Last Tuesday night was dark—the moon only a slender crescent, no streetlight near our driveway, no lights on across the street, and the light in our own driveway burned out. It was garbage night, and besides the deep darkness, what was unusual was that all of us were outside together, arranging the garbage and the recycling bins near the curb for the Wednesday morning pickup.

Sister Annette was just saying, “Shall I go in and get a flashlight?” when a shadowy figure on a bicycle approached.  As he drew near, he emitted a blood-curdling howl.  Yes, an ear-splitting, spine-chilling howl.

Now I am not normally one given to howling. But determined that he wouldn’t think he had intimidated us, I did just that. I responded with another howl, just as wild and eerie as his. Riding past, he howled again, and I answered again.

Somehow the howls had turned into a conversation.

A conversation?

There has been a lot of noise regarding the Vatican assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious: some consoling voices, some distressing howls.  Many people have expressed support for the sisters in this country.  But one of the sad consequences has been the unleashing of a new stream of vitriol directed toward American religious.  As far as I can tell, not many of the howls have refined into dialogue.

Some of the comments I have read are simply honest disagreement, some reflect misunderstandings, others verge on calumny.   Without dwelling too much on the most ferocious remarks, I would like to attempt to clear up a few misunderstandings.

First, there is no such thing as a generic nun.

It would be a mistake to expect all Catholic sisters to look alike, live the same way, pray the same way, and do the same kinds of ministry. This would not represent fidelity to the particular charisms of the varied religious congregations.

Some teach, some work in the healing fields, some feed the poor, some care for the dying—the list could go on and on. My own congregation, for example, the Sisters of the Cenacle (full name: “Congregation of Our Lady of the Retreat in the Cenacle”), has never run schools or hospitals. Since the early 19th century we have been doing retreat work and faith formation. In contrast, the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Theresa of Calcutta’s sisters and brothers, were founded to serve the poorest of the poor. People who want sisters to “return to the classroom” are asking some of us to be untrue to our founding.

About Habits (or habitual dress)

See “Nuns and Outward Appearances” for helpful information, posted by a Franciscan brother, on founders and habits.

And here’s a heads-up for our priests—your garb may be next on the howled-about list. Witness a blog post titled, “The abandonment of the cassock, the primary cause of the decay in ecclesiastical discipline.”

Religious Vows

Here, from the Washington Post website, is a comment from someone calling himself Chaytahn, and reflecting a serious misunderstanding: “Pope Benedict is responding to a group of nuns that are not being true to their oath of obedience to the Bishops.”

In the first place, we do not take an oath of obedience to the bishop. Rather, we make vows to God. As an aside, but which may be helpful, religious congregations are generally said to be of “pontifical right” or “diocesan right.” The Cenacle is a Congregation of pontifical right. Can. 589 of the Code of Canon Law defines the two:

An institute of consecrated life is said to be of pontifical right if the Apostolic See has erected it or approved it through a formal decree. It is said to be of diocesan right, however, if it has been erected by a diocesan bishop but has not obtained a decree of approval from the Apostolic See.

In the Cenacle, our vow formula (approved, along with our Constitutions, by the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes) reads:

Father, in response to the call of your Son Jesus, and entrusting myself to the power of your Spirit, I surrender myself to you without reserve for the service of the Church.

I commit myself to follow Jesus Christ forever by the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and to take part in his mission according to the spirit and Constitutions of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Retreat in the Cenacle.

It is normally the Provincial Superior who accepts the vows “in the name of the Church and of the Congregation.” Our Cenacle vow formula emphasizes surrender of self, because that is an important element in the spirituality bequeathed to us by our foundress, Saint Therese Couderc. Other orders have their own vow formulas in harmony with and according to their own special charism.

Living Faithfully

As John Courtney Murray, S.J., said, God would have each person wholly to be his witness, but not necessarily a witness to the whole of him. Only the church, as the community of the faithful, can really bear witness to the whole counsel of God in many-splendored variety. (George Lane, SJ, Christian Spirituality: A Historical Sketch)

This quotation takes us back to the reality that there are no generic sisters—or for that matter, no generic Christians. Religious sisters are as incapable as anyone else of witnessing to the whole magnificence of God or even to the whole of what we know of God from divine revelation.  We must witness faithfully to the gospel truth according to our call; for religious that means according to the charism and spirituality of our own congregation.

But the faith and the fidelity of sisters, especially in congregations affiliated with the LCWR, is being questioned. Here is one particularly judgmental comment citing Donna Steichen, who has written a book called Ungodly Rage: the Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism:

With the exception of a handful of young, deliberately faithful, countercultural, and largely recently-founded communities, the LCWR nuns and sisters have abandoned not only the habit that symbolized their devotion, but the faith that defined it, she said.

Concerning the tweets and online comments attempting to sift the faithful from the unfaithful, Father James Martin, SJ, writes, “Apparently the commenters were able to see within the souls of the unfaithful ones.” To presume that we can see within another’s soul is a very risky spiritual enterprise. Jesus cautions us not to judge, “so that you may not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). While the saints in heaven shine in glory (so we sing in “For All the Saints”) we still “feebly struggle.”  We depend on divine mercy at every moment of the day. And it is inevitable that some of us—clergy, lay, and religious, veiled or not—will live more faithfully than others.  Who besides God, however, can judge the human heart?

The Sisters I know proclaim joyfully the Creed, receive reverently the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist, and entrust their lives to the God who has called them. Do we need to proclaim our faith more vocally and make our community prayer more visible to the public? Perhaps so. Since we tend to gather for prayer in the privacy of our communities, it may be that people assume we do not pray. But it is also true that we all need to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

The Church

Finally, a number of commenters on the Washington Post and New York Times websites recommend that for our own good we just up and leave the Catholic Church altogether. One writes that “the Catholic Church is behaving in a very un-Christian like manner,” which is the implication behind a number of others as well. Some suggest that we find another church, or form another church, or embrace a kindly atheistic faith.

One misconception evident here is the notion that the Vatican (or the hierarchy or the Pope) constitutes the Church. In reality, you and I are the Church. We are all—laity, religious, and clergy alike—the Church. And I for one have no desire to leave this big, unruly, maddening, and beloved family to which I belong.

Back to howling

Let us howl, if need be, but in charity. How consoling it would be if our howls could turn into a conversation. As good Pope John XXIII wrote in Ad Petri Cathedram, “discussion can lead to fuller and deeper understanding of religious truths; when one idea strikes against another, there may be a spark. But the common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”

Perhaps by listening and sharing with the presumption of good will, we will find that despite differences in outlook, we are one in the love of Jesus Christ. And just perhaps, also, instead of being scandalized by our discord, others might see Christ in us—both in the ways in which we are alike and in the ways in which we handle our disagreements.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.
(John 13:35)

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Image designed by Rose Hoover, rc: Latin expression meaning “In essentials unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity” is superimposed on a photo of tiles from the Thomas Center in Gainesville, Florida.

The Resurrection of Christ shows us that we are not abandoned.

We are not abandoned even when we run off, as did most of the disciples of Jesus after his arrest; even when we deny him, as Peter did. Jesus comes back, and our call then is to welcome him as he welcomes us – or, like Peter, to jump in the water, and swim to him (see John 21).

The risen Christ shows us who we are called to be.

We need to grow in knowledge of the risen Christ so that we will recognize his presence in our everyday lives—and because the risen Christ is our life. We need to know the risen Christ because he shows us who we are called to be—and calls us to union with him, without which we cannot be who we are called to be. Saint Paul prays for the Christians at Ephesus, and for us:

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Suffering and death do not have the last word.

Though violence may seem to prevail in the world, though suffering may overwhelm us, though death may appear to triumph, God’s promise is that none of these will have the last word, either in our own lives or in creation as a whole. God does not promise that we will never suffer; but God promises to bring us through to the other side of suffering and death.

Shortly before his own death, Karl Rahner pondered and tried to describe that indescribable moment “when in a shattering shout of joy, it turns out that the vast silent emptiness which we experience as death is filled with the Mystery of mysteries which we call ‘God,’ filled with His pure light and His all-embracing and bestowing love.”*

There is more to come.

There is more beyond death than we can see or recognize with our limited faculties. We are told that the friends of Jesus did not recognize him at first. Paul, struggling to understand and explain the resurrection of the body, says, “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).  While the disciples encountered the Jesus they had known, his humanity had been transformed in the life of the Resurrection, as ours will be transformed.

But we know that there is more to life even now than we can perceive with our senses.  There is also more to what we do see with our eyes and touch with our hands than we know how to comprehend or to recognize. The Catholic Church has seven great sacraments; but in addition, reality itself becomes sacramental, pointing beyond itself, beyond what is visible and tangible, to an invisible Reality — to the incomprehensible and unseen Mystery who is God.  In Christ the world and the events of our own lives become (to borrow Augustine’s expression) visible signs of an invisible reality .

May we have the grace to behold the world with the eyes of the heart.  May our hearts be opened to gaze with the eyes of the risen Christ.

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* “Experiences of a Catholic Theologian” (a paper presented at Freiburg, February 12, 1984, shortly before his death). Cited in America, 16 June 1984: 452.

Christ on the Cross, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516

Holy, mighty One,
have mercy on us.

Unnameable Other,
Unshakable Compassion,
Infinite Goodness,
have mercy on us.

Loving Silence,
Beauty, source of all loveliness,
All-Desirable One,
have mercy on us.

O Crucified One,
have mercy on us.

Consider the Incarnation.

God-with-us, Emmanuel, comes as the most vulnerable of creatures: a human fetus; a human newborn dependent on fallible adults for care and protection, and who hasn’t yet learned to control his bodily functions; a small child who must be taught as all children must; a youth who, like us, must grow in wisdom and in stature (see Luke 2:52).

Consider the Crucifixion. 

The Messiah was to be a great political and military leader, ushering in world peace.  He was not supposed to be executed by the Romans.  So what about this suffering Christ?

If we accept that God comes in a form that admits suffering—which many have claimed is unfitting for divinity—we might accept as well that this Son of God would suffer, say, for the grandeur of the universe, perhaps for the whole world, maybe even for humanity.  And so he did.

But wait—we learn that Jesus of Nazareth suffered and died not just for a conglomerate of impersonal humanity, but for each one of us.  St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, emphasizes this personal nature of the Passion of Christ, speaking of “the great suffering Christ endures for me.”

For me?  Not just for everyone or for the cosmos, but for me?  For a person who never learned to fold a bottom fitted sheet properly?  Who gets on the Interstate going the wrong way and only notices it a half hour later?  Whose temper pops up at inconvenient moments and whose selfishness always lurks just under the surface?  For me, unworthy, grubby, and sinful?

Consider also the experience of Saint Paul and others who have come after him:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:19-20)

“…who loved me and gave himself for me.”  Wonder of wonders:  for me…  for you.

- – - – -

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:6-8)

1. Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

2. Body of Christ, save me.

3. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

5. Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

6. Within thy wounds, hide me.

7. Let me never be separated from Thee.

8. From the wicked foe defend me.

9. At the hour of my death, call me, and bid me come to Thee.

10. That with Thy saints I may praise Thee forever.

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
(Galatians 6:14)

I’ve heard it said, though, that the older we get, the less we desire fairness and the more we desire mercy.  If that is so, it may be because we have experienced more of life.  We know that life is not fair.  And we also know our own weakness and sinfulness.  I don’t want to receive exactly what I deserve!

And if it is true that as we get older we desire mercy more than fairness, it’s probably a very good thing, because fairness is not always available to us in this life, and mercy is.  As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes:

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air….

“The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe”

A primary truth of our lives is that God is friendly toward us.  God shows us this over and over.  And when we don’t get the message, God continues trying to convince us that no matter what we do, the divine love and forgiveness are always there for us.  We may find the truth of God’s mercy hard to believe as we consider our own failings and realize our own helplessness. But mercy assumes unworthiness and neediness.

We are always held securely in the divine mercy. We are wrapped in mercy like the air.

When we speak of mercy, however, we mean more than forgiveness of sins, although that is certainly a part of it.  Mercy is the loving-kindness of God—in Hebrew, hesed, God’s forbearance toward us, a tender love that does not require deserving on the part of the one on whom it is bestowed.  In the Hebrew scriptures it is “that sure love which will not let Israel go” (N. H. Snaith, “Loving-Kindness,” Theological Word Book of the Bible).

And there is another Old Testament word, racham, which the King James Version renders by the beautiful expression “tender mercies.”  Racham is etymologically related to the Hebrew word for womb, and represents “God’s tender compassion, that pity which he has for [us] in our … helplessness” (Snaith, “Mercy,” Theological Word Book of the Bible).

Experiencing the loving-kindness of God, we hear also the call to become a channel of the divine loving-kindness in our broken world.  It is when we have known our own deep need for mercy, our own helplessness and need for forgiveness and healing, and when we have let God through Jesus Christ pour out mercy on us, that we can more easily look on others with the merciful eyes and heart of Christ.

The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion;
slow to anger, and of great mercy.
The LORD is good to all:
and his tender mercies are over all his works.
(Psalm 145:8-9 KJV)

No, Lewis continues, “God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebula.”  God foresaw from all time that we human beings would misuse the freedom granted to us.  From the very beginning the divine plan included the Incarnation, and with it, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

This does not mean that God desired the cross or took away the freedom of those who betrayed and killed Jesus.  After all, God cannot desire evil, and the crucifixion was a murder.  Those who betrayed and killed Jesus retained their human freedom to choose good or evil.  But the divine foreknowledge meant that the cross was not an afterthought in creation.

What a wonder this is!  As J. V. Taylor goes so far as to say, “This is a pre-forgiven universe.”

God had chosen in eternity to take upon himself the risk and the cost of creating this kind of world.  As a precondition of creation he took upon himself the judgment and death of the sinner.  Being forgiven is therefore a more primary condition for us than being a sinner.

“The Theological Basis for Interfaith Dialogue”, Crucible, January-March 1978, pp.10-11.

No, God was not surprised by sin.  Each of us—fallen, frail, and perfidious; unworthy and infinitely loved—each of us has been held for all time in the divine heart.  Before the foundation of the world the plan included Emmanuel, God-with-us in our humanity, so that in spite of our sinfulness we might become one in and with Christ.

And so we are all enfolded in the prayer that is said quietly by the priest during each celebration of the Eucharist:

By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

(Preparation of the Gifts)

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

(Ephesians 1:3-10)

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Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-556 image courtesy of NASA

…Mother Sylvester, my first prioress, made two trips to our novitiate yearly. In both of them, she came to ask us only one question. Patience was her hallmark; she tutored us with measured steps. In fact, she viewed with great benignity the fact that most novices failed the test rather routinely at the time of her first visit. At the same time, she was anything but complacent if we failed it at the time of her second one. “Why have you come to religious life?” she asked each of us in turn, arms folded under her scapular, head tilted down to scrutinize us over her glasses as she scanned us around the table. At first blush, we made up wonderful answers: “To give our lives to the church,” the pious said; “To save our souls,” the cautious said; “To convert the world,” the zealots said. But no, no, no, she signaled with a shake of the head. Not that. Not that. Not that. “You come to religious life, dear sisters,” she said sadly, “only to seek God.”

Only to seek God. The answer stuns in its simplicity. In its ubiquitousness. In its universality. In its demands. The awful truth of the answer changes everything. For the person who cannot find God here, staying here is a mistake. For the person who does not seek God here, leaving here is an imperative. For the person who can find God better someplace else, leaving here is a grace.

Sometimes we mistake our divinely implanted desire for God for something less; and we may focus on this lesser goal, this counterfeit object of our desire which will never satisfy us. “You have made us for yourself,” said Saint Augustine to God, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Do not hide your face from me.

(Psalm 27:7-9)

ATTENTION HOME OWNERS:
No other plumber makes you this golden guarantee…
“MY PLUMBER WILL SMELL GOOD
AND SHOW UP ON TIME OR I’LL PAY YOU!!”

Now I can think of worse ways to approach life than smelling sweet and being on time. But oh, if only life’s dealings with us were so neat and sweet-smelling! If only everything would happen on time — that is, according to my own timely plan.

In reality life often refuses to work on my schedule, and what is more, life’s realities don’t always smell good. Events do not usually clean up after themselves, which can make things as messy and malodorous as the rat that slid down our unused laundry chute and died there.

As a matter of fact, the omnipotent God, in the divine ordering, does not promise to make life neat.  Rather, God is always present right in the midst of the mess, working to bring good out of it. We know this through the Incarnation and the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who shared our human existence — who is God-with-us.

Nor does God act in my life in what I always consider proper timing. However, no matter how much I am convinced of the wisdom of my own way, God’s timing is always better than my own. Waiting for the plumber may bring disappointment and a large bill; “but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).

For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night.

(Psalm 90:4)

When Beverly P. Gordon (“My Daddy Said So“) was filling out a questionnaire which asked her to describe herself with one word, she wrote — without any hesitation at all — the word “gorgeous.” Startled, and wondering why she hadn’t written something that sounded less vain, she pondered her response. She thought about her father and his unconditional love for her, and she remembered how her mother had told her about the wonder of her birth, and she concluded: “So the world can argue all they want; but my Daddy said I was gorgeous and my mother affirmed it, and that’s good enough for me.”

God’s word tells us that we are created good  — and lovely, too, since we are made in the image of the beautiful God. Whether or not our own parents were as loving as Beverly Gordon’s, God looks at each of us as a loving parent looks at a baby and says, “You’re gorgeous!” A humility which says, “Poor me, I am so wretched that God wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me” or, “I am such a terrible sinner that God could never forgive me” — this is a specious humility, not from God, and contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Christian humility is recognizing who we are before God. When we gaze at the magnificence of the Grand Canyon or the splendor of the night sky, we are conscious of how small we are. When we become aware of the depth and height of God’s love for us, we also see our own smallness and our unworthiness. We are creatures, we are weak, and we are at every moment in need of mercy. But we also stand in the truth of what our heavenly parent has shown us: that we are wholly loved and incredibly beautiful in the sight of God.

The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.
(Zephaniah 3:17-18a)