Lessons from Mother Teresa

Day after day, hour after hour, He asks the same question: "Will thou refuse to do this for Me?" -- Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light

My spiritual book of the month is the now-famous book of the letters of Mother Teresa which were published in 2007. Though I bought it when it was first made available, I am not really getting around to it until now. I like to think that the Holy Spirit directs me to read certain books that I have on my shelf when I need them the most. (Maybe I'm just justifying the fact that I buy too many to read right away.) For some reason, I picked this off the shelf and am making my way through it and hopefully finishing before the new year begins. So far, three things have stood out to me:

1) I am so struck by the difficulty Mother Teresa faced in starting the Missionaries of Charity. It is incredible how many letters she wrote to get it off the ground with Rome. She was completely faithful to the process and to her superiors, but she refused to quit her pleading. I can see her digging her heels into the ground in Loreto, foregoing despair and holding onto her conviction. It's a beautiful image I have in my mind, and an example to us all. She had every confidence that Jesus would work through the process of obeying authority (a good reminder for me at work!).

2) She describes the imperative from Jesus to start the Missionaries of Charity as a "call within a call." I think this is perhaps the most important contribution to the theology of vocations that we've had in a long time. It's easy to break down the vocations into single, religious, or married, and to leave them at that. But every vocation, whether single, married, or religious, or the vocation to work or to serve...all have little "calls within the larger call." How many times does God shatter the image of our own vocation by introducing something new into it and calling us to something unexpected?

3) Mother Teresa's discussion of cheerfulness is one of the most beautiful that I've read. In fact, when asked why type of woman would be recruited for the M.C., she answered, "Girls from the age of16 and upwards. -- Strong in body and mind with splenty of common sense. -- They must be able to put their hands to any kind of work however repugnant to human nature. They must be of bright, cheerful disposition."

Earlier in the book, she describes what she means by cheerfulness. I think it's written for me!

"When I see someone sad," she would say, "I always think, she is refusing something to Jesus." It was in giving Jesus whatever He asked that she found her deepest and lasting joy; in giving Him joy she found her own joy. "Cheerfulness is a sign of a generous and mortified person who forgetting all things, even herself, tries to please her God in all she does for souls. Cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice, continual union with God, fervor and generosity. A person who has this gift of cheerfulness very often reaches a great height of perfection. For God loves a cheerful giver and He takes close to His heart the religious He loves.

A Child in Winter, by Caryll Houselander

Only LOVE is incarnate. Goodness is natural because the Divine Child, who submitted himself to the law of his Father's love, has made it so. Christ subjected himself to the law of the seed in the earth, to the law of rest and growth. he was "one of the children of the year," growing through rest, secret in his mother's womb, receiving the warmth of the sun through her, living the life of dependence, helplessness, littleness, darkness, and silence which, by a mystery of the Eternal Law, is the life of natural growth.

Hi life in the womb was measured, like those of all the other children of the year, by a certain destined number of cycles of darkness and light, by the rising and setting of the sun so many times, by the rise and ebb of so many tides, by a certain counted number of beats of his mother's heart.

Who can think of the mystery of the snowflake, its loveliness, both secret and manifest, its gentleness, the moving lightness of its touch, the humility of its coming, and not think of the birth of the Infant Christ?

--From A Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander

Do you ladies know of the great 20th century English mystic Caryll Houselander? You should. Her work is stunning, powerful, and I'd gladly say, some of the most important spiritual writing of the 20th century (yet few people know her). My mother always had a long line of her books, but I only recently cracked open A Child in Winter, a beautifully edited collection of meditations for Advent, Christmas, and the feasts within the octave of Christmas. Accessible yet profound, modern and timeless, I highly recommend her writings. (The meditation above was taken from her Christmas Morning meditation. Below is her meditation for todays feast of the Holy Innocents, one of my favorite of the year.)

Baptized in blood, those little children were among the first comers to heaven. Fittingly they, with their tinyKing, are the founders of the Kingdom of Children. We celebrate their feast with joy; it is the most lyrical in the year. They reach down their small hands of to comfort every father or mother bereaver of a child. They are the first who have proved that the Passion of Christ can be lived in a tiny span by little ones...The tears that dried on their faces two thousand years ago in Jerusalem had the redeeming power of Christ's tears today. Each one of those infants is the first Christ Child of the Incarnation, the first of the first generation to call the Mother of God blessed.

Merry Christmas

And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: For, this day, is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.
Luke 2: 10-11

Awake, the Gospel tells us. Step outside, so as to enter the great communal truth, the communion of the one God. To awake, then, means to develop a receptivity for God: for the silent promptings with which he chooses to guide us; for the many indications of his presence. There are people who describe themselves as "religiously tone deaf". The gift of a capacity to perceive God seems as if it is withheld from some. And indeed our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today's world, the whole range of our experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for God, to make us "tone deaf" towards him. And yet in every soul, the desire for God, the capacity to encounter him, is present, whether in a hidden way or overtly. In order to arrive at this vigilance, this awakening to what is essential, we should pray for ourselves and for others, for those who appear "tone deaf" and yet in whom there is a keen desire for God to manifest himself.... Yes indeed, that is what we should pray for on this Holy Night. Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, come to us! Enter within me, within my soul. Transform me. Renew me. Change me, change us all from stone and wood into living people, in whom your love is made present and the world is transformed. Amen.

Pope's Christmas Homily 2009

From all of us at the Magdalene Sisters - Merry Christmas! May the Christ Child bring you all joy and peace of heart in this time.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and salvation thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God!

...And He Appeared and the Soul Felt Its Worth...

My favorite Christmas song is O Holy Night. Well, maybe it's one of my favorites. I cannot wait to sing it on Christmas Eve. I think one of the most special times of every year is the 48 hours of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We wait in silent anticipation of the birth of our Lord, meditating and centering ourselves in the fact that when he appears, we see our worth and our meaning, our goal and our end. A homily given by St. Josemaria Escriva called "Christ Triumphs Through Humility" encourages us to contemplate in silence the mystery of these moments. A mystery is not something to be solved, but rather, is something to be explored....

There is only one race in the world: the race of the children of God. We should all speak the same language, taught us by our Father in heaven -- the language Jesus spoke to his Father. It is the language of heart and mind, which you are using now, in your prayer -- the language of contemplation, used by men who are spiritual, because they realize they are children of God. This language is expressed in a thousand motions of our will, in the clear insights of our minds, in the affections of our heart, in our commitment to lead a virtuous life, in goodness, happiness, and peace.

You must look at the Child in the manger. He is our Love. Look at him, realizing that the whole thing is a mystery. We need to accept this mystery on faith and use our faith to explore it very deeply. To do this, we must have the humble attitude of a Christian soul. Let us not try to reduce the greatness of God to our own poor ideas and human explanations. Let us try to understand that this mystery, for all its darkness, is a light to guide men's lives.

-- St. Josemaria Escriva, from Christ is Passing By

O King of the Gentiles

O King of the Gentiles, yea, and desire thereof! O Corner-stone, that makest of two one, come to save man, whom Thou hast made out of the dust of the earth!

John Paul II and Pius XII

Saturday Pope Benedict XVI declared Popes John Paul II and Pius XII venerable, much to my joy! JPII is the pope of my childhood, and therefore very beloved (and I saw him twice!). Pius XII is, of course, a very controversial figure, though most of what is said of him is either unfair or outright false. It was a classic Pope Benedict move to bring forward their causes at the same time. John Paul II is, in so many ways, a Santo Subito, while Pius's legacy is much more murky.

All the same, I have loved Pius XII, and hope that this declaration will provide an opportunity to defend him against the claims that he aided the holocaust (when, in fact, he encouraged his priests to do the opposite). He was a man of courage, and the most recent pope who's legal duties as heaad of a nation were as important has his pastoral duty as head of the Church. I've always thought him a man of heroic virtue. I'm glad Papa B agrees. He said, on Saturday:

When one draws close to this noble Pope, free from ideological prejudices, in addition to being struck by his lofty spiritual and human character one is also captivated by the example of his life and the extraordinary richness of his teaching. One can also come to appreciate the human wisdom and pastoral intensity which guided him in his long years of ministry, especially in providing organized assistance to the Jewish people...Wherever possible he spared no effort in intervening in their favour either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church. [He made] many interventions, secretly and silently, precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews.


This courageous and paternal dedication was recognized and appreciated during and after the terrible world conflict by Jewish communities and individuals who showed their gratitude for what the Pope had done for them. One need only recall Pius XII's meeting on the 29th of November 1945 with eighty delegates of German concentration camps who during a special Audience granted to them at the Vatican, wished to thank him personally for his generosity to them during the terrible period of Nazi-fascist persecution.

O Dayspring

O Dayspring, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

The Feminine Countdown

I am a sucker for end-of-the-year countdowns. Seriously, give me any list of things in countdown from the previous year, and I'm content. A major guilty pleasure!

This year, many people are not only thinking back over the year but over the past decade. Can you believe the first ten years of the 2000's are behind us? I thought it might be fun to think back over these years and to think about how my experience of my own femininity has changed.

When the decade began, I was halfway through my high school years. Ah, those were interesting times. I was really driven and putting a whole lot of pressure on myself. Beauty consisted in watching everything I ate so that I was rail thin, and I would have given anything for my crushes to think of me as more than the nice girl or the smart girl. Miraculously, I emerged from those years as a poised 18-year-old, confident that the next four years of my life would be life-changing. And were they ever.

My college experience is something that I will be thanking the Lord for for years to come. It was there that I first treasured my filial relationship with God as my Father, where I encountered lifelong friends who were also aware of their faith journeys, where I met several men who formed my heart, where I studied the deep truths of history and of my faith, and where I was surrounded by nurturing professors and peers. I entered a teenager and emerged a young woman. Before I entered college, my mother told me that the years between 18-22 are extremely formative for a woman's heart. She was right. But while her college experience ended with a marriage to my father, my heart was to be formed in many more ways in the years that followed.

In the next four years to round out the decade, I have learned vital lessons and been formed as a single twentysomething out in the "real world." The first two years after college I spent in graduate school. These years I met some of my favorite friends, including Agatha, but they were actually very lonely years. I went from an environment where I was thriving socially to an environment in which I was studying nearly all of the time. My best friends lived far away, my mother couldn't really understand what it was like for a woman to leave college and to be single, and my dearest friends of this time were all married. I think I went on a total of 3 or 4 dates in 2 years. It was me and God, all of the time, and boy, did I wrestle with Him. Oh man, it was a tough, although certainly rewarding and formative time.

And now, I'm learning what it means to be feminine as a teacher and a "spiritual mother" to teenagers in an all-girls high school. I am learning through dating escapades what it means to be treated like a woman. I'm continually developing an interest in feminine fashion. I'm embracing providing for myself financially and having to take responsibility for my present and my future. It's a good time in my life, a difficult time. But I'm really, for the first time in the whole decade, embracing my own particular femininity. And for that, I'm grateful for all of the experiences that have led me here.

Here's to the next ten years, God willing. I can't wait!

O Key of David

O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, come to liberate the prisoner from the prison, and them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.