One thing that did not change, however, was the emphasis on prayer.  I would like to share with you a passage from the letter on prayer she wrote to all the Sisters in 1884.

In the Cenacle all is done, all is obtained by prayer; it begins, accompanies, and concludes all our actions…

If I hold my life in my hands (Ps 119:109) before God; if, living by faith, things of time are for me as already passed and things of eternity as already begun; if I have found the spring of “living water”; if I possess the one thing needful (Lk 10:42), what more can stir my desires, what struggle will be beyond my courage, what difficulty can arrest my course, what error or prejudice can weaken my faith? Closely united to God, loved by the Lord of all things, terrible to the devil, the prayerful soul accomplishes perfectly the divine will.  She fulfills her vocation as a Religious of the Cenacle, and can cry out with the Prophet-King, “Funes ceciderunt mihi in praeclaris”: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (Ps 16:6).

Although Mother Marie-Aimée’s reflections are addressed to the Cenacle Sisters, surely all of us may find our fulfillment by becoming as joyfully docile to God as the “prayerful soul” she describes.

And there is a darkness that is in reality light, but in our limited perception, it seems dark to us. This is a darkness that is as necessary for our growth and spiritual health as nighttime darkness is necessary for some plants to bloom.

This we may call a blessed darkness, a holy darkness.

It may be experienced simply as not being able to see or understand, because we are human and the realm of God is the realm of Holy Mystery. While God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, God is also Other.  God is not like us.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God tells us, “nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).   Sometimes we are given the grace to see how God is working in our lives and to experience in our prayer the light of God’s presence.  But often we can’t see.

One form of this darkness is the experience of waiting on God.

We see an important example of this near the end of the Easter season, after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven.   For a time, the disciples and friends of Jesus, along with Mary his mother, must wait in holy darkness.

Jesus has left them.  At least it seems that way.  Luke tells us in the first chapter of Acts that “a cloud took him out of their sight.”  Before leaving, Jesus had cautioned his disciples “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”  So they go to the Upper Room, the Cenacle, and pray together.  They don’t know what they are supposed to do otherwise.  They don’t know what their mission is to be.  They don’t know how they are supposed to deal with the lack of Jesus’ visible presence in their lives.

This is the holy darkness of waiting in prayer. It means waiting in total dependence on God, since they are helpless on their own to bring about that for which they long.  This is the blessed darkness of Mystery, an obscurity that in reality is the Light and presence of Christ in newness, though experienced as absence and as emptiness and as unknowing, because it can’t yet be perceived until the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

There is a necessary waiting that brings us face to face with our own weakness and need and desire for God, and with the fact that we can’t control God or save ourselves.  It is a waiting that removes our conceit, along with any pride in our spiritual experiences.  We then accept the obscurity of this prayer as sacred, for when we are truly waiting on God, the unknowing that feels like darkness is filled with the invisible light of Christ.

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
(1 John 1:5)

This quote came in an e-mail filled with Christian one-liners.  It seems particularly apt, especially on those days when I am making myself unhappy because God has not consulted me about the way life is going.

Saint Therese Couderc knew a more reliable path to happiness.  You can read her reflection on the peace that is found in handing oneself over to the good God, or watch the video:

]]> http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2009/10/514/feed/ 0 http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2009/09/wonderful-god/ http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/2009/09/wonderful-god/#comments Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:52:22 +0000 Cybernun http://www.vocationquest.org/cenaclearchives/?p=500 The expression “good God!” is often not a prayer.  But when Saint Therese Couderc used the words, “good God” – and she used them often – it was with reverence.  She knew God was good.  And she knew that all that God has made is good.

Saint Therese, co-founder of the Sisters of the Cenacle, loved everything about religious life, including her sisters.  But if you had asked her why she loved religious life and why she thought other women should enter religious life (if that is their call), I doubt very much that she would have said it is because the sisters are extraordinarily good.  She would have been much more likely to respond, “Because God is good.” God, she commented, is not only good, God is goodness itself.

About Catholic Sisters

There has been much discussion lately, online and off, about religious life and the lives of sisters today.  Discussion is a polite word, because some of it has descended to the level of slander.

But whatever you think of today’s Catholic sisters, we are, after all is said and done, ordinary human beings, as much in need of mercy as anyone else.  As the hymn, “For All the Saints” puts it, “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.”

God is surely calling all of us – sisters, priests, and laity – to a deeper fidelity to Christ.  Unfortunately, none of us – sisters, priests, or laity – will ever in this life attain perfection in the living out of our call, as much as we may struggle and pray.  We can nevertheless be consoled by the next line of the hymn, “Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine, Alleluia!”

A Blessed Way of Life

I think our Mother Therese would have said that being a sister is without doubt a blessed way of life, but that this is not because the sisters themselves are flawless.  (In fact the early history of religious congregations sometimes reads as if it belongs in a melodrama, featuring extraordinary Christian heroism side-by-side with commonplace pettiness.)  If religious life is is a blessed way, it is because God is the one who is wonderful, and can work through the clay vessels that we all are.

For me as well, the perfection – or lack of it – of my sisters in Christ is not why I entered the Cenacle,  though many of them are indeed remarkable and holy women who never cease to inspire me.  And neither is the goodness of my sisters, though they are all good women, the reason that I stay.  I entered and I remain, because God is wonderful.

What does it matter if my feet, bare and torn, fill my wooden shoes with blood? I would willingly begin my journey all over again, for I have indeed found the Good God!

- Saint Therese Couderc

September 26 is the feast day of Saint Therese Couderc.

For high quality viewing, click on “HQ” (bottom right of frame) after video starts.

Jesu, tibi vivo; Jesu, tibi morior;
Jesu, sive vivo, sive morior, tuus sum.

(Jesus, for you I live; Jesus, for you I die;
Jesus, whether I live or whether I die, I am yours.)

The lyrics are based on Romans 14:7-8:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

I used to think that “Jesu Tibi Vivo” belonged to us, but have recently learned that it is far older than the Cenacle. It dates from the Middle Ages (at least according to one source), and it can be found here and there on the internet — primarily on Italian sites.  In fact, there is a rather remarkable photograph, posted on FlickR by Lyonora, of a young Italian drinking what appears to be an espresso.  On his arm are tattooed the words, “Sive vivo, sive morior, tuus sum”: whether I live or whether I die, I am yours.

Tuus sum: I am yours.

This is the primary, the most basic reality of our human existence. We belong to God who loves us totally and without reserve. We human beings can be confused about who we are in the depth of our being – and who we are called to be.  But one thing is clear. We are God’s, and our life is gift. Tuus sum.

Now saying “I am yours” is different from saying “You are mine.” In the human context, “You are mine,” can be abusive if it is not part of the relational and reciprocal “I am yours.” God in Christ does say to us, “You are mine” (see Isaiah 43, for example); but being claimed in this way by God is freeing, not imprisoning. According to Pope Benedict XVI:

Before we can say “I am yours”, he [Christ] has already told us “I am yours”… With his Incarnation he said: I am yours. And in Baptism he said to me: I am yours. In the Holy Eucharist, he says ever anew: I am yours, so that we may respond: Lord, I am yours…

Address at the opening of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly
of the Synod of Bishops, October 2008.

The Creator of the universe does not call us into an abusive relationship. God does not say “you are mine” as if speaking to a slave, because God also says “I am yours.” As strange as it may sound in a society that tends to idealize autonomy, obedience to God becomes what is most freeing for us. Dwelling in the love of God to whom we belong and whose own love is self-giving, our own limited love may then be transformed into the joyfully self-giving love of Christ.

I am not my own.
I am yours.
In that I find my joy and my peace.

_____

Listen to “Jesu Tibi Vivo,” as sung by Cenacle Sisters.
There are two CDs available on the Cenacle Sisters’ website which offer “Jesu Tibi Vivo” with both Latin and English verses.

[The following was presented as a talk at Saint Augustine Parish in Gainesville, Florida.  For an abbreviated version, see "Waiting in the Cenacle."]

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After the Ascension and before Pentecost, there is another mystery worthy of honor, but which most of us just pass right over on our way to Pentecost. The Sisters of the Cenacle, however, don’t let it go unnoticed, because it is called the Mystery of the Cenacle and is celebrated as the Feast of Our Lady of the Cenacle. But it is not a mystery just for the Cenacle Sisters. It is a mystery important for the whole Church, because it prepares for the birth of the Church at Pentecost. The feast day of Our Lady of the Cenacle — for Mary was there — is the Saturday after Ascension Thursday.

We read in the book of Acts:

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.  (Acts 1:12-14 RSV)

The word Cenacle comes from the Latin word coenaculum, which means the supper room (or in this case the upper room).  Now tradition tells us that this cenacle was the same place where Jesus celebrated the last supper with his apostles and the same place where his friends and family were gathered when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them at Pentecost.

But what about this in-between feast? What were Mary and the friends of Jesus doing in the Upper Room – in the Cenacle – after Jesus had ascended into heaven? Well, we are told that they were praying.

“Is that all?” we ask.

Most of the other New Testament mysteries are mysteries of presence and of the breaking forth of something obviously new into the world. That is certainly true about the Last Supper and Pentecost. But the mystery of the little group gathered in the Upper Room is, first, an in-between mystery, sandwiched in between more spectacular ones of which it is a part. And secondly it is a mystery of absence: Jesus has departed from them. He has been taken into heaven. And third, it is a mystery where nothing much seems to be happening. What were Jesus’ friends and family doing in the Cenacle? Why were they gathered there?

As yet they had no ministry, strictly speaking. It is possible that Peter went out to fish each day and that others went out to work or carried out tasks in the Cenacle itself. After all, the necessities of life didn’t stop, no matter how timid and uncertain the group was feeling after Jesus had left them. But as far as we know, helping with the work was not the purpose of their being together. They may have sat around telling stories about Jesus, remembering.  But the only thing we know for sure is that they were praying — a useless activity in the pragmatic eyes of the world.

Some of you know that for about three years I have been carrying on an e-mail correspondence with an ex-christian — a former preacher who is now preaching fervently against faith.  One of his latest missives claims that there is no evidence for anything spiritual at all.  And as for prayer, he says, “Believers may talk with their god all they want, but he never responds to them.  And if they say he does, that constitutes a form of mental illness.”

And answered prayer is just an illusion, he writes.  (He has no concept of prayer as relationship or communion, just as asking for things — and not getting them.)  Now most of his rants against religion I ignore, but occasionally I do feel I have to respond.  So I wrote back,

If you write off all communication with God as mental illness, you are doing that by faith alone [i.e., his own materialistic faith]. There is absolutely no evidence that the majority of religious people are mentally ill.  Yes, some are, as are some non-religious people. 

But we Christians can also buy into the idea that prayer is a wasteful way to spend time.  It’s seems better to be accomplishing something.  The sense of absence and lack of purposeful activity in the Upper Room after the Ascension may be one reason this time when Jesus’ friends and family are gathered in prayer is so hard to deal with as an event – or a non-event – and why it seems easier to skip over this mystery and move on to Pentecost.

But I propose to you that something absolutely essential for the church and the world was happening there in the Upper Room. Yes, this is an in-between time: in between the great mysteries of Cross/Resurrection/Ascension and Pentecost. But all gestation periods are in-between times.

In the New Testament we have three times when the Body of Christ is prepared and given.  The first, of course, is the Annunciation and Mary’s time of waiting leading up to the birth of Jesus.

The second takes us to the Cenacle for the Last Supper, followed by the whole of the Paschal mystery of dying and rising — and then the mystery continued and lived after the Resurrection when the followers of Jesus met for what they called the “breaking of the bread” and what we call Eucharist.

The third is this period of waiting between the Ascension and Pentecost; and once again, we will see that, even in the post-Ascension absence, it is the Body of Christ that we are talking about here — even when Jesus seems to be absent to those who love him…

…Because what we have in the first chapter of Acts is a new Annunciation.

Let’s go back for a moment to the Annunciation scene in the first chapter of Luke. It took me a while to notice the similarities between Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary and the words of Jesus to his disciples just before the Ascension. Remember that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were both written by Luke. Luke is a careful writer, so it is doubtful that the resemblance is accidental.

In Luke 1, in response to Mary’s question, the angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…”

In Acts 1, right before the Ascension, in response to the questioning of the apostles, Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…”

In both events we hear that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and there will be an experience of power.  This verbal resemblance is important, because it indicates that what is happening is similar in both cases.

But there is a difference.

One of the major distinctions between the two annunciations is this: at the time of the first Annunciation, the word was spoken to one person, Mary; but the promise on the day of Ascension is made, not to one person, but to the gathered apostles of Jesus. This time, the Spirit is promised to the community. In both events, the power of the Holy Spirit will bring about an embodying, an enfleshing: in the first case, the conception of the infant Jesus; in the second case, the conception of the infant church, the mystical Body of Christ.

Since this is so, the womb is to be prepared this time, not in the body of Mary, but in the body of the community. Gathered there, supporting each other, forgiving each other — and they did have some forgiving to do, didn’t they, for the miserable and cowardly way most of them had acted after Jesus was arrested — assembled in the Cenacle, a hollowing-out is taking place, an emptying, a making room or preparing a womb for the Spirit of Jesus. In fact, there are paintings of Pentecost in which Mary, gathered with the others and representing the church and Mother of the Church, is depicted as pregnant.

The presence of Mary the Mother of Jesus is indispensable to this little community, for Mary is the only person in the world who already knows what it is like to be emptied in such a way as to receive the mystery of Christ within herself.

So is this a time when nothing is happening?

The group gathered in the Upper Room needs this time of prayer where nothing seems to be taking place. The friends and family of Jesus no longer have his physical presence, and what they are left with, for better or for worse, is each other. They must receive the mystery of Christ into themselves; they must be prepared to incarnate the presence of Christ for each other and for the world. Because of this wondrous process, Paul can later say:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

It would seem that not even Pentecost can happen without this strange mystery of waiting and being with and for each other in the Upper Room.  It is only when the presence of Christ is growing (you notice that I do not say “finished”) and nurtured in this little community that they can be entrusted with ministry, because only then can they be the presence of Christ in the world.

Isn’t our own call similar to theirs? These first Christians needed each other.  They couldn’t go it alone as Christians, and neither can we.  Like them, when we pray, we wait — if not in an actual Cenacle, in the Cenacle of our hearts — and often we feel as if little or nothing is being accomplished. However, along with the whole communion of saints, those still living (including the motley crew of sinners that we are here tonight) and those who have gone before us, we wait and pray, allowing God to pour out love on us (whether or not we are even aware of it) and to begin transforming us into the loving presence of Christ for each other and for the whole world.

The trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood range from bored babies whose young parents are the ones enthusiastic about Halloween, to expensively costumed children with specially designed trick-or-treat bags, to poor children with makeshift costumes and plastic grocery bags. Some have never seen a convent, and when we open the door, revealing a wooden Cenacle cross and the statue of our co-founder, Saint Therese Couderc, their eyes widen and they say with awe and simple courtesy, “I like your house!”

Somewhere around 8:00 , the teenagers begin to arrive. Year before last, they were mostly un-costumed and armed with a vaguely threatening air and gaping school backpacks as candy receptacles. This past year, however, brought a shift. The teenagers no longer seemed world-weary or menacing. They were dressed as butterflies and angels and other unidentifiable but innocent-looking creatures and seemed to be saying from their six-foot height, “We’re children, too!” They were delighting in the evening, and we delighted in their delight.

How many of them know, I wonder, that Halloween is the Eve of All Saints’ Day, their feast day, the feast of all God’s holy people, recognized and unrecognized? Of course, some of us seem to have a harder time with sanctity than others do, but the communion of saints links us all in companionship through the love of God. As the hymn puts it:

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

William W. How, “For All the Saints”

We are a motley crew, to be sure, but we who are still feebly struggling are just as beloved of God as those who are shining in glory. In a sense it is true that we all shine, even in the midst of the struggle. Thus the children with painted faces and sparkly or scary outfits, the teenagers still radiant with childhood or slouching to the door with their backpacks — all receive their treats and head back to the street, to borrow Wordsworth’s expression, “trailing clouds of glory.”

Sing praises to the Lord,
O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.

(Psalms 30:4 RSV)

When they had entered [Jerusalem], they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.
All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
(Acts 1:13-14 RSV)

What were Mary and the friends of Jesus doing in the Upper Room – in the Cenacle – after Jesus had ascended into heaven? We are told that they were praying.

“Is that all?” we ask.

Most of the other New Testament mysteries are mysteries of presence and of the breaking forth of something obviously new into the world. But here nothing much seems to be happening. Perhaps this is one reason the time in the Upper Room is so hard to deal with as an event – or a non-event – and why it seems easier to skip over this mystery and move on to Pentecost.

But I propose to you that something absolutely essential for the church and the world was happening there in the Upper Room. Yes, this is an in-between time: in between the great mysteries of Cross/Resurrection/Ascension and Pentecost. But all gestation periods are in-between times.

A new Annunciation

Let’s go back for a moment to the Annunciation scene in the first chapter of Luke. It took me a while to notice the similarities between Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary and the words of Jesus to his disciples just before the Ascension. Remember that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were both written by Luke. Luke is a careful writer, so it is doubtful that the resemblance is accidental.

In Luke 1, in response to Mary’s question, the angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…”

In Acts 1, in response to the questioning of the apostles, Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…”

This verbal resemblance is important, because it indicates that what is happening is similar in both cases.

But there is a difference.

One of the major distinctions between the two annunciations is this: at the time of the Annunciation, the word was spoken to one person, Mary; but the promise on the day of Ascension is made, not to one person, but to the assembled disciples of Jesus. This time, the Spirit is promised to the community. In both events, the power of the Holy Spirit will bring about an embodying, an enfleshing: in the first case, the conception of the infant Jesus; in the second case, the conception of the infant church, the mystical Body of Christ.

Since this is so, the womb is to be prepared this time, not in the body of Mary, but in the body of the community. Gathered there, supporting each other, forgiving each other, a hollowing-out is taking place, an emptying, a making room or preparing a womb for the Spirit of Jesus. (Notice the two portrayals of Pentecost shown in this post, from the 15th and 14th centuries, in both of which Mary, representing the church, is depicted as pregnant.)

The presence of Mary the Mother of Jesus is indispensable to this little community, for Mary is the only person in the world who already knows what it is like to be emptied in such a way as to receive the mystery of Christ within herself.

A time when nothing is happening.

The group gathered in the Upper Room needs this time of prayer where nothing seems to be taking place. The friends and family of Jesus no longer have his physical presence, and what they are left with, for better or for worse, is each other. They must receive the mystery of Christ into themselves; they must be prepared to incarnate the presence of Christ for each other and for the world. Because of this wondrous process, Paul can later say:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Isn’t this our own call when we pray? We wait — if not in an actual Cenacle, in the Cenacle of our hearts — and often we feel as if little or nothing is being accomplished. However, along with the whole communion of saints, those still living and those who have gone before us, we wait and pray, allowing God to pour out love on us (whether or not we are aware of it) and to begin transforming us into the loving presence of Christ for each other and for the whole world.

_____

Pentecost scenes: 1. from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry; 2. from l’Eglise de Palau de Cerdagne

For years, Mother Therese was favored with much consolation in her prayer. But at the beginning of 1885, there has been little consolation for some time. In fact, she has been suffering — not only physical suffering as her body is dying, but spiritual suffering as well, united with the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. But this painful period at the end of her life is relieved occasionally by remarkable consolations, of which one stands out as extraordinary. It is truly an experience which Sister Paule de Lassus (Saint Therese Couderc: The Woman—The Saint) calls a foretaste of heaven.

An uninvited choir

On Saturday, January 10, Mother Therese asks Mother Marie-Aimée Lautier, her Superior General, to visit with her alone.

“I don’t know what is happening,” Mother Therese says, “but since Our Lord is letting me speak with you, I will, since I can’t with anyone else. They would think that illness has made me lose my mind.”

What Mother Therese tells her is that since the previous day, she has been surrounded by a multitude of people singing and praying.

Sometimes she is frightened, and she would like them to go away. Nevertheless, she says that “There are hours when I am totally absorbed with them, for in spite of myself, I have to join with them.”

Mother Marie-Aimée suggests that she consult with the priest who is her confessor, which Mother Therese does. The next day, when Mother Marie-Aimée goes to see her, Mother Therese seems to be more at peace with what is happening.

“The Father is not afraid and doesn’t want me to be afraid. He believes that these are the souls in Purgatory and, since they are friends of God because they love him and are loved by him, they are, in his opinion, good company.”

They are indeed good company. While Mother Therese and the priest believe they are the souls in purgatory, I tend to think that these prayerful companions are in heaven. But Mother Therese has noticed that “they suffer and they express it in a heart-rending manner.” Can people in heaven suffer?

Those who have loved us on earth do continue to love us in heaven. It is likely that they love us even more after death, because they love us with the perfect love of God. Karl Rahner envisages them praying for us in this way:

“Lord, grant eternal rest to them whom we love — as never before — in your love. Grant it to them who still walk the hard road of pilgrimage, which is none the less the road that leads to us and to your eternal light” (The Eternal Year).

I imagine that the heavenly souls who surround Mother Therese are filled with compassion for her in her own pain. Their suffering is an expression of their love for her — and since they love with the love of God, an expression of God’s love for her as well.

She goes on to tell Mother Marie-Aimée about the experience of that morning. After she received communion, she says, the choir surrounding her struck up that ancient hymn of praise, the Te Deum. However, Mother Therese, like a lot of Catholics, prefers to be quiet following communion so that she can focus on Jesus. This time she doesn’t succeed.

“At the fourth verse, despite the efforts I made to attend to Our Lord as usual, I had to pay attention to them and sing along with them: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts…. I had to follow along with them all the way to the end.”

Joining them was more than just a distraction from her prayer.

“It was wonderful. Even if I were to live a very long time I would never forget that harmony, those tones, that respect to which nothing on earth can be compared. Each verse was sung with a feeling that corresponded with the praises or the supplications that it expressed.

“When they arrived at the last verse: In Te Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum,* they sang it at least ten times with humility, fervor, and a confidence full of love. How they pray! How they sing! Oh, if we only knew how to pray as they do!”

Practicing death

I have heard meditation described as practicing death. When I think of death, I think of being completely in the hand of God in total trust, not clinging to anything, letting go of all fear or worry. (See Se livrer, the “To Surrender Oneself” reflection of Mother Therese, where she speaks of the “sweet peace” of the totally surrendered soul, a peace which is “part of the happiness of the elect.”)

So in this context, meditation – or for that matter any kind of prayer – would involve practicing this surrender right now. It would mean resting in the presence of God in total trust (or as total as is possible on earth), rather than waiting for death to hand ourselves over to the Good God.

The choir that surrounds Mother Therese shares in this praise and peace of the blessed souls in the hand of God, a praise that is supremely beautiful. Praise of God is always lovely, of course, and the praise of these celestial multitudes is not tainted by self-seeking. An essential element of its beauty is love and compassion: in this case, the love and compassion they have for Mother Therese.

Eight months before her death, Mother Therese has experienced a foretaste of heaven. It is a heaven concerned with earth, a heaven filled with love for those of us still struggling here.

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, ‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’ And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen!’ And the elders fell down and worshiped.
(Revelation 5:13-14)

_____
* The 1975 Liturgy of the Hours renders the English this way: “In you, Lord, is our hope: and we shall never hope in vain.”