. So the trial as she’s perceiving it is: What happened? Do I have any faith?

It’s not that she really doubts, but it seems to her, where did the faith go? The love I had and love I was feeling is all gone.

She didn’t really understanding the meaning of it at the time, but because it’s connected to her vocation, she accepts it because it’s his will. In 1961, Father Neuner helped her to understand that it’s the spiritual side of her work, and that helped.

By the spiritual side of her work, it relates to when she used to say the greatest poverty in the world today is to be unloved, unwanted, uncared for. Now we discover that was her relationship.


Is this the first time these letters have been revealed in their entirety?

Yes, there were some Zenit articles a few years ago, and the Jesuits wrote some articles that weren’t widely distributed — but it was mentioned. And in the little biography we made for the beatification it was there. The Holy Father mentioned it in his homily. The darkness was not something new. What’s new and made a splash is that it’s there in its entirety and the 10th year since her death.


Is it a concern of yours that these letters have been manipulated by atheists to make it seem as though she had no faith?

Most people who really want to know what happened will first of all actually read it, and then they’ll understand it.

Then there’s Father Cantalamessa’s article that was printed in the Register.

At the beginning, people were confused, and headlines I saw in Canada that said, “Mother Teresa’s Secret Was She Had No Faith.” Well that’s a complete misrepresentation of what really was, so from the title at least, you can say some people didn’t get it, couldn’t get it, didn’t want to get it.


One of her main adversaries is the writer and atheist Christopher Hitchens. Would you say that his opposition to Mother Teresa and religion in general has more to his past family history than anything else?

Yes, and she’s probably praying for him. For someone with such anger, such animus against her, it’s more than just an intellectual thing, probably.


And his arguments don’t stand up anyway, do they?

No, in Time and in his article in Newsweek afterwards, he was quoted as saying that Mother just kept up the show for 50 years. She couldn’t have lived and done all that she did without great faith and great love.

It was humanly impossible to go around with her. We would be with her for a week and we’d want to rest a bit because we were exhausted. Humanly speaking, she couldn’t have done it and she knew too that it was grace. I remember one sister — sisters have rest for half an hour — and she would say to Mother, “Well you’re not going to have a rest.” Mother Teresa would say, “Yes, but you’re not Mother.”

She was always on. Until the last years, when she physically couldn’t, she’d be up until the early hours and then be up again at 4:40, day in day out.


Ten years after her death, what, to you, is her greatest legacy? What has she given the world?

I put a quote from her in the front of the book: “If I ever become a saint, I will surely be one of darkness. I will continue to be absent from heaven to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”

So that’s why the title of the book was chosen because those are Jesus’ words to her in 1947 — “Come be my light.”

And then, in the midst of this darkness, she’ll say, kind of like a mission statement, at the beginning of the book, her mission from heaven is to those in darkness, the darkness of unbelief, darkness of being unloved, unwanted, rejected. In another letter she says, “If my darkness is a light to others ...”

It’s a kind of paradox: that through darkness she is the light.

Now, especially for people such as Father Cantalamessa, she has become the patron saint of sincere atheists. A saint for people who are in the darkness of unbelief, or are at least open to receiving faith, and those who are in the darkness of love.

That is also part of her work.

Not only was she living and serving those in material poverty but was also identified with and in solidarity with those who were spiritually poor.

Saint John Chrysostom. Sorry, I haven't time now to find a picture, but I just wanted to say that:
Chrysostom = golden mouth = Goldmund.......which is what Joseph Ratzinger's students called him, because he spoke so eloquently when he lectured.

Our priest told us about the "golden mouth" at Mass today and it reminded me.....he didn't add the rest! Those were my private musings!

September 13
FEAST OF ST.JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH



Mosaic on ceiling of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. X century.


He is one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church. The Greek Orthodox Church considers him 'our father among the saints'.

John Chrysostom (347-407), Archbishop of Constantinople, was a notable Christian bishop and preacher from the fourth and fifth centuries in Syria and Constantinople. He is famous for eloquence in public speaking and his denunciation of abuse of authority in the Church and in the Roman Empire of the time. He had notable ascetic sensibilities.

After his death he was named Chrysostom, which comes from the Greek Χρυσόστομος, "golden-mouthed." The Orthodox Church honors him as a saint (feast day, November 13) and counts him among the Three Holy Hierarchs (feast day, January 30), together with Saints Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian.

He is also recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, which considers him a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Church of England, both of whom commemorate him on September 13. His relics were stolen from Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204 (commemorated on January 27) and brought to Rome, but were returned on November 27, 2004, by Pope John Paul II.

Known as "the greatest preacher in the early church," John's sermons have been one of his greatest lasting legacies. Chrysostom's extant homiletical works are vast, including many hundreds of exegetical sermons on both the New Testament (especially the works of Saint Paul) and the Old Testament (particularly on Genesis).

Among his extant exegetical works are sixty-seven homilies on Genesis, fifty-nine on the Psalms, ninety on the Gospel of Matthew, eighty-eight on the Gospel of John, and fifty-five on the Acts of the Apostles.

Two of his writings deserve special mention. He harmonized the liturgical life of the Church by revising the prayers and rubrics of the Divine Liturgy, or celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

To this day, the Orthodox Church typically celebrates the Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom, together with Roman Catholic churches that are in the Eastern or Byzantine rites (i.e., Uniates). These same churches also read his Paschal Homily at every Pascha, the greatest feast of the Church year.

Chrysostom's influence on church teachings is interwoven throughout the current Catechism of the Catholic Church (revised 1992). The Catechism cites him in eighteen sections, particularly his reflections on the purpose of prayer and the meaning of the Lord's Prayer:

“ Consider how [Jesus Christ] teaches us to be humble, by making us see that our virtue does not depend on our work alone but on grace from on high. He commands each of the faithful who prays to do so universally, for the whole world. For he did not say "thy will be done in me or in us," but "on earth," the whole earth, so that error may be banished from it, truth take root in it, all vice be destroyed on it, virtue flourish on it, and earth no longer differ from heaven.[46] ”

Christian clerics, such as R.S. Storr, refer to him as "one of the most eloquent preachers who ever since apostolic times have brought to men the divine tidings of truth and love".



Left, a modern Russian icon; center, Icon by Andrei Rublev, 14th century; right, another modern Russian icon..


First, a short account, thanks to Argent by the Tiber:

John Chrysostom was the son of a Latin father and a Greek mother; his mother, Anthusa, was widowed at the age of twenty, soon after his birth. Putting aside all thought of remarriage, Anthusa gave all of her attention to her son: she gave him the best classical education of the day, and enrolled him as a catechumen when he was eighteen. He came under the influence of Meletius, patriarch of Antioch, who sent him to the monastic school of Diodore, then baptized him and ordained him lector.

At this time, St. John Chrysostom decided to take his future into his own hands and became a monk-hermit, living in a cave, studying the Scriptures, and putting himself under the discipline of an old hermit named Hesychius. However, his health broke under this austere regimen and he returned to Antioch, was ordained a priest, and began his remarkable career as a preacher.

During the next twelve years, he electrified Antioch with his fiery sermons, filled with a knowledge and an eloquence that were astonishing. It was during this period that he received the nickname Chrysostom, or golden mouth, for his words seemed to be pure gold. In 397, when the see of Constantinople became vacant, the Emperor Arcadius appointed John patriarch, and since it was feared that he would refuse the honor, he was lured to Constantinople and consecrated bishop of the city in 398.

John found himself in a nest of political intrigue, fraud, extravagance, and naked ambition. He curbed expenses, gave lavishly to the poor, built hospitals, reformed the clergy, and restored monastic discipline. But his program of reform made him enemies, in particular the Empress Eudoxia and the Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria. The city in turmoil, his life threatened, John was exiled by the emperor in the year 404.

The papal envoys were imprisoned, and John — defended by the pope and ordered restored to his see — was sent further into exile, six hundred miles from Constantinople, across the Black Sea. Worn out and sick, he died of his hardships at Comana in Pontus. His last words were, "Glory to God for all things."

~from The One Year Book of Saints by Rev. Clifford Stevens



Anonymous Russian illumination, 13th century. .



From www.chrysostom.org/life.html
an Orthodox website dedicated to the saint. The article is from the Greek Orthodox perspective.
The Catholic Encyclopedia entry is on
www.newadvent.org/cathen/08452b.htm


The Life of Saint John Chrysostom:
Our Father Among the Saints
(taken from the November 1998 issue of Cornerstone)

The legion of saints of the Church is comprised of men of extraordinary ability whose talents may have been dissimilar but many of whom seem to have shared a common genius for oratory. Yet out of this vast assembly of eloquent speakers, whose reputation might have rested on their gift of expression alone, the one for whom the title "Chrysostom" (in Russian, "Zlatoust"), or "golden-mouthed" was reserved, was John of Antioch, known as St. John Chrysostom, a great distinction in view of the qualifications of so many others.

Endeared as one of the four great doctors of the Church, St. John Chrysostom was born in 347 in Antioch, Syria and was prepared for a career in law under the renowned Libanius, who marveled at his pupil's eloquence and foresaw a brilliant career for his pupil as statesman and lawgiver.

But John decided, after he had been baptised at the age of 23, to abandon the law in favour of service to the Saviour. He entered a monastery which served to educate him in preparation for his ordination as a priest in 386 AD.

From the pulpit there emerged John, a preacher whose oratorical excellence gained him a reputation throughout the Christian world, a recognition which spurred him to even greater expression that found favour with everyone but the Empress Eudoxia, whom he saw fit to examine in some of his sermons.

When St. John was forty-nine years old, his immense popularity earned him election to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, a prestigious post from which he launched a crusade against excessiveness and extreme wealth which the Empress construed as a personal affront to her and her royal court. This also gave rise to sinister forces that envied his tremendous influence.

His enemies found an instrument for his indictment when they discovered that he had harboured some pious monks who had been excommunicated by his archrival Theophilos, Bishop of Alexandria, who falsely accused John of treason and surreptitiously plotted his exile.

When it was discovered that the great St. John had been exiled by the puppets of the state, there arose such a clamour of protest, promising a real threat of civil disobedience, that not even the royal court dared to confront the angry multitudes and St John was restored to his post.

At about this time he put a stop to a practice which was offensive to him, although none of his predecessors outwardly considered it disrespectful; this practice was applauding in church, which would be considered extremely vulgar today, and the absence of which has added to the solemnity of Church services.

St. John delivered a sermon in which he deplored the adulation of a frenzied crowd at the unveiling of a public statue of the Empress Eudoxia. His sermon was grossly exaggerated by his enemies, and by the time it reached the ears of the Empress it resulted in his permanent exile from his beloved city of Constantinople.

The humiliation of banishment did not deter the gallant, golden-mouthed St. John, who continued to communicate with the Church and wrote his precious prose until he died in the lonely reaches of Pontus in 407.

The treasure of treatises and letters which St. John left behind, included the moving sermon that is heard at Easter Sunday services. The loss of his sermons which were not set down on paper is incalculable.

Nevertheless, the immense store of his excellent literature reveals his insight, straightforwardness, and rhetorical splendour, and commands a position of the greatest respect and influence in Christian thought, rivaling that of other Fathers of the Church. His liturgy, which we respectfully chant on Sundays, is a living testimony of his greatness.

The slight, five-foot St. John stood tall in his defiance of state authority, bowing only to God and never yielding the high principles of Christianity to expediency or personal welfare. In the words of his pupil, Cassia of Marseilles, "It would be a great thing to attain his stature, but it would be difficult. Nevertheless, a following of him is lovely and magnificent."

It is impossible to cover the entire life of St John Chrysostom in a few pages. However apart from providing a very brief outline of his life, we have included a little more information about his life as a monk and as Patriarch of Constantinople.

Chrysostom as a Monk (AD 374-381)

After the death of his mother, Chrysostom fled from the seductions and tumults of city life to the monastic solitude of the mountains south of Antioch, and there spent six happy years in theological study and sacred meditation and prayer. Monasticism was to him (as to many other great teachers of the Church) a profitable school of spiritual experience and self-government. He embraced this mode of life as "the true philosophy" from the purest motives, and brought into it intellect and cultivation enough to make the seclusion available for moral and spiritual growth.

He gives us a lively description of the bright side of this monastic life. The monks lived in separate cells or huts, but according to a common rule and under the authority of an abbot. They wore coarse garments of camel's hair or goat's hair over their linen tunics.

They rose before sunrise, and began the day by singing a hymn of praise and common prayer under the leadership of the abbot. Then they went to their allotted task, some to read, others to write, others to manual labour for the support of the poor. Four hours in each day were devoted to prayer and singing. Their only food was bread and water, except in case of sickness. They slept on straw couches, free from care and anxiety. There was no need of bolts and bars.

They held all things in common, and the words of "mine and thine," which cause innumerable strifes in the world, were unknown among the brethren. If one died, he caused no lamentation, but thanksgiving, and was carried to the grave amidst hymns of praise; for he was not dead, but "perfected," and permitted to behold the face of Christ. For them to live was Christ, and to die was gain.

Chrysostom was an admirer of active and useful monasticism, and warns against the dangers of idle contemplation. He shows that the words of our Lord, "One thing is needful"; "Take no anxious thought for the morrow"; "Labour not for the meat that perisheth," do not inculcate total abstinence from work, but only undue anxiety about worldly things, and must be harmonised with the apostolic exhortation to labour and to do good. He defends monastic seclusion on account of the prevailing immorality in the cities, which made it almost impossible to cultivate there a higher Christian life.

Chrysostom as Patriarch of Constantinople (AD 398-404)

After the death of Nectarius towards the end of the year 397, Chrysostom was chosen, entirely without his own agency and even against his remonstrance, archbishop of Constantinople. He was hurried away from Antioch by a military escort, to avoid a commotion in the congregation and to make resistance useless. He was consecrated Feb. 26, 398, by his Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, who reluctantly yielded to the command of the Emperor Arcadius.

Constantinople, built by Constantine the Great in 330, on the site of Byzantium, assumed as the Eastern capital of the Roman empire the first position among the Episcopal sees of the East, and became the centre of court theology, court intrigues, and theological controversies.

Chrysostom soon gained by his eloquent sermons the admiration of the people, of the weak Emperor Arcadius, and, at first, even of his wife Eudoxia, with whom he afterwards waged a deadly war. He extended his pastoral care to the Goths who were becoming numerous in Constantinople, had a part of the Bible translated for them, often preached to them himself through an interpreter, and sent missionaries to the Gothic and Scythian tribes on the Danube. He continued to direct by correspondence those missionary operations even during his exile. For a short time he enjoyed the height of power and popularity.

But he also made enemies by his denunciations of the vices and follies of the clergy and aristocracy. He emptied the Episcopal palace of its costly plate and furniture and sold it for the benefit of the poor and the hospitals. He introduced his strict ascetic habits and reduced the luxurious household of his predecessors to the strictest simplicity. He devoted his large income to benevolence.

He refused invitations to banquets, gave no dinner parties, and ate the simplest fare in his solitary chamber. He denounced unsparingly luxurious habits in eating and dressing, and enjoined upon the rich the duty of almsgiving to an extent that tended to increase rather than diminish the number of beggars who swarmed in the streets and around the churches and public baths.

He disciplined the vicious clergy and opposed the perilous and immoral habit of unmarried priests of living under the same roof with "spiritual sisters." This habit dated from an earlier age, and was a reaction against celibacy. Cyprian had raised his protest against it, and the Council of Nicea forbade unmarried priests to live with any females except close relations.

Chrysostom's unpopularity was increased by his irritability and obstinacy. The Empress Eudoxia was jealous of his influence over Arcadius and angry at his uncompromising severity against sin and vice. She became the chief instrument of his downfall.

The occasion was furnished by an unauthorised use of his Episcopal power beyond the lines of his diocese, which was confined to the city. At the request of the clergy of Ephesus and the neighbouring bishops, he visited that city in January, 401, held a synod and deposed six bishops convicted of shameful simony.

During his absence of several months he left the Episcopate of Constantinople in the hands of Severian, bishop of Gabala, an unworthy and adroit flatterer, who basely betrayed his trust and formed a cabal headed by the empress and her licentious court ladies, for the ruin of Chrysostom.

On his return to Constantinople he used unguarded language in the pulpit, and spoke on Elijah's relation to Jezebel in such a manner that Eudoxia understood it as a personal insult. The clergy were anxious to get rid of a bishop who was too severe for their lax morals.

The Repose of Saint John and
the Transfer of His Relics

The saint died in the city of Comene on September 14th in the year 407 on his way to a place of exile, having been condemned by the intrigues of the empress Eudoxia because of his daring denunciation of the vices ruling over Constantinople. The last words on his lips were, "Glory be to God for all things!" The transfer of his venerable relics was made in the year 438: after 30 years following the death of the saint during the reign of Eudoxia's son emperor Theodosius II (408-450).

Saint John Chrysostom had the warm love and deep respect of the people, and grief over his untimely death lived on in the hearts of Christians.

Saint John's student, Saint Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople (434-447), making Divine-services in the Church of Saint Sophia, preached a sermon which in glorifying Saint John he said: "O John! Thy life was filled with difficulties, but thy death was glorious, thy grave is blessed and reward abundant through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. O graced one, having conquered the bounds of time and place! Love hath conquered space, unforgetting memory hath annihilated the limits, and place doth not hinder the miracles of the saint."

Those who were present in church, deeply touched by the words of Saint Proclus, did not allow him even to finish his sermon. With one accord they began to entreat the Patriarch to intercede with the emperor, so that the relics of Saint John might be transferred to Constantinople. The emperor, overwhelmed by Saint Proclus, gave his consent and made the order to transfer the relics of Saint John.

But the people dispatched by him were by no means able to life up the holy relics -- not until that moment when the emperor realising his oversight that he had not sent the message to Saint John, humbly beseeching of him forgiveness for himself and for his mother Eudoxia. The message was read at the grave of Saint John and after this they easily lifted up the relics, carried them onto a ship and arrived at Constantinople.

The reliquary coffin with the relics was placed in the Church of the holy Martyr Irene. The Patriarch opened the coffin: the body of Saint John had remained without decay. The emperor, having approached the coffin with tears, asked forgiveness. All day and night people did not leave the coffin.

In the morning the reliquary coffin with its relics was brought to the Church of the Holy Apostles. The people cried out: "Receive back thy throne, father!" Then Patriarch Proclus and the clergy standing at the relics saw Saint John open his mouth and pronounce: "Peace be to all."

In the IX Century the feastday in honour of the transfer of the relics of Sainted John Chrysostom was written into church singing.



Greco-Byzantine icon, 16th century, showing St. John flanked by the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.



Here is a reflection from St. John Chrysostom:

---

The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus.

What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? ‘The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. I concentrate therefore on the present situation, and I urge you, my friends, to have confidence.

Do you not hear the Lord saying: Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst? Will he be absent, then, when so many people united in love are gathered together? I have his promise; I am surely not going to rely on my own strength! I have what he has written; that is my staff, my security, my peaceful harbour. Let the world be in upheaval. I hold to his promise and read his message; that is my protecting wall and garrison. What message? Know that I am with you always, until the end of the world!

If Christ is with me, whom shall I fear? Though the waves and the sea and the anger of princes are roused against me, they are less to me than a spider’s web. Indeed, unless you, my brothers, had detained me, I would have left this very day. For I always say “Lord, your will be done”; not what this fellow or that would have me do, but what you want me to do. That is my strong tower, my immovable rock, my staff that never gives way. If God wants something, let it be done! If he wants me to stay here, I am grateful. But wherever he wants me to be, I am no less grateful.

Yet where I am, there you are too, and where you are, I am. For we are a single body, and the body cannot be separated from the head nor the head from the body. Distance separates us, but love unites us, and death itself cannot divide us. For though my body die, my soul will live and be mindful of my people.

You are my fellow citizens, my fathers, my brothers, my sons, my limbs, my body. You are my light, sweeter to me than the visible light. For what can the rays of the sun bestow on me that is comparable to your love? The sun’s light is useful in my earthly life, but your love is fashioning a crown for me in the life to come.

---

[Here is a paylink to Tschaikovsky's setting of St. John Chrysostom's liturgy, with the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir
payplay.fm/evgeni64
and to Rahmaninov's setting of the same:
payplay.fm/evgeni41

September 14
FEAST OF THE CROSS


In the Christian liturgical calendar, there are several different feasts known as Feasts of the Cross, all of which commemorate the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus. While Good Friday is dedicated to the Passion of Christ and the Crucifixion, these days celebrate the cross itself, as the instrument of salvation.


Exaltation of the Cross, from the
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
(Musée Condé, Chantilly)

The original name of the feast celebrated on September 14 was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, by which name it is still known by the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church.

Since 1970, it has been called in English the Triumph of the Cross by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. However, in Latin its name remains 'The Exaltation of the Cross'. In some parts of the Anglican Communion it is called Holy Cross Day, a name also used by Lutherans. In Jewish folklore the feast was established by Saint Peter for converted Jews to observe instead of Rosh Hashana.

The feast commemorates the finding of the True Cross in 325 during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine I . The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was then built at the site of the discovery, by order of Helena and Constantine.

The church was dedicated nine years later, with a portion [1] of the cross placed inside it. In 614, that portion of the cross was carried away from the church by the Persians, and remained missing until it was recaptured by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628. The cross was returned to the church the following year after initially having been taken to Constantinople by Heraclius.

The date used for the feast marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335. This was a two-day festival: although the actual Consecration of the church was on September 13, the cross itself was brought outside the church on September 14 so that the clergy and faithful could pray before it.


Western practices

In Roman Catholic liturgical observance, red vestments are worn at church services conducted on this day, and if the day falls on a Sunday, its Mass is used instead of that for the occurring Sunday in Ordinary Time or after Pentecost which would otherwise fall thereon.

Until 1962, the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of the calendar week after the one in which September 14 falls were designated as one of each year's four sets of Ember days by the church in the West. In more recent years, there have been permissions to move these observances for local reasons.

September 14 is the titular feast of the Congregation of Holy Cross.


Eastern practices



In Eastern Orthodox practice, the Exaltation of the Cross commemorates both the finding of the Cross in 326 and its recovery from the Persians in 628, and is considered to be one of the Great Feasts of the church year.

One of the high points of the celebration is when the priest or bishop brings the Cross out of the sanctuary, where it has been reposing on the Holy Table (altar).

The cross is lying on a tray that has been covered with an Aër (liturgical veil) and decorated with basil leaves and flowers. He sets the cross on a table in the center of the church as the choir sings of the festal Troparion of the Cross: "Save, O Lord, Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance, granting unto Orthodox Christians victory over enemies, and by the power of Thy Cross, do Thou preserve Thy commonwealth."

Then, all the members of the congregation prostrate themselves on the ground as all sing, "Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify" three times (at the words "Thy holy Resurrection" all stand up again on their feet). Then all come forward to venerate the cross and receive the priest's blessing.

In cathedrals and monasteries, a special "Exaltation" is performed by the bishop or abbot, standing in the center of the church. This consists of his taking the cross in his hands and raising it above his head. He makes an exclamation, to which the choir responds, chanting, Kyrie eleison 100 times. As they chant, he makes the sign of the cross with it three times, then slowly bows down to the ground, and stands up again raising the cross above his head as before. This process is repeated four more times to the four points of the compass.

Icon and Synaxarion of the Feast

The Armenian Apostolic Church observes a five-day fast, called the Fast of the Holy Cross from September 10 through September 14, in preparation for the Feast of the Holy Church in view of the Holy Cross, which they celebrate on September 15. September 16 is observed as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a feast which continues for several days thereafter.



Exaltation of the Cross, by a Russian bishop.



From the site of the Orthodox Churches of America:

The Universal Exaltation
of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross
Commemorated on September 14



The pagan Roman emperors tried to completely eradicate from human memory the holy places where our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and was resurrected for mankind.

The Emperor Hadrian (117-138) gave orders to cover over the ground of Golgotha and the Sepulchre of the Lord, and to build a temple of the pagan goddess Venus and a statue of Jupiter. Pagans gathered at this place and offered sacrifice to idols there.

Eventually after 300 years, by Divine Providence, the great Christian sacred remains, the Sepulchre of the Lord and the Life-Creating Cross were again discovered and opened for veneration. This took place under the Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337) after his victory in the year 312 over Maxentius, ruler of the Western part of the Roman empire, and over Licinius, ruler of its Eastern part. In the year 323 Constantine became the sole ruler of the vast Roman Empire.

In 313 he had issued the Edict of Milan, by which the Christian religion was legalized and the persecutions against Christians in the Western half of the empire were stopped. The ruler Licinius, although he had signed the Edict of Milan to oblige Constantine, still fanatically continued the persecutions against Christians.

Only after his conclusive defeat did the 313 Edict of toleration extend also to the Eastern part of the empire. The Holy Equal of the Apostles Emperor Constantine, having gained victory over his enemies in three wars with God's assistance, had seen in the heavens the Sign of the Cross, and written beneath: "By this you shall conquer."

Ardently desiring to find the Cross on which our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, St Constantine sent his mother, the pious Empress Helen (May 21), to Jerusalem, providing her with a letter to St Macarius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Although the holy empress Helen was already in her declining years, she set about completing the task with enthusiasm. The empress gave orders to destroy the pagan temple and the statues in Jerusalem. Searching for the Life-Creating Cross, she made inquiry of Christians and Jews, but for a long time her search remained unsuccessful.

Finally, they directed her to a certain elderly Hebrew by the name of Jude who stated that the Cross was buried where the temple of Venus stood. They demolished the pagan temple and, after praying, they began to excavate the ground.

Soon the Tomb of the Lord was uncovered. Not far from it were three crosses, a board with the inscription ordered by Pilate, and four nails which had pierced the Lord's Body (March 6).

In order to discern on which of the three crosses the Savior was crucified, Patriarch Macarius alternately touched the crosses to a corpse. When the Cross of the Lord touched the dead one, he came to life. Having beheld the raising of the dead man, everyone was convinced that the Life-Creating Cross was found.



Patriarch Macarius in the center of the icon
elevates the Cross; at right, Saint Helen,
mother of Emperor Constantine, who discovered
the Holy Cross; at left, deacons with candles
venerate the Holy Cross.

Christians came in a huge throng to venerate the Holy Cross, beseeching St Macarius to elevate the Cross, so that even those far off might reverently contemplate it. Then the Patriarch and other spiritual leaders raised up the Holy Cross, and the people, saying "Lord have mercy," reverently prostrated before the Venerable Wood. This solemn event occurred in the year 326.

During the discovery of the Life-Creating Cross another miracle took place: a grievously sick woman, beneath the shadow of the Holy Cross, was healed instantly.

The elder Jude and other Jews there believed in Christ and accepted Holy Baptism. Jude received the name Cyriacus and afterwards was consecrated Bishop of Jerusalem. During the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363) he accepted a martyr's death for Christ (see October 28).

The holy empress Helen journeyed to the holy places connected with the earthly life of the Savior, building more than 80 churches, at Bethlehem the birthplace of Christ, and on the Mount of Olives where the Lord ascended to Heaven, and at Gethsemane where the Savior prayed before His sufferings and where the Mother of God was buried after her death.

St Helen took part of the Life-Creating Wood and nails with her to Constantinople. The holy emperor Constantine gave orders to build at Jerusalem a majestic and spacious church in honor of the Resurrection of Christ, also including under its roof the Life-Giving Tomb of the Lord and Golgotha. The temple was constructed in about ten years.

St Helen did not survive until the dedication of the temple - she died in the year 327. The church was consecrated on September 13, 335. On the following day, September 14, the festal celebration of the Exaltation of the Venerable and Life-Creating Cross was established.

Another event connected to the Cross of the Lord is remembered also on this day: its return to Jerusalem from Persia after a fourteen year captivity. During the reign of the Byzantine emperor Phocas (602-610) the Persian emperor Khozroes II in a war against the Greeks defeated the Greek army, plundered Jerusalem and captured both the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord and the Holy Patriarch Zachariah (609-633).

The Cross remained in Persia for fourteen years and only under the emperor Heraclius (610-641), who with the help of God defeated Khozroes and concluded peace with his successor and son Syroes, was the Cross of the Lord returned to the Christians.

With great solemnity the Life-creating Cross was transferred to Jerusalem. Emperor Heraclius in imperial crown and royal purple carried the Cross of Christ into the temple of the Resurrection.

With the emperor went Patriarch Zacharios. At the gates by which they ascended Golgotha, the emperor suddenly stopped and was not able to proceed farther. The holy Patriarch explained to the emperor that an angel of the Lord was blocking his way.

The emperor was told to remove his royal trappings and to walk barefoot, since He Who bore the Cross for the salvation of the world from sin had made His way to Golgotha in all humility. Then Heraclius donned plain garb, and without further hindrance, carried the Cross of Christ into the church.

In a sermon on the Exaltation of the Cross, St Andrew of Crete (July 4) says: "The Cross is exalted, and everything true gathers together, the Cross is exalted, and the city makes solemn, and the people celebrate the feast".

September 21, 2007
FEAST OF ST. MATTHEW, APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST


Here is Pope Benedict XVI's catechesis on Matthew given August 30, 2006, in his catechetical cycle on the Apostles.



Continuing the series of portraits of the Twelve Apostles that we began a few weeks ago, let us reflect today on Matthew. To tell the truth, it is almost impossible to paint a complete picture of him because the information we have of him is scarce and fragmentary. What we can do, however, is to outline not so much his biography as, rather, the profile of him that the Gospel conveys.

In the meantime, he always appears in the lists of the Twelve chosen by Jesus (cf. Mt 10: 3; Mk 3: 18; Lk 6: 15; Acts 1: 13).

His name in Hebrew means "gift of God". The first canonical Gospel, which goes under his name, presents him to us in the list of the Twelve, labelled very precisely: "the tax collector" (Mt 10: 3).

Thus, Matthew is identified with the man sitting at the tax office whom Jesus calls to follow him: "As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, "Follow me'. And he rose and followed him" (Mt 9: 9). Mark (cf. 2: 13-17) and Luke (cf. 5: 27-30), also tell of the calling of the man sitting at the tax office, but they call him "Levi".

To imagine the scene described in Mt 9: 9, it suffices to recall Caravaggio's magnificent canvas, kept here in Rome at the Church of St Louis of the French.


Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1600, 322x340 cm (approx 10'7" x 11'2"], Chapel of St. Louis, Rome.

A further biographical detail emerges from the Gospels: in the passage that immediately precedes the account of the call, a miracle that Jesus worked at Capernaum is mentioned (cf. Mt 9: 1-8; Mk 2: 1-12) and the proximity to the Sea of Galilee, that is, the Lake of Tiberias (cf. Mk 2: 13-14).

It is possible to deduce from this that Matthew exercised the function of tax collector at Capernaum, which was exactly located "by the sea" (Mt 4: 13), where Jesus was a permanent guest at Peter's house.

On the basis of these simple observations that result from the Gospel, we can advance a pair of thoughts.

The first is that Jesus welcomes into the group of his close friends a man who, according to the concepts in vogue in Israel at that time, was regarded as a public sinner.

Matthew, in fact, not only handled money deemed impure because of its provenance from people foreign to the People of God, but he also collaborated with an alien and despicably greedy authority whose tributes moreover, could be arbitrarily determined.

This is why the Gospels several times link "tax collectors and sinners" (Mt 9: 10; Lk 15: 1), as well as "tax collectors and prostitutes" (Mt 21: 31).

Furthermore, they see publicans as an example of miserliness (cf. Mt 5: 46: they only like those who like them), and mention one of them, Zacchaeus, as "a chief tax collector, and rich" (Lk 19: 2), whereas popular opinion associated them with "extortioners, the unjust, adulterers" (Lk 18: 11).

A first fact strikes one based on these references: Jesus does not exclude anyone from his friendship. Indeed, precisely while he is at table in the home of Matthew-Levi, in response to those who expressed shock at the fact that he associated with people who had so little to recommend them, he made the important statement: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mk 2: 17).

The good news of the Gospel consists precisely in this: offering God's grace to the sinner!

Elsewhere, with the famous words of the Pharisee and the publican who went up to the Temple to pray, Jesus actually indicates an anonymous tax collector as an appreciated example of humble trust in divine mercy: while the Pharisee is boasting of his own moral perfection, the "tax collector... would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!'".

And Jesus comments: "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 18: 13-14).

Thus, in the figure of Matthew, the Gospels present to us a true and proper paradox: those who seem to be the farthest from holiness can even become a model of the acceptance of God's mercy and offer a glimpse of its marvellous effects in their own lives.

St John Chrysostom makes an important point in this regard: he notes that only in the account of certain calls is the work of those concerned mentioned. Peter, Andrew, James and John are called while they are fishing, while Matthew, while he is collecting tithes.

These are unimportant jobs, Chrysostom comments, "because there is nothing more despicable than the tax collector, and nothing more common than fishing" (In Matth. Hom.: PL 57, 363). Jesus' call, therefore, also reaches people of a low social class while they go about their ordinary work.

Another reflection prompted by the Gospel narrative is that Matthew responds instantly to Jesus' call: "he rose and followed him". The brevity of the sentence clearly highlights Matthew's readiness in responding to the call. For him it meant leaving everything, especially what guaranteed him a reliable source of income, even if it was often unfair and dishonourable. Evidently, Matthew understood that familiarity with Jesus did not permit him to pursue activities of which God disapproved.

The application to the present day is easy to see: it is not permissible today either to be attached to things that are incompatible with the following of Jesus, as is the case with riches dishonestly achieved.

Jesus once said, mincing no words: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Mt 19: 21).

This is exactly what Matthew did: he rose and followed him! In this "he rose", it is legitimate to read detachment from a sinful situation and at the same time, a conscious attachment to a new, upright life in communion with Jesus.

Lastly, let us remember that the tradition of the ancient Church agrees in attributing to Matthew the paternity of the First Gospel. This had already begun with Bishop Papias of Hierapolis in Frisia, in about the year 130.

He writes: "Matthew set down the words (of the Lord) in the Hebrew tongue and everyone interpreted them as best he could" (in Eusebius of Cesarea, Hist. Eccl. III, 39, 16).

Eusebius, the historian, adds this piece of information: "When Matthew, who had first preached among the Jews, decided also to reach out to other peoples, he wrote down the Gospel he preached in his mother tongue; thus, he sought to put in writing, for those whom he was leaving, what they would be losing with his departure" (ibid., III, 24, 6).

The Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew or Aramaic is no longer extant, but in the Greek Gospel that we possess we still continue to hear, in a certain way, the persuasive voice of the publican Matthew, who, having become an Apostle, continues to proclaim God's saving mercy to us. And let us listen to St Matthew's message, meditating upon it ever anew also to learn to stand up and follow Jesus with determination.


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The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us more about St. Matthew's biography:

No further allusion is made to Matthew in the Gospels, except in the list of the Apostles. As a disciple and an Apostle he thenceforth followed Christ, accompanying Him up to the time of His Passion and, in Galilee, was one of the witnesses of His Resurrection.

He was also amongst the Apostles who were present at the Ascension, and afterwards withdrew to an upper chamber, in Jerusalem, praying in union with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren (Acts 1:10 and 1:14).

Of Matthew's subsequent career we have only inaccurate or legendary data. St. Irenæus tells us that Matthew preached the Gospel among the Hebrews, St. Clement of Alexandria claiming that he did this for fifteen years, and Eusebius maintains that, before going into other countries, he gave them his Gospel in the mother tongue.

Ancient writers are not as one as to the countries evangelized by Matthew, but almost all mention Ethiopia to the south of the Caspian Sea (not Ethiopia in Africa), and some Persia and the kingdom of the Parthians, Macedonia, and Syria.

According to Heracleon, who is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Matthew did not die a martyr, but this opinion conflicts with all other ancient testimony.


Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599-1600, 323x343 cm, Chapel of St. Louis, Rome.
A companion piece to the "The Calling of St. Matthew"

Let us add, however, that the account of his martyrdom in the apocryphal Greek writings entitled "Martyrium S. Matthæi in Ponto" and published by Bonnet, "Acta apostolorum apocrypha" (Leipzig, 1898), is absolutely devoid of historic value. Lipsius holds that this "Martyrium S. Matthæi", which contains traces of Gnosticism, must have been published in the third century.

There is a disagreement as to the place of St. Matthew's martyrdom and the kind of torture inflicted on him, therefore it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded. The Roman Martyrology simply says: "S. Matthæi, qui in Æthiopia prædicans martyrium passus est".

Various writings that are now considered apocryphal, have been attributed to St. Matthew. In the "Evangelia apocrypha" (Leipzig, 1876), Tischendorf reproduced a Latin document entitled: "De Ortu beatæ Mariæ et infantia Salvatoris", supposedly written in Hebrew by St. Matthew the Evangelist, and translated into Latin by Jerome, the priest. It is an abridged adaptation of the "Protoevangelium" of St. James, which was a Greek apocryphal of the second century. This pseudo-Matthew dates from the middle or the end of the sixth century.

The Latin Church celebrates the feast of St. Matthew on 21 September, and the Greek Church on 16 November. St. Matthew is represented under the symbol of a winged man, carrying in his hand a lance as a characteristic emblem.

More on Mother Teresa's struggles, with ample insights from Benedict


Does Doubt Belong to Faith?

By Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
First Things
Tuesday, October 2, 2007, 6:43 AM

The recent publication of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light by Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., with its frank avowals of the struggles with darkness of someone widely regarded as a saint (and not just by Catholics), has raised once more the question of the role of doubt in the life of faith. Are faith and doubt inherently incompatible, or are they necessary components in a single act of trust in God? Are they inevitably paired, like day and night; or is doubt a temptation that indicates, at best, a lack of vigor in the act of faith? If one doubts, is one already on the road toward unbelief?

This question has long occupied theologians, one that is obviously too complicated to analyze fully here. (For Avery Cardinal Dulles’ history of the debate, see here.) But one way of gauging the contours and implications of this age-old debate would be to cite two reputable authorities who take (or seem to take) opposite positions, in this case the two cardinals John Henry Newman and Joseph Ratzinger.

I think it would be no exaggeration to say that for Newman it is quite literally nonsensical to speak of the compatibility of doubt and faith. For him these two terms denote entirely opposite stances on the part of the human seeker. In a sermon during his Catholic days specifically devoted to this theme, “Faith and Doubt,” printed in the collection Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations, he speaks almost as a logical positivist in his exclusion of doubt from the act of faith:

I must insist upon this: faith implies a confidence in a man’s mind, that the thing believed is really true; but, if it is once true it never can be false. If it is true that God became man, what is the meaning of my anticipating a time when perhaps I shall not believe that God became man? This is nothing short of anticipating a time when I shall disbelieve a truth. And if I bargain to be allowed in time to come not to believe, or to doubt, that God became man, I am but asking to be allowed to doubt or disbelieve what I hold to be an eternal truth. I do not see the privilege in such a permission at all, or the meaning of wishing to secure it. If at present I have no doubt whatever about it, then I am but asking leave to fall into error; if at present I have doubts about it, then I do not believe it at present, that is, I have not faith. . . . I may love by halves, I may obey by halves; I cannot believe by halves: either I have faith, or I have it not.

At least at first hearing, Joseph Ratzinger sounds so different. In his influential Introduction to Christianity (a set of very erudite reflections on the Apostles Creed), the future pope boldly insists that “the believer is always threatened with an uncertainty that in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole that usually seems so self-evident to him.”

For an illustration of his point he uses the example of a shipwrecked Jesuit missionary in Paul Claudel’s play The Satin Slipper, who at curtain’s rise speaks these dying words while clinging to a piece of lumber, tossed about on a turbulent sea: “I really am fastened to the cross, but the cross on which I hang is not fastened to anything else but drifts on the sea.” To which Ratzinger appends this interpretation:

Fastened to the cross—with the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss. The situation of the contemporary believer could hardly be more accurately and impressively described. Only a loose plank bobbing over the void seems to hold him up, and it looks as if he must eventually sink. Only a loose plank connects him to God, though certainly it connects him inescapably, and in the last analysis he knows that this wood is stronger than the void that seethes beneath him and that still remains the really threatening force in his day-to-day life.

As it happens, this Jesuit has a worldling brother who at the end of the play has been captured on a slave ship and must beg alms from an old nun, a plot twist that leads Ratzinger to this conclusion:

If, on the one hand, the believer can perfect his faith only on the ocean of nihilism, temptation, and doubt, if he has been assigned the ocean of uncertainty as the only possible one for his faith, on the other, the unbeliever is not to be understood undialectically as a mere man without faith. Just as we have already recognized that the believer does not live immune to doubt but is always threatened by the plunge into the void, so now we can discern the entangled nature of human destinies and say that the nonbeliever does not lead a sealed-off, self-sufficient life either. . . . Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the nonbeliever is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole . . . [He too] remains threatened by the question of whether belief is not after all the reality it claims to be. . . . Anyone who makes up his mind to evade the uncertainty of belief will have to experience the uncertainty of unbelief, which can never finally eliminate for certain the possibility that belief may after all be the truth. It is not until belief is rejected that its unrejectability becomes evident. (emphasis added)

The question that animates this posting is simply this: Can Newman and Ratzinger be reconciled? When the medieval theologians were confronted with conflicting opinions from two unimpeachably orthodox authorities, they set them over against each other and tried to reconcile them by drawing distinctions. In this case, we may ask: Are Newman and Ratzinger defining, however implicitly, faith and doubt differently?

It would certainly seem that way. Clearly Newman is speaking, at least to some extent, of faith as the subscription of the mind to certain propositional truths, like the Incarnation or the existence of God. In that case, he must surely be right that no one can simultaneously agree that, say, Jesus Christ is the Son of God while holding that such a truth might not be true. Ratzinger, however, is defining faith more broadly and very much wants to include its sacerdotal and representative role, whereby the believer seeks to live for the sake of unbelievers in their despair, the way Claudel’s Jesuit prays for his errant brother by taking on his unbelief.

So far, so medieval. But what accounts for their different definitions of faith? Might there, perhaps, be a shift of perspective, a sea change, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that can explain their different assertions? The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, in his book Eclipse of God, uses the analogue of a solar eclipse to explain contemporary unbelief: for the believer, God the “sun” must radiate his light if the earth is to continue to exist, but something has intervened to block that light and make the darkness of unbelief plausible. (For Buber, the eclipsing “moon” was the atheist project implicit in the presuppositions of German Idealism.)

Taking that astronomical analogue as our clue, and prescinding from the question of what intellectual rock serves as the moon blocking the light of the sun, we can at least say that—for believer and unbeliever alike—the world is darker now than it was when Newman was alive. A long tradition of Christian theology speaks of “the eyes of faith”, but eyes need light to see.

I cannot here discuss all the converging factors that have made our times so much darker than Newman’s, but if we admit Buber’s point, perhaps we can see the meaning of what Mother Teresa of Calcutta endured.

From reading Fr. Kolodiejchuk’s riveting account of Mother Teresa’s experience of the darkness of faith, what becomes apparent (at least to those aware of the difference between darkness and doubt) is her sheer bafflement at the meaning of what she was called upon to endure: a kind of nagging, persistent pain in her soul.

That pain never seems to have abated, but eventually she did attain a certain breakthrough, when one of her spiritual directors, a Jesuit missionary from Austria, suggested that her suffering was a partaking in what Christ endured on the cross. Previously, most of the advice from her spiritual directors had suggested she was following the track of St. John of the Cross and other mystics in the Carmelite tradition, where darkness is usually interpreted as only a preparatory, purgative stage, one that would eventually yield to the light of consoling union as the soul progressed in the spiritual life.

What made Teresa’s experiences so baffling, both to her and to her directors, was the chronic nature of her darkness, and therefore apparently not directly correlated to her progress in virtue. But she made a real breakthrough when this Austrian priest suggested that she had indeed attained the final unitive stage, only it was union with Christ’s own darkness on the cross. From this point on, Mother Teresa seemed more at peace (despite her schedule as peripatetic world traveler, which she found extremely burdensome). For now, however dimly, she could see her connection with the redemption won by Jesus on the cross.

This breakthrough becomes most evident not only in the change of tone in her later letters and retreat notes, but above all in this address she gave to her fellow Missionaries of Charity in India on April 1, 1981, where—quite untutored in the intricacies of Pauline soteriology—she spoke in these accents to her sisters:

At the Incarnation Jesus became like us in all things except sin; but at the time of the Passion, He became sin. He took on our sins and that was why He was rejected by the Father. I think that this was the greatest of all the sufferings that He had to endure and the thing He dreaded most in the agony in the Garden. Those words of His on the Cross were the expression of the depth of His loneliness and Passion—that even His own Father didn’t claim Him as His Son. That, despite all His suffering and anguish, His Father did not claim Him as His beloved Son, as He did at the Baptism by St. John the Baptist and at the Transfiguration. You ask “Why?” Because God cannot accept sin and Jesus had taken on sin—He had become sin. Do you connect your vows with this Passion of Jesus? Do you realize that when you accept the vows you accept the same fate of Jesus?

According to Fr. Kolodiejchuk’s interpretation (a point often missed even among the most vocal defenders of his book, and certainly entirely missed by atheist kibitzers), Mother Teresa’s darkness was a direct result of the actions of Jesus on her soul. She first felt the call to leave her original order, the Sisters of Loreto, and establish a new order, the Missionaries of Charity, when she heard the voice of Jesus say, “I thirst.” That is, he thirsted in the poor; and when in obedience to him, she turned to the destitute to slake that thirst, she became Christ’s own chosen instrument, living out the same reparative suffering that had already brought redemption to the world—but which now has to be continued by the members of his Body, the Church.

In other words, to understand the reality of her experience of darkness, one must turn, yet again, to St. Paul, who said: “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his Body” (Col. 1:24). Thus, far from representing a temptation to infidelity, Mother Teresa’s darkness was the truest indication of her fidelity to Christ and to his ongoing work of redeeming the world, mediated through the suffering members of his Church. No wonder, then, that, except for a few captious and frightened atheists, the world—and not just Catholics—has so quickly and readily recognized her as a saint. Because she is one.

Edward T. Oakes, S.J., teaches theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, the seminary for the archdiocese of Chicago in Mundelein, Illinois.

PLACEHOLDER FOR
FEAST OF THE ARCHANGELS
AND FEAST OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS

October 1
ST. THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS,
VIRGIN AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH



Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin
Born January 2, 1873 in Alençon, France
Died September 30, 1897 in Lisieux, France


From left, Therese at age 3, 8, 13, 15, and as a novice


From left, as Joan of Arc in a convent play (1st two pics), with her community in 1905


Pictures fron 1896.


From left: July 1986, Nov. 1896, June 1987, August 1897 (in sickbed), and Oct. 1, 1897 (the day after she died).


Therese in death: Oct 1, 1897, and Oct. 3, 1897.


St Thérèse of Lisieux
by Sr Judy Murray, OCD



Thérèse was born to loving middle-class parents. Her mother, Zélie Guerin, came from a military family. Thérèse's grandfather was first a soldier and then a gendarme. As a young woman, Zelie dreamed of religious life and attempted to join the Daughters of Charity but was refused admission.

She took this as a sign that her vocation was to become the mother of children, whom if God willed, she would consecrate to God. Zelie then went into business as a lace-making broker, eventually employing twenty women.

Thérèse's father Louis also came from a military family. He, too, dreamed of religious life and desired to join the Canons Regular, but learning Latin proved too difficult. Instead, he took up watchmaking and eventually opened a jewelry shop. The business prospered.

When he married Zelie, Louis was earning about about11,000 francs a year or about $75,000 in 1995 US dollars. Eventually Louis sold his business and joined his wife's presumably even more successful lace-making business.

Zelie was 27 and Louis was 35 when they married.

Thérèse was the ninth and last child born to the Martins. Four of the children died in early childhood. Mme. Martin died of breast cancer in 1877, leaving four-year-old Thérèse to the care of her father and older sisters: Marie, Pauline, Leonie, and Celine.

Pauline became Thérèse's surrogate mother, but the traumatic loss of her birth mother affected her entire childhood. Thérèse became so hypersensitive that she cried over the smallest things - and then would cry all over again because she cried.

After Zelie's death, M. Martin moved his family to Lisieux to be near his late wife's family. When Thérèse was eight, she enrolled in the Benedictine Abbey School as a day student.

Thérèse did not flourish at the Benedictine Abbey School and was extremely unhappy there. She would later describe these years as "the saddest of her life". It was during these years that she had also lost her surrogate mother when Pauline entered the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux in 1882. This proved to be an enormous psychological blow that made Thérèse physically ill for a time. Finally, in 1886 she left the school and started taking private lessons.

Also in 1886, two more of her sisters left home for the convent -Leonie to the Visitandines and Marie to the Lisieux Carmel, where Pauline was already a professed sister.

During these years Thérèse was still daddy's very little girl, still emotionally hypersensitive. She suffered terrible scruples (obsessive, inappropriate worries about sin). Then in December, 1886, she experienced a marvelous transformation which she called "the grace of leaving her childhood" and "the grace of her complete conversion".

After the midnight mass at Christmas, as her beloved father was leaving presents in her "magic Christmas shoes", she overheard him say, "Well, fortunately this will be the last year." She realized that he wished his now teenaged daughter to give up this childish custom.

Overhearing a comment like that usually caused sensitive Thérèse to collapse in tears. This time was different. Although deeply stung by his comment, she concealed her emotions and went down to the Christmas celebration. This incident changed her forever because she had learned to transcend her inner turmoil.

A year and a half later, having gotten special permission from her bishop, Thérèse entered the Carmel of Lisieux on April 9, 1888. She was only fifteen.

Thérèse was at last where she had fought to be. But monastic life did not assure unalloyed spiritual joy. Soon after her entrance she lost all sense of consolation in prayer; she often fell asleep in chapel.

Family troubles added to her worries. In 1889 her seriously ill father was admitted to the mental hospital in Caen. Thérèse said that she could not have imagined a greater cross.

That same year she struggled again with a tinge of scruples, probably caused by pessimistic Jansenist preaching at the monastery. Her confessor told her to banish these doubts and believe obstinately in Jesus' love.

Relief came in 1894 when her sister Celine entered the Carmel and brought with her a little notebook of scripture passages. In them Thérèse found the inspiration for her "little way." The soul who had worried so much about her sinfulness now entrusted herself completely to God's tender care.

In her "little way" Thérèse prescribes only two things:
1) She reminds us that God invites us to the banquet even when we are sinners. Thérèse tells us that we must desire to grow in the love of God and then entrust ourselves to God's merciful care, for God is moved by reliance on the divine compassion.

2) Next she gives us a mandate for generosity, that is, for exercising a life of holiness in ordinary things. She writes that she has no means of proving her love for God other than that of strewing flowers: not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look or even one word. In this way she can profit from all the smallest things by doing them with love.

Several years of ordinary convent life passed. Thérèse took great interest in foreign missions and hoped to go to Indochina herself. No one realized that her health was giving way.

On April 2, 1896, Thérèse woke in the night coughing up blood - she had tuberculosis. After a temporary partial recovery, she relapsed in September and continued to decline. By April 1897 she was gravely ill. The accounts from this time describe indigestion, vomiting, fever, chest pain, spitting up blood, and coughing to the point of exhaustion. In May she gave up her laundry work. On July 8th she was transferred to the monastery infirmary where she died on September 30th around 7:20 pm.

Towards the end of her life, Thérèse was asked on three different occasions to write something about her life.

In 1895 Thérèse's sister Pauline, now known as Reverend Mother Agnes, told Thérèse, "I order you to write down all your childhood memories." In obedience to this order, Thérèse began writing in January, 1895. This text (Manuscript A) contains reminiscences about her childhood and deals with her life in Carmel, introducing her 'little way' and describing her oblation to merciful love which she made in June of that year.

In 1896, Thérèse's sister Marie, now Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, asked for a "souvenir" of insights from Thérèse's most recent retreat. Thérèse wrote this part of the document now known as Manuscript B on September 8. Later Sister Marie asked Thérèse to clarify some of her teachings. Thérèse complied, adding a new description of her "little way" to Manuscript B on September 13-16, 1896.

In 1897, saying she needed more information for the obituary that she would send to the Order, Mother Marie de Gonzague asked Thérèse to write more about her Carmelite life. Thérèse started this text (Manuscript C) in June, but did not finish it before she died.

When Thérèse wrote Manuscript C, she located the text for us quite clearly. First she wrote about the great saints like Teresa of Avila and then said "Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by the passers-by.

Instead of becoming discouraged," she wrote, "...I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new....I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection."

Thérèse referred directly to Teresa and then used two metaphors (the mountain, and the stairway of perfection) that deftly combined references to John of the Cross and his Ascent of Mount Carmel and Teresa's Way of Perfection. The work she was trying to do in this text was to articulate a spirituality as profound as that of the Carmelite founders, but much more easily accessible!

Indeed, she wrote in her text, "We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for, in the homes of the rich, an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus." This is another metaphor for her little way.

Before she died, Thérèse told her sisters that it was important to publish her texts, and she authorized them to edit her manuscripts freely. The nuns did edit them quite freely, putting them together in one continuous document. They also changed, omitted, and added text in the process. For example, the date of composition for Manuscript A was changed.

The most important adulteration of Thérèse's original text is what happened to the concept of the "little way." Sister Geneviève (Thérèse's blood sister Pauline) tells us that Thérèse never used the term "spiritual childhood"; rather she called it "her little Way."

And so even though Thérèse herself never used the term "spiritual childhood" in any of her writing, the phrase "little way of spiritual childhood" was added to the eighth edition of The Story of a Soul in 1907. This changed the work of the text enormously.

The edition of The Story of a Soul available on the Internet contains the modified text. To know what Thérèse really said, serious students go to the critical edition which contains the text in Thérèse's own words. The unedited version is available from www.icspublications.org/bookstore/lisieux/b_lisieux01.html

Posthumous Chronology

1898 Bishop Hugonin gives permission for Histoire d'une Ame to be published; 2000 copies printed; they sell out in a year.

1899 By October another 4000 copies are sold; pilgrims start to come to her grave.

1906 The nuns in Lisieux start work toward Thérèse's canonization.

1909 The Vatican appoints an official to study the case for Thérèse's canonization.

1923 Pope Pius XI beatifies Thérèse

1925 Pius XI canonizes Thérèse

1927 Pius XI declares Thérèse co-patron of the missions with St. Francis Xavier

1997 Pope John Paul II declares Thérèse a Doctor of the Church

St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul. Translated by John Clarck, OCD. WDC: ICS Publications, 1996. [The critical edition]

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This is a provisional post. There is so much material on this saint that I need time to choose material and organize the post properly.