Something I've been up to...

April is on it's way out and here in Boston it finally looks like spring! Monday begins the lyrical month of Mary, and this year that brings with it the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima and the canonization of two of her tiny messengers.

Our Founder, Blessed James Alberione, has yet to be canonized, but when that day comes, he will probably be numbered among the saints who were particularly noteworthy in their love for Our Lady. For Alberione, "devotion" to Mary isn't enough (if by "devotion" you understand a pious affection characterized by personal prayer to Mary). Alberione was convinced that love of Mary expresses itself in one's commitment to know Our Lady always better, to entrust oneself to her ever more deeply and trustingly and in imitating her: her virtues and her mission of giving Jesus to everyone. He loved the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, telling the Daughters of St Paul that it was practically an icon of the mission of evangelization. Evangelizers "carry" Jesus within them and communicate him even wordlessly wherever they go, as Mary did when she brought the just-conceived Christ into the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. That is why Alberione's favorite title for Mary was "Queen of Apostles": exemplar of all those who bring Jesus to the world. (A second-favorite title for her was "Mother of the Divine Shepherd," and it is lovely that not only will Pope Francis canonize two little shepherds on May 13, this year that date falls within the 4th week of Easter, begun on Good Shepherd Sunday.)

Sneak peek of part of a May message!

With all this in mind, I undertook a special little project on for the month of May, and now it is ready to launch. You can sign up now for " A Minute a Day for the Month of May" to get a daily Marian message from the writings of Blessed James and of my friend and fellow-sister, Sister Marianne Lorraine. The message includes a gorgeous work of art, a prayer for the day and a link to a Marian song by your favorite choir of media nuns.

Take advantage of the Fatima centenary to advance in your understanding of Mary and her role in the Church and in our salvation, and to warm your heart with the beauty that has always surrounded the one Full of Grace.

Earth Day and the Incarnation

On this Saturday in the Octave of Easter, many people are also observing Earth Day. I like to think of this year's confluence as serendipitous. It reminds me that "God so loved the world that he gave his Only-Begotten Son" to bring about a new heavens and a new earth, a newness that leapt into infinity with the resurrection, but that began with the Incarnation, God becoming one with the works of his hands.

Years (maybe even decades) ago, I was leafing through my Dad's scrapbook. In between his photos from Army days in Germany and newspaper clippings of his speeches as President of the Holy Name Society (local and then national) was a tiny, deeply yellowed bit of newsprint. The headline read: Poetess Edna St Vincent Millay dies in New York. A short obituary followed. It was 1950. (I just looked that up.)

The only poem I ever remember Dad reciting from memory was Robert Frost's famous one about the two roads. Whatever had possessed that shy young JAG officer to save the death notice of this poet? I should have asked him while I could. I myself came across a single line of Millay's just recently that impressed me deeply. Maybe this is what impressed him, too. Maybe it have a similar effect on you.

The first line of God's World speaks to me of the Incarnation, of the sudden and unexpected arrival of Gabriel with a message from the Most High to his tiny earth. It couldn't be more fitting for Earth Day 2017. Here it is, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation:

God's World

Related Poem Content Details

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! 

   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! 

   Thy mists, that roll and rise! 

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag 

And all but cry with colour!   That gaunt crag 

To crush!   To lift the lean of that black bluff! 

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! 

Long have I known a glory in it all, 

         But never knew I this; 

         Here such a passion is 

As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear 

Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year; 

My soul is all but out of me,—let fall 

No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Book Review: People of the Second Chance: A Guide to Bringing Life-Saving Love to the World

People of the Second Chance: A Guide toBringing Life-Saving Love to the World

Mike Foster

Every once in a while I get a book list with an offer to pick a free book to review. The listing typically features not just my preferred genres (religion, history, biography, cooking!) but business and management type books, celebrity tell-alls, the works. Once in a while a book looks like it will support something I am working on. Right now that would be a series of retreat talks for the sisters (please begin your prayers now). The theme of the retreat is taken right off the walls of our Pauline chapels the world over: Do not fear...Live with a Penitent Heart.

God's repeated call to “repent” means that not all is completely terrific with us. But it also says that we have a chance to get things set aright. We get a do-over. We get a second chance (and a third, and a four-hundredth). I figured that Mike Foster's book would offer me some insight into the practical side of living with a penitent heart, so when the book review freebie list came my way, I requested People of the SecondChance: A Guide to Bringing Life-Saving Love to the World.

When the book came in, its very format told me that it was the kind of book that came from an experience of working with people, lots of people, who may have been tempted to throw in the towel when it comes to getting things right. It turns out, “People of the Second Chance” is a non-profit organization that uses tools of faith, common sense, and a healthy acceptance of imperfection to help people who feel like failures (and whose lives, in some cases, may seem to bear that out). The book's dedication page reads: “For every broken life becoming beautiful again.” The organization offers leadership training and programs for churches, and founder (and book author) Mike Foster is on the speaker circuit with the message, as well.

All that experience comes out in the pages of People of the Second Chance. Foster begins with his own story, the deep roots of his personal feelings of failure. He looks like a guy who has it all completely together, but his ministry draws continually on the kind of honesty that comes from facing unpleasant truths with the powerful help of grace and humor. “God's love gets in through our cracks and breaks.... I may not like the formula, but God sure doesn't seem to mind.” In the chapter “How to Be an Imperfectionist,” Foster assures the reader:

You will be a jerk. You will let others down. You will make lousy decisions. You will hurt others...mess up your children.... have moral failures [and]...horrible memories...be rejected...heartbroken. Imperfection is a part of this life. …

So if we're going to make life into God's party, we have to ditch this damaging desire to be flawless.

Foster does not limit himself to Second Chance “in-house” language. He draws from a variety of spiritual writers from different traditions (for example, Ranier Maria Rilke, Thomas Merton, Anne Lamott, and St Teresa of Calcutta).

A frank, conversational tone is consistent throughout the book, and it is a book suffused with hope, starting with the forward by Bob Goff: “see who God is turning us into, rather than overidentifying with who we were”; “Each week...we bring friends to talk about a time when they failed. In fact, experiencing failure has become almost a prerequisite.... people who have failed are more generous with their compassion, more extravagant with their love, and less inhibited in their expressions of both.”

Foster's book offers sound encouragement to anyone who is appalled by their own past or their propensity for failure--or who find it hard to accept the wayward past (or propensity for failure) of those they live or work with or minister to.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. In addition, I received a review copy of the book mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. I am committed to giving as honest a review as possible, as part of my community's mission of putting media at the service of the truth. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

"They have taken away my Lord."

There at the empty tomb, Mary Magdalen could come to only one conclusion: "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they put him." Jesus' body was missing, and since it cannot be that he went away on his own, someone else must be responsible for this loss. "They" did it. ("They" always do.)

That Easter dawn, Mary was acting on a kind of instinct,  trying to figure things out, to find a reasonable explanation and make "sense" of what as going on, even looking for someone to blame. I can't speak for you, but I do this all the time. Things are not as they should be: why not? I expect a bit of order and logic in the way things unfold, after all!

What strikes me this morning is that Mary Magdalen, in her understandably distraught state of mind, failed to take into account a very important piece of information that was being made available to her. She failed to reconsider her logical assumption in the light of the fact that the tomb was not completely empty after all: there were two Angels there, and they had been speaking to her, offering to open up a conversation. A conversation from which she turned away after making her rather blunt reply about the missing Jesus.

Thankfully, the missing person was there all along, recognized only when he addressed her by name. "Mary!"

This Easter day invites me to learn to doubt my logical assumptions, based as they are on the solid evidence of my eyes or the experience of years past, but to keep my ears open. The words of the Eucharistic hymn by St Thomas Aquinas tells me "Sight, taste and touch ... are all deceived. The ear alone most safely is believed."

He is Risen and with Us Always

It is the Lord!
Blessed Easter!

About The Supper at Emmaus, by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (Italian, c 1590 - 1625)
Oil on canvas, about 1615 - 1625; 139.7 × 194.9 cm (55 × 76 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Good Friday

Of Palms and Martyrs

What a charmer, the smiling little boy in his Coptic server's robe, wearing a crown of woven palm and holding a cross of woven palm fronds. Palms, the ancient symbol of victory—and of martyrdom. Initial reports out of Egypt indicated that the child was among the worshipers martyred in yesterday's terrorist attacks against Coptic Christian churches; now there are some reports that he may be alive. So we don't know which side of eternity he is on today, but yesterday he was one of many who processed with us shouting “Hosanna!” to the Christ who is coming.

You know how you can hear a familiar text and then suddenly something new pops out? That's what it was like for me hearing Matthew's account of the entry into Jerusalem. “The crowds that went before him and that followed him shouted, 'Hosanna!'”

Fresco above the entrance of the Cathedral of Susa, Italy. Click to see in detail!

Was that always there? 

Crowds before him, and then crowds following behind, like the whole procession of salvation history. There were the generations that came “before him,” preparing the way for the Lord, and then, for two thousand years now, crowds following after him, that smiling child among them like us. All acclaiming him in words we still use to give him thanks and praise, and that will be on our lips when he returns—Blessed is he who comes!

And Jesus is the center of it all. 

May Jesus be the center of your every day this Holy Week.