The Feast of the Joy of the Gospel

Egyptian manuscript depiction of
today's feast, from the Walters Museum.

Today's Feast of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth was a favorite of Blessed James Alberione. He actually called it the "Feast of the Daughters of St. Paul" since we are to "go out" to others, carrying Jesus in our hearts and in our books.

In the light of Pope Francis' document "The Joy of the Gospel," I think it deserves a new subtitle: The Feast of the Joy of the Gospel. Elizabeth specifically interprets the unborn John's reaction to Mary's voice as "leaping with joy," and Mary herself responds to Elizabeth's praise with "my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." In the Visitation, we see why Pope Francis' insistence that Catholics not stay behind the walls of their schools and churches, perfecting life within those confines. "Go out!" he keeps telling us (and, despite his age, showing us by his example just what he means).

But wait! There's more: "When we live out a spirituality of drawing nearer to others and seeking their welfare, our hearts are opened wide to the Lord’s greatest and most beautiful gifts. Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God. Whenever our eyes are opened to acknowledge the other, we grow in the light of faith and knowledge of God. If we want to advance in the spiritual life, then, we must constantly be missionaries" (EG 272).

It's marvelous to celebrate this Feast at the beginning of the Pentecost Novena. The Holy Spirit permeates so much of the story, it is like a promise for Pentecost. You can follow the Pauline Pentecost Novena (which started yesterday) at http://visit.pauline.org/ifollowlight/2014/05/30/day-two-novena-to-the-holy-spirit/

This Jesus...Shall Return

Niccolò di ser Sozzo, Ascension in an Initial "V"

Metropolitan Museum of Art, used with permission.

During my last visit to New Orleans, my little great-niece and I spent some time talking about Meemaw (my Mom). Five-year-old Leah still remembers and misses her. "Me, too," I said. "But we'll see her again when Jesus comes back."

Leah's eyes widened as she asked, stupefied at the very thought, "Jesus is coming back?!!!"

Even though we recite the Creed every Sunday, I don't often really meditate on the fact of Christ's return. Can I admit it? I really need the liturgical cycle with its punctuating feasts to remind me of key realities of the faith. Catholics in general don't seem to have a reputation for being real big on the Second Coming, even though we pray about it in every Mass! Years ago, when Sister Bridget in our recording studio was getting the tracks ready for a new album, a technician who came to help with the equipment looked at the sheet music: "My Lord Will Come Again." The visitor, an Adventist, looked over quizzically: "You mean Catholics believe in the Second Coming?"

This amazing manuscript depiction of the Ascension (celebrated here in the UK on Sunday), inspires me to think about that "blessed hope."

Typically in paintings of the Ascension, you see just a pair of feet jutting out of a cloud at the top of the canvas; Jesus about to disappear from sight. Here, though, he might just be making the return trip.

Unlike the Apostles, Mary is not gazing up into the sky. In fact, her stance seems more in keeping with an Annunciation, where she is receiving Christ. When Christ comes again, will I, too, be ready to receive Him?

Suor Cristina gets American Nun Backup Singers! (Well, it could happen.)

The sisters in my community have been happily following the vocal adventures of Italy's Suor Cristina, the young Ursuline with the vocal talent and stage presence of a full-time music pro. In last night's semi-finals, the nun's run would have ended if it were up to the judges, but with 70% of the popular vote in, she was (if you'll pardon the expression), "saved."

For the finals, the producers at the Voice are (in my version of an alternate universe) pulling out all the stops, bringing in an American nuns' choir with extensive recording experience that includes pop styles. One of the sisters currently assigned to England is joining them as they serve as the backup singers for Suor Cristina's final, show-stopping number on The Voice.

Above:  a behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsals (for some reason, the producers had the Americans bring their own outdated and clunky head mikes instead of providing them with something more comfortable and less obtrusive, but that is clearly outside the purview of this blog).

Will the American sisters win over the recalcitrant judges? Will the people of Italy show their continued support for the singing nun? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, you can "like" the American nuns choir on Facebook to show your enthusiasm for this sisterly program!

If you missed last night's show, here is the clip:

Synod on the Family and the Pope of the Family: Be Informed!

With the Extraordinary Synod on the Family scheduled for this fall, people are already talking about the way bishops from around the world might deal with the serious problems so many families are facing. That makes the next few months an opportunity for Catholics to familiarize themselves with the very positive vision our Church has about married love.

Now's the time to get acquainted with the insights of the man Pope Francis called "the Pope of the Family," Saint John Paul II.

This is the unique pastor who spent decades as the spiritual companion and guide of numerous couples from their courtship through to the grandparenting years (not one of these couples suffered a divorce). He collated their experience with his own understanding of the Bible and the spiritual life,  releasing a groundbreaking book on the philosophy of erotic love, as well as a biblical reading of "human love in the divine plan" (also known as Theology of the Body). (When you're ready, there's a low-cost 6-part online video course overview of the Theology of the Body.)

If you can attend the Theology of the Body Congress in July, the roster of speakers and topics is outstanding (too bad I can't fly in from England for those few days!). And there is also an active Theology of the Body Community on Google+ where you can raise issues and share insights based on Saint John Paul's TOB writings as well as his principle documents on the family: The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, the Letter to Women and the document On the Dignity and Vocation of Women. While reading up on John Paul II, don't miss Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, God Is Love, which is almost his version of Theology of the Body!

The Women Who Loved St Paul

Not exactly Philippi, but there is a woman
in this crowd listening to Paul preach.

Today's first reading introduces one of those remarkable women who gives the lie to that pernicious and pestilential truism, "St Paul was a woman-hater."

An entrepreneur and head of her household, Lydia would have been a most unlikely convert if Paul had, in fact, been unappreciative of women. For one thing, Paul would not have bothered pausing to pray and share the Gospel with the group of women he found praying along the water's edge outside of Philippi. He would have kept tromping along, looking for a more likely group of converts. Instead, what we see in today's story, and even more in the follow-up in Paul's letter to the Philippians, is Paul's presumption that women are key partners in the work of the Gospel.

Lydia reminds me a lot of Prisca. Contrary to the conventions of the time, whenever Paul names this Jewish woman and her husband (which is a lot), Prisca comes first. While some interpreters would like to read a lot into this detail, one thing it does suggest is that Prisca had a sort of pride of place in Paul's mind that came out when he dictated his letters.

Add to these two biblical examples of women who were close to Paul (Prisca and Aquila, her husband, are credited with "risking their necks" for him) the most popular woman saint in the ancient Church after the Blessed Virgin Mary: St. Thecla. While the only narrative we have about this virgin martyr is a highly embellished novel ("The Acts of Paul and Thecla"), there is a preponderance of evidence of the saint's popularity to support at least the fact of her existence and some memory of the marvelous about her. Thecla's shrine was one of the biggest in the ancient world, and until her tomb was destroyed in the current conflict in Syria, it was a revered relic. Last year when the world was horrified by the abduction of a group of nuns from their Syrian convent, it was from the convent of St Thecla that they had been kidnapped. (The sisters were set free in March.) Thecla is considered, in the devotional tradition at least, Paul's principle female convert and in her own way "equal to the Apostles."

But wait, there's more! A popular story has Paul restoring a blind woman's sight minutes after his martyrdom when he (ascending to Heaven) tossed back to her the kerchief she had let him use as a blindfold. And then Paul was buried in property that belonged to a Roman woman.

Have I belabored the point a bit? Perhaps. But now you know that this Daughter of St Paul has something to say to the next person who calls Paul a misogynist, because, yes, I am one of those Women Who Love St Paul.

One Week In

Milk in your tea? Be sure to cut
through the cream at the top of the
"pint" bottle they delivered today!

Yes, it has been a week since I arrived in England, and I'm learning new things every day. Like saying "Ah-men" instead of "AY-men." (I think that may come relatively quickly, since we say "Amen" quite often in a day!) Zucchini are "courgettes." My driver's license may be utterly useless, not only because I would panic in a driver's seat on the right side of the car, but because I don't know how to drive anything but an automatic shift vehicle!

The "lift" was out of order when I first arrived. Not a problem for me, but a real hardship for the sisters in their eighties who had to take the stairs. What has been really taxing for me, I'm coming to realize, is navigating communication--the regular interpersonal kind. I am just not that used to processing so many different accents in a single day: Irish, Kenyan, Filipina, northern Italian, Sicilian... I have to really focus to keep up with the conversation. When the superior comes back to town tomorrow, the learning curve will go up steeply. (She's a Scot!)

One of the weirdest adjustments I've had to make involved technology. Not one of the four wifi devices I brought with me managed to connect to the convent wifi. Sister Mary Lou, God bless her, thought to check the IP address, DNS settings, all those techie things that ordinarily happen on their own. So I went in to each device, at each wifi network, and carefully copied those same settings (though I did modify the IP address). As you can see....it's working like a charm!

This weekend there will be a meeting for all the sisters of the UK, and a celebration of the Golden Jubilee of two of them. It will be a chance for me to get to know more of the sisters. Pray that I can start to get the names down!!!

Getting situated

I still don't quite know what day of the week it is, but I landed in Heathrow on Thursday morning and met a few small adventures right off the plane. My hands were so dry, the computer did not accept my fingerprints as a match with those on file. The border agent had to consult with his co-worker at the next booth. Pretty soon I had two of them working on my case (and nobody left in the line behind me: I was the only thing coming between those two agents and their tea break). After three tries with the fingerprints, the agent went to a back room to call up my documents on the computer for a verification. I passed! On I went to baggage claim, and then out to meet the sisters...who weren't there. (Turned out to be a mixup on the flight information.) It took me a while to get on the free airport wifi, and then to call the convent via Skype. While the phone rang, I popped on Facebook and posted my predicament, tagging several of the sisters in England in case some of them happened to be online. I also zipped off an email to another sister, alerting her to my arrival. And then someone picked up the phone and I let them know that, yes, I was already at the airport. Really. Terminal One. Yes, Terminal One. Meanwhile, the superior had gotten the Facebook notification and was making calls of her own to be sure that someone was on the way. Given the challenge of just getting a visa, this was a tiny hiccup--but another assurance that my mission in England is meant to bear fruit!

The convent is not that far from Heathrow, and before long I was shown to a cozy room and given some time to start working on my jet lag. I am getting used to the very different setting here--from downtown Chicago and its skyscrapers to a country district with cows in a nearby public pasture. I've been waking up, for some reason, at 3:30 a.m. and going down for morning coffee while the birds are just starting to sing. The fragrance of flowers is striking. Even in chapel, the scent is so strong I keep looking around for one of those plug-in things, but it's all natural. In the back, Sister Gabriella maintains an amazing garden. (Tomorrow we are having miniature artichokes she will harvest right before they hit the pan.) Oh, and tomorrow I am also going to a First Communion in a neighboring parish; the little girl of an Indian IT specialist. The parishes here are bursting at the seams with Catholics from India and Poland, among others. The district is teeming with immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well (in the little mall I visited today, the jewelry mannequin-heads wore hijab!).

I don't know when I'll actually get to London-town, but it's a real prospect. In the meantime, I have a quiet room in a country spot, and time to recover from some major jet lag...

Tally-Ho!

Cue the soundtrack!

The ticket is made.
The bags are packed.
Departure is...tomorrow! (All I need now is a ride to the airport.)
As we pray in my family, "Angels on wings!"

An anniversary draws near, depending on your calendar

Mom at my sister's wedding--the
day after Dad's funeral. We were
all so happy for Jane and Jim, the
smile (so typical) was genuine.

I've been feeling pretty out of sorts lately--and sure it wasn't all due to the l-o-n-g wait for a UK visa (granted today!!!!!). Last night, reading the Gospel for today's Mass, I realized what it was. Mom's first anniversary. Not her "calendar year" anniversary, which was weeks ago (April 21). This Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter, it will be one liturgical year since Mom's earthly life ended.

That has got to be one of the greatest "natural" benefits of going to daily Mass for 40 years. All week, I've been hearing the Gospels that were slowly preparing me, encouraging me, to "let it be done" to Mom according to those words: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." 

Book Review: Something Other Than God

So I'm a week late. I had to sneak a copy off the bookstore "New Release" table after hours to read Jennifer Fulwiler's long-awaited spiritual autobiography, "Something Other Than God." Here you go!

Some years ago, I discovered the “mommy blog” genre of online writing. The Catholic mommy bloggers especially offered me a real-life picture of faith in a 21^st century family setting. I began to notice how many of these women whose writing I really admired were not only living the Catholic faith, but still discovering it: They were converts. One of the most outstanding of these writers was Jennifer Fulwiler, of ConversionDiary.com. Brought up an only child, she is raising more children than she had ever seen in one place growing up. Educated to be a convinced and assured atheist, she thought she had all the answers, except for that one nagging issue: Why does life have to be so beautiful—when it is so meaningless?

In Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2014) Fulwiler traces the unlikely path of Providence from her childhood experiences of alienation from anything that might bear the name “Christian” to her realization that the Catholic baptism she had received as an infant (for the sake of the grandparents) had actually accomplished something very real in her life.

On the surface, Fulwiler would not have seemed destined for Catholic Mom of the Year the year before her conversion began in earnest: She had an exciting job in computers, was married to a genial overachiever, enjoyed friends, music and parties (lots of those), and had every reason to believe that her husband's goal of his “first million” was very much within reach. It was the birth of a son that cemented in her the overflowing conviction that life and joy and love were not merely chemical reactions in a material brain: they were evidence that needed to be taken into consideration.

While Something Other Than God is the story of a serious search for the meaning of life, you will find yourself laughing out loud over some of the episodes. (Fulwiler is a worthy heir to Erma Bombeck in that regard.) She has an eye for the incongruous detail that is the secret of humor writing, and a heart for the quirky poignancy of human life. (How many people do you know are consoled by the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory because it means they can pray for the soul of a violent rapper who met a violent end?)

Last year the RCIA director of a cathedral parish in the midwest commented that more and more of the people coming into the Catholic Church seem to be agnostics who began to doubt their unbelief. Look around you: these are your neighbors, co-workers, business associates. I would highly recommend Fulwiler's memoir to people who are beginning to ask their Catholic neighbors questions about faith in God, belief in Jesus, the role of the Pope and where the Bible came from, and to people like the pre-conversion Jennifer who have a perfect life, but can't help asking why life isn't perfect. I might even leave it in the office bathroom so people who are not ready to “come out” in terms of their interest in religion can read it in private, the way Fulwiler read her books about Jesus.

Here's a post about my interview with Jennifer during the 2012 Catholic New Media Conference in her home state. Download to audio file to listen to the interview with Fulwiler.

You might also enjoy Catholic by Choice: Why I Embraced the Faith, Joined the Church, and Embarked on the Adventure of a Lifetime (Loyola Press, Chicago, 2014) by Richard Cole, an Austinite (and a wordsmith) like Fulwiler.

Terror of Demons

On this first Wednesday of May, my community continues a centuries-old tradition of honoring St Joseph that originated with the Carmelites. One of Joseph's most unlikely titles is "terror of demons," and if the rumors about a scheduled satanic mass at Harvard turn out to be substantiated, we better start invoking him big-time.

  St George fighting the Dragon--that's more
like my idea of the "Terror of  Demons"!

But, really: St. Joseph? You'd think the title "terror of demons" would belong to the more ferocious saints, like St. Michael the Archangel, St. George, or even St. James the Moorslayer.

Instead, it is the meek carpenter who makes the underworld tremble. You have to admit he has a track record. Just ask Herod the Great about the toddler who escaped his minions' swords.

Another holy terror: St.
James (the Apostle), depicted
as "the Moorslayer."

Well, so far it is looking as though we may well need to be invoking Joseph in anticipation of the planned May 12 Cambridge sacrilege, praying especially for the naive curiosity-seekers who might put themselves in so much danger, on-lookers the scene of an unpredictable and uncontrollable inferno. Everyone who
comes within reach of this supernatural black hole risks getting swept in and finding that their life will no longer be entirely their own. That's precisely what rouses St. Joseph's manly ire: His foster-Son "came that they might have life" and Joseph has no intention of letting Christ's love for them be thwarted by some faux-intellectual "transgressive performance."

Of course, it wouldn't be a bad idea to invoke St. Michael, while we're at it.

'Tis the Month of Our Mother: Book Review of "Walking with Mary"

For Catholics of a certain age, May is simply “Mary's month.” We may have sweet memories of May

Image from The Catholic Anchor

Crownings (somehow I never was chosen to place the wreath of flowers on Our Lady's statue); the month even ends on a Marian feast: the Feast of the Visitation. But devotion to Mary is more than a pious add-on to faith, as Dr. Edward Sri demonstrates in Walking with Mary: A Biblical Journey from Nazareth to the Cross (Image, New York, 2013). Mary's essential place in the story of salvation did not end at Bethlehem!

Addressing Catholics and non-Catholic Christians alike, Sri takes us through Mary's life as we find it in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Scriptural expressions that I had just taken for granted (“Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”) turn out, on Sri's reading, to be densely and surprisingly packed with meaning. Despite its wealth of content, the book is not heavy or overwhelming, but calmly contemplative. It could be an ideal companion to the Rosary.

And every step of the way, from the Angel Gabriel's unexpected news through the events at Bethelehem, the Temple, the Wedding at Cana, are shown in relation to the Cross. In fact, according to Sri, Mary walked the way of the Cross, in joys and in sorrows, her entire life. Our life is certainly not exempt from the shadow of the Cross, either. In each chapter, Sri offers an application of Mary's relationship with Jesus in the mystery of the Cross and our own experiences, including those hardest to bear: our partipation in the Cross of Jesus. Well-chosen insights from Saint John Paul II's series of Wednesday talks on Our Lady as well as his documents enhance the richness of the overall presentation.

For Catholics who feel a bit uneasy when questioned (or challenged) about devotion to Mary, Sri's book provides a solid, deeply biblical vision of the Woman who stands at the intersection of Old and New Testaments, who stood beneath the Cross and was then seen standing with the moon under her feet in that final and mysterious book of Revelation. For non-Catholics who are drawn to Mary as one who “heard the word of God and kept it” (cf. Luke 11:28) as no other, Sri demonstrates that Mary is a model disciple as well as a mother of disciples.

A worthwhile read for the Month of May!

You may also be interested in:

Mary: Help in Hard Times. Stories and Prayers by Sister Marianne Trouvé: Presentation of the Catholic understanding of Mary, along with personal examples of Mary's intercession and Marian devotions. Includes reflection questions.

For children: My First Book about Mary, written by Sister Christine Orfeo and illustrated by Sister Julia Mary Darrenkamp: Mary's life, apparitions and feast days; includes how to pray the Rosary.