Retreat Report

Retreat opened yesterday afternoon, with thunder rumbling overhead. Today we had a perfect late spring sort of day: cool breeze, blue skies, puffy bright clouds, bird calls and the scent of flowers in the air. I'd rather be out there than inside continuing to put my talks together! Which is, as I told the sisters this morning, quite literally what I do: I gather notes and quotes, type them up, print them in whatever order they happen to be in and then use (yes) an actual pair of scissors and a glue stick to cut and paste them after I've sorted them into the topics that the notes themselves reveal. Probably not the most efficient way to get the job done, but I've found it helpful. Otherwise, I tend to procrastinate ever more, always feeling the need for more research before I attempt to write a paragraph. This way, it comes together before my eyes and tells me what needs to be written by way of transition and illustration.


Here's what I opened the retreat with:

I have a plaque in my room, lettered in gold over a kind of gold rainbow. It says, “The place is here. The time is now.” “When the Byzantine liturgy begins, the deacon says simply, 'Kairos!'“ (Schmemann, Eucharist, p. 217). Kairos! It doesn't just mean “roll 'em” or “On your marks, get set, GO!” It means both “Now!” and “Good timing!” St. Paul used that word when he wrote, “Now is the acceptable time.”
….Just a couple of weeks ago at Fatima, Pope Benedict spoke of making “ a journey to the core of one's being and to the nucleus of Christianity, so as to reinforce the quality of one's witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom” (woah). That is also a good definition of retreat. It sets the bar really high, but “Now is the acceptable time.”

The overall theme of the retreat is based on a message our Founder received in a mystical experience of Jesus in the Eucharist: Do not be afraid; I am with you. From here (the tabernacle) I want to enlighten. Live with a penitent heart.
Since the first three phrases all fall in the general category of divine promises, and the last is all that is asked of us, that's the part we're focusing on this week. Each day will consider a different quality of the "penitent heart" that corresponds to the Lord's call.
I'll try to keep you posted--a task rendered a bit more challenging by my laptop's seeming inability to find the retreat house wireless signal! (Good thing everyone else is on retreat; that means that the community computer is free all day!)

Retreat Report: A Grateful Heart

In case you missed last summer's "retreat reports" (don't worry; I'm not on retreat--I'm preaching it), I'll see if I can keep you in the loop with the daily meditation themes. Even though it's the same content as last year.
Today is officially day 2 of the retreat, but day 1 is more of an initiation into the retreat frame of mind. Today is when I really started talking about the subject, drawn from the divine message our Founder wanted written in every Pauline chapel in the world: "Do not be afraid; I am with you. From here [tabernacle] I want to enlighten. Live with a penitent heart." (Read about it here.)
The "fear not; I am with you" shows up all over the place in the bible, as does the theme of light. But the "penitent heart" phrase is a bit challenging--though it is very enlightening when you look at it through the bible's many calls to repentance. Our Founder's original expression was in Latin, "cor poenitens tenete," and it has been translated many ways: "be sorry for sin"; "live in continual conversion" or "have a penitent heart." But that "tenete" always gets lost in the translation, which is odd, because "tenete" means "keep" or "hold fast"!
What I decided to do is focus on the qualities of the penitent heart, and do that in some sort of order. Since everything starts from grace, the first quality of the penitent heart is gratitude. The penitent heart is stirred to love by the recognition of what good has been done "for me". The examen itself starts with thanksgiving—otherwise, instead of responsiveness, everything is reduced to dry duty, almost a mathematical transaction. Robert Roberts (Spiritual Emotions, p 144) wrote: “You get what you pay for and you earn what you get" is not a Christian worldview. “the obstacles to Christian gratitude are human resistances to acknowledge our dependence on God, and the failure to appreciate the gifts he gives us and the beauty of relationship with him.”

And Russian Orthodox liturgist Alexander Schmemann blew me away with this insight: “The Church convicts sin through her thanksgiving. Through which she recognizes the vital lessons of evil, the source of sin as unthankfulness, as man's falling away from the 'hymning, blessing, praising, giving thanks and worshiping' through which he lives—for man, and in him all creation, knows God and has communion with him. Not giving thanks is the root and the driving force of ... pride …. The spiritual essence of pride, properly distinguishable only in the spiritual effort of 'discernment of spirits,' lies precisely in the fact that, as opposed to all other causes ascribed to the fall, it alone is not from below but from above: It is not from perfection, but from completion, not from deficiency but from an overabundance of gifts, and not from weakness but from power. In other words, it comes not from some unexplainable 'evil' of an unknown origin, but from the enticement and temptation of the divine 'very good' of creation in man. Pride is opposed to thanksgiving precisely as unthanksgiving because it arose from the same causes as thanksgiving. It is another, opposite answer to the same gift; it is temptation by the same gift.” (Eucharist, page 187).

St Ignatius (and many other saints with him) even said we should give grateful praise to God for our good desires! We ought not ignore them, or assume they originate in our own hearts. Good desires are a form of grace for which we owe due thanks. Not a perfunctory "thanks" of politeness ("thank you, Lord. And now to the real business at hand...") but heartfelt and amazed thanks: "the Almighty has done great things for me! He, the Almighty! for me!"

Retreat Report: Recap

I'm down in the music studio with Sr. Bridget, Sr. Sean and Sr. Maria Kim while two reps from Decca Records visit the various departments of our publishing house here in Jamaica Plain. They really came to audition the choir (I guess you can say that), but there are only three of the actual singers here today. Good thing we have CDs (and YouTube videos) to share! 
The producer, Guy Gilbert, came before noon. He was telling us that they have been to a number of ancient monasteries. "It was like going back a thousand years," he said. He couldn't understand why the nuns in these cloistered communities would not come out from behind their grilles. "Don't they want to get the Word out?" It's certainly not always easy to "get" the idea of the vocation to the strictly contemplative life. It is a life that says, "Even here and now, God is enough." And the whole validity of the life is in that: God is enough. They don't have to point to works, activities, accomplishments. Their "work," their "activity," their "accomplishment" is telling the world "God is enough."
Which is a retreat in itself.
The sisters have been saying many good things about the retreat talks I prepared. (I think they especially appreciate that the conferences didn't last more than 40 minutes a day.) As for me, I am very moved to receive thanks from sisters who actually knew the Founder, whose message I was basing everything on. In fact, only a few of the sisters on retreat were my age or younger; most were older, and many had known the Founder, even made their novitiates in Rome when he used to preach to them every day. So it's good to know I'm on the right track!
Speaking of tracks... let me get back to the control room and set up my little video camera for the arrival of the music people. I want to have something to share with you later in the week!
(I return to Chicago tomorrow.)

Retreat Report: the Receptive Heart

Here's a tidbit from Day 3 of the retreat on the theme "The Penitent Heart" (or, the heart in continual conversion):

“Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

The context of this Gospel call to penitence is the presence of the Kingdom of heaven: this comes first; this is the motivation and condition and the context within which repentance is something positive, a statement of “How Great Thou Art.” “This is the time of fulfillment”: this is central; this is what matters most. So the penitent heart is a response to a fullness that is present and beginning to open up before your eyes. This is not a call to repent in view of oneself, or in a kind of void.

Repentance is the response to an overwhelming presence, perceived and received in humble gratitude, like Isaiah in the Temple (“Woe is me!”) or that catch of fish by Simon's crew. “Leave me, Lord: I'm a sinful man.” The answer: Do not be afraid. So “when they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.” The penitent heart is not in the “leave me,” but here in the “following him,” the living out of the response. Just “leave me, I'm a sinner,” is a dead end, not a path of life.

“It is I; do not be afraid.” The penitent heart starts with the recognition of God's nearness: “penitence” is not a prerequisite or condition for drawing near to God, but a response to God's initiative. (No one comes to me unless the Father draws him.) God loved us first; the penitent heart is responding to that prior love. And the heart “treasures all those [signs of love] and ponders them”:

“It occurred to me that I should write not just memoirs—it sounds pompous—a sort of report, testimony about how generously, throughout my whole life, God gave me gifts; about the ray of light which I almost always felt and saw” (Schmemann, page 318).

The heart is flexible, in motion, not calcified, hardened, stiff, impenetrable—which would make it invulnerable and impervious. Instead, the penitent heart is a feminine heart: receptive and responsive. So the penitent heart is a pure heart: “Purity of heart proceeds not only from what we avoid, but from what we receive: the poverty of spirit which leads us to turn to God; the meekness that is a deep-seated strength...” (Bransfield, interview with Zenit about his book The Human Person: According to John Paul II).

Rome Report, Free Day 2

After 20 days on retreat...
Greetings from Rome! If you find an unusual amount of typing errors in this missive, it is not due to my poor orthographic skills, but to the European keyboard, which has an extra key on the right, as well as punctuation marks in unexpected locations…

We have a free day today, marking the completion of the second of three stages in our month-long retreat. The weather is quite warm (delightful for me, of course), today is sunny—though we had lots of rain during the second stage of the retreat—and the broadband is functioning (yes!). The Casa San Paolo where we are staying is on the grounds of the Daughters of St. Paul generalate. There is a tree-covered hill, a small orchard (kiwi, pomegranate, grapes…) lots of birds (and bugs) and at night, bats flitting out of the trees like little wifts of charred paper from a fire. (The image came to mind because the night I found myself watching the evening air show, a farmer a few miles away was burning his fields, and the whole area smelled of smoke.)

I haven’t been able to enjoy much gelato this trip, though now that I think of it, there is a pretty good “produzione proprio” place not too far from here… But the food here at Casa San Paolo has been quite good. Pasta or risotto every noon, of course, but the pasta does not come with the usual tomato sauce most Americans think is the necessary corollary to spaghetti. For the most part, the pasta is seasoned with olive oil, a light white sauce or white cheese, mushrooms, or (heaven help us) chili peppers so hot they would make Tabasco Sauce evaporate. And there has been a nice array of salad veggies, so dear to me. One thing that has me a bit confounded is the propensity here to serve cooked vegetables at room temperature… I get around it by putting it in my salad. They also use a LOT of eggs. And cheese. Today Sr. Margaret Joseph and I stopped at a local supermarket (yes, a real supermarket, even if for the most part smaller than its American counterpart). The cheese counter offered probably over 100 varieties of cheese. And that isn’t even counting the packaged cheeses in the refrigerator case with the other mass produced dairy items! Breakfast, I admit, is boring, boring, boring: caffe latte (yum) and bread with your choice of spreadable cheese, nutella, apricot preserves, anchovies, eggplant, olives…. on our last free day I got a jar of Dutch peanut butter (the label is Dutch on one side, German on the other) to go with the preserves (and occasionally with the nutella: YUM) as an occasional switch.

During these weeks I have been especially impressed with our FSP missionaries who are making the retreat here. There are missionaries from Romania, Germany and Taiwan. They are characterized by what I can only call ardor. They are intent on mission, and direct everything in a missionary key. All three are Italian. The sister from Taiwan has been there almost her whole religious life. She learned Chinese in just two years, and has really helped, you could say, establish and raise up our Chinese presence. She is really “Chinese with the Chinese,” as St. Paul might say.

Participants in the retreat are not only Daughters of St. Paul, but members of several of the Pauline institutes. In fact, this afternoon we will all board a tour bus for the shrine of the Queen of Apostles, because it is the feast of Bl. Timothy Giaccardo, Father Alberione’s vicar. Mass will be celebrated near his tomb, and we will also (finally) have a chance to visit the tomb of Bl. James Alberione (which was incomplete when we came for the beatification). I am looking forward to seeing people I knew from when I lived here four years ago.

Every day there are little experiences I would love to write about, but I am trying to focus a bit particularly on Jesus right now. These are just a few things I wanted so highlight.

Solemn high silence begins again tonight at 9. Please pray for us!

Retreat Report: Poor in Spirit

Coming down the home stretch in the retreat I am offering our senior sisters. Today's theme was "The Penitent Heart is Poor in Spirit." My notes are rather sketchy, but they do include this very salient quote from Bonhoeffer:

“Anxiety for food and clothing is clearly not the same thing as anxiety for the kingdom of God, however much we should like to persuade ourselves that when we're working for families and concerning ourselves with bread and houses we are thereby building the kingdom, as though the kingdom could be realized only through our worldly cares. The kingdom of God and his righteousness are sharply distinguished from the gifts of the world.... Before we start taking thought for life, our food and clothing, our work and families, we must seek the righteousness of Christ.... Again we have here either a crushing burden, which holds out no hope for the poor and wretched, or else it is the quintessence of the Gospel, which brings the promise of freedom and perfect joy. Jesus does not tell us what we ought to do but cannot; he tells us what god has given us and promises still to give. If Christ has been given us, if we are all called to his discipleship, we're given all things, literally all things. He will see to it that they are added on to us” (D.B. commenting on Mt 7).

Retreat Report... Still Talking!

Can't believe we're halfway through the retreat at this point. The novices are videotaping the sessions (do you say that with a hard drive camera), and I was hoping to post a snippet of today's talk, but it is more complicated than I anticipated. These hard drive cameras save everything in proprietary formats, so you can't just open it in any old program and save the bit you want as a distinct file. I had to download a new program, and then import the files directly from the camera (again...) and I still can't figure out how to edit them. I hope there's some way to at least open them in the Mac when I get back to Chicago so I can edit them in QuickTime or something.
Anyway, today I gave the talk about Merton's "point vierge," which to me corresponds to Teresa's seventh mansion. And to which "sin in us" goes, as St. Paul says, "the full way as sin" to undo the beauty of God's work, attempting to lead us down the path of despair through acedia. About which books are beginning to be written once again. (That probably hasn't really happened since John Cassian's interviewed the original Egyptian desert mystics.)
Tomorrow's talk is "The Penitent Heart is a 'Convicted' Heart." I get the language from the evangelicals, who in turn got it from a translation of a term in the Bible. It's a great way of referring to the personal acknowledgment of sin in oneself; sin is not "out there," it is something I know up close and personal. Awareness of the particular quality of sin in me is pretty essential in the spiritual life. Not that you stare at it; not that you can eradicate it. But you can be more on your guard when what the Catholic tradition calls "near occasions of sin" come around. And you can use this knowledge to your advantage, because generally a person's greatest weakness is a sign of their greatest strength. And that strength is meant for the love and service of God and neighbor. (How sad it is when a person is so little in touch with herself that she doesn't know what she has to offer, but keeps trying to imitate the service other people offer.)
I'm drawing tomorrow's talk in part from blog posts from days of yore. (Is that cheating?)


Books I refer to in the talk:
   

Retreat Report

Yes, it's Memorial Day, but for 26 sisters here at the motherhouse, it's simply Day 3 (or 4, depending how you count) of their annual Spiritual Exercises. The theme for the retreat is from St. Paul: "We believe and so we speak." The first three meditations (Friday evening through Sunday morning) were on the "believe" part; tomorrow we begin the "speak" part. Today we looked at the "bridge" between the believing in God and the speaking to or about God. We looked at what our Founder called "the apostolate of desires." (St Therese is probably the best example out there of this supernatural mission.)

Here's a bit of the morning's conference:

Holy desires come from God; are a form of communion with the heart of God. "Incline my heart according to your will, O God."  After all, God can accomplish his will without us; he doesn't need us for the achievement of his desires. But he gives us communion with him in the very desires, if not in always in the actual carrying out of the explicit goal. He may just use our "prayers, actions, joys and sufferings" in the Body of Christ to bring about the end he, and we, desire without our being actual instruments in the accomplishment. But he lets us commit ourselves (prayers, works, joy and sufferings) freely and passionately to seeking these good outcomes for his sake, for the glory of God and peace to humanity.

Could it be that, like Simeon and Anna, holy desires will train our vision to recognize the way God is accomplishing his plan? They were so in tune with God in "longing for the consolation of Israel" that when He came, they recognized him intuitively. Their "longing for the consolation of Israel" was a holy desire and a prayer at the same time. It was the apostolate of desires.

Retreat Report: the "Convicted" Heart

In a retreat meditation from 1935 (#158-164a), our Founder stressed the “penitence” of the Sacrament of Penance, not the confession (accusation). He uses the example of the woman at Simon's house, whom he identifies with Mary Magdalen. He connects “sorrow for sin” (dolore) with two Gospel lines about penance: “If you do not repent (pentirete) and do penitence, you will not enter the kingdom (Lk 13:5) and “Do penance, repent” (he then restates it, “pull out evil by the roots: sradicarlo”); cf. Lk 3:8-9. Then he commented that we tend to put too much stress on the confession of sin: repentance ("sorrow/dolore for sin") is a “heavenly gift.” We have to pray for it, and have much hope, based on Jesus having died for us.

About two or three years ago, my community in Chicago was treated to tickets to a stage production of “The Screwtape Letters,” based on the book by C.S. Lewis. The whole work was reproduced by just two actors—and one of them didn't even have any lines! As we left the theater and headed toward the L train after the performance, we heard footsteps. A man strode past us with a real spring in his step. He had been at the theater too. Just as he passed us, he turned and declared, with arms outstretched, “I feel convicted!” He was beaming. That's a great example of what St. Paul called "godly repentance."  The bracing energy of truth strips away our threadbare compromises, but doesn't leave us bereft and bedraggled, humbled to the dust forever. Quite the contrary. In godly repentance, we suddenly recognize a greater good than the one we had been trying to preserve or protect. There is a dying here, as a bigger truth than we were ready to suspect strips away the compromises that we have grown so used to. And there is a resurrection here, too: in that very same instant, we discover that the greater good is already ours: a vibrant and trustworthy new life.

 “Christian conversion requires a fundamental reappraisal of oneself as a sinner, and hence an acceptance of others, even in their weakness, and this is the basis for true Christian community. When this reappraisal has not happened, the Christian community becomes an idea, separate from the members who make it up; they are rejected as stupid, confused, ignorant or sinful if they do not share the same ideal as oneself" (David Bird, echoing comments made decades earlier by Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

“ God loves every one of us with a depth and intensity that we can hardly begin to imagine. And he knows us intimately, he knows all our strengths and all our faults. Because he loves us so much, he wants to purify us of our faults and build up our virtues so that we can have life in abundance. When he challenges us because something in our lives is displeasing to him, he is not rejecting us, but he is asking us to change and become more perfect. That is what he asked of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. God rejects no one. And the Church rejects no one. Yet in his great love, God challenges all of us to change and to become more perfect" (Benedict XVI to the young people in Malta).

So the “convicted” heart is willing to change. 

Bella Italia!

Pardon me a moment while I pick up my jaw from the floor, where it keeps falling...

Detail from the top of the stairs at San Marco Friary.

We’ve been in Italy just over a (very full week), having spent the first three days in Florence. The three of us walked everywhere, and no matter where we went, as soon as a door opened, so did my mouth, “Ohhhh!” Many of the most significant sites in Florence, even though they are churches (heck, even the Cathedral), require tickets, but religious sisters generally get in free (and even the tickets are works of art). The Cathedral ticket is valid for 72 hours, which is a good thing, because it covers the Cathedral museum, the Cathedral itself, the crypt, the bell tower and the Baptistry. We only managed to see the Baptistery and the bell tower, though we did go to Sunday Mass in the Cathedral, so we saw that much. The Cathedral museum is one of the best-curated museums anywhere. I missed most of it and I was still blown away. So there is enough left for another trip, should God provide that opportunity! 

Florence was on my must-see list because of Fra Angelico. I had been on several day trips to this magnificent city (including my first visit when I was still a college student only considering religious life), but I had never seen the Dominican friary where the saintly artist lived (and where he painted each brother’s little cell). With almost three days there, I finally had my chance. (Unfortunately for me, the friary-turned-museum is closed on the first Sunday of every month, and September 1 was our only full day in town!) We visited the monastery Church of San Marco on Sunday and saw some of its jaw-dropping splendors (like the ancient mosaic of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Byzantine Empress: a mosaic that had been in the Constantinian Basilica of St Peter’s in the Vatican circa 705 AD, and when that was being torn down to make way for the new Vatican Basilica was cut in half and transported to Florence by a really smart Florentine cardinal).

We learned that Florence with its famous leather industry is the (only) place in Italy where you want to get a steak. And another culinary specialty: lampredotto. 

Lorenzo, the lampredotto vendor.
Note his name! It's a popular one in Florence!

We saw food stands and mom-and-pop restaurants boasting the availability of this unknown foodstuff (which we assumed to be eels or something lamprey-like). Finally we had to break down and ask what it was. This we did in the old produce market, now a combination marketplace (downstairs) and upscalish food court (upstairs). Lorenzo (he with the smiling face) ran a stand that featured something you can get nowhere else but in Florence: a cow stomach sandwich. Two of us were willing to give it a try (at least to split one). With artichokes. The portion of cow stomach (looked like tripe, but not tripe) was pulled from a pot of broth and chopped up; then the artichokes were chopped. These were piled onto a roll, topped with a thin parsley pesto and cut in half for us. Lorenzo was so pleased that we were trying the local specialty he gave us a discount. The flavor was very mild; so mild that it was really like eating an artichoke sandwich to which the meat gave only a bit more substance than the chopped vegetable. Don’t be afraid to try it. (Tell Lorenzo the Sisters sent you.)

Every night in Florence and for our two days in Rome my phone congratulated me: You have taken 15,000 steps today! You are taking more steps than usual! Keep it up! (Not going to happen…)

Sunset view from my room.

Right now we are currently immersed in a retreat experience—appropriately enough, at a retreat house. In fact, this is Pope Francis’ favorite retreat house: The Casa Divin Maestro, established by none other than Blessed James Alberione as a retreat house for the Pauline Family back in the 1950’s when he was at the height of what some members called his “brick fever.” (Always thinking ahead, he was buying properties right and left; this property is just a couple of miles away from the land he bought as a clinic where not only Paulines but any priests, brothers and sisters could be treated while offering their sufferings as a form of prayer that the media would be rightly used.)

Close quarters in the translators' booth.

At any rate, Sister Julia and I won the room lottery. Or maybe they just gave us the best views in the place because we were destined to be in the translation booth all day, every day. But our teeny, tiny bedrooms overlook Lake Albano, and as the sun begins to set, it lights up the Tyrrhenian Sea—highlighting Italy’s west coast. Since we are on the edge of a mountain (a volcano, which I sincerely hope is extinct), there is generally a cool breeze all day, so there is no AC (no screens, either). 

The first part of this month long meeting we are here to translate consists of a retreat with two hour-long conferences daily. (They are outstanding!!!) The “meetings” will begin on the 12th. That's when our translation work will really get intense. Aside from high-level input from Mother General and reports from the treasurer, there will be talks from experts in various fields. Then every day, our sister-delegates from around the world will present short (10-15 minute) reports on the Pauline mission and the needs of the people of their area. This can be especially challenging for the sisters who represent communities that serve more than one country! For example, our East Asia delegate represents communities in four very different counties, with more than four languages; similarly for the sister who represents Central Europe, where she must communicate the situation of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. These reports will help the assembly get a handle on the needs around the world so that the members will be better able to discern the direction the Lord wants us to take for the next six years (and the people he wants at the helm of the congregation for that timeframe, too).

The Chapter Hall, as seen from the translators' booths.

Overall, this is a young assembly. 27 of the 60 members have never attended a General Chapter before. (One of those 27 is also the eldest elected delegate!) I believe that this is also the first General Chapter in which all our African communities are represented by African sisters. At the last Chapter (I was a delegate) there were still missionary sisters representing East Africa and South Africa. And just Saturday night, as if truly passing the torch, one of our great missionaries to Africa died in our nearby hospital (the one founded as a clinic by Blessed James and Mother Thecla back in the 50’s). I don’t believe I have ever done this, but as soon as the English translation comes in, I am going to post her death notice so you can read about this apostolic woman who joined the Daughters of St Paul when she was just eleven years old, established our community in Angola and, before that, in Mozambique (she was kicked out of the country twice during times of political upheaval), and lived long enough to see the Pope visit her beloved adopted land. (One of them: she also served in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.) She was a writer, teacher, novice director, publisher, cheerleader for the evangelization of Africa. And when it was not possible, because of political tensions, to carry out the media mission of the Daughters of St Paul, she found a way to stay with the people of her adopted land and share the Word of God with them in any way that was available, including parish work, until the way was clear to take up the publishing apostolate and welcome Pauline vocations once more.

Sister Maria had been in Italy getting some medical attention, and had accepted with a spirit of sacrifice and real oblation a new assignment that did not include a return to her missions. However, she did have permission to go back to Mozambique one more time: for the Papal Visit. Instead, when Pope Francis landed there, Sister Maria, still in Italy, had landed in our hospital in Albano. So when the delegates from Africa began to arrive for the General Chapter, she sent them a message, "Please come and see me before the meetings start." The Mozambican sister told me that on Saturday evening, despite the retreat, she found herself turning on her cell phone, and there was an email from her novice director, Sister Maria: I am thinking of you and praying for the General Chapter. That night, the younger sister found it impossible to fall asleep. She tossed and turned, until late in the evening there was a knock on the door. It was Mother General, informing her of Sister Maria's sudden death.

How can we not see this missionary’s departure as a providential sign that, just as she went ahead in so many countries to prepare the way for the Pauline mission, she would be going ahead of the work facing the assembly in the coming weeks so that “the word of the Lord will speed on and triumph” through our mission in the future? 

I am counting on your prayers to help me and Sr Julia translate as well as possible the remainder of the (excellent beyond words) retreat conferences and to communicate accurately the content of the Superior General's report and the expert's input without stumbling too much along the way.... and counting on your prayers to the Holy Spirit to truly guide our Sisters in this most important month of discernment. (A General Chapter is the highest governing body in a religious congregation, even if its authority is only temporary. So it's kind of like a conclave that not only elects a Pope but gives him marching orders!)

Thanks a million!

A domani--or whenever! (Until tomorrow, or....)

Retreat Report

It's the next-to-last day for retreat, and the theme for the day was "The Penitent Heart is an Apostolic Heart." The penitent heart is not penitent merely for the sake of purifying ourselves of defects and sin; the most important aspect is not the negative but the positive: the heart must be penitent so it can be free to love God and neighbor; free to put aside immediate self-interest or concrete advantage for the sake of another.

Jesus in the words by our tabernacles tells us that he wants our hearts to be free: delivered from fear and filled with light. So we have the positive and negative aspects of the penitent heart. What is the fear that freedom casts out by its excess. Scripture speaks of fear as a slavish quality. “The fear of death makes us slaves our whole life long”; “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading you back into fear.”

Freedom is our favorite word as Americans, our greatest shared value. And it was Paul's favorite word, too! Paul says we become free when we are obedient to the Gospel Freedom and obedience are both aspects of Paul's concept of being a servant. And yet he could say, in almost the same breath, “Am I not free? Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” Pope Benedict also wrote, “I must learn... to keep myself available for whatever he, the Lord, needs of me at a given moment, even if other things seem more appealing and more important to me: it means giving life, not taking it. It is in this very way that we experience freedom: freedom from ourselves, the vastness of being. In this very way... our life becomes important and beautiful.”

In freedom, the person's gifts are released for full and expanisve expression, not as requirements, not “exacted,” but springing freely and abundantly and without interior force or effort. Even if they require immense energy and work, it is not grinding effort, but life-giving, with the fruits of the Spirit as side effects.

 

When Sr Helena and I met with Brother Al last November, I had a chance to ask him for some insights about the "penitent heart" based on his long years of acquaintance with our Founder. Right away he connected that exhortation, "Live with a penitent heart" to the apostolate. He said that the “be sorry for sins” wasn't merely a “be sorry for YOUR sins”; that there was a broader understanding of sin and grace involved, including the way the media play into that. So “live with a penitent heart” can mean, “have a heart!” Have a heart for what is behind the signs of the times; have a heart for what is going on in a culture produced by the use of these means; respond from the heart to the needs of that are manifested in the way peole interact in this culture; respond from the heart to the compromised glory of God and peace of humanity. Have a heart for the whole world of media, and every person affected by the misuse of these gifts of God. And that means to have a spirit also of reparation, which is the spiritual counterbalance for the harm that is spread when people use communications technologies without regard for the whole truth about the human person.

Doing penance and offering reparation is a is a sign of the clear awareness that:

1. all is not as it should be, and
2. we can make a difference. Even at the cost of sacrifice.

As God's love is manifested in this valley of tears as mercy, our love of God in this valley of tears is expressed in sacrifice.What is the spirit of sacrifice of the penitent heart? It is love that will not be held back or limited by discomfort or suffering or loss of personal advantage. Love speaks in terms of sacrifice: “I will climb mountains for you! I would slay dragons for you! I would throw myself in front of a train to pull you from harm! I would die for you.” The “for you” makes all the difference. Without a “for you,” there isn't a sacrifice. And there can be plenty of sacrifice in extending the word of God to others

Evelyn Underhill has such a charming expression of this self-emptying missionary sacrifice: “Redemption does not mean you and me safe and popped into heaven. It means that each soul, redeemed from self interest by the revelation of Divine Love, it taken and used again for the spread of that redeeming work.”

Referred to in this talk:

Retreat Report: Surrender--the Intersection of Faith and Prayer

My job is done here! I gave the last talk for our sisters' retreat this morning, and they have just under two hours left of their week of prayer and silence. So far, the reports coming in are good (their superior told me, "I haven't heard much, but if they didn't like it, I would have heard a LOT by now!"), so it sure seems as though all the prayers to the Holy Spirit have been answered. Thanks!

Today's topic is one that could be pretty intimidating: surrender (or, as the old spiritual writers used to put it, "abandonment to the will of God"). There's a page in our prayerbook with a prayer for submission to God's will; I always rephrase it. I just think "surrender" has a deeper meaning to it.

Here's why:

"Surrender" and "submit"  are not spiritual terms. We use them in many different contexts. In a law case, a lawyer might "submit the evidence", but he asks the jury to surrender to the truth (and surrender a verdict). In a war, an army might have to give up because the situation is hopeless; to continue would put their cause or their country at greater risk. They wave the white flag. They surrender. We use expressions like "I give up"; "I quit"; "face the facts"; "reality check"; "we've done all we could" (or "there's nothing else we can try"); "it is what it is."

Sometimes, when we want someone to submit to us, or to surrender to our ideas, we may say, "Just trust me on this!" And when we're driving, we might surrender to the guidance of the GPS and let it determine the road we take.  None of these are particularly spiritual. But they're all forms of submission or surrender.

"Submit" is a biblical term. The way it is in Greek seems to relate to putting things in proper order; a rightly ordered relationship. This (whatever) is "placed under" that. One thing is sent or put beneath or subject to another. We find this word used in the New Testament mostly in the Epistles, typically in an exhortation about Church order (but sometimes about submitting to God!): "Submit to your leaders." Husband and wife are to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Servants must be "submissive" to their human masters; that is the appropriate social order. St. Paul used the word "submit" as the opposite of freedom when he wrote about the Galatians "submitting to the yoke of slavery"--the old Law. There's a strong association with obedience here, but it is not a matter of "listening"; it is a matter of right order; right relationship.

"Surrender" is from the Old French. It means especially to give something over; to hand over, deliver. So we might think of it as highlighting the act of giving; the freedom of the Gift (rather than the way the gift is set in relation to something "over" it). The emphasis is less on "order" and more on giving. Surrender involves a relationship. That's the difference between raising the white flag ("I give up! There's no hope! Might as well surrender...") and making a GIFT of self. (Sometimes the act of resignation, facing the facts; accepting reality, may be a step along the way to surrender in the sense of the gift of self, though.)

We could spend some time looking at the obstacles and impediments and opposites of surrender, but why bother? Let's focus on the grace of surrender itself. And you know what? We automatically respond--or at least most easily and freely and gladly respond in surrender--when we come face to face with what is good or beautiful or true and trustworthy. This is just human  nature.

What happens when you see a fresh, hot, lovely donut? You SURRENDER! You let go! You give yourself to the donut in a way that is appropriate to donuts. The donut is GOOD! You have to go against yourself not to surrender (which is the precise problem with fresh, hot donuts.) But just to say... that is the proper and easy and normal response we make before the good and true and beautiful.

So the paradox of surrender is that it is an act of freedom, not of force. It is a movement of joy and confidence, or at least confidence (there are certainly things our human nature cannot be joyful about, as Mother Thecla was so wise to acknowledge: "We cannot always be joyful, but we can always be at peace"). It is the confidence of the man in the parable who found a treasure hidden in a field, and out of joy went and sold everything he had. He gave it all over; he surrendered all his possessions for the treasure he and he alone had recognized.

The Holy Spirit's goals in any given circumstance are probably going to be vaster and deeper and farther-reaching than any outcome I might be looking for. And so it may seem that the Holy Spirit is not acting when, in fact, he is doing great things on a huge scale!

Surrender is me becoming one with God's creative act that is constantly giving me existence. When Alberione reflected on this, he wrote, "My God, I am entirely the work of your omnipotent love!" Of course he wanted to respond in a complete gift of self! Same thing with the Blessed Mother. Her response to the Annunciation was a laying-down of her life, with complete trust in God to determine and direct the outcome. As we have been praying in the "Come Holy Spirit," "come take possession of our souls and make them all your own," I see Mary and say, "this is what happens when the Holy Spirit takes possession of a soul": Jesus becomes unavoidably manifest. Christ lives in me.

Retreat Report: The Eighth Day

In the Liturgy, Sunday is always the "eighth day," the beginning of a new cycle of days, like the first day of a new creation. And so today is, literally and liturgically, the eighth day for the retreatants: the last day of retreat launches them back into a new year of service. For this special day, the focus is on a prayer composed by our Founder in 1919. We call it the "Pact," because it is a kind of covenantal formula, even a pious "contract" with the Lord. The bottom line of the Pact is that God is calling us to something we cannot achieve on our own; therefore, we will give God all we have, and we will count on God to, in Paul's words, "make it all work out for the spread of the Gospel." 

So the penitent heart is a confident heart.

Paul is a great example of a penitent heart, not simply because he had something so dramatic to repent over, but because he did not let that realization block him from carrying out his call to be an apostle. “I am the very least, less than the least, of the holy ones” could have been a really good excuse to stay home in Tarsus and quietly end his days in prayerful solitude and self-effacing reparation. Instead, it was “I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called apostle, but anyway.... that is what I am” Evelyn Underhill wrote about the temptation to focus on discouraging self-assessments to the point that one is afraid to get involved in the Christian mission, because you know you'll only mess it up. If that's the case, she says, “the primary failure is in our relationship with God,” who's really the one who expects to act (p 225). And von Speyr (Confession, p ?) says that this is characteristic of the temptation to scruples, and that what it betrays is, paradoxically, that the person “underestimates grace...[because] he thinks there is such a thing as human sufficiency and adequacy. He overestimates himself because he thinks he's capable of lending his own words the proper weight.... He trusts God as little as he trusts himself.”

But the penitent heart is a bold, confident heart, like Paul's. The penitent heart is founded on love, not on fear—because what would it be afraid of? Losing the good it it focused on? That won't happen if you are focused on the “one thing necessary.” Punishment? “Love is not perfected in one who is afraid.” Loss or suffering? “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Punishment? “Who will condemn us—Christ Jesus, who died and raised from the dead, who himself intercedes for us?”

What about failure? Over at Pixar studios, they have special project meetings for their multi-million dollar movies, and when they find mistakes, there is a general sense of satisfaction, no matter how far along the movie is. The director of Toy Story 3 said, “We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That's why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.” And the Design Director for the online New York Times told a graduating class last year, “Every success is the culmination of a series of failures. You cannot have success without failing. If you want my advice, fail early and often. Don't waste any time, get out there today and start failing.” You know what Primo said: “If you do things, you will make mistakes. But if you do not do anything, you are living a mistake.”

So the penitent heart is “half-blind” and prone to failure, with only enough light for one step at a time. The whole way is not clear. The penitent heart has to keep monitoring its direction, its movements. It cannot set its own path and stride confidently forward. No matter which way it turns, it finds that it is “weak, ignorant, incapable and inadequate in every way” (from the Pact). Flannery O'Connor wrote (MM 131) “I believe that the basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.” And a few months ago there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about an art exhibit of the work of Tim Burton. (His characters include “Edward Scissorhands.”) The art critic said that the central theme of Burton's images is “ever and always the nobility of failure.... He seems to believe that all of us, even those who outwardly seem most successful, are infinitely frailer and more bruised than we care to admit, and it is this fact that constitutes our human dignity. But … Burton's art is somewhat happier than one might expect” (“In Goth They Trust” by James Gardner, WSJ 2/3/2010).

The Pact is not built on some extravagant spiritual notion: it is grounded in universal experience.

“More than ever in this culture of the success brought about by the media, we are forced, in order to evangelize, to rejoice in our weaknesses.... This ministry should be entrusted only to those who have decided to embrace the cross.... Our communication should be rooted in a twofold attitude: success and flight, immersion in media and solitude.... Without the cross we are unable to relativize our ego and without it people cannot see what animates us from within" (Babin, p. 30).

So our weakness is not a problem for the mission; it's one of the criteria! It is the presence of the Cross. Our inconstancy and weakness are not ultimate or absolute: the power of the Holy Spirit is. Even sin is already taken care of: “the worst has already happened, but it has been remedied” (Julian). “What is most helpful to the Church,” Pope Benedict wrote to priests about the scandal, “is not only a frank and complete acknowledgment of the weaknesses of her ministers, but also a joyful and renewed realization of the greatness of God's gift[s].” The focus goes back to God: God's call, God's grace, God's presence.

Books referenced:

   

Retreat Report

Continuing to put the talks together--I have tomorrow's ready (and the next two days' as well!), which leaves me the final two, and a surfeit of time for the task. 
In general, the topic is ongoing conversion. A "penitent heart" is a heart that hears and responds to the Gospel, which begins with a hearty "Repent!" Naturally, there are obstacles. One of the most insidious is the topic of Kathleen Norris' wonderful book, The Noonday Demon. (It's much better than it sounds!) The old desert mystics called this "noonday demon" acedia (later identified as plain old sloth, but really much more than mere laziness). Finally, today, I recognized that this is none other than what the spiritual masters in the western tradition, especially from around the 1600's on to about 1950, bemoaned as "tepidity." I find the notion of acedia to be a bit deeper, and way more useful, even if tepidity has the advantage of being related to a dramatic biblical image...
Norris writes about an experience she had: “I did not recognize it as a temptation, something that I could resist. I was not aware that even as I maintained a busy and productive life, sloth [as it has been named] had a firm grip on me. For I had become aware that it was possible to reject time, as well as embrace it. If I wanted to, I could live just barely, refusing the gift of each day” (p 12). Russian Orthodox liturgist Alexander Schmemann (another favorite of mine) writes in his journal, “The basic disease is sloth. It is that strange laziness and passivity of our entire being...which constantly convinces us that no change is possible and therefore desirable. It is in fact a deeply rooted cynicism which to every spiritual challenge responds, 'What for?' and makes our life one tremendous spiritual waste. It is the root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source.” 

If you've read any old western spirituality, sermons, exhortations, and the like, doesn't that sound just like the tepidity they warn against? Something in us just wants to be left alone! We want to live like "normal." The Carmelite writer Ruth Borrows (in “The Essence of Prayer”) wrote that we ought not assume that what seems “normal” or “natural” is, in fact, innocuous—that our unquestioned assumptions are very likely to be hiding places for primordial selfwardness: self-centered, self-seeking, self-serving.

Naturally, we tend to resist.

And we don't only have one of these passages to go through in life. Our inner life can be traced as a series of these conversions that we experience as death-matches. While we live in time, we are called to continuing conversion of mind and heart; to continually be transformed by the renewal of our mind.
Do you find the concept of "acedia" more spiritually helpful and hopeful than that of tepidity? How, why, why not? 

Books referenced here:

Retreat Report: halfway point!

There's a quality to the penitent heart that calls for some definition of terms. Starting with one of those words that, sadly, has been lost in our culture except in jokes and ironic comments.

What are the meanings of the word "virgin"?

It can mean pristine, original, new, beginning, nave, inexperienced...

But when you speak of human beings, the surrounding culture doesn't know of virginity in any other sense than the strictly biological. Unless you are speaking of extra-virgin olive oil. In some ways, many times, our culture treats virginity as a negation (it refers to something a person hasn't done) and yet at the same time as something you can lose. As something with a definite before and after. Certainly not something that can be shared in a life-long mutual gift.

Pope John Paul gives virginity a kind of unexpected twist. He sees it not as a matter of before/after, but as a totality of a person's gift of self. Think of a virginal couple on their wedding night: their marital embrace is a sharing of virginity that will extend throughout their lives together. The fullness of personal giving and of the intersubjective communion of persons. Not something you lose, but a point of communion. Something that speaks of the absolute and "eternal spousal meaning of the glorified body". Existence for an Other. I do not find my meaning in myself, but in a gift of self to that other to whom I belong.

There's a wholeness to the way the penitent heart clings (tenete) to the Lord, to become one spirit with him. A wholeness of its availability that is an image of the wholeness of the receptivity and availability of the 2^nd person of the Trinity, ever at the Father's side,receiving all that the Father gives and is (God does not ration his gift of the Spirit).

Bl. Alberione wrote: “Ah, if only we reflected that, in us, the Father is eternally begetting the Son; in us the Son is eternally begotten and in us the Father and Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit...” In us: our communion with this reality of the indwelling Trinity is what makes the penitent heart a virginal heart because we, too, are continually being brought into existence by a creative act of God.

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship, It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody and if we could see it we would see these billion points of light coning together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely (Merton).

It is our ongoing creation; our being-made here and now, and according to Robert Barron, conversion is a new creation. So the penitent heart is a heart springing fresh-made from the creative hands of God at what Merton (citing Massignon, who got it from a medieval Sufi) called the “virgin point.”

Retreat report

Yesterday's theme was "The Penitent Heart is a Grateful Heart."

Kathleen Norris (page 280) cited an ancient monk as saying that “Repentance without thanksgiving would be despair [and]...thanksgiving without repentance would be presumptousness.”

The founder wrote: "Keep in mind to fulfill the duty of riconoscenza [“grateful acknowledgment]. St. Paul is the one who suggests it to us: 'And be grateful!'”  "A decade or two later later he speaks of it again in the context of the particular judgment: “Oh! If only we were to reflect on our past life and picture a twofold story: the story of God's mercy [key word] towards us; in other words, how 'the hand of the Lord which is over us' has guided us, and the story of our response to the Lord's countless graces”. This is his definition of the examen of consciousness: “It is to recognize our benefits and thus be able to say: Thanks be to God! Because everything comes from him. It is to recognize our failings and be able to say: with the help of God's grace I want to remove this or that from my heart. It is to recognize what remains to be done in order to keep on working to make progress.” “We have sincerely to reflect on all the gifts that the Lord has given us,” natural and supernatural.”

Alberione is in line with the best of them in giving this kind of importance to thanksgiving, something I have to admit I fall very short on this point. I treat thanksgiving like an act of politeness before getting to the stuff I really want to pray about (er, "for")... but the saints tell us that the prayer of thanksgiving is also a preparation for new favors from God. St Teresa (Interior Castle, 4^th mansion, Chapter 3) wrote, regarding the beginning of interior prayer, “Anyone who is conscious that this is happening within herself should give God great praise, for she will be very right to recognize what a favor it is, and the thanksgiving which she makes for it will prepare her for greater favors. One preparation for listening to him...is being intent upon discovering what the Lord is working in the soul...”

The penitent heart is stirred to love by the recognition of what good has been done for me. So the first stage of the penitent heart is this grateful recognition. The examen starts with thanksgiving—otherwise, instead of responsiveness, everything is reduced to dry duty, almost a mathematical transaction. Robert Roberts (Spiritual Emotions, p 144): “You get what you pay for and you earn what you get” is not a Christian worldview. “The obstacles to Christian gratitude are human resistances to acknowledge our dependence on God, and the failure to appreciate the gifts he gives us and the beauty of relationship with him."
Books cited:
     

   

Retreat Report

Today we moved into the heart itself: what do we have "at heart"? And it's a good day for a reflection like that, being the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart! The theme was "The Penitent Heart is Poor in Spirit." In other words,  "non-negotiables and the one thing necessary." What's a non-negotiable? What are our non-negotiables? Sometimes we can determine these priorities for ourselves, or maybe it starts when we establish much-needed personal boundaries... that then take over more and more territory in our hearts, until we are practically identified with them. 
Obviously, that can become a huge impediment to living with others and working in a shared ministry. There's even the risk that we assume that these good things (they usually are good) are "the" good thing our life is meant for. Merton wrote, “Idolatry is the basic sin. Therefore that which is deepest in us...most likely to deceive us under the appearance of true worship, or integrity, or honesty, or loyalty, or idealism. Even Christianity is often idolatrous without realizing it. The sin of craving the God who is other than he who cannot be made an idol—i.e., an object.”

People set on the one thing necessary are free: Bonhoeffer commented, “They do not set their hearts on their possessions, but are inwardly free. That is why they are able to make use of the world without withdrawing from it all together (1 Cor. 5:13). And that is also why they can leave the world when it becomes an impediment to discipleship” (p. 301). First things first: the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. The onje thing necessary: to cling with all our heart to “glory to God, peace to humanity,” and to take things very lightly if they are not, really, “Glory to God, peace to humanity.”

It's so easy for us to convince ourselves that we are seeking one or the other of these exalted goods when we are really directly compromising some genuine good. I have found that I am most likely to do this when the good I am compromising relates to my neighbor, I have even learned that the higher the motivations I claim for myself in the case, the more I ought to suspect myself of pulling the wool over my own eyes, hiding from myself what is really at stake. No one else is fooled, of course. In situations like this, our intransigence is a dead giveaway that love of God and neighbor is not really what I am seeking or protecting.  

Rather than ask what our personal “non-negotiables” are, it might be better to name the value or wound we are trying to protect with them, because I suspect that quite often our non-negotiables are really strategies for self-preservation. It's important to separate the strategy from the need: we can name, affirm and uphold the value without insisting on the strategy we have in mind—which may or may not even be helpful: after all, we can be mistaken in our strategizing! We are fixing our gaze on this life, in its most limited expression!

Christian psychologist Robert Roberts reminds us: “For the mature Christian the kingdom hoped for is the focusing goal of life, to which everything else is subsidiary. In the [negative] attitude I have just described the kingdom is not the pearl of great price, the crown of life, the one thing needful, but a sort of consolation prize for those who do poorly in the race. The person I have described does not have the joy and peace of Christian hope; rather, he combines a comically mild form of resignation with a false conception of the kingdom” (Roberts, p. 151). 

Here's a final observation from Ven. Solanus Casey: “What I'd like to stress is the very insanity of trying to reckon on anything material these days as amounting to anything of importance aside from its use in promoting the glory of God in charity toward lifting humanity—and the necessarily very short time such material things hold their value.” 

Books referenced in this talk:

Retreat Report: The Apostolate of Suffering

Talk about "preaching to the choir"! Today I spoke about the "apostolate of suffering" to a group comprised, for the most part, of our senior sisters, women whose days of vigorous active ministry are long behind them; women who may very well specialize in the apostolate of arthritis; the apostolate of patience; the apostolate of suffering (nobody's favorite mission field, unless you're maybe St Therese of Lisieux). As active as our seniors try to be (they now have a little workshop going, where they put out handmade rosaries for our bookstores), they know that their real contribution to the mission of the Church is now completely on the supernatural order. Maybe that is why they paid so much attention to the reflections I offered them today.

Here's a sample:


From Carryl Houselander:

By making our humanity one with his, by making our suffering his own, [Jesus] has literally given himself to us, made his suffering ours, so that we now have as our own his power of love. His sacrifice offered for the world is irresistible to the Father. Because it is real reparation for sin it lightens the heavy burden that is bending the back of humanity, and man can lift himself up. In it the world's healing begins.
It is this power of his own love that Christ has given to us. Because of it our own personal share in the world's suffering is never useless, always potent. It is the most effective gift we have for the good of our fellow men.

The meaning of life is not to be found in or identified with the successful avoidance of pain, suffering, sorrow or discomfort. We can definitely try, but you know what starts to happen... we end up living in tighter and tighter confines. Our comfort zone shrinks to the extent that we focus on staying in it.

But the Gospel transforms our attitude toward suffering--as well as our attitude in suffering.  This is what the saints, starting with St. Paul, called "the wisdom of the Cross." On the feast of St. Rita of Cascia (just last week), the opening prayer asked this grace: 

Bestow on us, we pray, O Lord,

the wisdom and strength of the Cross,

with which you were pleased to endow Saint Rita,

so that, suffering in every tribulation with Christ,

we may participate ever more deeply in his Paschal Mystery. 

Alert readers will spot several of St Paul's key words in that prayer: wisdom of the Cross; strength; tribulation; participation. 

Jesus changed the meaning of that universal human experience of suffering. Before Jesus, and apart from Jesus, the cross--any suffering--is foolishness, waste, stupidity. From now on, every suffering can be a form of communion with him--never truly isolating--and because of that union with Jesus, it can have apostolic potential ("bringing many children to glory").

And you can bet that the person who declared "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" will have something to teach us about the apostolate of suffering, a ministrythat was as familiar to him as preaching the Gospel in synagogues and street corners. 

Even in his earliest preaching, in his very first letter (1st Thess 3:34), we find Paul saying very matter-of-factly: "You know very well that we told you that it is to be our lot...that we were to suffer affliction." We must share Christ's sufferings; his afflictions are prior to ours, and ours are "contained" in his and become only and always participating in something that is more his than ours, because God loved us first, taking on himself what had befallen us, even to death on a cross.

The apostolate of suffering is built on the foundation of Christ's resurrection: if Christ is not raised...we're in big trouble. Our faith is in vain. If Christ is not raised, suffering really is meaningless and absurd. But Christ is risen; he reveals--in himself, in his risen body with its nail marks and pierced side--that nothing we go through in life is wasted or worthless.

Here's the situation as Paul sees it: "We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed..." 

Now here's comes the apostolic meaning and power and fruit in what could be a very depressing set of circumstances:

"...ALWAYS CARRYING ABOUT IN THE BODY THE DYING OF JESUS so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body. Death is at work in us, but life in you!" (2 Cor 4:8-12)

That's what the apostolate is all about. Manifesting Jesus and communicating his life to others. It it no longer simply "I" who live, it is Christ who lives in me, making his dying present and available to others through em; making ME his presence in the world.