The viral nun

Our Sister Mary Augusta, who turned 100 on March 13, has touched at least a million lives. We're sure her prayers go beyond even that!

Kindred Spirits: Mother Angelica and Mother Paula

This is how I remember Mother Angelica.

A media apostle was called to eternal life, fittingly enough on Easter Sunday. There have been some great tributes to Mother Angelica; my favorite was the one by John Allen, who acknowledges that the feisty nun (whom no one would consider "progressive") ought be be recognized by progressives as a woman who achieved what some of them consider impossible in a male dominated, "patriarchal" church. I have my own memories of Mother Angelica, especially from the time I was a guest on her show (in 1990). I am trying to get that VHS tape transferred into a digital format so I can share it with you, but it's going to be a challenge finding enough backward-compatible equipment (the extra proviso being "equipment I will know how to use").

As I have been praying for Mother Angelica's eternal repose, memories of another bold woman Mother Paula Cordero, kept coming to mind. There really are a number of remarkable similarities between the two women:

apostle of the media, our own

• Both grew up in situations of poverty, albeit very different in kind: Mother Angelica knew the poverty of the Depression in urban America; Mother Paula was from a tiny hilltop village in rural Italy and ended her formal education at third grade. 
• Both were missionaries to cultures vastly different than their own: Mother Angelica went from a Catholic stronghold to the Bible Belt; Mother Paula from rural Italy to New York City (arriving at the height of the Depression).
• Both were foundresses, not as originators of a charism (the way St Francis or Blessed James Alberione were) but as "transplanters" of a religious community to a new terrain.  Mother Angelica established a new foundation of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration not once, but twice: first in her native Canton, OH, and then, famously, in Alabama. Mother Paula was in the first group of Pauline women sent by the Founder to establish the community in the United States. (She was only 23 and had not even made final vows yet.)
• Both were visionary and creative women who left a legacy that no one could have anticipated. While I am very intimately acquainted with Mother Paula's legacy (starting with my own vocation!), it is clear that, from an external point of view, Mother Angelica has had a far broader impact. (Only God knows the supernatural impact of any mission, so I must leave that judgment to him.) This has long been a sore point for me. For years, I suspected that God must have raised up Mother Angelica because the Paulines, with their charismatic responsibility for media evangelization, had dropped the ball somewhere along the way. And that could be, even though while Mother Angelica was making her first steps in media, Mother Paula was behind the Pauline efforts to build a radio station here in Boston. (The office I am writing in is just yards from the studio*; the building itself was designed to hold the massive satellite uplink that was never installed.) In the mystery of Divine Providence, God chose, as usual (see 1 Cor 1:27!), the least likely instrument to succeed where the presumedly anointed ones would fail. 
• Finally, both of these prophetic women spent their final years in silence as a result of a stroke. I was privileged to be among those who had a regular turn to provide care for Mother Paula for several years. Many times it was hard for Mother Paula to do more than accept the food I put to her lips. Sometimes she simply refused it. But when I would suggest that she "offer it up for the catechisms" or "offer it up for vocations," she was able to find the wherewithall to do whatever was necessary. Likewise, if her gaze was vacant, all I had to do was mention the latest vocational or catechetical initiative and her beautiful blue eyes would open wide, eagerly communicating her desire to participate in these vital aspects of our life and mission. I do not know what it was like for the sisters who cared for Mother Angelica in these many years but I suspect they had experiences like mine. 

Unable to communicate in their formerly crystal clear and forceful ways, these women of God remained completely at the service of evangelization until the Day of the Lord dawned for them: Mother Paula before dawn on Ash Wednesday, 1991 and Mother Angelica 25 years later on Easter Sunday.  May they rest in peace, and may we be able to count on their intercession that through the wise use of communications technology "the Word of the Lord may speed on and triumph!"






*While our dreamt-of station never materialized, we have been involved in radio for decades. Our Spanish radio programs are broadcast in over 100 stations worldwide. Listen here.

Paulines in Pakistan

Our sisters in Pakistan posted a few pictures from the scene of a peace demonstration by a number of Catholic sisters and religious brothers, as well as from their own visits with bombing victims in the local hospital. I will let you know if we find a way to send material aid to them.

An evening march for peace with a large number of Sisters.

Pauline sisters visiting the hospital. Bombing victims'
stretchers are barely two feet apart.

Behind this cot, you can see two other patients.
The paper says the child is "BLAST VICTIM P/N unknown,"
but penned below in red is "Jabina," a girl's name.
The flowers on the left are from the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
(No teddy bears in sight yet.)

The Great Silence of Holy Saturday

Filippino Lippi, Pietà (The Dead Christ Mourned by Nicodemus and Two Angels) c. 1500 Painting 
Image courtesy of NGA.gov

Christological battles around "The Young Messiah"

Last week's opening of The Young Messiah in theaters opened a theological can of worms in some circles. The controversy centered on the self-awareness of Jesus. Did the film imply that the boy Jesus did not know his own divine identity?

I'm not sure that everyone who wrote about or commented on the human knowledge of the Christ Child actually saw the movie, or if they were going more on the quote (from "Joseph") used in some social media: "How do we explain God to His own Son?" To me, it was clear in the movie that the seven-year-old Jesus was more than just precocious in his knowledge of God. When his dying uncle Cleophas was muttering incoherently, it was Jesus, yards away, who informed Cleophas' wife "He is talking to God" as if he had been on the receiving end of that communication. In the subsequent healing of that same uncle, Jesus is portrayed praying to his "Father God." At the same time, Mary and Joseph have not told the little boy anything of his mysterious origin, despite his searching questions. (That is one of the questions that continues throughout the movie: When, and under what circumstances, should the young child learn about his conception?)

We know from the Gospels that Mary referred to Joseph as "your father" and the evangelist Luke speaks of Mary and Joseph as "the parents of Jesus." It is only at age twelve that we hear the boy claim God as his father in a unique way, referring to the Temple as "my Father's house." (The same striking expression comes up again--at the cleansing of the Temple by the adult Christ.) Personally, I suspect that (pace The Young Messiah) Mary and Joseph never referred to God as Jesus' "father"; that this was a revelation we received directly from Jesus himself. But I digress.

That Jesus possessed full divine knowledge, knowledge that was somehow accessible to him in his human nature, is part of the truth of our salvation. Pope Pius XII (in his encyclical Mystici Corporis, n. 63) wrote: "The loving knowledge with which the divine Redeemer has pursued us from the first moment of his incarnation is such as completely to surpass all the searchings of the human mind; for by means of the beatific vision, which he enjoyed from the time when he was received into the womb of the Mother of God, he has for ever and continuously had present to him all the members of his mystical Body, and embraced them with his saving love." "The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me," Paul asserts (Gal 2:20).

He knew who he was, he knew his mission, and he knew whom he was saving.

But how did that work itself out in a seven-year-old with two natures? How did the ongoing formation of synapses in a seven-year-old brain coordinate with the workings of a divine mind? The filmmakers take a legitimate look at one way this might have expressed itself in the life of Christ. Since we cannot refer to anyone else with two complete natures, all we can do is use our imagination to try to envision the real-life implications of the dogma, and I think the filmmakers did all they could to create a movie that respects the whole truth about Jesus (even though they may not have been aware of the finer points of doctrine on the human knowledge of Christ).

In theology there is an expression "That which was not assumed [that is, taken on personally by Christ] is not redeemed." Jesus "grew in wisdom and age and grace before God and men" (Lk. 2:52).  It is not unfathomable that part of Christ's acceptance of a true and complete human nature might have been that he humbly submitted to the full natural process of personal development. (There is nothing in the Gospels to let us suspect that Christ's childhood was somehow remarkable; the incident in the Temple when he was twelve is narrated as an outlier in an otherwise ordinary home life.)

"That which was not assumed is not redeemed." Gregory Nazianzen coined this expression to teach that all of human nature was taken on and healed by Christ; could it not apply also to the entire process of growth and development?

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For more on Christ's human and divine knowledge, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 470-472.

Also available to accompany the film:
Study guide for Catholic youth groups
Catholic family discussion guide for the film

Abandoned.

It's a week from Good Friday, and I've been reflecting a lot lately on Jesus' sense of God as his Father. In part, this was sparked by seeing the movie The Young Messiah: the little boy Jesus has an intuitive sense of God as Father, even before Mary tells him about the Annunciation and reveals to him that God truly is his Father. Obviously, a major part of Jesus' mission was proclaiming God's trustworthy nearness and providence; his fatherhood. And Jesus himself had striking experiences of God affirming him as "my beloved Son."

Detail from El Greco, Christ Crucified

For St Paul, too, God's fatherhood was absolutely fundamental to the Gospel. Paul thought of the Holy Spirit as the one who prays in us with the same filial word Jesus used in his prayer, "Abba, Father!" (see Gal 4:6). Paul pointed to this same concept when writing about Baptism in his theological treatise letter to the Romans: "You have not received a spirit of slavery leading back into fear; you have received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry out 'Abba! Father!'" (Rom 8: 15).

Rewind now to Good Friday. Jesus spent an anguished hour or more the night before in Gethsemane, praying "Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me; yet not what I will, but what you will" (see Mk 14:36, Mt 26:39, Lk 22:42 and even Jn 18:11). Now Jesus is nailed to a cross, and suddenly the source of his existence seems to go extinct. Jesus is caught between two impossibilities: that the Father should not be, and that he, Jesus, somehow exists without the Father. He had been ready to face the void of sin; he was steeled to do battle with evil. But this total eclipse? A choking gasp of horror stifles him.

And here I wonder if Jesus found even more motivation to give us life for us poor, "fatherless" creatures. He experienced the desperation of our situation; our need for the Gospel. His love for the Father and for us meant that he would do anything so that his Father could be our Father. And from this, the joy and victory in his voice on Easter morning when he would be able to say to Mary Magdalen and to "my brothers": "I am ascending to my Father and your Father; to my God and your God!" (Jn 20:17).

Novena to St Joseph (with a difference)

The day The Young Messiah opens in theaters (yes, go see it), the Daughters of St Paul will be launching a "Cinema Novena" that incorporates clips from the movie. This is something I've been working on all week (still am, in fact). It is sort of a "Lectio Divina" but with a movie instead of a book. The daily e-mails will run from March 11 through the Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19.

So go to the sign-up page and put your e-mail address in the form. That's all. It's easy. It's free. And it's truly inspirational.

Still Re-Reading Lent with Rene Girard: The Peace the World Cannot Give

So far I've only read two books by Rene Girard and maybe four that are based on his insights (so I'm  barely literate in this field), but I have been really, really intrigued by what I've read,  convinced that there is a lot more for me to discover (and be challenged by). From my introductory reading, I've picked up 3 key Girardian terms that have served me pretty well in taking a new look at those familiar Gospel passages we hear every Lent. The key words are imitation (Girard prefers “mimesis”), rivalry and victim (scapegoat).

Imitation/mimesis is a human non-negotiable. We do not come with an adequate set of instincts for survival, ready for life: we have to learn just about everything, and we do it through imitation. (Girard remarked that this loss of instinct was the price of our free will.) Imitation/mimesis does more than show us how to do things: it also indicates what kinds of things to do, to achieve, to desire and to flee; what goals to aim for; what shoes to wear for what occasion with which crowd; what team to root for (or to jeer). Mimesis, in other words, does not only communicate how-to's; it communicates values. A thousand industries in our consumer culture build on this foundation.

But what happens in our sin-infected species when too many people grasp after the same coveted prize? Well, rivalry (what else?). Mimetic rivalries can take strange forms. I myself once witnessed a tragi-comic mimetic escalation between two mentally ill persons, each of whom tried to outdo the other in terms of the gravity of their diagnoses. And rivalries can escalate as competing parties jostle for dominance. It can even lead to all-out war. Girard's reading of ancient myths revealed that when mimetic rivalry reached a crescendo, it would often lead to the bizarre unification of all the competing parties in a lopsided battle against a single doomed victim. The violence unleashed against the “one” resolved the tensions among the “all,” simultaneously revealing the victim to be both the true “cause” of the conflict and the surprising “savior” of the community: a kind of “god.” Thereafter, sacrifice would be offered in imitation of the original scapegoating violence that had revealed such a “divine visitation.” And sacrifice could be repeated (whether at the expense of another human victim, or eventually with an animal proxy) the next time the community was threatened with collapse in the face of rivalry. Girard verified this mechanism not just in the Greco-Roman myths, but across the spectrum of world literature. The deception of “peace through victim-making” would continue unopposed until Easter Sunday.

Repeatedly, Jesus warned his disciples about rivalrous attitudes. There was the time they had just arrived at their destination and Jesus turned to the Twelve. "What were you discussing on the road?" Mark reports pointedly: “They kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. Sitting down, he called the Twelve and said to them, 'If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all' ” (Mark 9: 33-35 ). Another time, he advised, “...when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” in a show of one-upmanship (cf Luke 14:12-14).

"Offer no resistance to injury"; "Love your enemies."

Girard points out that Jesus' example in the Passion corresponds perfectly to his most puzzling, even distressing command: “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” (Mt 5:39). “Like a lamb led to the slaughter” (Is 53:7), he did not respond to violence with violence, not even the measured violence of equal measure as in the old rule “an eye for an eye” (Lv 24:17-23). Jesus allowed himself to absorb, not escalate, the destabilizing violence that threatens society.

After the triumphant parade to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when the disciples were sure that the Kingdom was about to be revealed (they were right about the fact, but dead wrong about the means), Jesus deliberately turned their expectations upside down by washing their feet. “If I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you must wash each other's feet.” He was calling for imitation, but in service, not in rivalry: “As I have done, so you must do.” There is little danger of mimetic escalation here!

Paul also takes issue with rivalrous tendencies that appeared in his communities. He ridicules those who compare themselves with others (favorably, of course) or who claim “higher” spiritual gifts or more important status in the community. With the Corinthians, he releases the full power of his irony, showing that he can out-do any and all boastful claims. And since the community is indulging in a foolish rivalry, he skewers them and “talks like a fool”:

“Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. ... Are they Hebrews? So am I! Are they Israelites? So am I! Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I! Are they servants of Christ? Now I am really talking like a fool: I am more, with my many more labors and imprisonments, with far worse beatings and frequent brushes with death...” (see 2 Cor 11:17-30). 

Instead of boasting of his authority as an Apostle, Paul turns the Corinthians' worldly standard of excellence upside down (which is truly “right side up” according to the example of Jesus). Then, to show us a “still more excellent way,” he gives us a kind of psalm about charity in all its self-emptying, other-favoring qualities (1 Cor 13). 

Girard's thought certainly rings true in my ears. It also makes some of the more mysterious passages in Paul (and in the book of Revelation) a bit more revelatory. Above all, what it suggests to me in this Lenten season is the need for the transformation of my desires. Like every other child of Adam and Eve except for Jesus and Mary, I imbibed a skewed set of values and the unfortunate concupiscence that drives me to pursue those limited goods at any cost. The redemption needs to reach me there, redirecting my hopes to what is good, true, real, beautiful and lasting; the hope that does not disappoint; the good that lasts forever and is unlimited, able to be shared completely by all without being diminished. 

And then? The end result is freedom. The children of God are free because they are no longer controlled by external/outside forces that would take them by the nose and lead them this way and that. We are always mimetic, but the thing is to “be imitators of God” (Eph 5:1) in Christ who made himself an example for us (Jn 13:15). That is peace “not as the world gives” (Jn 14:27), that is, not at the cost of someone else's blood or by making other people into a stepping-stone; not by assigning blame outward, but by letting it fall away, in imitation of the one who said “Learn of me who am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29).

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Books I've read and recommend on this theme:

 
 

The Young Messiah: Filling in the Blanks in the Infancy Narratives

One of the perks of maintaining a blog (and a strong Twitter following) is getting invited to preview upcoming films. That is how I got to see the unlikely Lenten film, The Young Messiah, before its release in theaters.

The film, which opens next week, was based on Anne Rice's carefully-researched novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Twitter conversations between our own Sister Helena Burns and director Cyrus Nowrasteh indicate that the director did his own due diligence when it came to research. It shows in many snippets of dialogue that reflect non-biblical traditions, especially the Proto-Evangelium of James, an early Christian “novel” that attempted to do for 2^nd century Christians what director Nowrasteh wanted to do for us: envision the events surrounding Jesus' childhood during that period which the Gospel writers completely skip over,between the Presentation in the Temple when he was 40 days old to that Passover when he was twelve. The film, like the novel, settles on a seven-year-old Christ Child.

This is a surprisingly dark film, and it is Satan who provokes that darkness, starting from the opening scene in Alexandria, Egypt. The cloaked, somewhat androgynous figure of Satan (visible only to the Child) resembles the demonic figure in the Passion of the Christ, but in one scene I thought I also caught an homage to the twisted Joker in The Dark Knight: “Your cause is lost.... Chaos rules!” We even get a preview of the future temptation in the desert when Satan appears (in a bejeweled stole) at the Child's bedside and then transports him to a high cliff to see the city of Jerusalem in flames, tempting the boy to react. It is this "Lenten" quality that makes The Young Messiah a not-incongruous film for the latter weeks of Lent.

Uncle Cleophas to the rescue!

The film does a nice job weaving together the strands of pious tradition and the loose ends given us in the Gospels. James, “the brother of the Lord” (Gal 1:19)? He's Uncle Cleophas' son. Who's Cleophas? Mary's brother. (People familiar with the Bible will realize that later, beneath the Cross, along with Jesus' mother, there will be “his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas [Clopas]” –see John 19:25.) The jolly Cleophas knows about Jesus' miraculous conception and drops tantalizing hints to the boy, who is beginning to puzzle about his own mysterious nature and why he, and not others, can restore life to a dead bird—and to a dead boy. “Your mother was weaving the veil for the Holy of Holies,” Cleophas remarks, setting the scene of the Annunciation as told not by Luke, but by that early Proto-Evangelium. For her part, Mary insists throughout most of the film that the boy is still too young for that story.

The extended Holy Family. That's James in the front.

Much is made of the fact that the child had been born in Bethlehem (something Mary tries to keep the Child from talking about). Even on the extended family's return to Israel (by sea), when it comes out that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, strangers take note. There are no seven-year-old boys in Bethlehem. Herod saw to that. When Herod's son (who looks like the Satan figure, but without the bleached hair) hears rumors about a boy who escaped the Bethlehem slaughter, he sends a Roman centurion on a mission to finish what he himself had done those years earlier. The several encounters (and near misses) between the boy and the soldier keep the plot moving through to a pivotal moment in the Temple.

Casting was totally on target. Joseph (Vincent Walsh) is spectacular, and Severus (Sean Bean) does a marvelous job showing the centurion's long-suppressed humanity struggle for the upper hand. The physical settings in Matera, Italy and in Rome's Cinecittá studios are superb. The location titles in Papyrus font, not so much.