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.

Here are four recent examples — small actions, but not insignificant, for kindness is never insignificant:

After I filled the gas tank, the pump flashed a message instructing me to pick up the receipt inside the store. So I locked the car and went in.

As I returned to the car, I had a sinking feeling. Where were my keys? I peered inside, and as I feared, they were on the seat inside the locked car.

Back in the shop, I asked if I could use the phone (because of course the cell phone was also in the car), then wandered about the aisles, waiting for our Sister Annette to locate the extra key and pick me up (one of the many kindnesses I take for granted on the part of my community).

Quickly tiring of the cramped store, I went back outside to wait. A woman pulling away in her truck stopped. She smiled, showing a mouth mostly bereft of teeth.

“Are you going to be okay, Baby?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I locked my keys in the car, and I’m waiting to be picked up.”

“I do that all the time,” she said, to encourage me. “That’s why I have three sets of keys. Is there anything I can do for you?”

I told her no, and thanked her. She drove off, and I continued waiting, but now feeling a bit more positive about myself and life in general.

On primary election day — the local primaries here in Gainesville — I bicycled to our polling place and afterward on to the public library, where I found a book and read for a while. At the table next to me was a middle-aged couple, and when I got up to leave, the woman noticed my “I VOTED” sticker.

“Oh, you voted!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, I did.”

“You go, Girl!” And she high-fived me.

Such a small event this was, but immensely cheering.  And as the high five is not a common convent greeting, I was thankful that I knew how to respond to this gesture of approval.

There is a mentally handicapped man whom I encounter occasionally, a small and rather round African-American who is often visible downtown — at the library, in the post office, outside on the sidewalk. His mission in life seems to be greeting passersby and wishing them a good day — far from a worthless calling when you think about the general state of human relations, and I earnestly hope most people respond to him in kind. His greetings serve as a reminder of God’s never-failing good will.

Another mentally handicapped citizen is the physical opposite of this greeter, a very tall white man whom I have met at daily Mass. His mission is similar, but with an explicitly religious slant. He blesses the congregation as he goes out after communion, anticipating the priest’s official blessing.

The other day at church, he was alone in the row just behind Sisters Annette, Elizabeth, and me. During the Our Father when worshippers in our parish generally hold hands, everyone in our pew had already taken the hand of the next person. He moved forward, but instead of trying to break in, he simply placed his left hand on my shoulder and his right hand on the shoulder of the man standing next to me. His hand was warm and weighty as we prayed, which was fitting, I thought, because a genuine blessing is not as insubstantial as we might think. No, a blessing has heft.

And like all blessings of which I am mindful, these small acts of kindness are not lacking in heft for me. Even what seems trivial can shed a glimmer of light on that supreme truth which Christ’s Resurrection manifests in splendor: that all the evil so evident in our world cannot annihilate the Goodness of God.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

(Numbers 6:24-26)