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Posted by on Sep 20, 2007

Jews and The Passion of Sister Rose

Jews and The Passion of Sister Rose

Sister Rose Thering (1920-2006) did her doctoral research on the image of Jews in Catholic textbooks. She received her degree in 1961 from St. Louis University, but her writing would be the catalyst for a significant change. Jews would no longer be labeled the “Christ killers.” The Second Vatican Council would adopt Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), a ground breaking document on non-Christians, including Jews.

Sr. Rose Thering’s research came to the attention of Cardinal Augustin Bea at the beginning of Council in 1962. Cardinal Bea was a major force in ecumenical relations. According to Fr. Eugene Fisher, the issue of anti-semitism came up early in the deliberations of the Council and was one of the last to be resolved. Anti-semitic tracts were submitted to the bishops (the Council fathers) and debunked. Diplomatic pressure came from Arab governments. Finally the issue was addressed in 15 sentences comprising section 4 of Nostra Aetate (In Our Time).

These two sentences strike down any biblical notion of the culpability of the Jewish people:

Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (see Jn 19:6), neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion. It is true that the church is the new people of God, yet the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy scripture. Consequently, all must take care, lest in catechizing or in preaching the word of God, they teach anything which is not in accord with the truth of the Gospel message or the spirit of Christ.

It is telling that this passage refers to the Gospel of St. John 19:6, since this Gospel casts Jews in a very negative light ,as do many other parts of the New Testament. This acrimony toward the Jews is part of a larger conflict between the two groups in the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. In fact, the tension with the Christian movement regarding observance of Mosaic law and Jewish practice was also intense. Over time, the Hellenistic segment prevailed by sheer force of numbers and their ability to assimilate into the broader Graeco-Roman culture.

The persistence of anti-semitism can be seen in Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ. The blockbuster movie followed the basic story line but contained a lot of materials that were the private revelations of a 19th century German nun. Somehow, Jesus, his family, and followers are no longer Jews but Aryans in the hands of alien hostile Jews. This reinforces something worse than a stereotype. It becomes an archetype of the Christian unconscious that structures dreams, perceptions, and ultimately – genocide.

The Jewish feast, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, comes every year as Summer gives way to Fall. As Yom Kippur approaches, Sr. Rose Thering provides an excellent example of going beyond guilt. She opens the door to a new and better day for everyone.

“She was a one-woman wrecking crew,” said Rabbi James Rudin, senior inter-religious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, and a friend of Thering’s for 36 years. “What she helped wreck was 2,000 years of the teaching of contempt which was built into so much of Christian teaching.”

For an in-depth report, see the section in the Anti-Defamation League site on the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) in October 2005.

Sister Rose’s Passion, a short documentary of Sr. Rose’s life and work, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. It is well worth seeing.


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Posted by on Sep 19, 2007

A Thread of Grace – Resisting The Italian Holocaust

A Thread of Grace – Resisting The Italian Holocaust

Grace is a heavy topic in systematic and historical theology. It has been the center of a longstanding dispute between Catholics and Protestants. In many respects, this dispute that dates to the Reformation is about how much credit we can take for the good we do or whether we have to credit everything to God.

I must say that when I picked up Mary Doria Russell’s, A Thread of Grace, I thought that the title was more of a poetic touch than a solid theological theme. I was attracted to the subject of the Holocaust in Italy. Since we are now between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the timing of this post seems appropriate.

When I picked up A Thread of Grace this summer for some “light” reading on vacation, I was unaware of Mary Doria Russell’s previous books, The Sparrow and Children of God, which are both works of science fiction with theological and philosophical themes. The Sparrow is the story of a Jesuit mission to an alien planet told by the sole survivor, Fr. Emilio Sandoz. In Children of God, Fr. Sandoz is called upon to return to Alpha Centauri.

Even though it is a work of historical fiction, A Thread of Grace reads like a thriller. Italy withdraws from World War II. Nazis come pouring in, along with refugee Jews from areas of southern France that had been controlled by Italy. Italians resist the Nazi extension of the Holocaust and 85% of resident and refugee Jews in Italy survive the 20 months of German occupation. The story takes place in northwestern Italy and presents the complexity and richness of the stories of the major characters. Who lives and who dies and how they die appears to be largely a matter of chance or fate.

The desperate situation of the region, caught between the collapse of their government and military, the German invasion, the relentless Allied bombing, and various partisan factions, provides a relentless cauldron in which the Jews are offered refuge and protection. The plot is very complicated but the characters reveal a great deal about simple truths. Werner Schramm, a Nazi doctor guilty of horrendous crimes, finds a measure of redemption after he is given a place and help to recover from tuberculosis. The man responsible for this help is the main character, Renzo Leoni, a Jewish aviator and veteran of the Abyssinian War, who has his own guilt about war crimes. Fr. Osvaldo Tomitz, who refuses to give absolution to Dr. Schramm, later receives his final Communion and last blessings from the Nazi doctor who is too late to rescue him. Iacopo Soncini, the local rabbi, comforts Fr. Tomitz when the priest comes to warn him and the Jewish community. People act to help others at an unbelievable cost – torture, the loss of their family, friends, and communities.

While this is certainly not a “feel good” book about the Holocaust, it is a resounding testament to people doing the right things in moments of grace. Are they responsible for these heroic actions or is God? The lives of these believers and unbelievers, these saints and sinners all wrapped up in the same complex person, render the academic quarrel over grace moot. God does not overpower free will and free will snatches hope from despair.

“There is a saying in Hebrew… No matter how dark the tapestry God weaves for us, there is always a thread of grace.”

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Posted by on Sep 18, 2007

Saint of the Day: St. Joseph of Cupertino

Saint of the Day: St. Joseph of Cupertino

Joseph Desa (1603-1663) was born in Cupertino, near Brindisi in the Kingdom of Naples.

St. Joseph of Cupertino is a challenge to anyone of an intellectual bent. His life is the prototypic story of an uneducated child, beset by poverty, who has ecstatic experiences beginning at age 8 which leave his mouth agape. His school mates called him “voca aperta.” The young child had quite a temper, which his mother tried to moderate, and he was later apprenticed to a shoemaker. At 17 he was turned away from the Friars Minor Conventual because of his ignorance. The Capuchins at first accepted him as a lay brother but his continued ecstasies made it impossible for him to do his work, so he found himself out on the street again. His mother and his uncles had given up on him and abused him as a good for nothing. Finally, after repeated prayers and a lot of tears he was allowed to work in the stable at the Franciscan convent of La Grotella near Cupertino. He was basically a lay servant. His humility, obedience, and love of penance must have impressed the friars because he was not only allowed to became a cleric but he was also ordained a priest over a period of years. Despite his lack of education, he demonstrated an amazing knowledge which appeared to be infused as a mystical gift. He was able to solve intricate problems.

His life was one long series of episodes of ecstasy, vision, and levitation. His superiors had to keep sending him from convent to convent to escape the curious.

John Coulson in his brief biography relates an incident that was all too typical.

“In 1645 the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, the High Admiral of Castile, having spoken for some time with him in his cell at Assisi, said that his wife too would like to meet him. The Father Guardian told him to go down to the church: Joseph said he would obey but did not know whether he would be able to speak to her. He entered the church, saw a statue of our Lady over the altar and straightway flew some twelve paces above the onlookers to its feet, and after a while, ‘uttering his customary shrill cry’, returned to the floor and then his cell, having said nothing to the Admiral, his wife and their large retinue. Instances could be multiplied up to the last month of Joseph’s life.”

Through it all St. Joseph of Cupertino kept his sense of peace and humility. It almost seems as if his life was written as an object lesson about the need for men in religious orders to temper and even validate their spirituality through obedience. This is not an uncommon theme of the time. How much of this is history, legend, and myth?

The art of writing about the lives of saints – hagiography – has undergone extensive criticism in the last 100 years. St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, was removed from the Church calendar by the Vatican in 1969 because there wasn’t enough historical evidence that he had existed or had lived a life of holiness. Many lives of saints had become embellished over the centuries. For example, St. Nicholas was said to have stood up in the bathtub as an infant and preached a sermon.

In the 17th century, a group of Jesuit scholars, the Bollandists, were commissioned by the Pope to prepare a definitive collection of the Acta Sanctorum, The Lives of the Saints – or literally, the Deeds of the Saints. In a bow to the Enlightenment and rationalism, the resulting investigations cleared away a lot of misinformation and also validated significant historical information.

We might expect that the flying Franciscan would have been relegated to the dustbin of history. However, the historical testimony of Pope Urban VIII, who saw St. Joseph of Cupertino in ecstasy, the accounts of powerful nobles and officials who saw his miracles, and the records of the Inquisition, bear historical witness to a saint who baffled his contemporaries as much as he baffles us today.

St. Joseph of Cupertino defies our psychological categories. We could use the terms: hysteria, seizure disorders, aphasia, schizophrenia. Yet he certainly did not fit the social norm of insanity. Against the odds, his superiors judged him worthy of ordination to the priesthood, although his paranormal behavior prevented him from saying Mass in church and participating in processions. In 35 years he could not eat in the common dining room (refectory) or participate in the “choir” or singing of the Liturgy of the Hours (The Divine Office). His creativity in solving problems seems to remove him from the idiot savant category.

If we can’t explain away his behavior as a mental illness, then perhaps we are getting a glimpse of what it means to have a lifestyle of intense religious experience. If we leave science behind, we enter into the language of faith itself, or at a minimum, we enter the language of theoretical physics by talking about additional dimensions beyond the space-time continuum or the notion of parallel universes.

As I wrestle for some type of explanation, I feel that at any moment people will come rushing forward to tell me that I have made a fool of myself in front of some hidden camera. On the other hand, maybe that is what St. Joseph of Cupertino is all about.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

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Posted by on Sep 17, 2007

Saint of the Day: St. Robert Bellarmine

Saint of the Day: St. Robert Bellarmine

Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino (1542 – 1621), a Jesuit who became a Cardinal and Doctor of the Church, was one of the major figures of the Counter Reformation. St. Robert Bellarmine has influenced Catholic Church positions on Protestantism, church-state relations, and the temporal power of the Church for 500 years.

St. Robert Bellarmine’s major contribution to Catholic theology was his organization and presentation of this large body of knowledge. The motivation was clearly to counter the position of the Protestant reformers. However, his work was part of a larger re-vitalization and reform movement within the Catholic Church. As the Archbishop of Capua, he implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which were to define Catholicism until the later part of the 20th century.

Although the Counter Reformation technically ended with the Thirty Years War in 1648, its general anti-Protestant thrust did not end until Protestants were admitted as observers and non-voting participants in the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965).

St. Robert Bellarmine’s extensive systematic writing defined a culture and world view which has not been displaced by Vatican II. His writing spells out clear boundaries and centralizes all authority, ultimately, with the Papacy. The limits of what is Catholic and Protestant are clear and all of the reasons as to why the non-Catholic position in any matter is wrong are also abundantly clear.

There is now a definite nostalgia for the security and limits of the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Catholic world, particularly among priests who have been ordained more recently. Pope Benedict XVI, who attended Vatican II as a theological adviser, has recently announced the revival of the Tridentine Latin Mass. Although the number of Catholics in the United States who support the return of the Latin Mass is only about 2%, there are substantial minority who fear that there has been too much deviation of belief and practice from the standards of the Counter Reformation.

The Vatican II Catholic Church endorsed certain points of the Protestant view that St. Robert Bellarmine and the Tridentine Church opposed. Liturgy in the language of the people, receiving the consecrated wine of communion, emphasizing the role of the laity, and simplifying or eliminating ritual were all opposed by the Council of Trent. To a great extent, Pope John Paul II occasioned the Restorationist movement by silencing dissent, forbidding discussion of the ordination of women, and training priests and appointing bishops who espoused more Tridentine views and devotional practices.

Whether one is a traditionalist or a progressive, the systematic theology of St. Robert Bellarmine forms a core of the identity of the Christian movement’s largest church.

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Posted by on Sep 14, 2007

Feast of the Day: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Feast of the Day: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Exhaltation of the Holy Cross

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It is almost impossible for Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and many other liturgical Christians to say these words without performing the gesture of blessing – the Sign of the Cross.

I have always liked the stories I first heard in childhood about Constantine’s vision of the Holy Cross –in hoc signo vinces, you will conquer by this sign – and the discovery of the True Cross by his mother, St. Helen.

The images are still fresh in my mind. It is also reassuring to see that there is some historical support for these stories from early church sources. We definitely know that St. Helen (Helena) dedicated the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on September 14, 335 on the site of the Tomb of the Resurrection. The location has the support of many archaeologists as the actual site.

The use of the cross as a central symbol by Christians began early in the life of the church. Early accounts from the first and second century indicate that Christians marked their homes with this sign and blessed themselves and others with it.

For millions of us, this symbolic gesture, like the prayer itself, marks beginnings and endings of liturgy, life, and rites of passage. When we went away on a trip or off to college or on those last steps to our weddings – the parental words still echo – “Here let me bless you” – followed by the sign, the words, a prayer, and a kiss.

My favorite form of the blessing for others came from a Spanish Jesuit. He said that it was used by St. Ignatius’ first companions at times of parting. “May the Holy Trinity bless you, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit – And as far as I am able, I bless you.”

Sites of Interest:

How the feast continues to be celebrated: Antiochian.org

Early uses of the Sign of the Cross: Justus.anglican.org

Catholic Encyclopedia: Newadvent.org

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Posted by on Sep 14, 2007

St John Chrysostom – Saint of the Day

St John Chrysostom – Saint of the Day

St. John Chrysostom - Early Byzantine mosaic

St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407) was born in Antioch and spent his life there until he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople. He received a broad education by non-Christian masters in a city teaming with many diverse religious groups.

John Chrysostom was one of the most eloquent speakers and prodigious writers of his time and has had few equals throughout the centuries of Christianity. He was called”Chrysostomos, or “the golden-mouth” because of his eloquence

Points to Remember and Ponder:

  • After Baptism at age 29 he left a promising career as a lawyer and became a monk.
  • Throughout his life he spoke truth to power, calling everyone to a more faithful Christian life. He ran afoul of the powerful and wealthy in Antioch and Constantinople and was harrassed and exiled for his efforts by civil and church authorities.
  • St. John Chrysostom’s preaching was known for its practical application of scripture to everyday life. Earlier approaches had looked at scripture as more of an allegory pointing to a higher truth. He took it more at face value.
  • One of his greatest achievements was the ordering of the liturgy, its music and cycle of readings and prayers. To this day the liturgy of the Orthodox and eastern rite Catholic churches is known as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and has not been changed significantly.
  • St. John Chrysostom worked very hard to differentiate Christians from Jews in Antioch since there was still a very fluid movement between the groups. Some think that this may have set a definite anti-semitic tone in emerging Christianity.
  • St. John Chrysostom is regarded as a towering figure in the Eastern and Western branches of the Church. His feast day is September 13 in the West and November 13 in the East. The three major leaders and teachers of the Eastern church: Sts. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Gregory the Theologian share a common feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs on January 30.

For more information see:

John Chrysostom – Orthodox website

John Chrysostom – Wikipedia

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Posted by on Sep 10, 2007

William Countryman – Homosexuality and the Bible

William Countryman – Homosexuality and the Bible

Scripture scholar William Countryman is part of a movement that threatens to split the Anglican Communion. Throughout its history, Christianity has held that homosexuality is an immoral act. Over the last 20 years, Papal pronouncements have referred to the sexuality of gays and lesbians as “disordered” and the act itself as “intrinsically” evil, while at the same time deploring acts of malice and violence toward homosexuals. The movement to give homosexuals full standing in the Episcopal Church has reached the point of severe strain with the confirmation of the election of the first openly gay bishop, the Rev. Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire in August 2003.

I had always wondered how Gay Liberation in Christianity was going to deal with St. Paul’s condemnation of it in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 1. (Jesus makes no reference to homosexuality in the Gospels.) When I came across Countryman’s Dirt, Greed, and Sex. I thought that it was probably the most provocative titled book by a scripture scholar that I had ever seen.

Countryman’s thesis is simple. Romans has been misread. According to Countryman, Paul was addressing a church (congregation) which he had not visited. The group in Rome was having what today we call a cross cultural conflict. Jewish Christians objected to unclean items and practices that were part of the culture of Gentile Christians. In the first part of Romans, Countryman says that Paul was playing up to the Jewish Christians and their moral sense of superiority in order to reprimand them later. The upshot is that the Jewish Christians are not supposed to require the same observance of ritual purity by the Gentile Christians.

However, Gentile Christians are to avoid certain acts such as meat sacrificed to idols in order not to trip up (scandalize) others in their faith. In fact, Paul doesn’t see division because of the Jewish ritual purity code as the big problem. The bigger divisive issue is greed.

Countryman’s book is a very carefully crafted and detailed piece of scholarship. My description of it in the previous paragraph is a great oversimplification. The key point though, is that is possible to see the scriptural basis against homosexuality in both the Old and New Testaments in a different light based on a careful study of the language and culture of the time.

This approach is giving many Christians more than heartburn. Anglicans in Africa whose culture opposes homosexuality make up a great part of the opposition. Interestingly, polygamy is socially acceptable among many African Christians. If one can take such a linguistic and cultural approach to scripture and even tradition, should the Episcopal Church accept polygamy?

The question was part of a April 24, 2005 podcast interview with Countryman at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. As a Roman Catholic, I have to confess some culture shock. The openness and frankness of the discussion, while refreshing, is very different from an environment in which the boundaries of belief and practice are more strictly defined. Even in everyday matters, Catholics – of a certain age – recall parents or teachers indicating that there was to be no more discussion when they heard in Latin or English “Roma locuta, causa finita.” “Rome has spoken, the matter is closed.”

This came up in the podcast regarding Anglican rejection of both Rome’s direct control of discussion by bishops and theologians and Geneva’s (read Calvin’s) objection to inquiry. “Rome cannot err. Geneva will not err.” Although dialog and collegiality among bishops may be a significant part of the culture of the Episcopal Church, what do you do when the other side doesn’t want to talk?

On the other hand what do you do when your personal experience tells you that there are good people out there who are involved – even in love with – a person of the same sex?

Stay tuned.

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Posted by on Sep 7, 2007

To Trust the Incarnation: An Interview with Sara Miles

Editor’s Note: Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion took the time to answer three questions which I felt might be useful to our readers. Very often the organized structures of “religion” are put at odds with those of our personal religious experience or “spirituality.” Many church goers are secure in their routine and not really open to the uncontrollable God. Many spiritual people rejoice in a the delights of a life lived far from the annoying humanity of our neighbors and the concerns of those struggling to get by on the margins. Sara Miles’ spiritual memoir challenges us to go beyond religion and spirituality and to live the Divine Mystery.

Randy Pozos: How would you advise parents and godparents to prepare their children for First Communion?

Sarah Miles: I’m probably not the best person to answer this, as I took my own first communion as an unbaptized adult, at the age of 46. My church, St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church (www.saintgregorys.org) offers communion to everyone, without exception, believing that Jesus welcomes everyone to his Table — and that his chosen sign was eating with outcasts, sinners, the unclean and the unprepared.

I believe that churches can prepare people to be members of churches; they can catechize children and adults to understand church doctrine and practices. But nobody can be “prepared” for the experience of God, because God is here, right now, making all things new: whether you are ready or not.

Randy Pozos: It seems that in your experience there is a direct, almost tangible, relationship between communion and your food pantry ministry of feeding and being fed by others. How would you encourage others to find and celebrate that transcendent experience of Eucharist in other ministries and occupations?

Sara Miles: Eucharist is a Great Thanksgiving: whenever we pour ourselves out, giving not only to our friends and loved ones but to our enemies and to strangers, we participate in Jesus’ feast, and share a “foretaste of the Kingdom” where all will be united in a heavenly banquet.

The connection between Eucharist and daily life is not mysterious: in fact, the liturgy is a reminder that it is precisely the most ordinary things of our lives (eating, drinking, kissing) that are suffused with God’s presence.

Randy Pozos: As a journalist and author, it seemed that you brought a poetic vision of a reality beyond the common sense experience of bread and wine. How can we engender this sensibility in ourselves and others and be ready for this experience of surprise and wonder?

Sara Miles: There’s a wonderful quote from Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury, who says, in an essay on the martyr Etty Hillesum, “A religious life is a material life. Forget for a moment the arguments we might have about the definition of the ‘spiritual’; living religiously is a way of conducting a bodily life.”

To trust the Incarnation is to open yourself to God in the “common sense” experiences of human life. This means inevitably opening yourself to more pain, more suffering– and more joy.

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Posted by on Sep 5, 2007

Sara Miles – Food for the Journey

Sara Miles – Food for the Journey

Sara Miles

Sara Miles’ book, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, is breathtaking in many ways for the traditional Christian who believes in the Holy Eucharist. Ms. Miles’ story of conversion does not follow the usual pattern of experiencing a call, undergoing instruction, receiving Baptism and being admitted to the Lord’s table. In Ms. Miles’ case, this ancient path is telescoped and reversed.

Ms. Miles experiences a longing and endures a search that begins with a political turned spiritual sojourn in Central America and her love of restaurants and feeding people. Along the way, she meets with her first catechist, a man who would later become one of the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, Father Martin-Baro. She finds not only an open door at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, but a communion table that is open to all comers. Her First Communion is a radically transforming experience. It is far from regular bread or even something special, it is, for Sara, the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus the Christ.

St. Augustine’s writings total five million words. (That is about 40 books, each with about 300 pages.) Almost none of his writings allude to that most secret of mysteries reserved only to the baptized – the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Those undergoing instruction, the catechumens were dismissed from the assembly after the Liturgy of the Word. In the restored Rite of Christian Initiation in the Catholic Church, this pattern is still followed, but the Mass is far from secret and is often broadcast around the world on television.

Nevertheless, making one’s First Communion is not the usual entry point into the Christian life. For those of us from the Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal, Lutheran and other churches with a Eucharistic center, the Table of the Lord is closely guarded. The ultimate sanction is be excluded from the community and the heavenly banquet.

Everything about Sara Miles – her atheist family, her support of leftist causes, her lack of a formal degree, her being a lesbian and mother, make her an updated version of the Parable of the Woman Who Loved Much. She is also a woman whom many Christians would like to reject. Then again, we killed the prophets didn’t we?

Miles’ Eucharistic theology is all about feeding the multitudes – literally and spiritually. The food pantry program, into which she dragooned her reluctant fellow parishoners at St. Gregory’s, led to a broader network of food pantries throughout San Francisco. Her faith and her vision made it more than social work. She brought food and companionship to those trapped in the run down housing projects.

Like the rest of us on the path, the way was seldom clear and never easy. Sara Miles is woman of more questions than answers because faith is not about certainty and certainly not about judgment. Her candor is not only refreshing but it is also healing.

Take This Bread is not only well written. It is moving. For all of us who grew up with First Communion as rite of passage and for all who cherish the Eucharist, this book and its author are a bucket of cold water on a hot summer day. In its pristine truth, the Eucharist is all about community and compassion. The transcendent and the sacred is definitely present in Sara Miles’ experience, but it is a love that overflows into feeding each other and finding God not only in the consecrated host but in the host of all the poor and needy in ourselves and in the world.

This is not a book for the faint of heart but those who want to take heart. Do yourself a favor. As St. Augustine was commanded in a vision ,”Tolle, Lege” – Pick this up and read it! Go to www.saramiles.net.

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Posted by on Sep 5, 2007

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

Mother Teresa – “Love is Left Alone”

Mother Teresa 1979

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

The Time cover story was not really news to me. I had read about Mother Teresa’s time of spiritual dryness in My Life With the Saints, by Fr. James Martin, S.J. Like most people, I never suspected that Mother Teresa’s spiritual silence and emptiness had lasted so long.

In the secular science of the soul – psychology – the current ideal of human development is one of balance. There is supposed to be an apportioning of time and energy for your internal, personal, and professional life. We are supposed to pay attention to our own personal space, our spouses, families, colleagues, communities, and the environment.

Like most ideals, it is unattainable. If we could achieve a balance in all of these relationships, we would implode under the disappearance of our own uniquely unbalanced personalities. If personal fulfillment and psychological health is not balance, it would seem that some portion of our efforts should be focused on many of these areas. What happens if your life is comprised only of ministry?

Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) led a life beyond balance. She had no secular career, no family, no apparent hobbies. She had an all consuming ministry to those completely abandoned by society. Founding and leading a religious order and expanding the work of the Missionaries of Charity, left little time for sleep, let alone rest and relaxation.

Mother Teresa’s hyper-focus and zeal appears to go against most of the consensus about the development of the spiritual life. Spiritual directors and teachers prescribe adequate sleep, relaxation, and attention to personal and community relationships. The Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 530) comes to mind, since it has been the de facto standard in monastic living. There is a large body of Christian literature, from the earliest times, advising prudence and temperance in the spiritual life.

St. Ignatius Loyola referred to dark periods, when there is little feeling of the presence of God, as periods of desolation or aridity. Early hermits in the Egyptian desert referred to this state as the “noonday devil.”

My first thought was that Mother Teresa’s lack of prudence and temperance had gotten the better of her. Yet, how could I make such an observation without knowing Mother Teresa? So, I decided to talk with someone whose home in Madras Mother Teresa had visited several times. Paul D’Souza is an old friend of ours who met her when he was 3 years old. What struck Paul was that, although the house was full, she always first sought him out and the other small children, before paying attention to any one else. Paul has had his own thoughts on harmony and balance for some time. As a management consultant and healer, Paul has his own theory of Beyond Balance.

When I asked him what he thought might have been the cause of Mother Teresa’s very long dark night of the soul, the reply was unusually sharp for someone with a master’s degree in social work. Paul remembered that Mother Teresa continually reminded her Missionaries that the face of Christ was to be found in every child, in every human person. The arduous work of caring for disabled orphans is a direct service to Christ. “What about balance?” I asked. In tones of not so patient exasperation, Paul said that in his study of leaders, “No one whoever accomplished anything was balanced.” When I pressed him on Mother Teresa as a person, he told me to talk with his mother who had met Mother Teresa several times.

I had a pleasant talk with Christine D’Souza, who is also an old friend. (Our children call her Grandma Christine.) She and her late husband, John, met Mother Teresa in 1968 in Madras, now known as Chenai. As many have recounted elsewhere, Mother Teresa was not demanding or seemingly driven. According to Mrs. D’Souza, she normally sat quietly and spoke in a soft voice while looking at her hands. Mother Teresa “put her cards on the table,” according to Mrs. D’Souza, and allowed her listeners “to pick up what ones they would,” without asking them to make any choice. Mrs. D’Souza recalls, “She had such humility, but with a strength and dignity. She reminded me of the beatitude, ‘Blessed are the meek.'” The only time Mrs. D’Souza recalls her making a request was when they first met and Mother Teresa asked her directly if she and the lay co-workers could meet at the D’Souza’s home.

When I asked Mrs. D’Souza what she thought about Mother Teresa’s decades of spiritual dryness, she responded with the wisdom of age and grace. Mrs. D’Souza said that she couldn’t speak for anyone else. She recounted that in her youth she experienced a closeness to Christ but that this emotional awareness and feeling waned over time. This absence did not keep her from raising a family, being a music educator, and engaging in many other activities in a spirit of faith.

Mrs. D’Souza recalled a few lines of a poem in a pamphlet her husband had given her:

God gives us love.

Something to love He lends to us.

Love reaches ripeness,

and of that on which it throve,

Love is left alone.

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