377 Silence Goergen

NOVEMBER:
DECEMBER
2000
,VOLUME 59
NUMBER 6
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LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES

Editor David L. Fleming sJ
Associate Editors Clare Boehmer ASC
Philip C. Fischer SJ
Canonical Counsel Editor Elizabeth McDonough OP
Editorial Staff Mary Ann Foppe
Tracy Gramm
Advisory Board James and Joan Felling
Adrian Gaudin SC
Kathryn Richards FSP
NOVEMBER
Joel Rippinger OSB.
DECEMBER
Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ
Patricia Wittberg SC 2000
VOLUME 59
NUMBER 6
contents
spiritual practice
566 Retrieving the Practice of Silence
Donald J. Goergen oP enters us into an appreciation of
silence that we might commit ourselves more to its
observance.
575 The Dangers of Solitude

Kenneth C. Russell, guiding readers through some
12th-century advice to hermits, shows its 2 l st-cenrury
relevance to hermits and others as well.
584 A Spiritual Direction

Mary Beth Moore SC gazes at, listens to, a few moments of
reality and possibility within contemporary sisterly living.
a witness response
594 Contemplative Religious Witness:
A Redemptoristine Monastery
Dennis J. Billy CSSR finds the life of a group of
contemplative sisters very much present to his apostolic
mission, and happily reflects that the reverse is
true as well.
601 AVowed Response to the Postmodern World

Andr~ Maureen Soete SSND seeks ways for the vowed life
to contribute more vigorously, more effectively, to the
alleviation of troubles in our troubled world.
Review for Religious

examples from the past
608 Mary Ward: Centuries Her Scroll
Lawrence F. Barmann sketches the life story of Mary Ward,
the saintly English founder of the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, as an inspiration for us living in the current
ecclesial milieu.
614 St. Catherine’s Letters:

Human Love, Gracious Authority
Stan Parmisano OP finds that in style and content the letters
of Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) have surprising and
challenging and charming relevance for persons living today.
627 Katharine Drexel’s Cultural Relevance Now

Normandie J. Gaitley SSJ sketches the life of the recently
canonized Mother Katharine Drexel SBS (1858-1955), a
Philadelphia debutante who used her inheritance to serve
Native Americans and African Americans.
vocation
633 When Vocations Happen by Accident
Elizabeth Julian RSM describes with quiet enthusiasm her
sense of a flexible small community in New Zealand that
fosters acquaintance and has shown itself to foster vocations.
643 Vocational Support

Donald Macdonald SMM speaks of the human need of support
in one’s vocation and of the providential availability of that
support if we are alert to its manifold presence.
departments
564 Prisms
650 Canonical Counsel:
Responsibilities of the Novice Director
656 Book Reviews
666 Indexes to Volume 59
November-December 2000
Whave come to appreciate
the rich complexi.ty of the biblical term jubilee, espe-
cially as we have looked toward the new millennium.
prisms But as we approach the Advent and Christmas seasons
of the year 2000, one focus of jubilee stands out. Jubilee
implies celebration. Advent and Christmas seasons pro-
vide an opportune moment for us to consider what it is
that we celebrate.
Celebrati6n often means bringing people together,
sometimes those dearest to us, and at other times the
"crowd" that comes together only for special occasions.
Celebration can include elegant banquets or simple fin-
ger food. It may suggest a refined cocktail party or a
noisy beer-keg-and-pretzels get-together. Celebration
can imply long-term planning or it may be a spur-of-
the-moment, spontaneous occasion. We celebrate
beginnings, like newborn babies and the wedding day;
we celebrate completions, like school graduations and
retirements. We observe national patriotic days, and
we take time for religious festivals.
But for all the aspects of a jubilee year of forgiveness,
justice, and reconciliation, what is it that we most cele-
brate? The biblical notion of jubilee celebrates, above
all, our being God’s people and our living like God’s
sons and daughters. This planet called Earth is "home"
for us because it is God’s home. Our space-age view of
our planet Earth has brought home to us how much we
all are "stewards," not owners, of God’s gift to us.
What is striking is how our jubilee celebrations enter us into
the Gospel Prodigal Son parable. Whether we more identify with
one who hopes to see life as only an arena of personal delights and
squanderings or whether we more identify with the other who
defines life as a kind of slavery with weighty obligations and grim
duties, we realize how much we need a jubilee understanding of
life. Both sons, in Jesus’ famous parable, understand neither the
father who helped bring them into life nor the life which this
father wants to share with them. The first son in his self-cen-
tered celebrating misses the point of celebration. The second
son in his self-defined servitude also misses the idea of celebra-
tion. Just as the father in the parable goes out of the way to meet
each son, so God continues to break into our life to call us to a
reality of biblical jubilee.
Advent is our jubilee celebration of our longing and desire to
dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our life. Christmas
is our jubilee celebration of God’s desire and longing to come
and play forever among the children of Earth. Advent and
Christmas are at the center of our understanding jubilee because
both seas~ons emphasize the heart of all our reasons to celebrate:
God calls us sons and daughters, and we know the redemptive
salvation that Jesus brought, of living in God’s home all the days
of our life.
David L. Fleming SJ
Th~ Mitor~ and

,of Revi~ ~orRoligiou~ . "
thank you for your ~uppor~throughout
thi~ pa~t yoar and pray that (~od~rieh
o a nd~ abundant iubiloo
Advont and ~hri~tma~
DONALD J. GOERGEN
Retrieving the Practice

of Silence
Jesus experienced the need for quiet. "In the morn-

spiritua ing, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out
to a deserted place, and there he prayed"(Mk 1:35,
practice NRSV). What did he seek there? What did he find?
The Book of Psalms is quoted in the New Testament
more often than any other book of the Hebrew Bible.
What role did the psalms play in the prayer of Jesus?
"Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). How
often in the course of his life did Jesus pray over verses
like that, or this: "For God alone my soul waits in
silence; from him comes my salvation"? (Ps 62:1).
There are few things in human life more important,
both personally and communally, than discovering the
value of silence. Spirituality and religion are important
dimensions of human and social life, and so are silence
and stillness. Other civilizations, perhaps more pastoral,
more agrarian ones, had greater opportunities for the
practice of silence. Our times seem less fortunate in that
regard. Yet silence is essential to wholesome living. My
purpose in these reflections is to help us appreciate
silence more and commit ourselves to practicing it.
Donald J. Goergen OP wrote on celibacy for our May-

June 1998 issue. His address is Friends of God Dominican
Ashram; 720 35th Street; Kenosha, Wisconsin 53140.

Worship, Charity, and Silence
Which is more important, love of God or love of neighbor?
(Mk 12:28-31). It does not take much to realize that this question
is falsely posed. Which is more important, inhaling or exhaling,
yang or yin?
St. Anselm spoke of God as "the Being a greater than which
cannot be conceived." Certainly, for one who believes, God alone
deserves to be worshiped. Adoration and praise are the only appro-
priate responses to God. Although there is nothing in human life
more important than love of God, the God of Jesus instructs us
that there is something that must precede or accompany it.
"So, when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remem-
ber that your brother or sister has something against you, leave
your gift there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your
brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift" (Mt 5:23-
24). "Those who say ’I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sis-
ters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom
they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. The
commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must
love their brothers and sisters also" (1 Jn 4:20-21). As important as
worship is, equally important is the practice of charity, love of
neighbor, the "works of mercy" (Mr 25:31-46). The revolution in
Jesus’ teaching was not that he understood love of God, the Shema
(Dr 6:4-5), as the core of the Hebrew Scriptures. Almost every
practicing and devout Jew understood that to be the great com-
mandment. But Jesus’ placing love of neighbor (Lv 19:18; Mk
12:31) on a par with love of God, that was revolutionary, and for
him that was what true religion is about. For Jesus, the second
commandment is not secondary, not second in the sense of less
significant. According to Matthew, it is "like" the "great and first"
commandment (Mr 22:38-39). Luke (10:27) reports them as really
one commandment.
True worship or love of God is inseparable from true com-
passion or love of neighbor. But what do love of God and love of
neighbor, or worship and the works of mercy, have to do with the
practice of silence? Abhishiktananda, or Henri Le Saux, the French
monk who came to India in 1948 and immersed himself in its reli-
gious environment, wrote:
Now if something has passed in this long discourse by the
way of words, yet beyond words, if you have heard in the
words of the Upanishads some echo of what the Spirit has
November-Decenlber 2000
Goergen ¯ Retrieving the Practice of Silence
certainly whispered in your heart when you sat in contem-

plation of the mystery of the Father and the Son, then you
will discover by yourselves the secret of what is called the
Advaitic or Upanishadic prayer. It can be summed up in one
Hebrew phrase of Psalm 65, which Jerome translates: silen-
tium tibi laus. Silence is praise for you. Silence in prayer,
silence in thanksgiving, prayer, and adoration, silence in
meditation, silence inside and outside as the most essential
preparation for this stillness of the soul in which alone the
Spirit can work at his pleasure.~
The contemplative and interior journey, the love and worship
of God, are dependent on silence. But charity or love of neigh-
bor depends on silence too. A loving kindness toward our human
companions on this earth requires the silent journey inward just as
true worship of God requires it. Can there be true love of neigh-
bor without confronting the truth about ourselves? Can we expect
reconciliation and forgiveness in our world if we ourselves are not
yet ready to forgive? If we are to transform our world, we must also
be working on becoming transformed ourselves. Social engage-
ment requires time apart. Silence is essential if we are to deepen
our love for God and our love for our neighbor.
Silence, Solitude, and Simplicity

What does silence sound like? What does it look like? Are
there different kinds of silence?
Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting
mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but
the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earth-
quake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the
earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after
the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he
wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at
the entrance of the cave. (1 Kg 19:11-13)
True silence, the inner stillness, the still point, is an achieve-

ment to be sought, yet always remains a grace. But it is a grace
upon which we must focus our attention. It requires discipline,
which does not guarantee interior silence, but rather prepares the
way. We must devote time to "the practice of silence," the practice
of interior and contemplative prayer, the practice of an awareness
that is the fruit of quieting the mind.2
Such "quiet" is not easily obtained in our world today. Not
that a busy, technological, urban society is the enemy of silence, but
neither is it a friend. Modern social and commercial life cannot
prevent the pursuit of silence, but neither do they encourage or
value it.
Entertainment is a noisy industry. The more channels we have
on television, the better. But then they must be filled--with "stuff,"
whatever it be. They compete for attention; thus, the more out-
rageous, the more likely the success. The Internet now multiplies
ways to distract us from an inner stillness.
Not to find television entertaining seems
quaint. To see it or the overuse of the
Internet as distraction from true entertain- Modern social and
ment, a life with God quietly pursued, is sec-
ular heresy. For silence is not the stuff of commercial life
which modern societies, commerce, or edu- cannot prevent the
cation are ordinarily made. Not that the
media, the schools, the churches, market- pursuit of silence,
places, and businesses are avowed enemies but neither do they
of silence; they are just uneasy with it.
We are talking about a disciplined encourage or value it.
silence that requires resolve. Its close friends
are solitude and simplicity. These compan-
ions reveal how countercultural true silence
really is. Solitude is one of silence’s most cherished friends. Yet
how difficult it is in our world today to find solitude, to pursue
solitude, to practice solitude. We are "driven" away from it. We can
hardly face the silence within ourselves. We flee. As Francis
Thompson wrote:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.3
The running is aided by all the activities of our world, justified
by the needs of our world, and rationalized by "This is just our
world and that’s the way it is." To desire silence we must value
solitude.
We identify aloneness with loneliness. But, until we are at
home with ourselves, we will always be lonely, no matter how busy,
how "with it," how much with others we might be. As we know,
marriage is no cure for loneliness. Neither is single life. Dietrich
Goergen ¯ Retrieving tbe Practice of Silence
Bonhoeffer once cautioned us to be wary of the person who lives

with another or in community who cannot be alone, or who lives
alone but cannot live in community.4
Sociality and solitude are two sides of the same coin: we can-
not find one without the other. Silence lives on solitude. We must
find ways to structure it into our lives on a regular basis, like the
food we eat. Where can we find that place apart, that space for
being alone, and for how long can we keep ourselves there with-
out being taken up by distractions~ Where can we go to practice
silence? Or how in the midst of activity can we find that cell
within? s
One of solitude’s companions is simplicity of life. Simplicity
inside requires simplicity outside. A cluttered, thing-filled, con-
sumer-intensive environment is hardly the place in which to prac-
tice an awareness that few things in life are important. The world
immediately outside myself needs to reflect what I am trying to
attain within myself. Simplicity in life is an outward expression of
simplicity within. One’s "within" and "without" go together. And
now we can see more clearly why our current economic world can
easily become an enemy of silence. The pursuit of silence eventu-
ally becomes a pursuit of simplicity of life--which is a recognizable
enemy to a consumer economy, a global and ever expanding mar-
ket economy. Not that the market is evil; it is just easy prey to the
pretension that it alone is important, the be-all and end-all of
human life. The practices of silence, solitude, and simplicity enable
us to see the truth about economic pursuits: How inhumane they
can be when given priority in life, how grounded in greed they
become!
Kinds of Silence
There are a variety of silences.6 Silence can be either destruc-
tive or constructive.7 Destructive silence is refusing to speak when
a word is called for, a word of consolation, of affection, of chal-
lenge. Destructive silence can be passive aggression, a refusal to
participate, a lack of care, a form of punishment, unconscionable
noncommunication. But silence as context for an interior journey
is positive.
Silence as a socia! context is the absence of noise in our imme-
diate environment. There are different degrees of environmental
silence. A noiseless environment is difficult to find in modern
urban settings. One can distinguish rural silences and urban
silences. For someone unaccustomed to rural silences, the sound
of the cricket or the howl of a coyote can be disturbing. There
are sounds to which we have become accustomed and those to
which we are not. Familiar sounds need not destroy environmen-
tal silence, but can blend with it. There is a silent stillness to the
vastness of nature: the sounds and silence of the ocean, the moun-
tains, the desert, the plains. Each is a different environment and a
different silence. On a windless day, sitting atop
one of the mountain peaks of the Sangre de
Cristo range near Christ in the Desert Monastery
in northern New Mexico, one can hear an almost Human silence
absolute environmental silence.
Human silence is the presence of nonspeech, call be a silence
It is not necessarily noncommunication or non-
of solitude,
communitarian. Silence itself can communicate
abundantly, and it is amazing what can be corn- but it can also be
municated without words. Human silence can be
a silence of solitude, but it can also be commu- communitarian.
nitarian. A solemn silence can prevail in Christian
or Buddhist monasteries or a Hindu ashram, in
a synagogue, church, or mosque. These settings
or "environments" can be sacred space. There are times and places
when human speech is out of place or out of season. Human silence
can be community silence, but there is also personal silence. An
individual person can cultivate silence--by seeking environmental
silence, or sacred space, or solitude, but also by the practice of
silence: avoiding unnecessary speech, c~eating personal space, the
silence of one’s own room, withdrawing to "the cell within," lis-
tening to music, allowing absorption in art and beauty, acquiring
an inner stillness and the practice of meditation.
Personal silence itself is not only oriented toward calm, tran-
quillity, and an absence of stress, but ultimately toward interior
silence, the silencing of the mind, even if this is rare or only
momentary. I remember a conversation with a cloistered
Dominican nun, who had a doctorate and had been teaching before
joining this cloistered contemplative community. When I asked
why she had joined the monastery, she replied, "I needed to stop
thinking if I was going to start praying." The human being is a
reflective being, but also a contemplative being that sometimes
needs to move beyond thoughts (mental silence) as well as wordsv-~z-~’~---)-’[-i
(verbal silence). The interior journey is in fact directed toward

this deep silence within, this cave of the heart, this still point, this
soul of the soul, this human spirit. Spiritual silence is the human
spirit at peace, the silence of the spirit in its communion with the
Spirit of God, the divine Spirit, the Holy Spirit. This is mystical
silence, with its dark nights, its ecstatic joy, its calm recollection,
its deep rest.
Silence of any sort is most often not constant, but periodic,
coming at intervals, having a rhythm of its own. Deep silence,
mystical silence, is not an achievement but a grace. Thus one can
speak of the grace of silence, a grace that is present in varied ways
and at varied levels, exteriorly and interiorly: the prayer of silence,
the silent Presence, the Holy Mystery. It is this mystery that we cel-
ebrate in liturgy and seek in contemplation. We experience litur-
gical silence, a pastoral silence, intimate silences, times and places
not to speak, for which words are inappropriate, occasions on
which only silence can communicate. Silence can communicate
from within a depth beyond words. In community, in friendship,
in ministry, and in prayer there must be silence as well as speech.
Divine silence is God’s very own silence, God’s very own self-
communication, God’s’ awesome and incomprehensible transcen-
dence, God’s overwhelming intimate immanence, God’s elusive
presence and mysterious absence, God’s truth and God’s beauty, the
Nameless One whose name is Father, Son, and Spirit, the One-
Who-Is, the One-Who-Is-With-Us, the silence of being, the sound
of ore, the soundlessness of communion, the union of God and
humanity, the union of Word and flesh, the triune union, the incor-
poration of humanity into the silent triunity of its Creator. There
is ultimately no distinction between divine Silence and divine
Speech. They are one ’and the same. God’s speech is silent, and
God’s silence speaks.
Silence and Theology

.The practice of silence is necessary not only for the spiritual
journey and to sustain our humanity. It is also essential for doing
theology. Theologians are accountable for their theology to their
professional peers, to their varied communities of faith, and to
society at large for the quality, fidelity, and social implications of
their work. They cannot absolve themselves of this threefold
responsibility. But the theologian is also accountable to God. One
does not stand before the Holy Mystery, the mysterium fascinans
et tremendum, without asking the Holy Spirit for courage, guid-
ance, and wisdom. In other words, all theology must begin with
prayer. It has both a reflective moment and a contemplative
moment. It is not an ego project, but a work of the Spirit.
Theology cannot be done apart from silence. The practice of
silence, of placing oneself in the presence of God, of meditation,
of listening, of longing are all part of doing theology.
Theology can too easily become words, verbal batdes, polemic,
agenda ridden, jargon, rather than revelatory, illuminating, con-
nected to life, committed to Truth. This happens when theolo-
gians neglect the practice of contemplative silence--which would
make them aware of both the inadequacy and the necessity of
words for communicating the divine mystery.
A theologian needs to be practiced in the art of silence. So
does the magisterium in the church need to practice it. "Roma
locuta est," the saying goes. But think of the symbolic power in
"Roma tacuit." What a wonderful example that could be.
Magisterial authority must reflect that we are a learning church
as well as a teaching church. Is not part of the crisis over author-
ity the ways in which the church exercises its authority? We do
not grant authority easily to those who do not listen.
Silence gives value to words. Apart from words, silence can
be sterile, but apart from silence words lose their power. As
Ecclesiastes (3:7) says, "There is a time for keeping silence, a time
for speaking." Silence is a work of the Spirit. True silence is ulti-
mately prayer. It speaks with authority. It communicates truth. It
creates community. It is the voice of the soul, of the human spirit,
and of the Holy Spirit. Can we afford to allow its practice to
become peripheral in our lives?
In The Sleeping Beauty, Ralph Harper points to the value of
silence for our world:
Each order of experience has its own a.tmosphere. The atmo-
sphere of presence, of giving, of wholeness, is silence. We
know that serious things have to be done in silence, because
we do not have words to measure the immeasurable. In
silence people love, pray, listen, compose, paint, write, think,
suffer. These experiences are all occasions of giving and
receiving, of some encounter with forces that are inex-
haustible and independent of us. These are easily distin-
guishable from our routines and possessiveness as silence is
distinct from noise.8
Not only nuns and monks, but all of us need to retrieve the art
and practice of silence. We need to dip deeply into the silent abyss
of self, of God, of God in the self and the self in God, We need to
explore the emptiness and the fullness that lie within us. We need
silence.
Notes
1 Abhishiktananda, "The Upanishads and Advaitic Experience," in
The Further Shore (New Delhi: I.S.P.C.K., 1984), p. 117.
2 Buddhist traditions also see a triple relationship: compassion, rooted ¯
in egolessness, which in turn is rooted in mindfulness. These three are
intimately connected. See Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and
Dying (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), esp. pp. 59-72, 116-122, 188-201.
3 The first lines of "The Hound of Heaven."
4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper and Row,
Publishers, 1954), esp. pp. 76~89. "Let him who cannot be alone beware
of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.
¯.. The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community.
Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference
as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other.
Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence out of speech. Silence
does not mean dumbness, as speech does not mean chatter. Dumbness
does not create solitude and chatter does not create fellowship" (p. 78).
s See Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke OP
(New York: Paulist Press, 1980), on the "cell of self-knowledge," pp. 25,
118, 122, 125, 135, and 158.
6 Theodore Pereira in "Eloquence in Silence, Healing in Stillness,"
Indian Theological Studies 33 (June 1996): 99-126, has written about
different types of silences.
7 "Silence itself is expressed in several ways. We know silences of
contempt and of joy, of pain and of pleasure, of consent and of solitude."
Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991), pp. 53-54.
~ Ralph Harper, The Sleeping Beauty (London: Harvill Press, 1955),
pp. 110-111. The word "men" in the original was changed to "people"
to accommodate current usage.

KENNETH C. RUSSELL
The Dangers of Solitude
~o~ e~oli! There is a long tradition of warning would-be hermits

e dangers of solitude. And the warnings have not come
solely from cenobites suspicious of solitaries off doing "their own
thing." Religious who have the highest regard for the blessings and
joys of the life of aloneness with God have tempered their
enthusiasm with cautionary words about the special difficulties the
solitary is likely to encounter. Thomas Merton, for example, warns
that "sordid difficulties and uncertainties" attend .the life of even
interior solitude,l Authors from the first centuries of the church
conjure up frightening pictures of the demons who lie in wait for
the unsuspecting hermit, while modern writers warn newcomers to
the desert that solitude will force them to confront the disturbing
image of their true self. The message is clear: more awaits the
novice hermit than the beauties of nature and the spiritual delights
which ancient and contemporary enthusiasts of the eremitical life
tend to emphasize.
I suppose that most contemporary solitaries would agree that
demons in one guise or another must be wrestled with and that it
can, indeed, be a distressing experience to come face to face with
the self we usually avoid in a flurry of activity. However, I also
suspect that most hermits are somewhat amused by both the
modern and the ancient depiction of their lot. They would be only
too happy to confess that there are no monsters writhing in the
Kenneth C. Russell last wrote for our March-April 2000 issue. His
address remains 40 Landry Street, Apt. 1505; Vanier, Ontario; K1L
8K4 Canada.
E5-7-5
Russell ¯ The Dangers of Solitude
corners of their huts and that the identity crisis so precious to their
contemporaries does not keep them awake nights. What they
actually confront, it seems, is a routine cycle of sun and cloud on a
prairie stretching clear to the horizon. There are no mountains or
valleys to speak of. Their bad days are as unremarkable as their
good ones. They struggle against subtle temptations, not
spectacular ones.
It has always been so. The 12th-century Cistercian Aelred of
Rievaulx recognized this in his hard-hitting Letter to a Recluse,
addressed to his elderly sister but written with less seasoned
solitaries in mind? So did his contemporaries Peter the Venerable
and Bernard of Portes, who wrote shorter and less theologically
dense letters to male recluses who had asked their advice.3
Twelfth-century recluses lived in circumstances that are quite
different from those in which most modern hermits seek solitude.
But this does not mean that the letters of Peter and Bernard are
merely quaint witnesses to a bygone era. The basics of the eremitical
life are constant across the centuries. They are also unaffected by the
way in which different solitaries choose to live the eremitical life.
Whether the solitary is a recluse, a hermit, or a homeless wanderer
like Benedict Joseph Labre does not radically modify the eremitical
life. Consequently the letters Peter and Bernard wrote to 12th-
century male monastic recluses remain relevant to male and female
solitaries of all kinds, even today. Indeed, it seems to me that their
practical orientation makes them especially useful.
Therefore, I want to focus on the difficulties these authors see
arising when the honeymoon period of the eremitical life--which
may last a good long time--is finally over. In highlighting some of
the minor difficulties which can grow into major problems if not
attended to, it is not my intention to present a negative view of the
solitary life. It does have dark days; it would not be a human
enterprise if it did not. However, in focusing on the gray periods, I
am not denying its spells of fine weather. I am merely reiterating
the warning uttered down the centuries that people who wander off
into the desert on their own had better know what they are about.
Peter the Venerable’s Letter to Ghislebert

Peter the Venerable, the great abbot of Cluny, was, by his own
admission, a very busy man. In fact, he shocks us a bit by admitting
that he read the letters from a Cluniac recluse named Ghislebert in
his choir stall on Holy Saturday. He claims that he had simply not
been able to find a moment to read them earlier. Peter may have
been rushed, but he nevertheless knew something about the
eremitical life. Not only did he himself periodically spend time in
solitude, but he had pastoral experience in directing monks who
sought a solitary retreat for a limited period or for life. There were
actually a large number of hermits living in the woods near Cluny.
Peter the Venerable, then, knew what he
was talking about when he replied to
Ghislebert’s request for guidance.
The key to Peter’s advice is the Hermits soon discover
emphasis he puts on the idea that, as a
recluse, Ghislebert has been buried with
that they are a crowd
Christ. We do not know the nature of the unto themselves.
liturgical ceremony with which Ghislebert
was committed to his cell, but other
sources indicate that the idea of being
buried with Christ and dead to the world was sometimes
dramatically represented by using funeral rites to initiate such
enclosure. In any case, Peter emphasizes that, if his effort to live as a
recluse is going to succeed, Ghislebert had better be sure that he is
indeed dead to the world and the world dead to him. To drive home
the point, Peter quotes the desert father Arsenius: "Flee people, be
silent, and you will be saved." In short, be what you have set out to
be and all will be well.
Although we may feel a little ill-at-ease with the medieval idea
of the recluse being rather literally buried with Christ, it is obvious
that any new solitary needs to make a definitive break with the
world and his or her past to get off to a good start. He or she has to
be serious about being marginal. But, for all the images of being cut
off and buried, the reality is that a living human being goes into the
desert. He or she wants to be there, of course, but the spiritual and
especially the psychological conditioning to solitude is not achieved
by a mere act of will. The hermit, in fact, begins with some interior
dividedness. Part of the self has no interest in disappearing.
Inevitably the life force will rise up against the isolation and denial
of achievement that the solitary life demands.
Hermits also soon discover, as the Carthusian Guigo II puts it,
that they are a crowd unto themselves. They are, indeed, the
doorway through which the world presses into the cell. They may
succeed in finding a quiet spot on the sidelines of society, but the
internal vacuum created by their withdrawal makes them

vulnerable to the imagination’s readiness to reassert their right to a
place in the world.
Since hermits have what we might term a "weak" present, the
mind tends to take refuge in either the past or the future. Bernard
of Portes will highlight the way in which the past crowds into the
hermit’s mind. Peter the Venerable puts more emphasis on the
daydreams about the future which exploit the hermit’s status to
draw him away from his solitude. He pictures the monk turned
hermit imagining that he feels the tabs of a bishop’s miter on the
back of his necl~ or fantasizing that he is the wise, holy, and much
admired abbot of a large monastic community.
This is all nonsense, of course, and surely most beginners are as
amused by the tricks the imagination plays as Peter the Venerable
is. What is not funny is that these silly thoughts can trouble prayer.
It is also true, unfortunately, that small threads can weave
themselves into strong ropes. If hermits are not careful, they can
convince themselves that they are made for something better than
the sorry life of a solitary.
A more serious pressure to "return from the dead" and reenter
the hustle and bustle of.life, bit by bit, springs from the essential
nature of the solitary existence. Hermits have to live without the
external momentum that social interaction usually provides. They
are not carried along by the excitement of what is going on at their
workplace, nor can they look forward to parties or sports events to
distract them. Unfortunately, unless solitaries maintain their focus
on whatever is the task of the moment, their day-to-day existence
will begin to feel dull and wearisome.
The obvious way to relieve this lethargy is for the solitary to
engage in a small amount of pastoral or counseling activity. This
sounds like a psychologically sound idea, especially to modern
Christians, who are more than a little suspicious of the way hermits
pull away from the good causes "activists" think so important. Peter
the Venerable, however, is not so sure. He is afraid that this public
ministry will become addictive. Instead of relieving the hermits’
boredom so that they can return to the solitary life refreshed, each
turn outward makes solitude all the more unbearable and the turn
away from it all the easier. What looks like a solution to the
pressures of the eremitical regime can destroy a hermit’s ability to
live the solitary life. "Doing good" can do a hermit in.
A second consequence of the turn outward is that the solitaries’
availability attracts people who offer two enticing things: prestige
and cash. Since the strict eremitical life deprives hermits of the
ordinary opportunities to see themselves mirrored in the reaction
of others, Peter the Venerable rightly fears that Ghislebert will
take the high esteem in which he is held by those he helps as the
true measure of his worth. The abbot sees a further danger in the
money that the hermit will be offered for his services. With all the
good intentions in the world, Ghislebert can easily find himself
managing a little charitable fund which will
grow, as such things do, until, as Peter puts it,
he is putting up buildings and demolishing
himself. "Doing good"
Peter’s point would seem to be that hermits can do a hermit in.
who are not perfectly honest about their
motivations can make a place for themselves in
the world. They can keep an address in the
woods, as it were, and still be part of society. The price they pay,
unfortunately, is the abandonment of their original commitment.
History offers many examples which confirm that the hardest
thing in the world for solitaries is actually to be what they profess
to be. Aelred of Rievaulx was very hard on the way in which
solitaries drift into outside activities. He sharply admonished them
to wake up to the facts of their vocation. "When you are pressured
to get involved: Tu sede, tu tace, tu sustine. Sit still, keep quiet, and
stick it out! Period! Leave the doing of good deeds to those who
.have the responsibility for such tasks."
The solitary’s fundamental temptation, it seems, is to focus on
something other than God. According to Peter, this can be anything
from good works to an obsession with health or appearance.
Bernard of Portes’s Letter to Rainald

The Carthusian Bernard of Portes agrees with Peter the
Venerable that solitaries need to be on guard against the distractions
that are likely to entice them away from their fundamental
commitment. He is particularly sensitive, however, to the spiritual
and psychological repercussions of the hermit’s withdrawal from
society. He understands very well that the social self will not go
lightly into solitude. Though hermits are united to all believers
and, indeed, all humanity in their union with Christ in his church,
the social self wants to strut its stuff in the midst of the diversions
Russell * The Dangers of Solitude
of the marketplace. It does not want to be shut away with not

much more than God to focus on. Therefore, Bernard warns
Rainald that he must expect a spell of bad weather sooner or later.
One day he might be hit by a wave of sadness and the next be in a
bad mood and irritable. He will find tapes from his past running in
his head while he reedits the script of what he said and did. A
troupe of lewd thoughts will stage its floor show one day, and
lukewarnmess flood in the next.
It seems that there is no escape from these inner storms and
flat stretches. Indeed, Bernard maintains that hermits go into the
desert specifically t6 wrestle with these elements that distract us
from God. They are, we might say, the
psychological echoes of a hermit’s
Hermits do not have attachment to the world he or she claims to
have renounced.
the social status Bernard of Portes warns hermits that,
because they are no longer carried along by
they enjoyed in the the current of daily life in society, they will
12th century. be the targets of acedia and sadness. Acedia, a
listless psychospiritual condition, weighs so
heavily on its victims that some escape from
the boredom o’f the here and now into
dreams of what has been and might yet be while others slip into the
torpor of chronic fatigue. This affliction, which involves a hanging
back from the initial vocational commitment and a failure to
actualize it in the present moment, "detemporalizes" hermits. It
weakens their focus on the here and now and sets them adrift.
Therefore they look outward for things to occupy their mind and
fill their time.
Bernard says it is very important for hermits to give their life a
certain self-generated dynamism by moving from one activity to
another th~’oughout the day. Oddly enough, this is in accord with
the traditional wisdom that the secret of the eremitical life is "Keep
it moving." Bernard also emphasizes meditation and advises
Rainald to be totally present to the words he is saying when he
recites the Office. Bernard, it is quite clear, believes that acedia can
be held at bay if a hermit puts his or her mind to it and lives in the
present moment.
Sadness, however, is another matter. Bernard seems convinced
that an occasional period of feeling down is an inescapable feature
of the eremitical life. Sadness is, I suppose, a pit into which an
individual ill-suited for solitude might tumble, but this does not
seem to be what Bernard has in mind. He is describing, not a
chronic or pathological condition, but the normal downturns of
life--which the hermit feels more intensely because of his or her
isolation. On the spiritual level, the alternation of these strong and
weak periods is inevitable in view of the ebb and flow of God’s
grace.
If acedia pulls one away from the present, sadness can be said
to sink one into it. Sadness is the clouding over of the eternal
horizon of hope which draws us forward. Without the attraction of
the ultimate goal--which is, remember, the sole dynamic element
in a hermit’s life--the individual is oppressed by the miseries of the
present. For no good reason, anger can well up in the solitary and
rail away at the self or other people: "Nothing they do is ever any
good, and nothing I try ever works out!"
Such slack times call for patience, because, once again, the
temptation is to shift attention away from God and the love that is
his due. The self, whether proud or inadequate, whether much
sought after or neglected, must not become the primary object of
the hermit’s attention.
Application to Modern Hermits

Is any of this applicable to modern hermits living in country
cabins and cheap city apartments? I think so. Times have certainly
changed, but the leisure of the hermit can still go flat, and money
remains a worrisome issue. Unlike their 12th-century counterparts,
modern hermits do not have to figure out how to channel their
excess funds to the poor without attracting a crowd of beggars, but
they do have to worry about how to live apart from the world and
still earn their keep. Unless they are supported by a religious
congregation or order, paying their bills and providing some
measure of stability in an unsettled time can be a real
preoccupation. Indeed, it can shipwreck their project altogether.
Pride, which Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Portes see as a
major threat to hermits, would seem to be less of a worry these
days. Solitaries are looked up to once again, but the applause is not
unanimous. In fact, many people who give their lives to the service
of Christ and his poor question the sense of such a calling.
Certainly hermits do not have the social status they enjoyed in the
12th century. In any case, while many religious who become
solitaries identify themselves as hermits, most lay hermits have no

official status of any kind. They live a hidden life which is just that,
hidden. The lack of social status does not mean, of course, that
hermits are immune to the temptation to take a little secret pride in
the uniqueness of their calling. Pride, however, does not seem to be
the great danger it was to hermits in the Middle Ages.
Certainly relevant today, however, is the emphasis Peter the
Venerable and Bernard of Portes put on the need for the hermit to
exist in the now. This almost Buddhist focus on being present to the
moment is for both of them basic to the
eremitical life. Without this absorption in the
With no one else here and now, distractions press in. The hermit,
to borrow a phrase from the world of sports,
to worry about, "loses his or her concentration" on the worship
of God in unending prayer.
they can become This is a major problem, but, given the
restrictions of the solitary life, it manifests itself
obsessed with in small and sometimes silly ways. For example,
every ache. hermits may get too wrapped up in their work or
turn repairs to their dwelling into a full-scale
redecorating project. They can become finicky
fussbudgets who insist that every item in their
cell be lined up just so. Worse yet, with no one else to worry about,
they can become obsessed with every ache and sniffle.
What are we to make of Peter the Venerable’s condemnation
of the tendency of hermits to make themselves useful to their fel-
low Christians by offering them the fruit, as it were, of their con-
templative silence? Must we conclude that he, and Bernard as well,
would censure the spiritual direction and parish activities in which
some contemporary hermits get involved? Not necessarily. In their
letters both authors emphasize--and we must keep in mind that
they were writing to recluses, that is, to solitaries who in theory
were totally cut off from the world--that the singularity of the
eremitical life means that hermits will have to work out what is
best for them. Therefore, while Bernard borrows from the cus-
toms of the Carthusians to make all kinds of suggestions to Rainald
about the details of his life, he realizes that it is up to the hermit
to exercise discretion in choosing what suits him. Consequently, we
can conclude that, although Peter and Bernard show that it is easy
for hermits to delude themselves about why they are rendering
this or that occasional service, it is up to them to determine, after
taking counsel, what fosters their aloneness with God and what
hinders it.
I suspect that there are times when novice solitaries, going
through a dark period, might welcome the sight of a few demons
raising cain in their living room. They might even be glad to
summon up the self-absorption required for the drama of a first-
class identity crisis. Anything exciting and novel would be a relief.
What they have to contend with, however, day in and day out, as
Peter and Bernard remind them, is the subtle task of remaining
faithful to their original commitment in all kinds of psychological
weather. They have much to gain and much to lose. Peter the
Venerable and Bernard of Portes, who shared a high regard for the
solitary life, warn them, therefore, to take care.
Notes
’ Thomas Merton, "Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude," in his
Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1960; Noonday
Book, 1976), p. 165.
2 A Rule of Life for a Recluse, trans. Mary Paul MacPherson, in The
Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, Vol. 1: Treatises, The Pastoral Prayer, Cistercian
Fathers Series, no. 2 (Spencer, Massachusetts: Cistercian Publications,
1971).
3 Neither the letter of Peter the Venerable to Ghislebert nor Bernard
of Portes’s letter to Rainald has, as far as I know, been translated into
English. The Latin text and a French translation of Bernard’s letter can be
found in Lettres des premiers chartreux, Vol. 2, introduction, critical text,
French translation, and notes by "un chartreux" (Sources chr~tiennes, no.
274; Paris: Cerf, 1980), pp. 50-79. For the Latin text of Peter’s letter, see
Giles Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, Vol. 1 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 27-41.
MARY BETH MOORE
A Spiritual Direction
C onnie drew the heavy drape across the window, noting the
ast gray light filtering from the west. She turned on a small
lamp on one side of the room and lit the vanilla candle at the
other. Immediately its aroma permeated the small space. She
selected a Mozart disc from the handful of CDs near the love seat,
placed it carefully on the turntable, pressed play, and adjusted the
volume so that the maestro’s graceful, precise notes were barely
audible, as subtle as the candle. She paused, looking slowly to
each corner until satisfied by the atmosphere she had created.
Free of clutter, the parlor was just large enough for the love seat,
chair, and coffee table. She sat down on the chair. Connie never
sat until she was satisfied. She was a short, heavy woman and,
since it was not easy for her to get out of a chair, she considered
the act of getting into it.
She had a few moments before her guest arrived, and this time
was also planned. The guest or, more precisely, the directee
required the kind of attention one must work up to. So she made
an effort to appreciate the room for its own sake. She awaited the
security these preparations usually brought. She summoned the
attitude of inner peace which any directee had a right to expect
of her, breathing deeply, ignoring the slight pulse in her legs,
ankles, even noting the contradiction between attending to a pleas-
ant carnal sensation--the candle--and determinedly shutting out
the unpleasant. She made herself breathe.
Connie had been a spiritual director for almost twenty years,
Mary Beth Moore SC writes from 3496 Jerusalem Avenue; Wantagh,

New York 11793.

and people liked her. She had talent in this abstruse area, and she
knew this because her directees said so. Most of her clients were
nuns, participants in a lifestyle whose subtle conflicts she knew as
her own, having been a nun now for forty years. Relationships:
community, friends, principals, superiors. Even, occasionally, a
romantic entanglement. And, of course, the relationship with God.
Connie never told them what to do. She listened. She asked ques-
tions. She recalled for the searcher his or her own best qualities.
(Yes, even the occasional priest or layman found his way to her.)
Generosity. Loyalty. Courage. Connie never mi~de these things
up. Yes, that was the talent. Seemingly from thin air, she would
recall a point the directee had made two months before, or ask
precisely the right question. "What must you do to grow in this sit-
uation?" The question was perhaps trite, but the answers never
were. Stammering or articulate, passionate or cool, the directee
usually responded with a perfectly credible plan of action, one
whose truthfulness went to the heart of the matter. She had learned
to expect the creativity that her directees brought with them.
Still, Connie did not consider herself creative. She thought
of herself as a modest person, and attributed the results to God’s
grace. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a face that had
always been plain, and was now old. Of course, Connie had not
once seen her own brown eyes transformed with the glow of the
full attention she gave to the directees. They simply thanked her.
She expected nothing more.
At the sound of the doorbell, Connie took hold of the chair
arms and, giving herself a boost, stood and steadied herself before
crossing the short distance to the front door. She was pleasantly
nervous for this encounter with her client, and she hurried as much
as she could, knowing how uncomfortable it was to wait at her
door. The Bronx brownstone faced southeast toward the Sound
and Long Island, and through the winter a stiffwind blew almost
steadily. She opened the door to see a petite woman framed against
the dark corridor of the street, hopping around on the stoop to
cope with the cold. The sky behind her was clear, but dark. The
city lights obliterated all but the highest-hung stars.
"Marilyn, my dear, come in quickly before the wind knocks
you down."
"It almost did. I parked a block away, and--"
"Did you meet much traffic?" Connie took Marilyn’s coat and
shivered at the cold that rolled off of it.
Moore ¯ A Spiritual Direction
"Som’e, as usual. The Cross Bronx is always crowded."

"Oh, that’s a terrible road. I always feel glad when I turn off.
A cup of tea before we start?"
"I would love it, if it’s no trouble. It sounds so good."
"No trouble at all. Go in and make yourse.lf comfortable. I’ll
be right back." She indicated the room she had just prepared, and
waited to be sure her guest was seated before disappearing into
the inner quarters to make tea. She returned with a tray and two
steaming cups. They were silent as they fixed the tea to their lik-
ing. Part of Connie’s skill was to suppress small talk as the pre-
lude to spiritual direction. Chatter cluttered the spirit, she believed.
She had once lived as a hermit for three months, and the disci-
pline served her well. After a suitable interval she moved to her cus-
tomary opener.
"So, tell me, what brings you to spiritual direction?"
"Ah, yes. Well, I have the intuition, this notion. It haunts me
and I feel almost, I don’t know, maybe, embarrassed to share it.
Or even ashamed--though maybe that is too strong a word. I’ve
tried to discuss it, get a hold, but I..."
Connie listened as the other woman stuttered, and felt a tug
of compassion. She leaned ever so slightly toward her, her eyes
widening to lend support to the recitation. A sexual problem per-
haps. Everything supposedly out in the open these days, but the
unique turns of the human heart, and the struggle to articulate
them! She waited.
"... this notion, and others don’t want to hear, or maybe can’t
hear. Almost a conviction actually."
"A conviction that ...." Connie was poised, waiting for the
other to look up.
"I don’t want to offend you, as well. But I suppose it’s foolish
to come and beat around the bush. You see--"
"’I assure you, my dear, I won’t be offended. I’m eager to hear
what you have to say."
"A conviction that it’s over. Over, over, over."
Connie frowned, noted the slightest wave of impatience with
the conversation’s turn. "You’ll have to tell me what ’it’ is, I think."
"This." She spread her hands as if her meaning should be obvi-
ous, indicating the candle, the lamp, and Connie herself with thrusts
of her chin. "Convents. Middle-aged women living in polite little
groups, good-hearted, but accommodated. Comfortable. Convents,
parlors, single beds, obsessive neatness, vanilla candles. Over."
"Leave my candle out of it, at least," Connie said, more
emphatically than she had intended. She was offended, but she
did not realize it quite yet.
"O.K. Your candle may be spared." Marilyn grinned. "But as
for the other elements, well, the writing is on the wall."
"Nebuchadnezzar? A kingdom about to fall?" Connie tried to
get her bearings. The other’s hesitancy had disappeared, her voice
got stronger by the sentence, and Connie began to think that her
earlier, tentative approach might have been a ploy.
"Yes. That’s exactly right, Connie. The humble kingdom we
built for ourselves that did so much good. Children we taught,
sick we nursed. It was a world in itself, a kingdom if you will. We
had a place in a religiosity that was shared by Catholics every-
where. In that Catholic world,
we had a mystique of holiness,
otherness. We were a cheap
labor pool. Now others can do "’Prayer is the balance
what we did, without living a
special way of life." She took of mind and heart.
deep breath while Connie waited
with alarm. "I believe our Perhaps you think too much."
lifestyle is ending."
Buy time. That was Connie’s
second idea, after the first one,
something like, who do you think you are? Who are you, sup-
posedly asking me for help, boldly upending a tradition? One that
needs no defense. "I must keep eye contact," she thought.
"Marilyn, too, is a committed religious, sincere, middle-aged, a
seeker like myself." She was unused to such a strong emotion that
was not compassion. She focused with effort. "Fall back on tech-
nique," she urged herself. When she finally spoke, her voice was
light.
"Well, that’s radical, for sure. Possibly a bit reductive. I’ll need
some time to take in the idea. But, in any case, you know that spir-
itual direction does not provide answers. Why don’t you tell me
about your prayer. What’s happening there?"
"Connie, don’t you see? That is what’s happening. I pray, but
I feel afraid. This sense of winding down . . . it, it assaults me.
This is the result of my reading the signs of the times. And, very
selfishly, I wonder what will happen to us. I’d actually like some-
body to refute me."
"Prayer is the balance of mind and heart. Perhaps you think

too much."
"Oh, maybe. It’s just when I have an insight I always think it’s
correct. I’m not pious, either."
Marilyn’s voice had softened. Connie saw that she had heard
her words as a correction, as in fact they had been. She had men-
tioned fear, a key word in Connie’s work, the rope binding the
spirit, an adversary of growth. Usually Connie would have asked
about it, but this evening it suddenly seemed like too much trou-
ble. She was impatient, her back began to ache. She sought for a
middle ground.
"Or perhaps I think too little. You’re a challenge to me, and
I’m not sure if I can be as objective as I like. Can you"--she
searched for the way back to Marilyn’s point--"can you stay with
the questions?" She got a little stronger. "Ride the questions."
Marilyn thrust out her chin, as if shg regarded the question as
an object in the room. There was a pulse of silence. "Yeah. That’s
a good idea." She smiled and looked at Connie with a glint of
humor.
"Good luck. I’ll pray with you."
There was a notable pause, and Connie sighed before turn-
ing to topics of lesser import. Her back pain was easing, and she
felt relieved that the conversation had returned to a manageable
place. She was no coward. She had borne others’ tears and rage at
God. But a messy squabble with herself as partner was not at all
congenial. She had put the balance back. She would pray with and
for Marilyn.
Both were careful to refrain from gossip in the spiritual-direc-
tion setting; the set of those who chose such support was small, and
many knew each other. Still, there were allowable facts--some-
one’s new job, an elderly sister’s passing. And, after the intense
discussion of the inner life, it was consoling to take in the mellow
light and the full attention, each from the other. When they had
finished the tea, and the candle wax threatened to spill on the table
top, Marilyn moved to go. Connie helped her with her coat, saw
her out into the cold air. The street was quieter now and a single
star, maybe a planet, winked above the streetlights.
She closed the door and went back to her direction room to
turn off the light and blow out the candle. The wax had leaked
onto the table into a viscous pool. "Ride the question," she repeated
softly aloud to herself. She had been pleased to hit upon a phrase
Revie~v for Religious
that seemed to help her directee, but, as she turned it over in her
mind now, looking at the empty room, it sounded trite, facile. The
dialogue with Marilyn echoed in her mind, and a sensation rip-
pled quickly, like the hint of an unpleasant duty she could not
quite remember. She stepped away from the room with unusual
haste and headed for the community recreation room and her
favorite TV program.
When Connie got to the community room, Sarah was watch-

ing a public TV program--something about endangered species--
with the intensity of a graduate student. While she made eye
contact with Connie, she held up a forefinger to
postpone conversation until the program seg-
ment ended. Connie sank into the chair and
waited. She did not mind. It was more inter- She could see
esting to observe Sarah than to watch the in the woman
parade of facts on the screen. She could easily
see in the woman the ardent girl she had taught the ardent girl
thirty years before, and, in her unsettled state of
mind, that girl seemed to inhabit the room
she had taught
again. Sarah’s field was biology, and she brought thirty years before.
her expertise along with boundless energy to a
nonprofit agency that monitored the environ-
ment. Connie studied her with detached affec-
tion. What was it that made Sarah so interesting? The combination
of ambition and idealism, thought Connie. She was the perfect
nun for our time.
Connie mused about the effect of her own ministry. She had
joined Sarah and the others in the brownstone house the year she
finished her term as novice director. It had been her initiative to
work free-lance in spiritual direction, and the community con-
firmed’ her choice. Her clients found her by word of mouth. She
spent her day much as she had with the novices, in a disciplined but
unhurried rhythm of prayer, study, and client appointments.
It was Sarah who persuaded Connie to get a paying job two
years ago. Some of the sisters in her own house had argued against
it, but Sarah persisted. She pointed out to Connie that she com-
plained about being the one to answer telephone solicitations and
wait for plumbers. Sarah, the realist, reminded the community
that their income base was shrinking, since the elderly sisters far
outnumbered the younger wage-earners. Connie began to mind
not having even a modest paycheck to present for the running of

the house, and the quota for the retired sisters’ care. The only
thing she did not tell Sarah and the others was that she was tired
of not having tales to "tell at supper about the outside world they
inhabited each day. What could she say about spiritual direction?
In that field there were no general issues, no little anecdotes, to
report, only secrets of the heart whose value was discovered as the
directee conferred it.
So Connie took a job as the secretary in a little Catholic school
in the Bronx. She bolstered the idealistic young man who was prin-
cipal and lent an ear to the parents who rushed through with for-
gotten lunches and umbrellas. She now had tales for the dinner
table with the community, and savored even more the evenings of
direction.
She did not allow herself to miss the easy pace she had once
enjoyed. She was often tired. She worried intermittently about
losing weight, especially when Sarah inaugurated a new restric-
tion in the community diet. She gave up insisting that they buy
whole milk: it was not worth the commentary on cholesterol. But
these were small .annoyances, predictable, familiar. If the occa-
sional ache or pain pressed itself too deeply into her conscious-
ness, her mind might leap to the future for a moment. But the
pain subsided, or was integrated into what she chose to put up
with. It was against her principles to measure herself by a worldly
standard.
She gazed at the TV for a bit, savoring the comfort of her
(avorite chair until the program finished and Sarah pressed the
mute button. "How was your day?" Connie asked.
"Really productive," Sarah answered brightly. "I spent the
morning editing that junior high ’natural city’ curriculum. Jake
did a great job with the project and I told him so. Then I had a
meeting with the Friends of the Harbor committee. Giuliani’s guy
stopped in. Nice person actually, said he would continue to press
our concerns with the mayor. He sounded sincere, but we’ll keep
the pressure on anyway. Peter was pleased."
"Peter?"
"Grossman, the earth sciences professor from Bronx
Community College, that one who chairs--"
"Oh yes, I remember him." Connie made it a point to keep up
with the cast of cha[acters that peopled Sarah’s offbeat job. "Did
Jake’s wife have the baby yet?"
"Three days ago! I thought I’d told you. Mother and daugh-
ter are doing fine." Sarah described the particulars of the birth in
detail, then trained eager eyes on Connie. "How was your day?"
Connie’s mind returned to her session, where a seasoned nun
had suggested that religious life would become a thing of the past.
It was an abstract idea, after all. The common room she shared
now with Sarah was perfectly real and stable. The house had been
paid for.
"Connie, your day?" Sarah’s voice called her from her reverie.
"Anything wrong?"
"Wrong? Oh no." She hesitated. "Do you think about the
future, Sarah? I mean our community. Do you think there will be
nuns living in this house in twenty years? Youngish nuns, enthu-
siastic like yourself, women who believe in prayer, the vows? Some
of my directees"--she tried to be deliberately vague--"a few think
our way of living is a thing of the past."
Sarah frowned. "It could be, you know. Let’s face it. No one
has joined the community at all in the past five years, and those of
us in it aren’t getting any younger. It could be. But, hey, God our
Mother will bring to birth something new. Birth, growth, decay,
matter recycle into new growth. It’s a universal process. Why
should we escape it?" She reached for the TV wand.."Do you want
to watch anything else?"
"You’ve thought about this?"
"Oh, it crosses my mind now and again. Shall I turn this off?."
Sarah waved the remote again.
"Sure." Connie could see that Sarah was preparing to leave
the community room, and a wave of desolation passed over her. She
longed to call out, "Please don’t go, yet," but she knew perfectly
well such a request would startle Sarah. "She’d probably think I’m
having some kind of attack," Connie thought. "What reason could
I give for the need of her presence?" Nothing came to her. Sarah
was at the door now, turning back, her gaze objective and ldnd.
"You O.K., Connie?"
"I’m just fine," Connie answered quickly. "Sufficient for the
day is the trouble thereof."
Sarah was satisfied. "Sleep well, then."
"You too."
Connie was alone now in the familiar room, and hothing could
threaten her. Soon her strange moment of panic would pass, and
she would move to her usual routine, fold back the newspaper,
enjoy the silence. She had an honorable job. She loved Sarah, and
the others with whom she lived and shared an uncomplicated love
of friendship. She scanned the headlines, then tossed them aside to
read the Arts page, a book review, but she struggled to concen-
trate. "Loneliness has no hold over me," she thought. Loneliness
and solitude were the same companion in different dress, the bite
of one and the consolation of the other alternating throughout
her days.
But the mood of release she sought at the end of the day still
eluded her. She focused on the gratitude she must render for the
events of the day, and recalled a grandmother who had come to the
school to deliver a forgotten lunch. In her mind’s eye she could
see the weary black face transformed with smiles when the child
hove into view. But, when the memory dimmed, a keen discomfort
reasserted itself.
She pushed through her rote evening prayer, "Now Lord you
may dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes have seen your sal-
vation. A light of revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for your
people Israel." Simeon, welcoming his life’s end, having seen the
object of his heart’s desire. "He was lucky," she thought. The
prayer did not seem to help at all. She turned off the light in the
common room and made her way out by the light of the street
lamp filtering through the blinds.
She turned toward the kitchen. "A nice cup of tea," she
thought. "It will clear my mind." She made the tea. She measured
out her usual two spoonfuls of sugar, tasted it, then furtively added
a third. She sipped it slowly and regarded the clock, whose subtle
whine could be heard in the silence. "I tell my directees to face
their fears. And so must I," Connie concluded. "What was it, then,
old age?" But she dismissed this quickly. Maybe prettier, fitter
women, yes, even nuns might struggle with this, but she had never
known herself that way. She had long ago accommodated herself
to aches and wrinkles. Nor was it fear of death. Not yet. Her
mother, her aunts, stout women all, had lived into their nineties.
"I probably have a few decades in me," she mused.
What had Marilyn said? "It’s over." That was the phrase that
had ripped her, as if a web of equilibrium she hardly knew existed
was torn, and its sundering had discovered a category of feeling she
could not recognize.
"Now, Lord, you may dismiss your servant in peace, because
my eyes have seen your salvation." Simeon’s words came back
again, with the picture of the bearded sage, smiling and content,
holding an infant whom he knew certainly to be the savior. Who
did he think he was? "I’m jealous of him," she thought.
And, since the habit of honesty was well established, Connie
began to name the struggle. The child Simeon held had just been
named Jesus, newly circumcised, accompanied by proud parents.
She was jealous of Simeon’s proximity, his luck to be in the right
place at the right time. She was envious of the consolation of touch,
the embrace that illuminated him, at once revealing the true iden-
tity of the child.
But most of all she was jealous of his certainty. As a young
idealistic woman, and through all the vicissitudes of the years, she
had fallen back on the certainty that she was doing God’s will.
And, just as the meeting with a newborn child had transformed
Simeon from a bumbling old man into a prophet, so she had
thought her lifestyle would transform her.
She looked around the kitchen slowly, scrutinizing the cabi-
nets, the fridge. Stalling. The fear she felt was not provoked by the
encounter with Marilyn, but rather unmasked by it. Fear, raw
fear, as when a young child is lost in a crowded arena. Connie
placed both hands on the teacup and concentrated on the warmth
that spread to her palms. She recalled, with effort, that she was an
adult.
But, slowly, understanding came to her. What was threatened
was certainty and specialness. The fear in her belly suggested that
she had bartered for those goods with the austerity of her lifestyle
and her vows. Yet she herself had taught the basic truth of spiri-
tual direction so many times: All that is not love must be rooted
out. She could not blame anyone or anything external for her new
situation.
She sat thus at the kitchentable for a long while, and the tea,
untouched, grew cold. By and by she simply admitted that an inner
battle was just beginning; she might as well go to bed. Fear would
come and go, and grief, too, must attend the process. She lay in
bed, listening to the faint sounds of traffic, making an effort to
yield to sleep in order to be ready for the next day. But, as she was
poised on the mysterious shelf before consciousness falls away, a
phrase floated up from the well of memory, a saying she would
work with for months to come, "Though a bird be tied to earth by
only a thread, still he cannot fly."
DENNIS j. BILLY
Contemplative
Religious Witness:
A Redemptoristine Monastery
a witness At the end of each academic year, I leave my work at the

response Alphonsian Academy in Rome and spend the summer
months as an author in residence at Mount St.
Alphonsus, the Redemptorist retreat center in Esopus,
New York. During my time there, one of the
responsibilities I share with the other members of my
community is to celebrate Eucharist at the nearby
Redemptoristine monastery of Our Mother of Perpetual
Help. This small community of contemplative nuns
devotes itself to being what their 18th-century
Neapolitan foundress, Maria Celeste Crostarosa (1696-
1755), called a "living memory" of the Holy Savior. My
close contact with the sisters there has helped me
appreciate more deeply the contemplative dimension of
my own vocation. It has also helped me see the intimate
relationship between the Redemptorist and
Redemptoristine callings, two very different lifestyles--
one apostolic, the other contemplative--deeply devoted
to a common charism of proclaiming "plentiful
redemption" in Christ.
Dennis J. Billy CSSR, a frequent contributor to this review,

may be addressed at Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458;
00100 Roma; Italy.
R~view for Religious

Spousal Love
As a community of women entirely dedicated to
contemplation, the sisters at Perpetual Help Monastery maintain a
spirit of separation but openness to the world around them. They
follow the norms of papal enclosure as laid out in church law and
interpreted by their Constitutions and Statutes, but do so with a
keen sensitivity that their contemplative vocation places them at the
very heart of the local church. In the spirit of Vatican Council II,
they have also renewed their way of life to be more in keeping with
the spirit and charism of their foundress. In doing so, they have
attempted to adapt the contemplative life to the
exigencies of North American culture while at
the same time taking care to maintain the
significant countercultural and eschatological To be with Mary
witness that religious life in general and the
contemplative life in particular seeks to convey. a "living memory
The result is a small but dedicated group of of the church’s
women religious whose lives are deeply
immersed in the mystery of Christ and his body, spousal love"...
the church.
Verbi sponsa, the recent Vatican instruction
on contemplative life and the norms of papal
enclosure, describes cloistered nuns as becoming, with the Virgin
Mary, "the ’living memory’ of the church’s spousal love" (§1). I
could not read these words without thinking of the special meaning
they would have for the Redemptoristines at Esopus and
throughout the world. Mary’s close.relationship to her Son places
her in a position of humble service toward all who turn to her. "To
Jesus through Mary" was the way St. Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-
1787) liked to express Mary’s role in the economy of salvation.
Everything she does is meant to lead us to a closer, more intimate
relationship with her Son. Her loving and heartfelt fiat in Luke’s
Gospel reminds us that it could not be otherwise. Her response to
the angel reveals a deep trust in God’s trust in her. She became the
Mother of God because of her spousal relationship with God,
which was itself a gift from God to her and, through her, to all the
world.
When seen in this light, to be with Mary a "living memory of
the church’s spousal love" leads quite naturally (perhaps it would be
better to say "supernaturally") to being a "living memory of the
redeeming Christ." Each remembrance is a single dimension of a Ly-95---2
Billy ¯ Contemplative Religious Witness
much larger reality: you cannot have one without the other. Keenly
aware of this connection, the Redemptoristines at Esopus proclaim
their spousal love for their risen Lord at their daily Eucharist,
where he eats with them, drinks with them, and caresses them with
the gentle, calming breeze of his Spirit.
A Eucharistic Community
It is often said that something is not fully experienced until it is
remembered. If this saying is true, then the Redemptoristines’
desire to become a "living memory" of their Lord must foster a
deeper experience of Jesus’ presence in their hearts and in their
midst. One need only consider the deep spirit of prayerfulness that
fills their daily celebration of the Eucharist to see that this is so.
These simple celebrations tap into the hidden life of contemplation
going on in the deepest recesses of their hearts and reveal the
height and depth and breadth of the paschal mystery.
The daily Eucharist is the center of the sisters’ lives. It
immerses them in the mystery of God’s love which their lives
espouse and puts them in intimate contact with their risen Lord.
The Eucharist reminds them of the "eucharistic quality" of the
cloistered life itself (see Verbi sponsa, §3). Separation from the world
enables the sisters to be present t6 the world on a much deeper
level. It enables them to share not only in Jesus’ life of kenotic self-
offering, but also to join him in his eternal act of thanksgiving to
the Father. This close connection between the Eucharist and the
sisters’ contemplative vocation touches the very heart of the
redemptive mystery. It affirms Jesus’ ongoing presence in their
community and gives meaning to every dimension of their largely
hidden life of prayer. The sisters’ daily remembrance of Jesus is
possible only because of Jesus’ continual remembrance of them.
They seek to be a living memorial to the living memorial he has left
them in the Eucharist. They, more than anyone else I have met,
take to heart Jesus’ words "Do this in memory of me."
In this light, life in the Redemptoristine cloister at Esopus
takes on the threefold dimensions of banquet, sacrifice, and
presence that characterize the mystery of every Eucharistic
celebration. Being a "living memo~ry" of Jesus, in other words,
means seeking to give nourishment to others (banquet) through a
humble offering of self (sacrifice) in the name and in the company
of Jesus, who is "Emmanuel, God wi~h us" (presence). The
Eucharist, in other words, not only is the summit of their lives, but
permeates everything they do. Without it, there is no way they
could continue or even survive.
From Death to Life

I once had the occasion to experience this eucharistic quality of
the sisters’ lives in a profound and beautiful way. Sister Mary
Regina, one of the sisters in the community, was nearing death after
a long-drawn-out battle with cancer. This was happening at the
very time I had been scheduled to lead the
sisters in their annual ten-day retreat. After
learning that Regina’s death was drawing near, Separation from
I fully expected the retreat to be canceled (or at
least postponed), since the sisters’ hearts were the world
heavy with sorrow and their schedule was
already overloaded by the "round the clock" enables the sisters
attention Regina’s condition demanded. I was to be present on a
~urprised, therefore, to learn that the
community wanted the retreat to go on, much deeper level.
despite the added strain it would put on them.
I was even more surprised (but also delighted)
when, on the first day of the retreat, the prioress asked if it would
be all right to celebrate Mass in the infirmary so that Regina could
attend from her sickbed.
That Eucharistturned out to be the last Regina would ever
share in--at least on this side of death. The breaking of the bread
took on special significance as we celebrated in the presence of one
whose life was ebbing away. The nearness of death brought a
special solemnity to our celebration. Regina’s silence added depth
to our words; her gaze, a quiet calm to our troubled, questioning
hearts. The knowledge that she would not be with us much longer
affected the way we prayed. Everyone in the room seemed to have
one eye fixed on the Lord and the other one on her. And that was
the way it should have been, the way the Lord himself wanted it.
This was Regina’s moment. With her community around her, she
was free to be herself before her Lord. Firmly fixed on the host, her
eyes told us in a quiet, nonverbal way that Jesus was with her in a
way he had never been before. So it is, I believe, with all of us at or
near the time of death. Each one of us must one day drink from the
same cup. Now it was Regina’s turn.
Billy ¯ Contemplative Religious Witness
Near the end of Mass, I looked around the room and

experienced that sense of communion that can only come from
hearts united by their common yearning for God. As my eyes moved
from face to face, I could sense the pain that the community as a
whole and each of its members was experiencing as a result of
Regina’s illness and imminent death. I could also sense the deep love
that bound them to each other and, at this special moment, to
Regina. In the midst of the sadness, my gratitude deepened and gave
way to a deep sense of peace. The Lord was with us, and that was all
that mattered. I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the upper
room.
The Heart of the Church

Contemplatives, we are told, live at the very heart of the
church. On this day I was grateful for this brief glimpse God had
given me into the heart of a contemplative community. There the
simple mysteries of life and death are recognized, pondered, and
celebrated. There human existence is plumbed to its depths and
experienced in all its wonder and heightened fragility. There the
restlessness of the human heart forages in the darkness of divine
mystery. There God is allowed to be God and is welcomed,
however he chooses to come.
Very few of us ai’e called to live as contemplatives in the heart
of the church. Those who hear the call and respond to it often find
that they have been driven to it by the relentless pursuit of a
passionate divine Lover. Happiness would elude them anywhere
else. Only there, in the cloister, can they give themselves exclusively
to God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Their hidden
life behind their monastery walls is the visible reminder of what
they have left behind--and journeyed into. So essential is it to the
good of the whole that it recedes, almost by necessity, to the
background of life’s numerous surface activities. Like the heart
itself, it is never seen, rarely heard, seemingly still, but always
pumping.
The heart, one might say, is an appropriate metaphor for
monastic enclosure itself. Some of the most vital activity in the
entire body takes place within the narrow, confining chambers of
the heart. These otherwise empty cavities are formed by the inner
contours of the heart’s muscle fibers. The constant expansion and
contraction of these tissues forces the blood through the chambers
and creates enough pressure to make it flow throughout the rest of
the body. In a similar way the empty spaces within the cloister are
visibly shaped by the rules of monastic enclosure which, firm yet
flexible, allow the life of the contemplative community to
distinguish itself from the rest of Christ’s body in order to perform
for it a special function. Here the all-important apostolic dimension
of the contemplative life comes to light. The contemplative
community plumbs the depths of the Spirit so that the life of the
Spirit may flow more freely to all the members of the body. Here
the law of inverted magnitudes operates in full force. The
contemplative community confines itself in time and space in order
to open itself up to and move more deeply into the sacred. This
simultaneous movement ("juxtaposition," if you will) of contraction
and expansion is at the center of the contemplative experience.
Although not everyone is called to live a life of monastic enclosure,
all of us are called to foster a contemplative attihade toward life. For
us to do so, this dynamic .movement of physical withdrawal and
spiritual expansion must somehow come into play for each of us.
Active and Contehaplative

I began these reflections by stating that my contact with the
Redemptoristine community at Esopus has given me a deeper
appreciation of the contemplative dimension of my vocation as a
Redemptorist, missionary. I also like to think that, in some way, the
appreciation has been mutual, giving rise in them to a deeper sense
of the apostolic dimension of their lives as contemplative religious.
We share a single charism which, although expressed in
drastically different lifestyles, brings to light the plentiful
redemption wrought for us in the passion, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Contemplative religious, we have seen, live in the
very heart of the church. The Redemptoristines, to my mind, do
much the same for the apostolic mission of the Redemptorist
congregation. Both orders, after all, share common origins and
embrace the same motto: Copiosa apud eum redemptio ("With him
there is plentiful redemption"). To follow the Lord in his work for
the poor and most abandoned (as Redemptorists try to do) is closely
tied to being a "living memory" of the risen Lord (as the sisters try
to be). Each order focuses on a different dimension of the one
redemptive mystery and, for this very reason, is intimately related
to the other.
Noventber-December 2000
My experience at Esopus has taught me that contemplative
religious can best contribute to the apostolic mission of the church
by simply being themselves and living whatever Rule they follow
with patience, humility, and deep compassion. In doing so, they
reveal the depth of their humanity and remind us of the intimacy
we are all called to share with the divine. The eucharistic quality of
their lives enables them to celebrate the present moment--
whatever it may bring--by sharing the gifts of self-offering and
sensitive personal presence. Their life of solitude places them at the
very heart of the church’s life and ongoing mission. Their enclosed
life offers the world a countercultural and eschatological sign of
what is still to come, yet somehow already mysteriously present in
the deepest recesses of the human heart.
Like the Redemptoristines at Esopus, contemplative religious
are called to lose themselves in the mystery of the divine in order to
find themselves in the face of the very next person they meet. They
plumb the depths of human experience in order to move more
deeply into the sacred and live in intimate spousal union with their
divine Lover. All of them are living reminders of the passion, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All are visible expressions of the
church’s living memory of what took place in the person of Jesus
Christ and takes place today in his body, the church. Theirs is a
message for all times, all places, and all circumstances. Those who
hear it will recognize the need to foster in themselves a
contemplative attitude toward life. Those who do not will miss a
unique opportunity to peer beneath the surface of life and behold,
as never before, the innermost treasures of the human heart.

ANDRI~ MAUREEN SOETE
A Vowed Response
to the Postmodern World
Tp hoe characteristics symptoms, and realities of our so-called

stmodern world are being studied and probed by scien-
tists, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians.
All seek to understand the reality, foresee the consequences, and
arrive at some satisfactory description and response. Since I am
not a theologian, scientist, philosopher, or any of the above, I do
not claim to understand this reality, much less propose responses.
What I offer is simply my own response as a woman religious,
specifically a School Sister of Notre Dame.
The Situation of Our Age

Postmodern issues have been touching us and coming into
our consciousness for some time now. Our world is rapidly chang-
ing, and what we once thought were objective, unchangeable real-
ities are in fact changing. The "way to be" and the "way to do" for
the present generation seems so different from our way. What can
all this mean to SSND sisters and associates at this time?
This time of change may feel like a breakdown. The world
has become so different that we may not like it and may question
Andr,~ Maureen Soete SSND has ministered in Japan for thirteen

years. This article is the address she gave to an assembly of Japanese
and North American School Sisters of Notre Dame in Kyoto on 9
January 2000. Her address is 11 ol Kawarada-cho; Matsugasaki; Sakyo-
ku; Kyoto 606, Japan.
Soete * A Vowed Response
the direction in which it is heading. Envisioning ourselves living

in this new age, we may have the feeling that we do not fit, for
what we understood as reality is being challenged. This is not just
the usual generation-gap experience that we have all probably
experienced from one side or the other. This phenomenon has
been observed by many since the first hints of it in the 1970s and
is obviously a real cultural shift.
The choices for different lifestyles, the questioning of what we
considered permanent values, and the challenges to our thinking
are in some ways unnerving. We may catch ourselves longing for
the good old days--the secure structures, the way students "used
to be," and the way convent life was. It almost tempts us to choose
to respond by retreating--by going back.
These times are being described by the word chaos. Some of
the chaotic things that people observe and study are political, eco-
nomic, and social oppression; poverty, starvation, and unemploy-
ment; the oppression of women; the ecological crisis; nuclear
threat; secularism, materialism, and the failure of churches to
renew themselves and inspire belief. Chaos causes a great deal of
anxiety, but it also provides us with the moment and the call to
rediscover our real story and our deepest roots.
How Our Foundress Would Respond

As followers of Mother Theresa Gerhardinger, we can ask
ourselves how she would manage in this age, how .she would
respond if she were alive today. We know that our answer would
have something to do with our charism. What is it that she passed
on to us that is ageless? What is the changeless essence that will
survive these times and even give us the hope we need to go on?
When we think of Mother Theresa responding to her time
and day we think of a strong woman of prayer, a woman of God,
a woman in touch with the reality and needs of her day, a woman
animated and energized by the conviction that women can change
the world, a woman who knew that, if people can change, the
world can cMnge too. But at the root of all these images of her was
her sense of God’s desire and call "that all be one." She longed
for the oneness of all in God. She was a woman willing to strug-
gle for unity on every level.
She could see unity in diversity, for she believed in the rights
of individuals and the respect due to each person. She learned the
lessons essential for real unity--lessons of love, respect, appreci-
ation, tolerance, and trust--first from her own parents and later
from her mentors Bishop Wittmann and Father Job. These were
her models, inspiring her to foster the same values among her sis-
ters and her society. It was her commitment to unity and her drive
"to make one" that gave her tireless energy for mission, and could
give us the same tireless energy.
The Postmodern Age

The academic world has come to use the term "postmodern"
in an attempt to name this period of the world’s history because
this is the period in which people are reacting to all that is false and
untrue, all that has not worked in our familiar modern age. In
some way the choice of the name "postmodern" is like calling the
butterfly a "postcaterpillar." "Postcaterpillar" might be a suitable
name during the period when we observe that the caterpillar is
no more, that what was once the caterpillar now seems dead or
half dead, changing unaccountably. But once we see the beautiful
creature with bright wings emerge, flutter freely, and take flight,
we find ourselves calling it a "butterfly."
Similarly, because of the lack of clarity about the future, schol-
ars describe the present reality by noting changes from the earlier
condition.When all of the characteristics of this age become clear
and show some coherence, it will be time to give the new period
a name. The world may not reach that point in our lifetimes, but
I hope that all of us want to be a part of the creation of the new
name. We can do that by appropriately influencing, shaping, and
creating some of the characteristics that will emerge. I suggest
that a principal characteristic must be unity. That same oneness
that was Christ’s mission and Theresa Gerhardinger’s mission must
be our mission too.
Failure of the Modern Age

The modern age promised us that by science and technology,
by dividing the whole, dissecting and labeling every part, and con-
trasting one thing with another, it could understand and solve the
problems of our world and probe the depths of reality. It promised
that the world would be controlled and developed and perfected,
[--~2 ¯
and that human beings would reach great heights. But science
Soete ¯ A Vowed Response
itself has had to admit that the mysteries of the world are far
beyond such probing; that our scientific advances have actually
destroyed much of our world and have led us to live in fear of
some scientific developments; that actually, in spite of all of our sci-
entific progress, we have missed opportunities to expand and
develop our spiritual and human potential and have inst(ad created
horrendous human misery.
MI of the human misery in the world today is a sign that these
former beliefs are not working. When I think of the oppression,
poverty, ecological recklessness, uncontrolled materialism, and
other problems of our day, I can
understand why a new generation
rejects our old answers. When I hear
Our prosperity and plenty dogmatic pronouncements from our
come to us on the backs of churches or from our governments
about how things should be and see
the poor and oppressed. that those very pronouncements
bring about more division than unity
and hope alnong peoples, I can
understand why some of my own
young nieces and nephews reject them as incomplete, irrelevant,
without meaning in their lives.
It is probably true that there have always been famines, always
children abused, always conflicts among religious groups, always
people oppressed and exploited and murdered--but we have not
always known about them with such immediate clarity. Now, thanks
to advances in technology, we do. We are informed immediately
about what is happening around the world. And we know now what
the prophets and economists have been telling us for a long time,
that our prosperity and plenty come to us on the backs of the poor
and oppressed. And now the poor and oppressed know that too.
We can see all of the "signs of the times" on our nightly news
programs. It is up to us to read them carefully, interpret them
honestly, and respond accordingly. If society is not organizing
itself so as to be inclusive of all citizens, but chooses rather to be
exclusive, then the developments in the world around us must sig-
nal that we are going in the wrong direction. If our lack of respect
for our environment cries out to heaven and to us in its misery, if
our land is no longer fertile, our water is befouled, and our air is
poisoned--if we really see and recognize this, we must know that
we are going in the wrong direction.
If our neglect of the poor and downtrodden causes our edu-
cation and healthcare systems to fail, and if our competitive cul-
tures make the lives of many people miserable, then all of that
neglect and competition must be the wrong direction. If the signs
tell me that life the way we have thus far organized it is not work-
ing, that nothing succeeds, that my actions effect disaster for oth-
ers, I am obviously moving in the wrong direction.
After recognizing all of this, what do we do? We must make
choices in response to these signs. We can choose to be "the tired
ones" who give up to let someone else lead the renewal. We can
choose to be "the selfish ones" who create only our own security
and pleasure. Or we can choose to be "the hopeful ones" who will
look for new possibilities for ourselves and for the world. I want
us to be the ones who choose to be hopeful. I think we must con-
tinue to believe that human beings hold the potential to create a
world that works for all peoples.
Our Vows as a Response

I think that as vowed religious we might bring new dimen-
sions to the thinking about solutions to world problems and could
radically affect outcomes--not by seeing ourselves as an elite group
distanced from our neighbors by some holy and private choices, by
mysterious vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, but rather
by remembering--and letting ourselves be reignited by--the zeal
with which I think we all made our first vows. I mean the per-
sonal hope that we would change the world for the better, that
we ourselves would bring with us the presence of Christ, that by
sharing our love, faith, and hope we would make Christ visible
and bring all the world to oneness in God. What happened to that
most wonderful zeal and enthusiasm?
I think that we religious need to ponder deeply the meaning
of our vows and the witness our lives can give, must give, in con-
trast to various trends and news events. I think of instances of
environmental pollution, of trials for war crimes, of the terroriz-
ing of ethnic and religious groups, and of the mother of a young
child who could kill another woman’s little girl. We seek to be
effective in demonstrating hope and bringing it into our world.
In a world where millions (including helpless children) suf-
fer from the lack of such essentials as food, clothing, shelter,
medicine, and education; in a world where people use their wealth
Soete ¯ A Vowed Response
to produce more wealth so that they can live in a style that uses up
the goods of the earth; in a world where people want more and
more and give less and less to the laborers who produce the goods;
in a world full of people who throw away and waste without even
a thought--in such a world I have promised, we have promised, to
use only what we need and to share everything we have. Are we
keeping that promise? Would anyone who looks at us, our
lifestyles, or our closets notice our choiceto do with less and our
willingness to share? Would they be edified, stand in awe of the
way that we are keeping our promise?
In a world where groups of human beings look upon other
groups as lower and with great intolerance seek to get rid of them;
in a world where "ethnic cleansing," ways of death, become a way
of life for some; in a world where nationalism means that free-
dom to be intolerant of the differences of other races or peoples--
in such a world I have promised, we have promised, to love
inclusively and to take on Jesus’ own reverence and concern for all
people, excluding no one. Are we keeping that promise? Would
anyone who looks at us, at our way of being with the people with
whom we live, at our way of being with the people at our place of
ministry, notice our love, tolerance, and respect? Would they be
edified and stand in awe of the way we are keeping our promise?
In a world where the strong and influential make decisions
for the weak; in a world where whole groups of people are not
consulted about matters that affect vital areas of their lives; in a
world where people are murdered because they disagree--in such
a world I have promised, we have promised, to search for God’s will
and the right direction through dialogue and conversation, con-
sultation and collaboration with all concerned. Are we keeping
that promise? Would anyone who watches how we lead or partic-
ipate in groups of students or teachers or coworkers notice our
collaborative style or the way we listen to every person? Wotild
they be edified and stand in awe of the way we are keeping our
promise?
What Then?
I have spoken about our vows, emphasizing them as three
promises because the term "vows" can sometimes be spiritualized
and focused only on our commitment to God. In thinking about
them as promises, I had a sense of a great possibility. I began to see
that what we promise is more like a radical way that all human
beings need to choose if we are to create a world where all people
can live with dignity. I Wonder what might happen if we shared
these choices of ours more openly among ourselves and witnessed
to them more radically with our associates and with our partners
in ministry.
I am not so sure of our next step. I am not so sure how this
small core of friends and others like us might have a good impact
on our society and our world. But I think that
somehow we can--and I challenge ourselves
and others to come alive with that potential.
"Striving for Unity" is our charism. We are
supposed to be masters of it by now. Why, in
We have promised
our Japan Region alone, if we add up all of our to use only
years of religious life, we have more than three
thousand years of our SSND lifestyle! what we need.
I hope that we and others may gather Are we keeping
together everyone’s good insights and with
them create for ourselves an exciting and real- that promise?
istic dream as we step forward with God into
this third millennium. Many of us will probably
not be around when the next era gets its name,
but--just as we prefer the word "butterfly" to "postcaterpillar"
when thinking of the little creature’s potential--would we not
want the concepts of oneness, tolerance, collaboration, acceptance,
and respect to be part of the name given to the next era?
Are there initiatives for us to take, or can we at least support
and encourage the wonderful people around us who are already
dedicating their lives to this conversion and transformation of the
earth? Is this not what we want to use our energy and ingenuity
for? Is this not a way that we could use our positions as educa-
tors and as ministers? Is this not worth the offering of the rest of
our lives?
November-Decen~ber 2000
LAWRENCE F. BARMANN
Mary Ward:
Centuries Her Scroll
Today, amid questions about effective evangelization in

examples the 21st century, about leadership and ~uthority in the
Catholic Church, and about women’s fuller participa-
from the tion in these efforts and echelons, there is much that
can and should be learned from Mary Ward at long last.
past During her lifetime four hundred years ago, she experi-
enced much suffering and failure, but her full contribu-
tion to the church and the world seems now to be only
beginning. For religious in the United States and else-
where who may know little or nothing of this extraor-
dinary woman, I hope this article may provide a brief
but warm introduction. The recent book I will be draw-
ing from and citing is an excellent place to make fur-
ther acquaintance with her goodness and truth. I refer to
Mary Ward: Pilgrim and Mystic by Margaret Mary
Littlehales IBVM)
Mary Ward was an English gentlewoman, well-con-
nected by birth, and related to many of those who were
executed for their part in the ill-conceived Gun Powder
Plot of 1605. She was born in Yorkshire in 1585, three
years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada and four-
Lawrence E Barmann is a professor of American studies

and theological studies at Saint Louis Univ, ersity. His
address is Humanities Building; 3800 Lindell Boulevard;
St. Louis, Missouri 63108.

teen years after Pope Pius V’s bull Regnans in excelsis made techni-
cal traitors out of all English Catholics who claimed allegiance to
the pope by inviting them to dethrone Queen Elizabeth. So mar-
tyrdom for the faith, or at least willingly accepted hardship for
the ability to practice it, became the very atmosphere in which
Mary Ward grew to adulthood. Such an atmosphere is often
inducive to quick spiritual maturity, and in Mary Ward’s case it
certainly was.
By the time she was sixteen, Mary Ward had developed a
strong prayer life and the conviction that God intended her for
the religious state in some form. Her parents thought otherwise,
and Edmund Neville, heir to the earldom of Westmoreland,
became her suitor. After Mary had gently rejected him, Neville
became a Jesuit; and at twenty-one she persuaded her father to
allow her to go to the continent to try her vocation to religious life.
In 1606 Mary arrived at SaintoOmer in the Spanish
Netherlands (now northern France), where English Catholics
escaping persecution in their homeland had been migrating for
decades. Through the advice of misguided confessors, she entered
a Poor Clare convent, only to realize within a year that this was not
where God intended her to be. In 1609 she returned briefly to
England, where she seems to have gained some light about God’s
choice for her. Upon returning to Saint-Omer with a small group
of English women about her own age, she set about doing for
women’s education what the Jesuits were doing for boys among
the emigr~s. She called her community the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and her specific intention was "to train English girls
from Catholic families to be wives and mothers or religious, but all
to be apostles for the faith in England."
She was convinced that women were quite as capable of edu-
cation as men, though she thought they did not need precisely the
same courses. For Greek and Hebrew she substituted modern lan-
guages, and for physical training, dancing. Moreover, she set about
having her own followers trained to teach such things. In the patri-
archal world and church of the 17th century, this was considered
wildly innovative and thus suspect; and so the church authorities,
who alone could approve her work as a religious institute, were
to make Mary pay dearly for such innovation.
Once, in 1617, after hearing a Jesuit priest comment on the
work of her schools that, "when all is done, they are but women,"
Mary remarked calmly but with conviction: "There is no such dif-
November-Decen~ber 2000
Barmann ¯ Mary Ward
ference between men and women that women may not do great
things ..... And I hope in time to come it will be seen that women
will do much .... What think you of this word ’but women’? but
as if we were in all things inferior to some other creature which I
suppose to be man." Mary Ward’s convictions about this and much
else were drawn not primarily from books and debates, but from
her intense relationship with God and from his grace working
through her wonderfully balanced and prophetic personality.
As the schools grew and young women increasingly wished to
join Mary Ward’s community, she needed to settle on some rule of
life. By 1611 already about forty women had cast their lots with
hers. Both the local bishop and her confessor tried to force her to
adopt either the Augustinian, Benedictine, Franciscan, or Carmelite
rules. To these urgings she could only respond that "they seemed
not that which God would have." These "English Ladies," as they
were now commonly called by their supporters (or "Jesuitesses," by
their detractors), could not have adopted any of those earlier rules
for women and continue to do the work to which they were called;
all four rules as they were applied to women in those days required
canonical enclosure. Finally Mary Ward had her answer, and it
was to lead to incredible suffering for the remainder of her life. To
the papal nuncio in Cologne, Monsignor Albergati, she explained:
About this time, in the year 1611, being alone in some
extraordinary repose of mind, I heard distinctly not by sound
of voice, but intellectually understood, these words: "Take
the same of the Society"; so understood as that we were to take
the same both in matter and manner, that only excepted which
God by diversity of sex hath prohibited. These few words gave
so great a light in that particular institute, comfort and
strength, and changed so the whole soul as that it was impos-
sible for me to doubt, but that they came from Him whose
words are works.
Mary Ward’s conviction that God intended her to adopt the
Jesuit Rule to her institute of religious women and to do her spe-
cial work in the world rather than in a cloister was what 17th-cen-
tury western Europe obviously needed if it were to remain at all
Catholic. But it was a conviction far in advance of the convictions
of most of the male authorities in post-Reformation Rome.
Furthermore, the Jesuits had managed to incur the jealous wrath
of the secular clergy in England, and these latter pursued Mary
with calumnious accusations simply because she intended to estab-
lish a female religious congregation based on Jesuit principles.
These calumnies found a ready hearing in Rome. The Jesuits them-
selves were ambivalent about her institute, sometimes being
extremely helpful and sometimes joining the enemy. In 1622 Mary
Ward finally met the Jesuit general, Mutius Vitelleschi, who was
deeply and permanently impressed by her. Henceforth the Jesuit
general would instruct his men to be supportive of Mary’s work and
gracious to her, short of such involvement as might lead to a sort
of second order--something St. Ignatius Loyola had strictly for-
bidden.
Meanwhile Mary’s institute had established schools not only in
Saint-Omer, but in Liege and Rome, and would soon have houses
in Naples, Perugia, Munich, Vienna, Pressburg, and elsewhere.
Mary herself, always of delicate physical constitution, went back
and forth across the Alps,
mostly on foot, frequently
in winter and in the midst
of the Thirty Years War, in
Mary Ward’s conviction that
order to strengthen and God intended her to adopt
encourage her followers;
while at the same time she the Jesuit Rule to her
worked tirelessly to gain
the necessary support of
institute of religious women
bishops, the Roman curia, was what 17th-century
and the pope, for the approval
of her institute. western Europe obviously needed
The number of high-
placed clerics who opposed
if it were to remain Catholic.
her for reasons that had
nothing to do with reli-
gion, or even good sense, always outnumbered those who sup-
ported her. The bishop of Vienna, for instance, wrote to Rome in
1628 to complain that the English Ladies had opened a school
there without his peymission (though they had the emperor’s per-
mission and he had even given them a house and funds) and that
the girls in Mary Ward’s school had actually performed publicly in
a comic school play!
With the Catholic religion collapsing in central Europe, a
bishop’s jealousy of his rights against the only Catholic ruler of
any weight in the region would ultimately prevent the Catholic
education of young women in the empire. Of popes with whom
Mary had to deal, Urban VIII, who would condemn Galileo at
Barmann ¯ Mar~ Ward
about the same time that he condemned Mary Ward, was the most
duplicitous. She first had an audience with Urban in 1624, in which
she pleaded for approval of her institute and in which Urban smiled
and smiled and totally misled her about his intentions. Eventually
he ordered the suppression of all of her houses and the dissolution
of her institute, and this merely on the basis of English clerical
calumnies and calumnies spawned by the hurt pride of ambitious
continental clerics. Mary herself was eventually imprisoned as a
heretic in a Poor Clare convent in Munich, by order of the Roman
Inquisition. There she nearly died, though she so impressed the
resident Poor Clares that they knew she was anything but a heretic.
Meanwhile, her followers were being systematically driven
from their houses and were mostly on the verge of starvation.
Having at length been released from prison, Mary set out at the
end of 1631 for Rome in order to clear her good name for the
sake of what she hoped might be the future of her institute.
Kneeling at Urban’s feet she burst out, "Holy Father, I am not
nor ever have been a heretic." At which the pope interrupted, "We
believe it, we believe it; we need no other proof." He also allowed
the institute to continue (under private vows) in Rome and under
his protection.
In 1637 Mary Ward set out again for England, though it would
be May of 1639 before she actually got there. She sought a letter
from Pope Urban to give to Queen Henrietta Maria to gain the
queen’s support for her institute. The letter Mary received speaks
of her as "one much esteemed in Rome both for her well-known
qualities and piety, which will without doubt cause Your Majesty to
see and hear her." This was the same Rome which, only half a
dozen years earlier, had imprisoned her as a heretic and decreed the
destruction of her life’s work. The queen did receive Mary gra-
ciously, but within a year the country would be in the throes of
political ttirmoil that would end in civil war and the execution of
the king. Without completely abandoning her hope of establishing
a school in London, Mary went north to Yorkshire in 1642, and
there she died at Osbaldwick, a short distance from the city of
York, on 20 January (old style) 1645.
After her death Mary Ward’s institute did in fact flourish, and
finally, in 1977, after a wait of 366 years, the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary was able to realize Mary Ward’s original insight and
founder’s charism by adopting the Jesuit Constitutions, and with
the blessing of the Jesuit general, Pedro Arrupe. Margaret Mary
Littlehales’s study of Mary’s Ward’s life reveals many things. It
reveals the costliness, but also the great happiness, of completely
abandoning oneself to God. It also demonstrates that, within the
external church structure, official authority can be quite wrong,
but probably less so in proportion to the genuine humility of its
wielders.
Mary Ward’s life demonstrates incontrovertibly that God’s
intended purposes are often achieved through the near annihilation
of the human instruments of that achievement. Christians should
not be surprised by this, for such was the case with God’s own
Son. Contemporary religious, both men and women, can find great
encouragement and inspiration in the life of this saintly English
woman. Dorothy Day did, and she even titled her own autobiog-
raphy with a remark Mary Ward once made as she pondered what
lay ahead of her as a young woman bent on seeking only God’s
will--"the long loneliness."
Note
1 Margaret Mary Littlehales, Mary Ward, Pilgrim and Mystic, 1~8Y-
164~ (Tunbridge Wells, England: Burns and Oates, 1998). Pp. 272.
£18.95.
Patrimony
my patrimony
is a deity unknown
whose name I cannot
pronounce
communicated to me
in stuttering speech,
in fits of temper and in weeping,
in so many questions
unleavened by answers
in silence and in absence
by those struck dumb
and those afraid to speak
Sefin Kinsella
STAN PARMISANO
St. Catherine’s Letters:

Human Love, Gracious Authority
O ne level of St. Catherine of Siena, perhaps her deepest, is

revealed in her Dialogue.’ But this great work, whether in
the original or in proper translation, is strange fare for many mod-
ern readers. Its subject matter--mystical union with the Trinity
in and through Christ--is high and heavy and, I should think,
attractive only to the relatively few seriously intent upon such
union. Its language often includes words and phrases borrowed
from the scholastic theology of the day, though Catherine’s orig-
inal genius keeps breaking through, giving new form to old mat-
ter. The book is also rife with personification and allegory (Christ
the Bridge, the Tree of Life, Vineyard of the Soul, and so forth)--
fun for the medieval reader, but dry and tedious for today’s read-
ership. Also, in the Dialogue Catherine is quite formal and
impersonal. The lively, dynamic personality recorded in history
is certainly there, but it has to be searched out, for it is hidden in
the shadow of the great Truth she labors to expound. She herself
is merely un’anirna in the mighty presence of her God.
Her letters are a different matter.2 They are personal--writ-
ten not by an anonymous "soul," but by the flesh-and-blood
Catherine. Io Caterina rings throughout, addressed not to people
in general, but to here-and-now individuals. The letters evoke
wide and popular interest. They deal with Catherine’s own life
Stan Parmisano OP wrote about theology and faith in our September-

October issue. His address remains Saint Albert’s Priory; 5890 Birch
Court; Oakland, California 94618.
Revie’a, for Religiou,

and visible experiences and with details about life around her, social
and political as well as spiritual. Their language is not borrowed
from or freighted with outmoded rhetorical devices, but is pleas-
ingly spontaneous and informal, as alive today as in Catherine’s
own time. On the whole the letters are original. They are
Catherine, in every vibrant word and phrase--simple, nuanced,
various, alive with passion for the truth, and the truth in particu-
lar situations. They are "unliterary," to be sure, for they were
talked, not written, by our unlettered saint, but
they are clear and coherent, direct and firm, ... simple,
though also tactful. Catherine sometimes digresses,
loses the train of her thought, but she never really nuanced,
rambles on or gossips. She has little time for light
conversation ("Let us run, let us run, for the time various, alive
is short!"), and her central point is almost always with passion
clear and precise.
Though each of her letters is unique, many of for the truth,
them fall into a common pattern. They begin with and the truth
Jesus, and with Catherine as the slave of the servants
of God--never, for Catherine, a mere pious formula, in particular
but always freshly genuine. Then she often seems to
lose herself in the contemplation and exposition of situations...
one of the mysteries of faith, which, however, turns
out to be pertinent to the subject of the letter. Soon she comes to
the question at issue, and, if in the initial paragraphs she was high
and spiritual, peacefully contemplative, now she is very much the
active apostle dealing practically and in detail with earthy mat-
ters. She ends with statements of love and concern for her corre-
spondent, placing all in the hands of God: "Bathe you in the blood
of Christ crucified. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love."
The letters reveal the breadth as well as depth of Catherine’s
concerns, and her marvelous ability to adapt, with no compromise
of ideal, to various situations and personalities. To a little niece she
writes in gentle, childlike simplicity about the wise and foolish
virgins in the Gospel and the lamps they bear: "Do you know what
this means, my daughter? By the lamp is meant our heart, because
a heart ought to be like a lamp. You see that a lamp is wide above
and narrow below, and so the heart is made to signify that we
ought always to keep it wide above through holy thoughts and
holy imaginations and continual prayer; always holding in mem-
ory the blessing of the Blood by which we are bought .... I said
Parmisano ¯ St. Catherine’s Letters
that a lamp is narrow below, and so is our heart: to signify that

the heart ought to be narrow toward these earthly things--that
is, it must not desire or love them extravagantly, nor hunger for
more than God wills to give us" (letter no. 23).
To Alessa, as to other of her women disciples, she sends prac-
tical advice about the religious life, which is to be lived "both with
and without moderation .... For love toward God should be with-
out measure, and that for creatures should be measured by that
for God, and not by measure of one’s own consolations, whether
spiritual or temporal." And how manage this? "Make two homes for
yourself, my daughter: one actual home in your cell, that you go not
running about into many places, unless for necessity, or for obe-
dience to the prioress, or for charity’s sake; and another spiritual
home, which you are to carry with you always." This last, she con-
tinues, is "the cell of true self-knowledge," embracing both the
knowledge of God and the knowledge of self, "two cells in one..
¯ and when abiding in the one you must abide in the other, for oth-
erwise the soul would fall into either confusion or presumption.
For, if you rested in the knowledge of yourself, confusion of mind
would fall upon you; and, if you dwelt in the knowledge of God
alone, you would fall into presumption" (no. 49).
Still within the uncompromising truth and love of Jesus, but
with some relevant adaptation, she writes in a much different vein
to Sir John Hawkwood, the English soldier of fortune who was
the scourge of the Italian city-states. She begs him to leave "the
service and pay of the devil.., and take the pay and the cross of
Christ crucified." He is a soldier; let him remain such, but let him
now become Christ’s knight: "I beg you, then, gently in Christ
Jesus, that, since God and also our Holy Father have ordered a
crusade against the infidels and [since] you take such pleasure in
war and fighting, you should not make war against Christians any-
more--for that is wrong to God; but go against the infidels. For
it is a great cruelty that we who are Christians, and members
bound in the body of Holy Church, should persecute one another."
And she concludes abruptly but quite aptly with a subtle undertone
of warning against his soldiering altogether: "I beg you, dearest
brother, to keep in memory the shortness of your time." Her final
words are as usual: "Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God.
Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love" (140).
To that formidable woman of the world Queen Joanna of
Naples, who first sided with Clement, then Urban, then with
Clement again in their rival claims on the papacy, Catherine writes
in a similar manner, but with deeper sorrow and fiercer passion:
"Dearest Mother--mother, I say, insofar as I see you to be a faith-
ful daughter of Holy Church--it seems to me that you have no
mercy on yourself. Ah me! because I love you I grieve over the
evil state of your soul and body. I would willingly lay down my
life to prevent this cruelty. Many times I have written to you in
compassion, showing you that what is shown you for the truth is
a lie; and the rod of divine justice.., is ready for you if you do not
flee so great a wrong. It is a human thing to sin, but perseverance
in sin is a thing of the devil .... Be merciful, ah, be
merciful to yourself]. I say no more to you. Remain
in the holy sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus
Love" (348).
Religious life
She writes differently to Gregory xI than at a is to be lived
later date she would write to Urban vI. Gregory
was weak and vacillating, and so in her letters to "both with
hi~n she exhorts him to be "manly" and firm in his
high office of supreme pontiff: "Be manly in my
and without
sight, and not timorous .... I, Catherine... write moderation."
you in his precious Blood, desiring to see you a
manly man (uomo virile) without any servile fear."
And, when Gregory hesitates in his resolve to
return to Rome for fear of being poisoned there, Catherine
reminds him that there are other, more terrible kinds of poison;
and at any rate there’s as much poison "on the tables of Avignon
... as on those of Rome!" (229, 239).
Urban, on the other hand, from the start of his pontificate
was already betraying that spirit of anger and vindictiveness that
would end in personal revenge, violence, and mt~rder. One had
written to Catherine after the election of Urban: "It seems that our
new Christ is a terrible man." In her first letter to him, Catherine
appears to be aware of this and shapes her words accordingly:
"Next I beg you, and constrain you by the love of Christ crucified,
as to those sheep who have left the fold--I believe for my sins--
that, by love of that Blood of which you are made minister, you
delay not to receive them in mercy, and with your benignity and
holiness force their hardness; give them the good of bringing them
back to the fold, and, if they do not ask it in true and perfect
humility, let Your Holiness supply for their imperfection. Receive
from a sick man what he can give you" (291).
Parmisano * "St. Catherine’s Letters
She writes to William Flete and other hermits at Laceto a

gem of a letter begging them to leave for a time the peace and
quiet of their forest retreat and come to Rome on pilgrimage in
support of Urban. She desires them so to lose themselves as to
seek "nor peace nor quiet elsewhere than in Christ crucified." If
out of piety they are loath to leave their solitary life, they must
know that there are woods and forests aplenty in and around
Rome! (326). To Raymond of Capua, her Dominican soul brother
and dearest friend, she writes in every which way: tenderly, pas-
sionately, in joy, in anger; now as a scolding mother, now as his
obedient daughter, now reproving him for cowardice and want of
faith, now exposing her own weakness and want of love. And, often
uncomfortably for Raymond, always she wants him together with
herself to die a martyr: "I tell you, sweetest Father, that, whether
we will or no, the time we are living in enjoins us to die, so do not
live any longer..." (333).
Catherine’s Human Love

This last suggests one of two facets of Catherine’s personality
that may prove especially problematic for the modern reader of
her letters, namely, the quality of her human love. The spontane-
ity, passion, naturalness, and totality of her love for the Person of
Christ is beyond question: she is quite literally consumed, body
and soul, with love for Him, who is mad (pazzo), drunk (ebro) with
love for her. But, when it comes to lesser*folk, her native inclina-
tions seem to be oversupernaturalized, and her love may appear
forced and lacking in the milk of human tenderness and warmth
and understanding. This would explain the extreme discomfort
she experiences when ordered by the Lord to leave her solitary life
and give to others the same love that she gave to him. Raymond
testifies that such discomfort was habitual with her: "Catherine
responded to this call, yet she often acknowledged to me that,
every time our Lord ordered her to quit her cell and converse with
others, she experienced so live a sorrow that it seemed to her that
her heart would break.’’3 Such distancing from human love appears
time and again in her letters. With Catherine it is either God or
mammon, divine love or the "corrupt love" of the world: "No one
can serve two masters .... And if you ask me ’How then must I
love?’ I answer that you may love children and all other creatures
for love of him who created them and not out of self-love or of love
Review for Religqous
for the children" (247). How are we, who are schooled in a psy-
chology of love that values human affection and "others" for their
own sake, to respond to this?
We may find something of an acceptable answer to our ques-
tion in a wider, deeper reading of Catherine and her early biog-
raphers. One would suspect from the endearments showered upon
her by her disciples--Mamma Caterina, carissima mamma, venera-
bile e gioconda e dolcissima mamma--that she was most lovable and
therefore must have been as warmly,
affectionately loving as any "dearest,
kindest, sweetest" mother must be.
Apropos of the above quotation about She writes in
loving children, one of her biographers
notes in passing her own de facto tender every which way:
love for them: "If it were seemly," she is tenderly, passionately,
reported to have said, "I’d do nothing but
kiss them.’’4 And in her letters we fre- in joy, in anger.
quently find a kindly though measured
attitude toward human love, as in a letter
to a certain Monna Jacoma: "I would not
have you believe that God does not want us to love, for all things
made by him deserve to be loved, since God, who is the highest
Good, has made all things good" (264).
It is human affection and love alone, and the individual apart
from God, that disturbs Catherine, for, unless people are rooted in
the divine caritas that is their intended home, they can only tease
and fail, and eventually destroy. ("Each man kills the thing he
loves"~here is a later indictment of merely human passion by one
sadly experienced in it.) Catherine, innocent of the experience,
knows the lesson from the beginning in startling and uncompro-
mising clarity: "To love people," she continues in her letter to
Monna Ja,coma, "outside of God and without true humility, with-
out recognizing that they are from him, is that which makes them
evil" (264). We may not like Catherine’s often extreme, discom-
fiting language about mere human love and emotion, her stark
black-and-white situations and her either-or theology and psy-
chology. We may rightly argue that, if divine love is the condition
for a full and creative and lasting human love, so human love is the
way to the divine and the means, perhaps the only means, of deep-
ening and strengthening it. But Catherine is a shocking reminder
to those of us now "liberated" in matters of love and sexuality that,
Noven~ber-December 2000
by whatever means we come to the divine or at whatever time of

life, God must be there if ever we are to love truly, and that we
must continually pray our human loves into the full heart of Christ.
This is what Catherine means when she insists time and again that
we are to love the souls of others--not that we are to love only
part of them, spirit sans body, but that we should love them fully
and in depth. Whatever we do for others or suffer because of them,
it must be with and toward the soul. Catherine’s unrelenting com-
mand is that we be mangiatori delle anime--eaters of souls. For her
there is only one love, which must continually reach to the divine
depth in and beyond all.
This same dynamism was marvelously operative in Catherine’s
love for the church as a whole. "The other" for Catherine was the
church, no mere abstraction, but the tangible "sweet bride of
Christ," and often Christ himself in visible presence. Because she
entered into her vocation of love with such graced exclusivity--an
exclusiveness that would not tolerate "the nothing" (her word for
sin)--she saw the church clearly and in depth. Here too, as in her
more private loves, she saw both the human and the divine, the
human rooted in the divine, as with Christ. Much of our
post-Vatican II world is likely to object to Catherine’s passionate,
almost blind faith in and love for the church. But perhaps the lim-
itation is with us.
There is the tendency now to see the visible church only as
human. People think that, if there is a divine element, it is some-
thing apart from the visible; something within the church and now
and again operative in it, perhaps, but not a constant, vital, essen-
tial, believed part of it; something having nothing at all to do with
the politics of the church or its formal structure or its rites of wor-
ship or those ordained to celebrate them. We may hope and search
for the divine within the church, but we look for it in the hidden
hearts of people, in the secret motives, the caritas that inspires the
corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
This was not Catherine’s faith. In accord with approved the-
ology, she believed in ex opere operato, the objective presence of
grace in the church, minister, and sacrament, and she spelled her
faith out in concrete word and deed.s As powerfully as she believed
in the divinity of the human Christ, whom she saw and heard and
touched, so did she believe in the divinity of the church, acting
in, through, beyond, and often in spite of its visible human man-
ifestations and signs. God was there, not just in the charity of the
faithful, but in visible pope and priest, whose special grace it was,
whether worthy or unworthy, to bring us "the Blood." So priests
are always to be reverenced, and the pope is always il dolce nostro
Christo in terra. Christ, divine as well as human, is to be loved and
worshiped in the quite visible structured church just as in its invis-
ible heart, on earth as in heaven.
But obviously this meant for Catherine something more than
mere passivity in the face of manifest corruption. With the keen-
ness of vision that rises from passionate and dedicated love, she saw
the enemy within, saw the cancer eating away at the vitals of the
church, raged against it, and spent her life trying to excise it. The
pope was her sweet Christ on earth and so her dearest babbo, but
as a fallen son of Adam there.was in him, as well as all around
him, viciousness and corruption that
marred and debased his dignity as pope.
So she writes to Abbot G~rard du Puy,
nephew and confidant to Gregory: "Alas,
There is the tendency
alas, therefore do Christ’s members decay, now to see the
because there are none to chasten them!.
.. They [priests and prelates] are devils visible church
dragging the souls of their subordinates to
hell and care nought for it, for they are
only as human.
ravening wolves themselves and traffic in
the divine grace. A strong hand is needed
here" (109). To Gregory himself she writes: "Alas, alas, sweetest
Babbo mio, ... this is the reason why all the subordinates are cor-
rupted in impurity and injustice .... Blind are the sick who do
not know their own disease, and blind is the pastor who ought to
be the healer, but who never dares to use the knife of justice or the
fire of true love .... Such a pastor is nothing but a hireling.., and
he is that because he loves himself otherwise than in God .... I
hope, therefore, venerable Father, that you will quench that wrong-
ful love yourself and not love yourself any more for your own
sake" (185).
To the cardinals who had reneged on their election of Urban,
she writes a letter that begins and ends in love and respect, but in
between is scathing: "You fools, a thousand times worthy of death!
You are like the blind who cannot see their own disease .... You
make liars and idolaters of yourselves" (310). And Catherine’s early
biographies teem with instances of hard journeys she undertook to
right the wrongs of churchmen by her action as well as her word.
But Catherine loved and worshiped church and minister much

more than she condemned and reproved, because, as in all else, she
searched the depths, looked into the soul of the church, and there
found in all his splendor her beloved Christ, quite visible and
active. This is why, unlike many of the reformers of subsequent
centuries including our own, she is more positive than negative
in her criticisms of priest and prelate, much more hopeful than
discouraged, and always loving even in her fiercest anger. "And, if
you say to me," she writes to the disillusioned rulers of Lucca,
"that it looks as if the church is failing and that she can no longer
help herself or her children, then I tell you that it is not so, but that
it only looks so from the outside. Look within (ragguarda dentro)
and you will find that strength which her enemies have not" (168).
She knows all too well the corruption that is there, and knows
that it "must reach to the very roots." But she also sees the beauty
that is more deeply there--in the church at large as well as in indi-
viduals-and this holds all her love and hope.6
I, Catherine, Will It!

A second facet of Catherine’s personality that may trouble the
contemporary reader is her "authoritarianism" and her certitude
even in most contingent situations. While others in her day, includ-
ing saints and saintly statesmen, were confused about who was the
legitimate pope, Catherine had not the slightest doubt. When oth-
ers asked her about their futures, what they should do and be,
Catherine unhesitatingly and with surety told them. Even those
given her by proper authority as spiritual directors ended up lis-
tening to her and taking her direction. This gives us pause. We
have become aware of the complexity of the world, of our corre-
spondingly limited resources in the pursuit of truth, and of how
wrong we can be especially when we think we are right. But there
stood Catherine in all her hard and certain truth and her
undaunted proclamation of it, and she brooked no compromise.
Such a mentality, however, may not be all that foreign to our
times. We too have our prophets, those with some positive belief
who speak out and act upon it--all those, for instance, passionately
seeking justice and wholeness within church and state and trying
to live truth out in their personal lives. To such as these Catherine
makes or can make sense. She is a sister in the ageless world revolt
against the powers of darkness in high places. She is one of the rel-
Review for Reli~ous
atively few of every generation who can slice through the com-
plexity, red tape, and myriad excuses and get to the heart of things.
But one must also note the differences. Catherine was not
regarded by her contemporaries as a revolutionary or reformer or
protester or rebel of any sort. She was known as a lover, precisely
a lover of God and of human souls in God. She spoke with author-
ity--her Io, Caterina echoes in one form or another in just about all
her letters--but not the frightening authority of power or physical
force or even of personality. Blessed Raymond called it autoritb de
caritb. It was her overwhelming love for God and the church and
for every individual she confronted that constituted her authority.
And it was under pressure of this love, this caritb, that she spoke the
truth. Others might and did disagree with what she said, but few
could resist the love out of which their carissima mamma said it.
We must remember that much of what Catherine insisted
upon was obvious or should have been so to those to whom she
addressed herself. She spoke no new truths, but simply gave vital
and practical expression to orthodox doctrine. Thus, as noted
above, her letters often begin with statements and elaboration of
some common truth of faith which is then brought to bear upon
the concrete situation at hand. Others might more or less have
succeeded in separating their Christian belief from their daily sec-
ular life, but Catherine would have none of this. She would con-
tinually remind her correspondents that the faith was to be lived,
lived here and now.
So it was, for instance, with Brother Gabriele of Volterra,
master of sacred theology. He was a Franciscan friar and as such
was especially vowed to poverty, but, as Catherine points out, he
was living "like a cardinal." He had come to expose Catherine as
a fraud. Her response to him, grounded in simple truth, struck at
his conscience and made of him a disciple: "How is it possible for
you to understand anything Of that which pertains to the king-
dom of God, you who live only for the world and to be honored
and esteemed by men? Your learning is but little use to others and
only harms yourself, for you seek the shell, not the core.’’7
To Pope Gregory, who was concerned about preserving the
temporalities of the church, she writes from the vantage point of
her faith and his: "I know well, Holy Father, that you can say: ’In
my conscience I am pledged to preserve and regain the posses-
sions of the church.’ Alas, yes, that is indeed true; but I think there
are things of greater value to be considered. The treasure of the
church is the Blood of Christ, shed for the redemption of souls and
not for the temporal possessions of the church" (209). This last
quotation also evidences the tact and balance of Catherine’s author-
ity. She was no rabid fanatic who would have the church divest
itself of all temporalities and corporal concerns and devote itself
exclusively to "spiritual matters." The church was the Body of
Christ, in its nakedness and passion, but also in the visible splen-
dor of its resurrection; and temporalities are de necessitate as long
as we are in the body. But Catherine would have first things first:
passion before resurrection, and first and foremost in every
moment the church was to be for the kingdom of God which is not
of this world.
Though Catherine was definite and firm and often loudly vocal
in her opinions--the trtttb, she would say--she was also paradox-
ically detached from them, and was not altogether sure of them.
This was because she saw the one essential truth so clearly and
adhered to it so fixedly: the depth and intensity of God’s love, his
"mad love" for each of us. Here was the giant sun of truth that
paled all lesser lights and would, in the belief she shared with her
English contemporary and sister in mystical love, "make all to be
well" beyond our poor reckoning.8 Thus she could write to some
of her disciples: "The will of God alone shall judge, which seeks
and wills naught but our sanctification. In this way one is not
shocked at his neighbor and does not criticize him. Nor does he
pass judgment on one who talks against him. He condemns him-
self alone, seeing that it is the will of God which permits such men
to vex him for his own good. Ah, how blessed is the soul that
clothes itself in a judgment so gentle!" (294).
Perhaps the best evidence for this "ambiguity of authority" in
Catherine’s life is found in her relationship and correspondence
with her dearest friend and counselor. Often she was severely dic-
tatorial with Raymond of Capua, requiring high and mighty deeds
of him including perilous journeys likely to end in his martyrdom.
But his frequent failures did not unduly trouble her or lessen her
love and reverence for him and her confidence in him. "In all your
doubts and needs," she tells her disciples in her final illness, "turn
to Father Raymond and tell him not to be discouraged or lose
heart.., and, when he does anything he shouldn’t, I shall tell him
and see that he mends and improves his ways!’’9
Though in a number of letters she commands and sometimes
chides Raymond, she rarely fails to conclude humbly and gra-
ciously: "Forgive me, most holy Father, for my prodigious igno-
rance and for the offenses I have committed against God and your
holiness .... I beg you to pardon me if I have said anything against
the honor of God and the respect I owe you: love is my excuse"
(267, 344). Once, having advised Raymond on a certain matter,
she concludes: "However, in spite of what I say, do what God
inspires you to do and what appears to you to be best" (226). The
same humility and graciousness surfaces in letters to other friends
and disciples. No doubt Catherine was very much in command
wherever she was and was not shy about speaking her mind. But
she was also careful to leave each of her children in the freedom of
the infinite and variegated wisdom of a God whose ways are
Mystery and Love.
Notes
~ No critical edition of the Dialogue has yet appeared. An authorita-
tive text of the original is that of Giuliana Cavallini, I1 Dialogo della
Divina Provvid?nza ovvero Libro della Divina Dottrina (Rome, 1968). This
is the text used by Suzanne Noffke OP in her splendid English transla-
tion, Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).
2. Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, ed. N. Tommaseo, 4 vols.
(Florence, 1860); rev. ed. P. Misciatelli, 6 vols. (Siena, 1913-1921;
reprinted Florence, 1939-1940). E. Dup~ Theseider projected a critical
edition of Catherine’s correspondence, but was able to complete only
one volume containing 88 letters (out of 382): Epistolario di S. Caterina
da Siena (Rome, 1940). Two fine English translations of selected letters
are available: St. Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters, trans., ed., and
intro. Vida Scudder (London, 1980); and I, Catherine: Selected Writings of
Catherine of Siena, trans., ed., and intro. Kenelm Foster and Mary John
Ronayne (London, 1980). One volume of a projected complete transla-
tion in 4 vols. by Suzanne Noffke has appeared, with an engaging,
detailed introduction: The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena (Binghamton:
State University of New York, 1988). Noffke’s Vol. 2, together with a
revision of her Vol. I, is shortly to be published by the Arizona Center
of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I have used Tommaseo/Misciatelli
and its numbering of the l(tters throughout this paper, and have been
guided by the above translations.
3 B. Raimondo da Capua: S. Caterina da Siena, ed. and trans, into
modern Italian by G. Tinagli, 2nd rev. ed. (Siena, 1952), p. 163.
4 T. Caffarini, Supplementum (additions to Raimondo’s biography),
as cited in J. Jorgensen, Saint Catherine of Siena, trans. Ingeborg Lund
(London, 1939), p. 67.
s To my knowledge Catherine never uses the term ex opere operato,
which first appears among the late-12th-century scholastics, but she
Parmisano * St. Cutberine’s Letters
assuredly has the idea; as does St. Thomas when he asks and answers
the very question that so much concerned Catherine: Whether evil min-
isters can confer the sacraments? Catherine’s mind is identical with his
response. Church ministers are the instruments of Christ, whose power
can work through a defective instrument as through one that is perfect.
However, the evil minister (or evil recipient) would sin by conferring
(or receiving) the sacraments. God’s work is accomplished through human
instrumentality, but is not bound thereby. See Summa Tbeologiae, HI, 64,
5-6, and Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed.), §§1127 and 1128.
6 Letter 109: "Egli e bisogno, che racconciare al tutto, si quasti infino
alle fondamenta." See Raimondo, S. Caterina, p. 355: "After all these
tribulations and miseries have passed, in a manner beyond all human
understanding, God will purify Holy Church by awakening the spirit of
the elect. This will lead to such an improvement in the church of God
and such a renewal in the lives of her holy pastors that at the mere
thought of it my spirit exults in the Lord .... Give thanks to the Lord,
therefore, who after the tempest will give his church a period of splen-
did calm."
7 Cited byJorgensen, Saint Catherine, pp. 145-146.
8 The English mystic is, of course, Julian of Norwich, who received
her revelations "in the year of our Lord 1373, the eighth day of May"--
less than a month before Catherine’s reception of the stigmata. Our
Lord’s reply to Julian, troubled like Catherine by manifest and profound
corruption in church and world, was this: "All things shall be well.., and
all manner of things shall be well" (Revelations of Divine Love, chap. 32).
9 Raimondo, S. Caterina, p. 448.
Sequela Christi
There are places where snowplows have chopped
and crushed last summer’s fresh-laid concrete.
Then there are stretches where all sidewalk disappears,
and the road shoulder is a tangle of stubble and sticks,
brambles, debris, and we inch alongside traffic.
There are openings which turn into surprising paths
that lead to lakesides -
though there we dodge the leavings of the winter’s geese.
Sometimes, sometimes, though, we walk clear beach.
Pamela Smith SSCM

NORMANDIE J. GAITLEY
Katharine Drexel’s
Cultural Relevance Now
Km atharine Drexel’s canonization on 1 October 2000 has

eaning not only for Catholics but for every American. In
the multicultural world of this new millennium, her life and works
have a particular relevance. She challenges each woman and man
to respond to the issues of racism and diversity in substantive and
creative ways that will promote the dignity of all persons.
Katharine Drexel was born of Philadelphia-patrician stock on
28 September 1854. Her mother died five weeks after her birth.
The maternal love she received during her childhood came from
her father’s second wife, Emma Bouvier. Her marriage to Francis
Anthony Drexel on 19 April 1858 was chronicled by the
Philadelphia newspapers as an event of unusual distinction. The
lavish wedding reception at Michel Bouvier’s mansion--inthose
days the reception preceded the nuptials--testified to his mate-
rial success. A choir and a full orchestra attended the wedding cer-
emony at old St. Joseph Church in Willings Alley.
Th~ European honeymoon reflected the success of Francis
Drexel’s banking interests. At Emma’s insistence the newlyweds
visited Pont-Saint-Esprit, in Languedoc, her father’s birthplace.
This was followed by a visit to Dorbirn, Austria, the birthplace
of Francis Martin Drexel, her husband’s father. When the couple
returned, they set up their household at 1503 Walnut Street, in the
tree-shaded, newly fashionable quarter of Philadelphia.
Normandie J. Gaitley SSJ writes from Epiphany Convent; 3040

Walton Road; Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania 19462.
Gaitley ¯ Katbarine Drexel’s Cultural Relevance Now
In this age before income tax, the wealth of entrepreneurs

was not diminished by taxes, and their lifestyles were often like
those of European royalty. The Biltmore Estates, the French
chateau built by George Vanderbilt in North Carolina in the
1850s, gives a visceral experience of the style this kind of wealth
afforded. An indoor bowling alley and swimming pool, a gymna-
sium, and beautifully appointed stables suggest not .only "the hunt"
but, in general, a life of leisure for family and friends.
This was not the lifestyle embraced by Emma Bouvier and
Francis Drexel. Circumstances surrounding their lives had given
each of them a sense of noblesse oblige. Louise Vernou, Emma’s
mother, had given her daughter a strict Catholic upbringing. Her
formal education was received at convent schools of the Religious
of the Sacred Heart, first on Walnut Street, then at Eden Hall. A
primary goal of the education there was to develop a social aware-
ness that would impel the students to action. Emma imbibed these
values completely, and her life was marked by a singular devotion
to charity. She shunned the world of fashion and pleasure and
strove actively to engage her children in the needs of the people of
their neighborhoods. From her winter home in the city she oper-
ated a private soup kitchen, and from her summer home in the
country she conducted a center for religious education.
On Katharine’s father’s side, such social consciousness can be
seen in the work of her uncle, Anthony Joseph Drexel. Desiring to
help in a practical manner those who are willing to help them-
selves, he founded in 1890, in West Philadelphia, the Drexel
Institute. The school was to supplement the ordinary common-
school education by a more thorough pi’actical instruction, that
is, to make the learning of trades simpler by explaining to stu-
dents the fundamental principles upon which all trades rest. He
wanted to help fill the basic need that people have for self-real-
ization through useful and creative effort.
Life was happy in the Drexel household. Often Francis Drexel
played the organ upon his return home after a day at the office,
The family gathered regularly for night prayer. The years passed
with winters on Rittenhouse Square and summers in Torresdale.
In 1874 the family took its first long trip to Europe. Kate’s letters
during this trip provide an honest record of her perceptions. Only
after a glorious evening at Lake Lucerne did she admit seeing a
more beautiful landscape than any she had ever seen in the United
States. In one of her letters she noted that "Americans have often
as false notions of aristocracy as Europeans have of the state of
society in our republic." Upon her return home she made her bow
to society. At the time she exclaimed to her parents, "Oh, I love
parties, I love them. I’m never going to stop going to parties as
long as I live!" (Burton, p. 51).
Francis and Anthony Drexel made good use of the proficiency
in banking that they had learned from their father. In 1870 they
merged their firms in Philadelphia, New York, and Paris with J.P.
Morgan’s firms in New York and London.
In only ten years this organization would
receive the major share of the Rothschilds’
business in America and would obtain con- A goal of the education
trol of most of the Vanderbilt interests, there was to develop
becoming one of the leading banking
houses of the world. a social awareness.
Emma Drexel died in 1883 and
Francis only two years later. At his death,
he left an estate of approximately $16 mil-
lion. His will caused nationwide comment at the time, and did so
again in 1955 when Katharine Drexel died. Two million of his
estate was to go directly to twenty-nine charities. The remaining
$14 million was to be divided into trust funds for his three daugh-
ters, Elizabeth, Katharine, and Louise--and the terms of the will
forbade any husband’s having anything to do with his wife’s prop-
erty. This assured each daughter of an annual income of $190,000
for life. If a daughter died without issue, her share was to be divided
among the other two; if all three died without issue, their shares
would go to the twenty-nine charities he had specified.
The synergistic effect of Katharine’s family traditions and the
emerging needs of her day brought to birth a new and unique
reality. To appreciate this fully, one must consider the times in
which she lived. Emma and Francis Drexel were married about a
year before the firing on Fort Sumter. By the time the Civil War
began, the firm of Drexel and Company had become one of the
financial powers of the nation and was able to supply the govern-
ment with the gold so badly needed to finance this war. With the
invention of the steam engine and the development of the rail-
road, the expansion westward continued. By the end of the 19th
century, the American Indians had joined the masses of freed slaves
in suffering from social dislocation.
Through Dr. O’Connor, the pastor of the Drexels’ summer 1-6-9,.9
Nove~nber-Dece*nber 2000
parish, who later became the bishop of Omaha, Nebraska,

Katharine learned of the terrible injustice done to the Indians at
Wounded Knee and of the plight of all the Indian tribes. After
their father’s death, the Drexel sisters ventured west at Bishop
O’Connor’s invitation to see the Indian situation for themselves.
Although the Indians had been her first concern, Katharine
and Louise shared an equal concern for the treatment of Negroes.
They abhorred the pattern of racial segregation and denial of equal
opportunity that had characterized
their position in American society.
Their mother had instilled this atti-
Missioners from the West tude in them. Emma Bouvier Drexel
came to Sister Katharine was especially vehement about racial
discrimination as a denial of the
and sought her help principles on which America was
to establish a network founded.
While still young socialites, the
of Catholic education sisters established, in honor of their
parents, St. Francis Industrial School
for the Indians. and St. Emma’s School for Negro’
Girls. At St. Emma’s, after much
effort they succeeded in establishing
white and "colored" children in catechism classes. Attractive, intel-
ligent, and rich, the Drexel sisters had the world at their feet, yet
they disdained worldly attractions.
By 1870 it had become apparent that political machinations
had brought to an end President Grant’s peace policy for the
Indians. The freed slaves were also without a place in society. The
Catholic hierarchy was concerned about both groups. During a
visit of Katharine’s to Rome in the 1880s, Pope Leo XlII gave her
an inspiring challenge regarding her desire to use her inheritance
particularly for the benefit of the Indian and the Negro. But, before
she could immerse herself in such work, her archbishop, Patrick
Ryan, insisted that she be properly formed in the values of reli-
gious life. Novitiate training with the Sisters of Mercy was
arranged.
In 1889 Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia addressed these
words to the American bishops gathered in Baltimore:
I believe that in the last century we could have done more
for the Colored People of the SOuth and the Indian tribes
.... I believe that Negro slavery and the unjust treatment
of the Indians are the two great blots upon American civ-
ilization .... I fear that, in the Catholic Church also, the
most reasonable cause for regret in the past century is the
fact that more could have been done for these dependent
classes. (Duffy, p. 151)
A few weeks later, at the reception at the beginning of Katharine’s

noviceship, he spoke directly to her and said:
Thousands of the Indian and the Colored Races unite
their voices with mine in "crying out to you, ’Come, we
have waited for you. God is sending you. Come.’"
(Burton, p. 117)
Soon afterwards, missioners from the West came to Sister
Katharine and sought her help to establish a network of Catholic
education for the Indians. After the novitiate, in 1891, Katherine
and a few companions began a new life as founding members of the
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.
During her lifetime Katharine would open, direct, and support
nearly sixty schools and missions.
In 1895 Katharine Drexel made her final vows in the congre-
gation she had founded. The name of her community reflected
her strong devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the sacramental sym-
bol of unity. The motto she took to be inscribed within the ring
she received on this occasion said, "My Beloved to me and I to
Him."
In her quiet way Katharine combined prayerful and total
dependence on Divine Providence with determined activism. Her
joyous incisiveness, attuned to the Holy Spirit, penetrated obsta-
cles and facilitated her advances for social justice. Through the
prophetic witness of her initiative, the church in the United States
was enabled to become aware of the grave domestic need for an
apostolate among Native Americans and African Americans. She
did not hesitate to speak out against injustice, taking a public
stance when racial discrimination was in evidence.
Katharine was active not only in religious and philanthropic
pursuits, but in financial enterprises as well. She had inherited
from her father an uncanny ability to make profitable investments,
especially in real estate. Often outwitting seasoned realtors, she had
a sixth sense about buying the right properties at the right time.
Quadrupling her inheritance, she poured the profits into her
schools and convents.
Until 1921 various taxes absorbed a large part of her trust’s
income. Then, with her in mind, through the efforts of her

brother-in-law Stephen Morrell, Congress changed the tax laws so
that income which was going completely to charity would be tax-
free. Katharine was in continual demand as a speaker at religious
and educational institutions. Audiences were amazed by the vehe-
mence with which she denounced the then prevalent discrimina-
tory practices.
At the end of her life, determined that as much money as pos-
sible would go to her congregation, Katharine Drexel was com-
pelled to work harder and harder. Her broad and encompassing
vision drove her. She left behind her a community of sisters ded-
icated to serve the Black and Indian peoples, Xavier University in
New Orleans, and an entire school system dedicated to the Drexel
idea of equal opportunity for all. Prompted by a prophetic vision
of unity, she strove to promote union among all races and classes
of people. On one occasion she commented about Jesus’ special
prayer and precept (Jn 15:4): "’Abide in Me and I in you.’ Oh, I
would write the word ONE always in capitals" (Burton, p. 13 5).
Bibliography
Baldwin, L. (1988). A Call to Sanctity: The Fomnation and Life of Mother
Katharine Drexel. Philadelphia: The Catholic Standard and Times.
Burton, K. (1957). The Golden Door: The Life of Katharine Drexel New
York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons.
Davis, J. (1969). The Bouviers. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Duffy, C.M., SBS. (1965). Katharine Drexel: A Biography. Philadelphia:
Peter Reilly Company.
Lukacs, J. (1981). Philadelphia, Patricians and Philistines, 1900-1950. New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
McDonald, E.D., and E.M. Hinton (1942). Drexel Institute of Technology,
Camden: Hamden Craftsmen.

ELIZABETH JULIAN
When Vocations Happen

by Accident
Do vocations happen by accident? When do we stop

calling it an accident and instead call it an "extended"
invitation? This article describes a thirteen-year experi-
vocation
ence in community living which has influenced the deci-
sion of four young women who are now at various stages
of formation as Sisters of Mercy.
In the Beginning
In 1987 the Sisters of Mercy (Wellington, Aotearoa
New Zealand) established a community of two sisters
and two young adult Catholic women in a small house
close to the center of the capital city. The idea for such
a community came from an article in Review for
Religious about a community in the United States. The
founding members of the Rolleston Street community
had difficulty convincing the leadership team of the need
for such an experiment in community. It was envisioned
that the young women would remain at Rolleston Street
for one year or at most two. The original aims were:
° to provide young women with an experience of com-
munity life, ¯ to provide young women with the oppor-
Elizabeth Julian RSM, a native of Aotearoa New Zealand,

has this address at present: Catholic Theological Union;
5401 South Cornell Avenue; Chicago, lllinois 60615.
Julian ¯ When Vocations Happen by Accident
tunity of daily community prayer, and ¯ to provide a group of

young university graduates working in the city a weekly mean-
ingful experience of Eucharist followed by simple meal.
There was never an intention that the young women who lived
with us would become Sisters of Mercy. Yet it is significant that, of
the young women with whom I lived at Rolleston Street, one (31
years old) is now a professed member of the Auckland Sisters of
Mercy, and two others (26 and 33) are novices with the Wellington
Sisters of Mercy. A 38-year-old nurse who was part of the weekly
group that meets for Eucharist and a meal was recently professed
as a member of the Sisters of Mercy (Wellington).
Choosing to become a member of the Rolleston Street com-
munity in June 1988, I stayed there with one of the founding mem-
bers until June 1989, when I went to Boston for eighteen months.
I returned to Rolleston Street in 1991 and remained there until
April 1998, when I began studies in the Doctor of Ministry pro-
gram at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Of the sisters
who have lived at Rolleston Street since 1988, my period of
involvement has been the longest. It is out of eight years’ experi-
ence that I offer the following reflections.
A teacher for twenty years, I am not a trained spiritual for-
mator, nor have I ever had any desire to be involved in official
formation work within my religious congregation. But, because I
am passionate about religious life, I have been much involved in
vocation ministry in my leisure time. Six years ago I established a
National Vocation Network in New Zealand and links with voca-
tion offices in the United States, Australia, and England. Although
the questions of why we invite and whom we invite are important,
I am particularly interested in how to invite young people to join
us and what "community" might mean for them.
There has never been any official formation process in place
at Rolleston Street, nor has there been any documentation about
the experience of living there other than a twelve-year "house
diary," a photographic record with brief written descriptions of the
significant events captured by the camera. As I look back over my
eight years, however, I believe there has been a formation pro-
cess at work among the various community members. They may
be seen as three groups: ¯ those who gather for weekly Eucharist
and a meal (the extended community), ¯ the priests who preside
at the weekly Eucharist, and ¯ the resident community of lay and
religious women.
Review for Religqous
The Extended Community
Fifteen or twenty female and male Pakeha (New Zealanders of
European descent), of middle or low income, single or married,
between the ages of twenty-five ,and forty-five, attend Eucharist at
5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and remain for a meal provided by the
resident community. Some of the extended community have been
regular attendees since the house was established in 1987. They are
all serious about the presence of God in their lives, but not all
attend Sunday Mass regularly. Some are much involved in their
own parish (for example, liturgy commit-
tees). Over the years two or three have been
from other faith traditions (Anglican and
Presbyterian). The young women who have Fifteen or twenty
experienced living at Rolleston Street usually attend Eucharist
become part of this group when their living
period has finished (1-2 years). on Wednesdays and
In May 1997 approximately fifty people
who had ever been associated with Rolleston
remain for a meal.
Street attended a celebration to mark the
tenth anniversary. The extended community
members are mainly university graduates employed in and around
the city. They express varying degrees of job satisfaction. Because
of the economic situation in New Zealand, some are unemployed
or are in temporary jobs. One or two are unable to work because
of mental-health problems. Many are involved in some social out-
reach (for example, soup kitchen, men’s shelter, St. Vincent de
Paul). The extended community organizes an annual retreat week-
end together at a convenient location as well as a week-long camp-
ing holiday at a beach just after Christmas. Throughout the year
they organize other social events. Some individual members (usu-
ally those who have actually lived at Rolleston Street) make an
annual six- or eight-day retreat.
Once those who are married have children at the toddler stage,
their attendance at Eucharist usually ceases because the lounge
where we worship is small and, of course, their schedules are
crowded, but they are always remembered in prayer. (One evening,
when there were four toddlers present, one sat on the presider’s
knee throughout the Eucharistic Prayer.) Some members of the
extended community also take a turn to prepare and lead the
Eucharist. They come to Rolleston Street sometime during the
weekend to prepare it. They have access to the house and know
Noven~ber-December 2000
~ulian ¯ When Vocations Happen by Accident
where everything for the liturgy is kept. These members have

never been called "associates."
The Presiders
At the beginning of each year, a roster is established of five
priests willing to take a turn once a month presiding at the
Eucharist from February until mid December. In general they
remain on the roster until they have to take up an appointment
in another place. There are four Marist priests and one diocesan;
other diocesan priests would like to be involved but their own
parish commitments prevent them. Occasionally the auxiliary
bishop of Wellington presides. A former parish priest of the neigh-
boring parish, he is well known to everyone at Rolleston Street
because of his extensive youth-ministry experience. If for some
reason none of the regular presiders is available, we have a Liturgy
of the Word.
The Resident Community

The young women who choose to live at Rolleston Street do
so because of a desire to live a community life. They have usually
responded to an advertisement in the December issue of the
monthly diocesan paper. These women have been university stu-
dents in a variety of fields, a teacher, a librarian, a policy analyst,
a bank employee, government employees, a newspaper employee,
an unemployed workers’ union organizer, and a social worker. In
general they have been Pakeha, but there have also been a young
woman from Samoa and one from Singapore, and a Maori and a
Filipina have been given temporary accommodation.
The two sisters who live at Rolleston Street have always been
ones who chose to do so. They have full-time ministries (teaching,
chaplaincy, administration, and so forth). A reality we face is that,
as we become older as a congregation, it is more difficult to find
sisters energetic enough to live with women much younger than
themselves.
These three groups, then, make up the Rolleston Street com-
munity. I believe that formation has happened in varying degrees
for all of them. There has been no planned program, but in my
experience the unwritten and informal formation program has
included Scripture, Liturgy, Catholic doctrine, and Mercy spiritual-
Religious
ity. This has usually taken place on Wednesday evenings from 5:30
to 9:00, when the extended community gathers with the resident
community for Eucharist and a simple meal.
The homily after the Gospel within the Wednesday evening
Eucharist is a shared one. Members may offer (without discus-
sion) their reflections on what the readings mean to them in their
current situation. During the meal that follows, there is often some
discussion of matters raised in the homily. Members may have
consulted biblical commentaries on the particular readings, and
they share these findings with the others. The discussion some-
times includes a point raised in the Sunday homily at the local
parish. If I am currently teaching a six-week Scripture course and
some of the members are attending it, then issues and questions
raised there, and personal insights too, may also become matter for
lively conversation. Current political issues and global issues are
often discussed in the light of Scripture. Sometimes there is debate
about scriptural questions raised by members’ workplace colleagues
from other faith traditions.
Catholic doctrine, too, is discussed informally. Members raise
questions and issues arising from their work, from the media, and
from political developments, and together they seek clarification
and answers. Because Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand
and several Rolleston Street members are employed by various
government ministries such as Work and Income, Social Welfare,
and Justice, often the questions are concerned with morality and
social teaching. Members also raise questions about the meaning
of prayer, sacraments, spirituality, the lives of saints, local parish
practices, and New Zealand bishops’ statements.
Liturgy
The nature of Liturgy and what it is supposed to do has been
another significant component of the informal and unwritten for-
mation program. I would say that liturgical formation has hap-
pened mainly through the members being able to experience
nourishing liturgies and sound liturgical practices. The liturgies are
always well prepared and follow the normal liturgical cycle. The
readings for the day are seldom changed, and particular blessings
(such as for an engagement, birthday, farewell, or anniversary)
usually take place after the homily or before the final blessing.
The leader generally leads the Liturgy until the Preparation of
Julian ¯ When Vocations Happen by Accident
the Gifts, at which time the priest presider continues. Members

who take a turn preparing the Liturgy use a guideline sheet devel-
oped over the years. On a fine evening (usually in early or late
summer, that is, Lent or Advent) the Eucharist is held outside in
the garden area at the back of the house.
Mercy Spirituality
Significant stories about Catherine McAuley and other Mercy
women are shared in conversations and discussions. In addition,
songs, prayers, rituals, and practices of the Mercy tradition may be
incorporated into the Liturgy. Mercy sisters formerly associated
with Rolleston Street and other members who have had to move
to different locations are often prayed for, inquired after, and sent
a community ~ard in accord with the tradition of Catherine
McAuley, who was a great letter writer. (With e-mail it has been
easy for me to keep in touch with members during my Chicago
sojourn. It is a great feeling to know that I am so loved, cared
about, and prayed for by a community at the bottom of the world.)
To foster Mercy spirituality, a copy of the corporal and spiritual
works of mercy is prominently displayed and often referred to. A
significant and challenging reflection on having a cup of tea in the
tradition of Catherine McAuley is also on display, and many mem-
bers have asked for a copy of it.
The starting point for the above formation process has been
the lives and questions of the members themselves as they strhg-
gle to make the gospel relevant to their everyday lives. There never
was any intention to offer a formation program. To draw up gen-
eral formation plans now, after the Rolleston Street community
has been in existence for twelve years, would seem absurd (such
plans are usually starting points).
My experience, however, tells me that the following goals seem
to have been operative among us: To enable the young women to
¯ experience a Mercy way of life and contribute as an equal mem-
ber in community; ¯ know some of the stories, songs, prayers, and
rituals of the Mercy tradition; ¯ take part in larger Mercy gather-
ings (celebrations, funerals, and so forth); ¯ be introduced to the
corporal and spiritual works of Mercy; ¯ experience the impor-
tance of prayer and be introduced to a variety of prayer forms; ¯
develop the skills necessary to prepare and lead 15-20 minutes of
Morning Prayer based on the official prayer of the church; ¯
develop the skills necessary to prepare and lead the weekly
Eucharist; ¯ prepare a low-cost meal for 15-20 people; ¯ take
responsibility for general hospitality on Wednesday evening (see-
ing that all who come, including latecomers, are fed and have a
cup of tea, ensuring the dishes get done, and so forth). Morning
Prayer, Wednesday evening Liturgy, the meal, and the hospitality
are divided among the four members each week.
The formation goals regarding the extended community can
be conceived of as follows: To enable the extended community to
¯ have their desire for a deeper spiritual life nourished; ¯ experi-
ence a place of hospitality and acceptance; ¯ experience the impor-
tance of prayer within a community; ¯
discover the connection between liturgy and
life, faith, and daily life; ¯ have a deeper A reflection on having
understanding of Scripture; ¯ have a deeper
understanding of the liturgical year; ¯ expe- a cup of tea
rience lively, informative, and challenging
discussions of the relationships between
in the tradition of
faith, politics, employment, and so forth; ¯ Catherine McAuley
access resources (people, courses, books,
seminars, visiting speakers) for further study is on display.
of these issues; ¯ celebrate significant events
in their lives in meaningful rituals; become
informed about current church teaching; ¯ be encouraged to par-
ticipate in their local parish and suitable outreach programs; ¯
experience Mercy spirituality, values, stories, prayers, songs, ritu-
als; ° get to know the presiders (important for those who have lit-
tle contact with priests).
I have described the members, the formation content, and the
operative formation goals. But what does it take to live in such a
community as a religious woman?
The Skills Resident Sisters Need.

In my experience, the skills required for living in a lay-and-
religious community in a small house are very different from those
required for living in a large community of women mostly older
than oneself, where the focus may be on the past more than the
future. This is not the same as living in a community with the
emotions of young women who fall in and out of love, who make
extensive use of the one community phone, who have very differ-
ffulian ¯ When Vocations Happen by Accident
ent eating and sleeping habits from mine, who are used to loud
music all the time, who have large student loans to pay, who have
been made redundant from their employment, who have the future
in front of them rather than the past behind theM, whose under-
standing of the Catholic tradition is somewhat vague, who have
not been taught by religious, who are estranged from their parents
or have given up a child for adoption. Such
situations have all required skills different
from those I needed during my early years
Finding the necessary in religious life.
Maintaining one’s own center and find-
silence and solitude ing the necessary silence and solitude for
must be worked at. an integrated life is challenging and must
be worked at. As a religious I am primarily
a "God seeker," but to keep faithful to this
orientation is sometimes difficult when liv-
ing with young adults in a fairly small house. Yet they want us to
be God seekers. When a group of Wellington vocation ministers
met in 1996 with a group of forty young adults, we asked them
what they thought we should be doing as religious women and
men and diocesan priests. They did not want us to do something,
but rather to be "the face of God in a Godless society, .... beacons
of hope," "leaders of prayer," "spiritual guides," and "prophets."
And this was before the publication of The Fire in These Ashes!
One year no sister except me was willing to take on the com-
mitment, so I lived with three young women. That experience
involved a very steep learning curve for me as I struggled to main-
tain connections to my sisters as well as be totally present at
Rolleston Street. I learned that community for me as a religious
means actually living with my own sisters. This may sound sim-
plistic, but there is something that happens among Sisters of Mercy
incidentally over the doing of the dishes, the bringing in of the
washing from the clothes line, the cup of tea, the meal, the joke
shared, the idea tested, the apology offered--the ordinary give-
and-take of adult living that builds Mercy community for me.
I discovered that I could not get this kind of interaction from
other forms of connection with sisters of my congregation such
as phone calls, visits, gatherings, sharing/prayer groups, and
newsletters. ] have a strong hunch that it is the daily-interaction
kind of community that young people today are seeking. It may not
be its defining characteristic, but I would see it as a strong ele-
ment. Networking by means of all the technology available today,
although important, does not seem to be enough.
I have found that, besides living with my own sisters, having
good friends both inside and outside of my cgngregation and hav-
ing a sense of humor are essential for living at Rolleston Street.
Living such a life brings many blessings.
The Blessings
The Wednesday-night commitment can sometimes be very
demanding. To come home from a full day at work to face a house
full of people, or to get home in time to ensure that there will be
a Liturgy to experience on Wednesday and food to eat (though
both are usually prepared earlier), is not always easy. However,
when 9:00 p.m. comes and the extended community have gone, I
always feel grateful for what we have just experienced together.
To be part of the lives of these young adults is indeed a privilege,
and my life has been deeply enriched by them.
Living with young women and being with the extended com-
munity also allowed me to experience the prophetic dimension of
religious life (recall that young adults want us to be prophets).
The call to contemplation as well as the grounding in people’s
daily struggles (which I believe make up the life of the prophet) are
an essential part of Rolleston Street.
I believe that actually living with young women has enabled
me to be about the educational commitment to young women so
important in the life of our foundress, Catherine McAuley. In addi-
tion, Rolleston Street has allowed our congregation to offer a form
of unofficial temporary commitment which unintentionally has
influenced some youngwomen in their decision for more perma-
nent commitment. It was not something we planned to happen,
but it has happened. And, since we are a congregation of only about
eighty-five sisters, to have had four vocations in the last six years
after a lengthy period without any is, I believe, significant. We have
had to buy a house for a novitiate. We need to consider training
someone else as a formator. But what does the future hold?
Where To from Here?

Are we being foolish to think that the recent increase in voca-
tions will continue? I believe not. I would like to see Rolleston
3~ulian ¯ IVben Vocations Happen by Accident
Street community continue in its present form, with a resident

community of religious and young lay women and an extended
community of young adults. If vocations continue to happen by
accident, then we will indeed be blessed. If not, our lives as Sisters
of Mercy will nevertheless continue to be enriched by the young
adults who reveal another face of the mercy of God to us.
Awakening to Grace
Are the moments of my unrestrained tears

a precious time when you, Jesus, can enter unannounced
into my despair and reclaim me as a black retriever
snatches expertly a wounded waterfowl
from mud-coated grhsses in a back swamp?
You drop me as prize before the waiting master,
knowing that my brokenness will be healed.
Are you the one who asked me as a boy to observe

succulent blackberries growing on thorny branches ?
It took many seasons of painful practice before my pudgy fingers
could claim the awaiting fruit.
You let me scratch and prick my clumsy hands countless times
before I learned to reach out and say to you:
"I am here, Lord. I am taking ownership of you."
Am I a new brother Lazarus emerging from my tomb

a richer man, because I have come to see that within each
of my black nights I can call raucously or softly to you
with the knowledge that your callused carpenter hands
will first firmly grasp my encapsulating bondage
and then quickly unwrap me from my darkness?
Joseph Kaufmann

DONALD MACDONALD
Vocational Support
H as there ever been a time when information was so avail-

ble? Radio, cassettes, films, videos, books, newspapers,
magazines, faxes, the telephone, and the Internet communicate so
much. Literally, information is at my fingertips. If I want more
than just information, however, I should make my own some of
the information I receive. Only then do I have knowledge. I may
know of or about many things, but to know the intrinsic value of
what is there I must first make it mine. Assimilation is the point.
A professor of Russian literature who, people said, could make
even dishwater interesting as long as it was Russian dishwater knew
of what he spoke.
This, of course, takes time. W.M. Ramsay, a cofounder of the
British Academy, made the point well almost a hundred years ago:
"The student finds that there is so much to learn that he rarely has
time to begin to know. It is inexorably required of him that he shall
be familiar with the opinions of many teachers dead and living, and
it is not often sufficiently impressed on him that mere ability to
set forth in fluent and polished language the thoughts of others..
¯ is not real ’knowledge.’ He does not lea;-n that learning must be
thought out afresh by him from first principles, and tested in actual
experience, before it becomes his own .... He must live his opin-
ions before they become knowledge,.., trying them and molding
them in real life and experience" (Pauline and Other Studies [London,
1906], pp. 43-44). That is as valid now as then.
Donald Macdonald SMM, a frequent contributor to our pages, still

lives at Montfort House; Darnley Road; Barrhead, Glasgow; G78 1TA
Scotland, U.K.
Macdonald * Vocational Support
Environment
As a Christian sensibly looking for vocational support, I should
follow that advice. What I give myself to in faith I need to know
in fact. When John Henry Newman was ordained deacon at age
twenty-three, for example, he felt like someone thrown suddenly
into deep water, since "the words ’for ever’ are so terrible." He
was to learn what was implied in his self-commitment over a long
life, and he did not drown. Unless I do this too, I risk suffocation
in an environment which claims neither to know nor to respect
the name of Jesus.
I cannot live on secondhand faith or experience, nor passively
allow my environment to dictate to me. I am open to countless
images and influences in the media and my neighborhood, many
of which are incompatible with a would-be evangelical life. I need
to make gospel truth my own ballast if I am not to be tilted and
tossed or even swamped by the mass of what I hear and see. As I
found on returning to Europe from a largely TV-free and even
media-free environment abroad, it is easy to lose taste for things
spiritual or evangelical amid all the commercial entertainment and
information. Initially ill-at-ease, I saw that it could lead to a coars-
ened sensibility. Can I reasonably expect to savor the gospel if I
continue to taste this? Can I really listen to, read, or watch this?
I saw the effect on children from three to sixteen who fed daily
on that diet and worse. Is my discrimination sufficiently sensitive
to ensure that it could not have a like effect on me? ls it unrea-
sonable to suggest that a commercially driven adult world can have
so great an effect on a gospel-based Christian vocation?
From within that environment, will I ever rise to the chal-
lenge of the medieval guide who knew that "God does not ask
your help. He asks for you"? I know what he says, but do I know
what he means? Am I challenged by its implications? I may be so
accustomed to the currency of cheap grace that I devalue the spir-
itual, both in practice and in aspiration. In order to savor the taste
of the spiritual, I need to know something of its sometimes astrin-
gent flavor. I may, then, need distance between me and my envi-
ronment if I am not to lose my taste for my very vocation, my
taste for God.
Comfortable furnishings, for example, may muffle the cate-
gorical call to detachment implicit in a religious vocation. They
may signal how my environment has captivated me at the gospel’s
expense. It may have grown on me unawares, but concern for per-
sonal well-being as regards where I live and what I do, or as regards
securing a choice future for myself, can put at risk the detachment
needed to go where my vocation leads. I may come to seek secu-
rity in control of circumstance, not in Christ.
Detachment and its implications may frighten me, so that it
seems better to lose myself in something else. After all, there is
safety in numbers, and today it is easy to see where the numbers are.
But it is in attachment to God in Christ alone
that true security is to be found. This attach-
ment detaches me from all else, and offers the The personal
perspective and courage I need. Speaking of
detachment, Eckhart said that when a door
is the best of guides
opens and shuts the panels move, but the hinge to gospel living.
stays where it is. Does the panel or the hinge
more accurately represent me? Do I know
what he meant in saying that detachment on my part compels God
to love me? A knowledge of detachment and what it implies is
cial for vocational support, particularly as regards motivation.
Without this, I may never be free from my environment.
Personal Witness
There was a time when the Christian community, just by being
there, offered vocational support. As times and values change in a
society, causing many to become confused and frightened, that
Christian presence no longer seems quite so supportive. But there
are still people who know their faith and reflect it in the way they
live. They may have no particular status--said Thomas R. Kelly,
the Quaker guide, with superb insight--but, living from the cen-
ter where God’s love is known, they have the maturity of faith and
experience to draw me into their fellowship and enthusiasm for
God. The personal is the best of guides to gospel living. Time in
the company of such people pays rich dividends if I accept the
challenge to glimpse what they see.
In an unfair and sometimes crucifying world, a further help to
vocational support in personal terms is, wherever I am, to ask
myself "Whom do I identify with here?" Many people everywhere
live lives framed by little choice and limited opportunity. Religious
especially, professedly poor in fact and in spirit, should resonate to
that--and real detachment asks nothing else. To the extent that I
am rooted there, I shall never lack vocational support.
Macdonald ¯ Vocational Support
Personnel, structures, and programs can be put into place for

vocational support, but there is no substitute for meeting the
authentic individual. People who are what they are called to be
encourage others even by their human failings: being like them
seems attainable! When several who live from the center where
God is come together, the attraction is compelling. "Come, follow
me" is the call of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels; the attractive
people I refer to here have heard and continue to respond. In their
company, reflecting on the wonder of the challenge, I may ask
myself, "Is this for me too?" Some such pattern may be the way of
priestly or religious life in the years just ahead. The conviction of
the few, centered on the One, can then spread to the many.
Reasons for burnout have often been compassionately assessed.
Among them are feelings of powerlessness to influence anything,
lack of evident results, loneliness, lack of numbers, loss of nerve in
the community and loss of confidence in leaders and in one
another, confused teaching and pedestrian Liturgies, expecting
too much of pastors and superiors, a seemingly dominant secular
agenda, scandal, fear of the future, and so forth. Two-child fami-
lies and broken families are not seen as vocationally supportive.
Such negative factors are present in many places. In earlier
times there were other problems. There is never a problem-free
vacuum for the church. Paradoxically, pastoral experience in some-
times harrowing environments may show that many alternatives to
the gospel just do not work, while the gospel offers much. If my
own experience confirms this, I may find the environment pro-
viding much vocational support. I may see that I have someone to
be and much to give. As others before me have found, though I
seem to have nothing people want, yet insofar as the gospel is
really mine I have the capacity to make many rich. If I do not lose
my nerve, I may be around to pick up the pieces for hurt people
whose lives society has fragmented. It implies hard work, and I
need help from a supportive community.
Take and Read

Another way of receiving this is to try to really "belong" to the
Christian community and thus, as Thomas R. Kelly suggests, find
myself hungering for Scripture "in order to find more friends for
the soul." I should approach devotional reading for the same rea-
son. If I test what I read by life as I experience it, I may know how
much of it is true and practical now. I may grieve and sympathize
with religious people preoccupied with "problems, problems," but
my prior call is into fellowship in a community that is centered
on God in Christ through the Spirit. People who over the years
and the centuries have lived in that community offer much support.
I can miss much if I never read, if I do not become familiar with
perhaps just one or two of their books.
St. Augustine’s Confessions, for example, tells of his having
become disillusioned with his Roman students and then successfully
applying for a job in Milan. There he met St. Ambrose, the arch-
bishop, who received him kindly.
Initially Augustine paid no atten-
tion to what Ambrose said. His
was a professional interest in how The conviction of the few,
he spoke. Yet, having come to
hear, he was drawn to listen, and,
centered on the One,
hearing how eloquently Ambrose can then spread to the many.
spoke, he came to see how truly he
spoke (5.14). The man who
despaired of finding truth or God
in the church was being opened to the possibility that what he
sought in life was to be found there. He would continue, therefore,
as a catechumen in his mother’s church, unwilling to entrust him-
self to those who "were without the saving name of Christ" (5.14).
Augustine was blessed further in meeting Ponticianus, a fellow
countryman who was a devout Christian. He was delighted to see
a copy of St. Paul’s Letters with Augustine. His intentions were
none too subtle when he told him about St. Anthony, the Egyptian
monk, who was riveted one day by hearing the Gospel read in
church and subsequently found himself, almost despite himself,
playing a pivotal role in the growing desert monastic movement.
Augustine heard him in wonder.
Then Ponticianus spoke of friends of his at the emperor’s court
who came across a copy of the Life of St. Anthony as they walked
in a garden while the emperor was at the games. One of them was
upset and challenged by it. The clarity of Anthony’s insight and
commitment contrasted with this man’s own distaste for the pre-
cariousness and backstabbing of life at court. In the light of what he
read, he knew that, "if I should choose to be a friend of God, I can
become one now" (8.6). That was altogether different from his
experience of court. He would give up his career and begged his
MacdonaM ¯ Vocational Support
friend not to dissuade him. On the contrary, his friend was of the
same mind, and he too would give himself to God’s service "from
this hour, in this place" (8.6). Later the women to whom they were
engaged did the same. Ponticianus told of envying them their deci-
sion.
Even when the account is read and reread today, it captures
something of the transparency of the original, reflecting the power
of the gospel to give life to someone ready to receive it. It illus-
trates something often repeated in the personal stories of voca-
tion, that "when the disciple is ready the teacher appears."
Vocational support is found in people, the printed word, and vir-
tually any circumstance. In Augustine’s case, his mother, some of
his friends, other teachers, books, his own experience, all helped
him to finally face himself. Uncertainty left him as a line from St.
Paul leaped from the page and spoke to him: "I had no wish to
read further, and no need" (8.12). In retrospect, he had received
immense vocational support.
I Saw One Face

Speaking of the role of the preacher, St. Augustine notes how
he is eager to share with his people what is in his heart and mind.
After reflection he brings it to his tongue to articulate it so that his
people will hear and receive what he has been thinking. The mar-
vel of it all from his point of view is that, while he gives to others
what is in his heart, it never leaves him. Preachers or teachers
might echo that from their own experience: the attempt to share
something of what they believe often strengthens their grasp on it,
along with helping them and their hearers to come closer together
through their attraction to one and the same truth and goodness.
If I see the need for support in order to believe more fully and
give myself to Christ more generously, I am well advised to open
myself to people who were on the same road before me--who may
have seen farther than I do and can tell me about it. "If a book is
worth reading, it is worth reading twice" is surely true.
In an old story about desire, a young man has been living near
to a certain solitary monk for ages, but has never been spoken to.
One day the solitary asks, "What do you want? .... Enlightenment!"
The monk takes him to the river and holds his head under the
water, eventually releasing him. Then he asks, "What did you feel
with your head under the water? .... That I would never breathe
again," he answers, and is told, "Come back when you want God
like that." Psychological, medical, and practical-aptitude tests, and
other tests as well, have their place in vocational guidance, but
what I need is what that monk taught the young man. This is true
of every Christian vocation if, made for God, our hearts are gen-
uinely restless until they rest in him. Experience suggests that this
insight is no once-and-for-all achievement. Whether I am inching
toward or slipping away from what I have glimpsed of God, I do
need vocational support to sustain what I have seen.
Like St. Augustine and virtually everyone graced with a
Christian vocation, God has lifted me up to see that there is some-
thing to see, but perhaps I am not sufficiently grown to see it. I
must mature in faith (7.10). I have sketched a few ways of doing this
here. But, whatever the source on which I feed, I see that I am at
one with countless people in the Christian community into which
I have had the good fortune to be baptized. With their support
under the providence of God, and in touch with authentic experi-
ence, perhaps I shall see, wherever I look, what St. Augustine saw
in the Letters of St. Paul: "I saw One Face, and learned to rejoice
with trembling" (7.2 I). Then, far from being just a passive recip-
ient, I shall try to be alive to Christ in the Gospels and in my envi-
ronment, and so offer vocational support to others.
The Pearl
XorYorZ
irritates me,
gets under my skin,
sometimes so thin.
If only I could learn
to qualify, discern
to f!lter out what can

be f!ltered, embracing in
my hcart the rest,
hoping for the best.
Walter Bado SJ
Responsibilities of the
Novice Director
In recent essays, comments concerning the novitiate have

canonical stressed its fundamental elements, among which are peo-
ple who are immersed in a particular program for a
counsel required period of time and (in the case of religious insti-
tutes and societies of apostolic life) also in a designated
place.’ The immediately previous essay detailed the basic
requirements for--and certain formal aspects of-~the
novice director’s role. This essay will concentrate on the
specific responsibilities of the novice director, who, not
forgetting the novice himself or herself, is usually the
single most instrumental person for novitiate formation.
The responsibilities of the novice director (and other
associated formators) are many and varied and pro-
foundly significant:
Canon 652, §1. It is for the director and assis-
tants to discern and test (comprobare) the vocation
of the novices and to form them gradually (gra-
datim) to lead correctly t~he life of perfection
proper to the instittJte.
Elizabeth McDonough OP, STL, JCD, regularly writes

this department of canonical information and reflection.
She teaches at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and is canonical
advisor for numerous religious communities as well as for
the Archdiocese of Washington. Her address is Mount St.
Mary’s Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727.

§2. The novices are to be led to cultivate human and
Christian virtues; they are to be introduced to a fuller way
of perfection by prayer and self-denial; they are to be
instructed to contemplate the mystery of salvation and to
read and meditate on the Sacred Scriptures; they are to be
prepared to cultivate the worship of God in the sacred
liturgy; they are to be trained in a way of life consecrated
by the evangelical counsels to God and humankind in
Christ; they are to be educated about the character and
spirit, purpose and discipline, history and life of their insti-
tute; and they are to be imbued with a love for the church
and its sacred pastors.
§3. Conscious of their own responsibility, the novices
are to collaborate actively with their director so that they
may faithfully respond to the grace of a divine vocation.
§4. Members of the institute are to take care that on
their part they cooperate in the formation of novices by
the example of their life and by prayer.
§5. The time of novitiate mentioned in can. 648, §1, is
to be employed properly in the work of formation, and
therefore the novices are not to be occupied with studies
and duties which do not directly serve this formation.
Because §1 and ~2 of this canon refer, respectively, to a "life
of perfection" and a "fuller way of perfection," it is important to
note at the outset that these English phrases do not completely
convey the meaning of the official Latin text, which in both
instances uses a construction indicating motion towards a goal, in
contrast to personal arrival at a particular state or level of sup-
posed or observable "perfection." Thus, in keeping with the initial
canon on consecrated life (c. 573) regarding that life’s purpose as
gleaned from Lumen gentium and Perfectae caritatis, what is at issue
in novitiate formation is clearly and always the personal commit-
ment to ongoing conversion in a lifelong journey towards total
love of God and greater charity in service of God’s kingdom. On
the one hand, then, novitiate formation must be gradual and must
in some fashion be realistically adapted to the circumstances of
the individual seeking membership. On the other hand, however,
novitiate formation should not be so tailored to the personal needs
of a particular novice that substantive elements of the required
formation program are glossed over or omitted.
Recall from the January-February 2000 essay that canon 646
has already established four identifiable goals for the novitiate and
that these are assumed to be further explicated in the proper law
and ratio studiorum (plan of studies) of each institute. At the very
Canonical Counsel
least, any formation program should provide that novices: (1) arrive
at greater awareness of their vocation (especially to a particular
institute) as divinely initiated and sustained, (2) experience the
actual way of life of a particular institute, (3) are interiorly imbued
(in mind and heart) with the spirit of a particular institute, and
(4) are assessed (comprobentur) regarding their commitment (proposi-
turn) and suitability (idoneitas) for being incorporated into a par-
ticular institute.
Mthough canon 652, §1, does not specifically refer to canon
646, it places immediate accountability for implementation of that
canon on the novice director and assistants. These already estab-
lished-and, if you will, seasoned--members of the institute must
somehow assess the authenticity of the call (or vocation) of each
novice to the community in question and must also evaluate the
ongoing progress of each novice regarding his or her assimilation
of fundamental aspects of Christian witness as expressed by a com-
mitment to the evangelical counsels manifested in the compre-
hensive (but always partially unknown) practical consequences of
life according to the charism of the particular institute. In canon
652, §3, novices are urged to take personal responsibility for their
own formation through active (and not merely passive) cooperation
with their formators. Also, in ~4, all members of the institute are
called to some personal participation in formation, at the very least
by their lived example and by their prayers. But it is the novice
director (and his or her assistants in accord with c. 561, §2) to
whom direct responsibility for initial and substantive formation
of novices is given.2
Without repeating here the seven elements listed in canon
652 §2, above, it is clear that the comprehensive formation of
novices involves cultivation and integration of human and reli-
gious values in relation to both practical and theoretical matters.
In order to fulfill his or her responsibilities, the novice director
(and formal collaborators in formation) must of necessity deal with
information pertaining to what is known in moral theology and
in canon law as the internal forum, as well as with items pertain-
ing to the external forum. The term internal forum, often called
the forum of conscience or simply conscience, refers to those things
about a person which cannot ordinarily be known unless they are
voluntarily revealed. Such matters would include, by way of exam-
ple in the spiritual arena, one’s personal experience or sense of
prayer as well as one’s interior relationship with God. In contrast
to the internal forum, matters of the external forum are those
which can be observed in a person’s external behavior, such as reg-
ular participation in community prayer and meaningful presence
at other community practices or activities.
Canon 652 does not mention canon 220, which asserts a fun-
damental right for all the Christian faithful to privacy and the
inviolability of conscience; it also does not make any reference to
canon 630, §5, which affirms the specific inviolability of conscience
for members of religious institutes in relation to their superiors.
Nonetheless, the norm of canon 220 is certainly applicable to
novices as members of the Christian faithful, and the norm of
canon 630, §5, is considered applicable by analogy to novices as
well as to professed members of an institute. Fuller understanding
of the importance of personal privacy and the inviolability of con-
science in formation circumstances can also be gleaned from related
canons on confessors and spiritual directors in seminaries as well
as from basic principles of moral theology.
Regarding confessors, in institutes categorized as clerical (see
c. 588, §2) the novice director and his assistant(s) are excluded
from hearing the confessions of novices unless a novice freely
requests it (c. 985). Likewise, other superiors in clerical institutes
are excluded from hearing confessions of members unless a mem-
ber freely requests it (c. 630, §4). And, should a superior in such
communities happen to hear the confession of a novice or a pro-
fessed member, (1) he is absolutely forbidden by the seal of con-
fession to disclose information about the sin or the penitent (c.
983); (2) he may not use any knowledge whatsoever which he has
gained about sins from hearing sacramental confession when he
is exercising external governance (c. 984, §2); and (3) he is for-
bidden to use any knowledge acquired in confession to the detri-
ment of the penitent even if there is no risk of violation of the
seal (c. 984, §1). Moreover, in seminary formation, the following
norm puts similar limits on spiritual directors: The votes of spir-
itual directors and confessors cannot be sought for decisions
regarding admission of seminarians to ordination or regarding
their dismissal from the seminary (c. 240, §2).
These canons make clear, then, that the church treats matters
revealed in the nonsacramental internal forum (as in spiritual direc-
tion) as privileged information which is not subject to third-party
revelation or external use. That is to say, in addition to the strict
inviolability of matters revealed in the internal forum of the sacra-
Canonical Counsel
ment of penance, superiors and spiritual directors who have access

to internal-forum matters gleaned from circumstances outside the
confessional must also treat this information as privileged in accord
with basic principles of Catholic moral theology, as well as in
accord with canonical and civil restraints.3
Whether or not an institute is clerical (and, therefore, has
superiors who might hear confessions of members), the church
has always considered it crucial to safeguard the inviolability of
each person’s conscience. This safeguarding of matters of con-
science is a responsibility extending to all those in positions of
authority who have access to nonsacramental internal-forum infor-
mation, and it is particularly applicable to novice directors and
other formation personnel. Because the scope of responsibilities
delineated in canon 652, §2, is so broad, because the nature of
novitiate formation is so fundamentally spiritual, and because it
touches such significant aspects of one’s interior dispositions and
motives, it is common for novice directors and other formators to
possess some degree of nonsacramental internal-forum information
about novices. This is technically privileged information that may
not be shared without explicit consent of the person to whom the
information applies. As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of inter-
est in conscience matters that might arise from their direct par-
ticipation in making decisions about the technical status of
members (as in admission, exclaustration, and the like), council
members and major superiors should not assume the role of novice
director even in communities that have only a few members.
Finally, canon 652, §5, restricts the studies and ministries
undertaken by novices during the canonical novitiate (c. 648, §1)
to those which directly serve the process of formation as such. In
this regard, the 1990 "Directives" (§48) note that even the apos-
tolic activities undertaken during the time which can be added to
the required twelve months of novitiate formation (c. 648, §2)
ought not to be merely professional endeavors, but rather ought to
correspond in truth to the apostolic purpose of the institute and
ought to contribute to the actual formation of novices for life in the
community itself. At the very least it is safe to say that the mini-
mal time required for carrying out novitiate formation, when
assessed in relation to its purpose and scope and consequences, is
actually quite brief and that its value can probably only be under-
estimated in view of its impact on the future of any institute of
consecrated life.
Notes
t The treatment of admission to consecrated life in general begins
with the Canonical Counsel essay "Admission to an Institute of
Consecrated Life," Review for Religious 58, no. 4 (July-August 1999):
429-434, while consideration of the novitiate as such begins with "The
Novitiate," Review for Religious 59, no. I (January-February 2000): 94-
98.
2 These responsibilities are more fully explicated in the CICLSAL
document "Directives on Formation in Religious Institutes," §§29-41, as
published in Origins 19, no. 2 (22 March 1990).
3 See again the July-August 1999 Canonical Counsel essay for fur-
ther comments on privileged information that in general may be classi-
fied as such either by the nature of the matter, by personal request, by
professional obligation, or by civil legislation. As a rule, neither the prin-
ciples of moral theology nor the laws of most civil jurisdictions permit
further third-party revelation of confidential matter without specific
additional consent.
Poets’ Addresses
613 Patrimony
Se~in Kinsella
44144 Lakeview Drive
El Macero, California 95618
626 Sequela ChOsti

Pamela Smith SSCM
SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary
3535 Indian Trail
Orch_ard Lake, Michigan 48324
642 Awakening to Grace

Joseph Kaufmann
2337 Lexington Driv, e, #214
Mt. prospect, lllinoisi60056
649 The Pearl

Walter Bado SJ
Newman Center
32~Roge Lane
Lexington; Kentuck~40508
The Twentieth Century: A Theological Overview
Edited by Gregory Baum. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999.
Pp. viii + 263. Paper. $20.
Sometimes I find a gem of a book by accident. I have not
looked for it. I did not even realize I was interested in its
reviews content. But having received it and begun reading it, I find
it immensely satisfying. The Twentieth Century is a case in
point.
It consists of ten essays examining the impact of his-
torical events on theology and eight essays of theological
evaluation of events and movements, with a concluding
essay by the editor. Each essay is a careful analysis of a spe-
cific event or movement.
Donald Sweitzer traces the development of the polit-
ical and theological thought of Reinhold Niebuhr as he
faced the realities of the Great Depression, showing his
principled moves away from his early enthusiasm for the
liberal Social Gospel and toward more pragmatic Christian
social thinking. A. James Reimer outlines in clear, sharp
strokes the positions of theologians in support of and in
dissent from the National Socialism of Nazi Germany.
Harvey Cox finds a positive direction in the religious move-
ments of the century. Bernard Dupuis sketches the ten-
sions in various schools of Russian theology as the
theologians worked in diaspora after the Bolshevik
Revolution.
Materials for this del~rtment should be sent to: Book Review Editor;
Review for Religious; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis,
MO 63108. Reviews published in Review for Religious are indexed
in Book Review Index. Neither Review for Religious nor its
reviewers can fill orders for any titles. Interested parties should
inquire at their local booksellers or directly fro,n the publishers.

The one difficulty, to readability is the sparsity of white space on
the pages. The density of the print on the page can give a false impres-
sion that the prose is also dense. This book will appeal to a reasonably
well-read nonspecialist who enjoys the intellectual excitement of see-
ing connections between familiar material and new material.
Patricia Cbaffee OP
Newburgh, New York
Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life

in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context
Sandra M. Schneiders IHM. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2000.
Pp. xxx + 4Y0. Paper. $22.9~.
In his plenary address to the College Theology Society last summer,
John Coleman SJ asserted that every sociology presupposes a theology
and, conversely, every theology presupposes a sociology, however
unfelt and unexamined these presuppositions may be on the part of
sociologists and theologians. Coleman feels that a major defect in the
works of these scholars is their unfamiliarity with, if not their open dis-
missal of, each other’s intellectual traditions and research. Sociologists
view theologians as overly preoccupied with arcane abstractions and
wishful projections in blithe disregard for what is "really" happening
in society. Theologians find that sociological analysis of religious phe-
nomena stops short of reaching the fundamental motivating force
behind them.
If for no other reason, this well-founded criticism should lead all
those concerned with the future health and growth of religious life
to welcome the appearance of Sandra Schneiders’s new book. In it
she shows her thorough familiarity with the perspectives of the secu-
lar sciences of anthropology, psychology, and sociology that have been
used to analyze religious life. She shows as well the depth of theo-
logical analysis her readers have come to expect. Finding the Treasure,
the first of a projected two-volume series, is a thoughtful, provocative
step toward furthering the interdisciplinary cross-fertilization called
for by Coleman.
Schneiders’s main tl~esis is that on a social level religious life can
be considered analogous to an organic life-form or species that evolves,
mutates, and possibly dies out. She postulates that the current condi-
tion of North American religious communities might be considered a
communal version of the dark night of the soul described by St. John
of the Cross. This analogy limps a little. Some of her examples of the
active dark night (p. 162) and the passive dark night (pp. 175-176)
are of intra-individual darkness, while others (p. 166) more accurately
describe how the dark night operates communally. Despite this, how-
ever, I found her analysis inspiring and heartening.
Reviews
I
Schneiders’s later chapters (7-10) cogently describe the ecclesias-

tical and cultural conditions that have stripped the religious life-form
of the "theological and ecclesial co-ordinates" (p. 187) that had sup-
ported and validated it in the past. This seems to be the key precipi-
tating agent’for the sort of communal dark night that Schneiders
describes, yet she does not say so. Indeed, after developing the con-
cept so well in chapters 5 and 6, she does not refer to it again. I would
have liked to see it infuse the entire book.
It is unrealistic to expect any. one volume to single-handedly
accomplish a definitive synthesis between the theology and the soci-
ology of religious life. But Schneiders’s book is a valuable step toward
such a synthesis. By themselve~s, sociology and psychology can never
touch the core of religious life, which is, as Schneiders convincingly
argues, the single-minded quest for the Divine. Indeed, both disci-
plines would consider psychic or communal dark nights to be patho-
logical and destructive of the individual or group experiencing them.
Without the insights of theology, therefore, religious life cannot be
adequately described in its depth. But without sociology and psy-
chology-and anthropology, history, and political science--religious
life may not be accurately described in its societal and cultural con-
text.
It is a measure of Schneiders’s scholarship that she has made such
a good start in synthesizing all of these disciplines in her book. I urge
members and leaders of religious congregations, and all those con-
cerned with the future of religious life in the Catholic tradition, to
read and reflect on Finding the Treasure. If Schneiders’s second vol-
ume lives up to the first, we will have an equally provocative intel-
lectual feast to anticipate in another year or two. We can be grateful
for her dedication and scholarship.
Patricia Wittberg SC
Indiana University at Indianapolis
A Heart That Knew No Bounds:

The Life and Mission of Saint Marcellin Champagnat
Sedn D. Sammon FMS. New York: Alba House, 2000. Pp. 99.
Paper. $12.95.
The recent canonization St. Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the
Little Brothers of Mary, now known as the Marist B~others, has
sparked a renewed interest in his life and mission. Sefin Sammon FMS
has supplied the English-speaking world with a new account of
Champagnat’s life that has important insights into French spirituality
of the 19th century.
It is fascinating that a period in history which can truly be called
a period of upheaval and overthrow of established order should be

also a period of new life for the church through devotion to Mary. A
seminary classmate of St. John Vianney, Champagnat was confronted
as a young priest with the need for the evangelization of youth. A
founding member of the Society of Mary in 1812, he established the
Little Brothers in 1817 for the education of young boys. The con-
gregation was part of the movement to found various groups within
the wider family of the Society of Mary. The Little Brothers were to
"embrace a spirituality that included’mindfulness of God’s presence,
confidence in Mary and her protection, and the practice of the ’little’
virtues of simplicity and humility" (p. 34).
As with so many religious founders, St. Marcellin met with much
resistance and even outright opposition both from within and without
his nascent community. The rapid growth of the Marist Brothers in the
saint’s short lifetime (.51 years) shows the need for the mission of the
congregation and the grace-filled moment of renewal in 19th-cen-
tury France. The continued expansion of the community over the
next century into every continent of the world is another attestation
of both the mission and the holiness which was called forth in the
church.
Especially moving is the description of the saint’s final days and
death. His address to the brothers assembled at his bedside is a
founder’s wish: "Remember that you are brothers and that Mary is
your common Mother. Bear with one another and do not forget that
it is the practice of charity that will make of your religious life a life
of sweetness." Fidelity to the vocation and the community were to
be the instruments of the growth of the mission of the Marist Brothers
of the Schools, as they came to be known.
Sammon does a real service to his readers by giving us a readable
biography as well as a reminder of the perennial spirituality of devo-
tion to Mary and an emphasis on the virtues of humility and sim-
plicity so exemplified in St. Marcellin Champagnat. As with many of
Sammon’s writings, he makes the book "user friendly" by placing
reflection questions at the end of each chapter. Alba House has pro-
duced an attractive work enhanced by a collection of pictures perti-
nent to the study.
Paul K. Hennessy CFC
Arcadia, Florida
The Essential Guardini

Heinz R. Kuehn, ed. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1997.
Pp. 184. Cloth. $I 6.
What religious person would not want to meet "the essential
Guardini"? His writings, after all, provided rich relief from the dry
tomes of Rodriguez and Tanquerey in many novitiates and spiritual-
Reviews
~.
development programs of the mid 20th century and even to this day.
The Lord and Meditations before Mass are instantly recognized by many
as inspiring, incarnational counterbalances to the legalism and rigid-
ity of other spiritual writers of earlier times. Thus, it is quite startling
to meet this author on the pages of Kuehn’s anthology, for the first half
of the book seems very like those other writers in its abstractness and
density.
This anthology is very similar to that of Kierkegaard’s works,
Provocations, recently reviewed in these pages. The reader will feel
the difference from the outset, however, in that the style of Provocations
is more concrete and pastoral in tone, while the volume under review
here is more abstract and scholarly. The selections are grouped into
four parts: our world, Jesus Christ, the church, and liturgy and wor-
ship. The early chapters provide only scattered intimations of the
familiar Guardini, but chapters six through nine reveal the author as
he is best known: meditative, poetic, moving, homiletic, and mystical.
The clouds part, and the bright daylight of his soul infuses the final
segment on liturgy and worship.
The biographical information at the beginning of the book paints
Guardini’s personality, struggles, and historical context (both societal
and ecclesial). Though Italian by birth and family heritage, as a small
child Guardini moved with his family to Germany. They left there
for the four years of Vqorld War I and then returned to Germany,
where Guardini was educated and ordained and where he found his
niche in university teaching and voluminous writing.
At the end of each selection, Kuehn indicates the year in which it
was written, which is a thought-provoking tool. It can be enriching to
consider two historical realities of his lifetime: the Nazi Germany of
the 1930s to 1940s and the Vatican Council. What was he writing
about during those years? Does the passage contain a foreshadowing
of the coming event? Does it reveal any influences from the event?
Consider, for example, Guardini’s passage (p. 135) on the con-
gregation as church, written in 1939: "Not only are we as Christians
’congregation’ and ’new creation’; we ourselves are ’church,’ so we
must consent and patiently educate ourselves to this given role." His
understanding of the Christian as mature and responsible predates
by twenty-five years the same thinking at Vatican I1. Likewise, many
of the selections from Meditations before Mass prepared the readers
for the Vatican II "Constitution on the Liturgy."
In a similar way, the reader cannot miss the allusions to the social
conditions during the Third Reich on page 55. Guardini (by then a
German citizen himself) there reflects on the then-current degrada-
tion of values as a responsibility shared by all, not by merely a small
group (read "Nazis"). This insight is very much in tune with 20th-cen-
tury scholars who have researched and written of the complicity of the
Review for Religlot~s

"common folk" during that period.
This book, then, is a rich resource for those who want to delve
deeply into both the scholarly and the poetic styles of Guardini’s work.
It will serve well those, too, who want to know the author’s personal
and historical contexts. It will not satisfy those who expect to find the
readability of Guardini’s works that ~hey have known and appreci-
ated. On the other hand, attractive selections included in the book
may point the reader to their sources, which would increase the
reader’s enjoyment of and appreciation for this cherished member of
the Christian community.
Ma~ Jeremy Daigler RSM
Baltimore, Maryland
for the bookshelf

This column focuses on a potpourri of books that cluster in four areas:
(1) books about ministers and ministries, (2) stories with a purpose, (3)
books with a light touch, (4) books that need no category.
Books about Ministers and Ministries: Loviug YourJob, Finding
Your Passion by Joseph G. Mlegretti (Paulist Press, $14.95) offers the
thesis that, when one develops a spirituality of work, all aspects of
life become more fulfilling. Among the topics Allegretti explores are
finding meaning in work, discovering its creative side, and balancing
work and the rest of life.
Anyone familiar with her music is aware that the Maryknoll Sister
Miriam Therese Winter has discovered the creative side of her work
as well as the spirituality that it reflects. In her autobiographical work,
The Singer and the Song (Orbis, $15), she recounts some memorable
moments that witness to the action of the Spirit in her life. These she
recounts with humor and reverence as she invites the reader to be
part of her spiritual pilgrimage.
Why IAm a Priest, edited by Lawrence Boadt CSP and Michael J.
Hunt CSP (Paulist, $7.95), and The Changing Face of the Priesthood by
Donald B. Cozzens (Liturgical Press, $14.95) look at the priesthood
from different perspectives. Boadt and Hunt’s book is a collection of
thirty stories from priests who share with the reader "their insights into
being a priest, their identifies, their awareness of weakness, their hopes
and dreams." Cozzens’s work examines the priesthood from the per-
spective of psychology, spirituality, and theology.
Two books focus on the lay ministry: Because God Has Called by
Tom Rogers (Concordia Publishing House, $17.25) and Lay Ministers,
Lay Disciples by Susan Blum Gerding and Frank DeSiano CSP (Paulist
Reviews
Press, $14.95). Rogers’s book is an inspiring collection of devotions for

church workers. Gerding and DeSiano’s work is an exposition of the
part that lay workers have in the mission of the church. Both books are
excellent resources both for lay parish workers and those in the priest-
hood who work with them.
Garth D. Ludwig’s Order Restored (Concordia Academic Press,
$19.95) and Mary Ann Finch’s Care through Touch (Continuum, $24.50)
deal with healing ministries. The subtitles of the books state the focus
of each: Ludwig’s subtitle is "A Biblical Interpretation of Health,
Medicine, and Healing." Finch’s subtitle is "Massage as the Art of
Anointing." Ludwig’s book is noteworthy for its combination of a
medical anthropologist’s and theologian’s treatment of healing. Finch
brings a how-to approach to massage combined with a prayerful, rev-
erent approach to the Spirit within each practitioner and client.
Stories with a Purpose: Among these the authors of these books,
John Shea and Edward Hays, probably are the two most widely rec-
ognized names. Shea’s Elijah at the Wedding Feast (ACTA, $12.95) and
Hays’s The Ladder (Forest of Peace, $13.95) will not disappoint read-
ers who have read these authors’ previous works. Shea uses his own
experiences and spiritual legends from other religious traditions to
provide insights into spiritual values and eternal truths. Hays uses a
parable style to lead readers up to God and down into insights about
themselves.
The Yellow Brick Road by William J. Bausch (Twenty-Third
Publications, $14.95) uses the characters from Frank Baum’s The
Wizard of Oz to represent spiritual traits one might find in pilgrims on
the spiritual path. They become characters in the stories he tells.
Another book of parables, reflections, and prayers is Blessings for the
Fast Paced and Cyberspaeed, by William John Fitzgerald (Forest of
Peace, $12.95). The traffic grid of the morning rush hour, e-mail,
going to a Little League game--all are occasions for reflection and
blessing. Fitzgerald adds tin]ely suggestions for journaling and reflec-
tion throughout the book.
On the more traditional side of books of prayer reflections, Lessons
from the Lives of the Saints by Joseph Esper (Basilica Press, $12.99) is
a collection of mini-biographies and meditations on a saint for each day
of the calendar year. Each entry is a good launching pad for daily
meditation.
Stories with a Light Touch: Credo by Brian Doyle (Saint Mary’s
Press, $9.95), Bent Halos and Other Saintly Stories by C.T. Thomas
(Alba House, $14.95), and Pope Fiction by Patrick Madrid (Basilica
Press, $14.95) bring a light heart to serious subject matter. Doyle’s
essays cover everything Catholic from altar boys to the
Annunciation--all done with a sense of humor and more than a touch
of grace. Thomas’s stories center on some prominent, some little-
known, and some rather odd members of the church triumphant
who have been formally canonized by the church. The entries are
informative as well as humorous. Madrid’s book gives the answers
to thirty myths and misconceptions about the papacy. The author’s
colloquial and humorous style does not detract from the solidity of
the material he presents.
Books That Do Not Need a Category: Sister Wendy Beckett’s
In the Midst of Chaos, Peace (Ignatius Press, $19.95) is another of the
artistically appealing devotional books "The Art Nun" has become
famous for. This time the artistic focus is on the silhouettes created by
Sister Mary Jean Dorcy OP and Dan Paulos. Dogspell by Mary Ellen
Ashcroft (Forest of Peace, $9.95) uses the image of a dog’s unques-
tioning love to gain insights into the undying love of God for his
creatures and to create an offbeat and appealing book.
Clare Boehmer ASC
books received
AUGSBURG BOOKS: Spirited Women: Encountering the First
Women Believers by Mary Ellen Ashcroft, pp. 110, paper, $11.99.
AVE MARIA PRESS: The Good Listener by Rev. James E. Sullivan,
pp. 96, paper, $8.95; Moment by Moment: A Retreat in
Everyday Life by Carol Ann Smith SHCJ and Eugene F. Merz SJ,
pp. 96, paper, $10.95; Living in God’s Embrace: The Practice
of Spiritual Intimacy by Michael Fonseca, pp. 223, paper, $12.95;
This Blessed Mess: Finding Hope amidst Life’s Chaos by
Patricia H. Livingston, pp. 144, paper, $11.95.
BELL TOWER: Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the
Interior Life ed. Lorraine Kisly, pp. 256, cloth, $22; God at the
Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and
Unexpected Places by Niles Elliot Goldstein, pp. 203, cloth, $22.
CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES (209 Flagg P1.; Staten Island,
NY 10304): For the Love of Immigrants: Migration Writings
and Letters of Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini 1839-1905 ed.
Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi CS, pp. 359, cloth, $19.95.
CROSSROAD: God Seen in the Mirror; of the World: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of God by Pierre-Marie Emonet
OP, trans. Robert Barr, pp. 139, paper, $22.95; Must There Be
Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible by
Raymund Schwager SJ~ pp. 243, paper, $29.95; Sacrament: The
Language of God’s Giving by David N. Power OMI, paper,
$24.95; Prayer and the New Testament: Jesus and His
Communities at Worship by Robert J. Karris, pp. 223, paper,
$25.95.
CROWN PUBLISHING: Coloring Your Prayers: An Inspirational
Coloring Book for Making Dreams Come True by Carolyn
Reviews
Manzi, pp. 191, paper, $17.95.

EDIZIONI PAOLINE (Via Domenico Fontana, 12; 00185 Rome, Italy):
La Sostanza dell’ Effimero: Gli Abite degli Ordini Religiosi in
Occidente by Giancarlo Rocca, pp. 646, paper, price not available.
WM. B. EERDMA~NS: We, the Ordinary People of the Streets by
Madeleine Delbrel, trans. David Louis Schindler Jr. and Charles F.
Mann, pp. 270, paper, $24.
ENGAGE PUBLISHING: Wil’s Bones by Kevin Bowen, pp. 244, paper,
$12.95.
FORTRESS PRESS: Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested
Truth in a Post-Christian World by Walter Brueggemann, pp.
153, paper, $16.
HIDDEN SPRING (997 Macarthur Blvd.; Mahwah, NJ 07430):
Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore
Zeldin, pp. 112, cloth, $12.
]CS PUBLICATIONS: The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers ed.
Regina Siegfried ASC and Robert E Morneau, pp. 226, paper,
$11.95.
JE~AqSH LIGHTS PUBLISHING: Bringing the Psalms to Life: How
to Understand and Use the Book of Psalms by Daniel E Polish,
pp. 191, cloth, $21.95.
LITURGICAL PRESS: The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke’s
Gospel by Brendan Byrne, pp. 209, paper, $19.95.
LOYOLA PRESS: Visions: The Soul’s Path to the Sacred by Eddie
Ensley, pp. 285, cloth, $17.95.
NEW CITY PRESS: Heaven on Earth: Meditations and Reflections
by Chiara Lubich, pp. 174, paper, $12.95; Soliloquies by St.
Augustine of Hippo, trans. Kim Paffenroth, pp. 104, paper, $9.95;
Matthew: God with Us by Ronald D. Witherup, pp. 211, paper,
$12.95; Elizabeth Bayley Seton: Collected Writings, Vol. 1,
ed. Regina Bechtle SC and Judith Metz SC, pp. 563, cloth, $49.
ORBIS BOOKS: Long Have I Loved You: A Theologian Reflects on
His Church by Walter J. Burghardt SJ, pp. 506, paper, $20.
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR: Hitler, the War, and the Pope by Ronald
J. Rychlak, pp. 548, paper, $19.95; The Spirituality of the Celtic
Saints by Richard J. Woods, pp. 246, paper, $16.
PAULIST PRESS: New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law ed.
John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, pp. 1952, cloth,
$89.95; Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through
Music, Art, and Rhetoric by Richard Viladesau, pp. 277, paper,
$17.95; Abound with Blessings: A Month of Poems and Prayers
by Julia H. Crim and Keith R. Crim, pp. 112, paper, $8.95;
Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy, and Burn
All Jewish Books by Johannes Reuchlin, trans, and ed. Peter
Wortsman, pp. 90, paper, 9.95; Elisabeth of Sch6nau: The
Complete Works trans. Anne L. Clark, pp. 336, paper, $24.95.
RESURRECTION PRESS: Mother Teresa: Angel of God by Eugene
Palumbo SDB, pp. 80, paper, $5.95.
SAINT JOSEPH’S UNIVERSITY PRESS: Jesuit Education 21:
Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher
Education ed. Martin R. Tripole SJ, pp. 544, cloth, $70; I Leave
You My Heart: A Visitandine Chronicle of the French
Revolution (M~re MarieoJ~ronyme V~rot’s Letter of 15 May
1974), trans, and ed. P~ronne-Marie Thibert VHM, pp. 160, cloth,
$24.95.
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS: Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian
Tradition by Patricia Ranft, pp. 307, paper, $19.95.
SAINT MARY’S PRESS: The Country Called Life: More Reflections
for Living by Lou Guntzelman, pp. 130, paper, $14.95; Pray with-
out Ceasing: Mindfulness of God in Daily Life by Wayne
Simsic, pp. 120, paper, $14.95; Praying with Mother Teresa by
Jean Maalouf, pp. 130, paper, $8.95.
SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS: Spiritual Secrets of a Trappist Monk:
The Truth of Who You Are and What God Calls You to Be by
M. Raymond OCSO, pp. 394, paper, $19.95; All for Jesus: The
Easy Ways of Divine Love by Frederick William Faber, pp. 279,
paper, $19.95; Surprised by Truth 2 by Patrick Madrid, pp. 320,
paper, $14.95; The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and
Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas (rev. ed. of Devoutly I Adore
Thee, 1993) trans, and ed. Robert Anderson and Johann Moser,
pp. 121, leatherette, $9.95.
SORIN BOOKS: Touched by a Saint: Personal Encounters with
Mother Teresa by Susan Crimp, pp. 128, paper, $14.95.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: "Begotten, Not Made":
Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity by Virginia Burrus, pp.
240, paper, $19.95, cloth, $49.50.
SUNBELT PUBLICATIONS: Mission Memoirs: A Collection of
Photographs, Illustrations, and Late Twentieth-Century
Reflections on California’s Past by Terry Ruscin, pp. 203, cloth,
$50.
USCC PUBLISHING SERVICES: The Application of Ex corde
Ecclesiae for the United States by NCCB, pp. 28, paper, $1.95.
VANTAGE PRESS: Creation to the Return of Christ: The
Bible/Science Connection by Robert C. Poehler, pp. 367, paper,
$18.95.
2000 indexes ¯ volume 59
authors
Armstrong, Philip, CSC, Our Past Mission’s Unfinished Destiny:
The Perspective of Vowed Commitment .......................537
Auer, Benedict, OSB, From Resentment to Acceptance:
Elderly Religious Return ................................... 241
Barmann, Lawrence F., Mary Ward: Centuries Her Scroll ...........608
Beha, Marie, OSC, Work in Such a Way .........................500
Billy, Dennis J., CSSR,
Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality ..............53
Contemplative Religious Witness: A Redemptoristine Monastery ....... 594
Cababe, Louise, OP, Sister Morns:
Something Old, Something New .............................396
Calvert, Roland, OSFS, The Easter Faith of Catherine of Siena ........180
Clark, Keith, OFMCap, Celibate Life Offers Insights ............... 131
Collins, Julie A., Celibate Love as Contemplation ...................79
Costello, Robert T., SJ, Discovering God in Gaps .................. 44
Danella, Francis W., OSFS, Apostolic Religious Communities in America:
Moving in the Right Direction! ..............................263
Davis, Kenneth G., OFMConv, Eduardo C. Fernfindez sJ,
and Ver6nica M~ndez RCD,
U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and Works 1999 ................ 193
DiIanni, Albert, SM, and Justin Taylor SM,
What Is Religious Life’s Purpose? ............................148
Dominic, A. Paul, SJ, Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy .......34
Praying through Sleep ..................................... 410
Dulles, Avery, SJ, Theological Education in Jesuit Formation ........ 230
Eggemeier, Matthew, Generation X and Religious Life:
A Personal View ......................................... 479
Eichten, Beatrice M., OSF,
Electing Leaders in Women’s Congregations ................... 249
Fernfindez, Eduardo C., SJ, Kenneth G. Davis OFMConv,
and Ver6nica M~ndez RCD,
U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and Works 1999 ................193
Fleming, David L., SJ,
Discerning Our Celibate Way in Our Culture ...................139
Foley, Mary Anne, CND,
Another Window on the Crisis in Women’s Communities .........342
Galligan, J. Sheila, IHM, Bride of Christ and Ecclesial Identity ........488
Giallanza, Joel, csc, Look to the Future ......................... 271
Gaitley, Normandie J., ssJ,
Katharine Drexel’s Cultural Relevance Now ....................627
Goergen, Donald, OP, Retrieving the Practice of Silence ............566
Himes, Michael J., Returning to Our Ancestral Lands ................6

Johnson, Mary, SNDdeN, Bowling Alone, Living Alone:
Current Social Contexts for Living the Vows ...................118
Julian, Elizabeth, RSM, When Vocations Happen by Accident ........ 633
Kenney, W. Henry, SJ, Finding God’s WilI---A Maneuver ...........368
Klein, John, FMS, Transforming Mission: A Spirit of Adventure .......26
Larldn, Ernest E., OCarm,
The Little Way of St. Thdr~se of Lisieux ......................507
Macdonald, Donald, SMM,
Let Me Alone! True Christian Solitude ........................ 311
Vocational Confidence .................................... 399
Vocational Support ....................................... 643
Malone, Janet, CND, Two Journeys:
coming Home and Going on Pilgrimage ....................... 299
Mayer, Suzanne, IHM, "2 Stand Here Ironing": Delays in
Developing Intimacy among Candidates and Members ............286
Mdndez, Ver6nica, RCD, Kenneth G. Davis OFMConv,
and Eduardo C. Fern.4ndez SJ,
U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and Works 1999 ................ 193
Mirkes, Ren6e, OSF, Fertility Awareness and Women Religious .......277
Moga, Michael D., sJ, Toward a Spirituality of Weariness ........... 420
Moore, Mary Beth, SC, A Spiritual Direction ..................... 584
Murray, Robert J., OSA, Mission:
Not Do We Have One But Do I Live One? ..................... 175
Nugent, Robert, SDS, Helping Seminarians Live Celibate Chastity .....66
O’Hea, Eileen P., CSJ, Tell Them, Tell the New Members ..........388
Ottensmeyer, Hilary, OSB, Consulting Your Inner Wisdom ..........379
Parmisano, Stan, OP, Theology Lived in Faith .................... 471
St. Catherine’s Letters: Human Love, Gracious Authority ......... 614
Pieper, Bernadine, CHM, A Path of Humility and Truth:
Historical Reminiscence ................................... 358
Russell, Kenneth C., Must Hermits Work? ...................... 156
The Dangers of Solitude ................................... 575
Soete, Andr~ Maureen, SSND,
A Vowed Response to the Postmodern World ................... 601
Sur, Carolyn, SSND, The Power to Bless:
The Sacramentality of Human Touch .........................518
Taylor, Justin, SM, and Albert DiIanni SM,
What Is Religious Life’s Purpose? ............................148
Tripole, Martin R., SJ, Ex Corde Ecclesiae:
A History from Land O’Lakes to Now ......................... 454
Webster, Bertrand, FMS, Sharing Our Spirituality:
Top-down, Bottom-up, or Lateral? ........................... 294
Wittberg, Patricia, SC, Community and Obedience:
Musings on Two Ambiguities ............................... 526
Wright, Cathy, LSJ, Foucauld’s Evolving Response to God’s Call .....188
Zerdin, Emanuela, OSF, Sisters in a War-Torn Decade:
A Report from the Balkans ..................................87
Index Volume ~9
titles
Another Window on the Crisis in Women’s Communities
Mary Anne Foley CND ..................................... 342
Apostolic Religious Communities in America:
Moving in the Right Direction! Francis W. Danella OSFS ........
263
Bowling Alone, Living Alone:
Current Social Contexts for Living the Vows
Mary Johnson SNDdeN .................................... 118
Bride of Christ and Ecclesial Identity
J. Sheila Galligan IHM ..................................... 488
Celibate Life Offers Insights, Keith Clark OFMCap ................
131
Celibate Love as Contemplation, Julie A. Collins ..................
79
Community and Obedience: Musings on Two Ambiguities
Patricia ~Vittberg SC ...................................... 526
Consulting Your Inner Wisdom, Hilary Ottensmeyer OSB .......... 379
Contemplative Religious Witness: A Redemptoristine Monastery
Dennis J. Billy CSSR ...................................... 594
The Dangers of Solitude, Kenneth C. Russell .................... 575
Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality
Dennis J. Billy CSSR ....................................... 53
Discerning Our Celibate Way in Our Culture
David L. Fleming SJ ....................................... 139
Discovering God in Gaps, Robert T. Costello SJ ...................44
The Easter Faith of Catherine of Siena
Roland Calvert OSFS ....................................... 180
Electing Leaders in Women’s Congregations
Beatrice M. Eichten OSF ................................... 249
Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy
A. Paul Dominic SJ ........................................ 34
Ex Corde Ecclesiae: A History from Land O’Lakes to Now
Martin R. Tripole SJ ...................................... 454
Fertility Awareness and Women Religious
Ren~e Mirkes OSF ........................................ 277
Finding God’s WilI--A Maneuver, W. Henry Kenney SJ ............ 368
Foucauld’s Evolving Response to God’s Call, Cathy Wright LSJ .....
188
From Resentment to Acceptance: Elderly Religious Return
Benedict Auer OS8 ........................................ 241
Generation X and Religious Life: A Personal View
Matthew Eggemeier ...................................... 479
Helping Seminarians Live Celibate Chastity, Robert Nugent SDS .....
66
"I Stand Here Ironing": Delays in Developing Intimacy
among Candidates and Members, Suzanne Mayer IHM ..........286
Katharine Drexel’s Cultural Relevance Now
Normandie J. Gaitley SSJ .................................. 627
Let Me Alone! True Christian Solitude
Donald Macdonald SMIVl ................................... 311
The Little Way of St. Th~r~se of Lisieux
Ernest E. Larkin OCarm ................................... 507
Reviem for Religious

Look to the Future, Joel Giallanza CSC .........................271
Mary Ward: Centuries Her Scroll
Lawrence Fo Barmann ..................................... 608
Mission: Not Do We Have One But Do I Live One?
Robert J. Murray OSA ..................................... 175
Must Hermits Work?
Kenneth C. Russell ....................................... 156
Our Past Mission’s Unfinished Destiny:
The Perspective of Vowed Commitment
Philip Armstrong CSC ..................................... 537
A Path of Humility and Truth: Historical Reminiscence
Bernadine Pieper CHNI .................................... 358
The Power to Bless: The Sacramentality of Human Touch
Carolyn Sur SSND ........................................ 518
Praying through Sleep, A. Paul Dominic SJ ......................410
Retrieving the Practice of Silence, Donald Goergen OP ............566
Returning to Our Ancestral Lands, Michael J. Himes ...............6
St. Catherine’s Letters: Human Love, Gracious Authority
Stan Parmisano OP ....................................... 614
Sharing Our Spirituality: Top-down, Bottom-up, or Lateral?
Bertrand Webster FMS ..................................... 294
Sister Moms: Something Old, Something New
Louise Cababe OP ........................................ 396
Sisters in a War-Torn Decade: A Report from the Balkans
Emanuela Zerdin OSF ...................................... 87
A Spiritual Direction, Mary Beth Moore SC ...................... 584
Tell Them, Tell the New Members, Eileen P. O’Hea CSJ ..........388
Theological Education in Jesuit Formation, Avery Dulles SJ ........230
Theology Lived in Faith, Stan Parmisano OP .....................471
Toward a Spirituality of Weariness
Michael D. Moga SJ ....................................... 420
Transforming Mission: A Spirit of Adventure
John Klein FMS ........................................... 26
Two Journeys: Coming Home and Going on Pilgrimage
Janet Malone CND ........................................ 299
U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and Works 1999
Kenneth G. Davis OFMConv, Eduardo C. Fernandez SJ,
and Ver6nica M~ndez RCD ................................. 193
Vocational Confidence, Donald Macdonald SMM .................. 399
Vocational Support, Donald Macdonald SNI!Vl .....................643
A Vowed Response to the Postmodern World
Andr~ Maureen Soete SSND .................................601
What Is Religious Life’s Purpose?
Albert DiIanni SM and Justin Taylor SM ....................... 148
When Vocations Happen by Accident
Elizabeth Julian RSM ...................................... 633
Work in Such a Way
Marie Beha OSC .......................................... 500
Index Volume 59
poetry
Bado, Walter, SJ, The Pearl ...................................649
Bauman, Donna, Traditional Practice ...........................276
Block, Ed, Ordinary Time ..................................... 52
Bouchard, Mary Alban, CSJ,Free and Groaning ...................262
Cochran, Leonard, OP, From a Letter to His Mother
by a Young Man in a Foreign Country .........................208
Cornell, Doretta, RDC, Blink ..................................25
Crumback, Maria Corona, IHM, Musings of the Prodigal’s Brother .... 357
Dobbyn, Kevin, FMS, Beneath Fear ............................. 174
Fitzgerald, Nell C., At the Sea of Tiberias ........................78
Hannan, Maryanne, Seek and You Shall Find .....................293
Herbert, Mary Kennan, The Joys of January ...................... 33
Higgins, Jane, RSM, Omega Time ............................... 65
Inkel, Maxine, SL, Monk’s Chant ..............................478.
Kaufinann, Joseph, Awakening to Grace ......................... 642
Kinsella, Se:in, Patrimony .................................... 613
Kramer, June A., Prayer ..................................... 419
Peter and the Servant Girl ................................. 499
Main-van der Kamp, Hannah J., The Silence That Is Not Silence at All ....147
Mayer, Suzanne, IHM, Yes ................................... 395
At that time Jesus ........................................ 525
McCarrick, Bernadette, RSM, Magnificat ........................378
McCauley, Kathleen, SC, Love’s Serenade .......................429
Rourke, Patricia G., IHM, Lent ............................... 187
Spring Prayer ........................................... 270
Smith, Pamela, SSCM, Sequela Christi ..........................626
Westerfield, Nancy G.,
The Angel Gabriel Descends upon a Pumpkin Patch .............. 536
book reviews
Arnold, Eberhard, Innerland:
A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel ....................... 324
Arnold, Johann Christoph
Seeking Peace: Notes and Conversations along the Way ........ 104
Why Forgive? .......................................... 328
Baum, Gregory, ed., The Twentieth Century:
A Theological Overview ................................... 656
Berger, Robert, ed.,
Spirituality in the Time of St. John Baptist De La Salle ........ 218
Boadt, Lawrence, ed.,
Genesis: The Book of Beginnings .......................... 329
The New Testament Epistles: Early Christian Wisdom ........ 329
The Psalms: Ancient Poetry of the Spirit .................... 329
Sayings of the Wise: The Legacy of King Solomon ............ 329
Carthusian, A, They Speak by Silences .......................... 550
Coburn, Carol K., and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns
Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 .........99
Crossin, John W., OSFS, Walking in Virtue:
Moral Decisions and Spiritual Growth in Daily Life ........... 436
Crysdale, Cynthia S.W., Embracing Travail:
Retrieving the Cross Today ................................. 216
Canningham, Lawrence S., Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision ....437
Faulkner, Mary, and Bob O’Gorman,
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism .....440
Finley, James, The Contemplative Heart ........................ 554
Fischer, George, SJ, and Martin Hasitschka SJ
The Call of the Disciple: The Bible on Following Christ .......435
Gambero, Luigi, Mary and the Fathers of the Church:
The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought ................ 439
Gillis, Chester, Roman Catholicism in America ...................331
Guardini, Romano, The Essential Guardini ......................659
Gala, Richard M., SS, The Good Life:
Where Morality and Spirituality Converge ................... 436
Harris, Paul T., ed., The Heart of Silence:
Contemplative Prayer by Those Who Practice It .............. 326
Hasitschka, Martin, SJ, and George Fischer S3,
The Call of the Disciple: The Bible on Following Christ .......435
Jones, Timothy, A Place for God:
A Guide to Spiritual Retreats and Retreat Centers ............ 549
Korn, Frank J., A Catholic’s Guide to Rome:
Discovering the Soul of the Eternal City .....................551
Kuehn, Heinz R., ed., The Essential Guardini .................... 659
Lane, Belden C., The Solace of Fierce Landscapes:
Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality .................. 214
Moore, Charles E. ed., Provocations:
The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard ......................219
Nassal, Joseph, Premeditated Mercy:
A Spirituality of Reconciliation ............................ 328
Newland, Mary Reed, A Popular Guide through the Old Testament...215
O’Gorman, Bob, and Mary Faulkner,
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism .....440
Palmer, Parker, The Courage to Teach:
Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life ............552
Porette, Margaret, The Mirror of Simple Souls ................... 547
Raymond, John, Catholics on the Internet: 2000-2001 ............. 440
Rodgerson, Thomas E., and Robert J. Wicks,
Companions in Hope: The Art of Christian Caring ............ 101
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Women and Redemption:
A Theological History .................................... 326
Sammon, Sefin D., FMS, A Heart That Knew No Bounds:
The Life and Mission of Saint Marcellin Champagnat .......... 658
Index Volume 59
Schneiders, Sandra M., Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic

Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context ........
657
Schreiter, Robert J., The New Catholicity:
Theology between the Global and the Local ................ 103
Smith, Martha, and Carol K. Coburn, Spirited Lives: How Nuns
Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 .........99
Tripole, Martin R., SJ, Promise Renewed:
Jesuit Higher Education for a New Millennium ............... 441
Wicks, Robert J., and Thomas E. Rodgerson,
Companions in Hope: The Art of Christian Caring ............ 101
Zuck, Roy B., Spirit-Filled Teaching:
The Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Teaching .............. 552
canonical counsel
The Novitiate ............................................... 94
Location of the Novitiate ..................................... 209
Duration of the Novitiate: General Norms .......................318
Exceptions to Duration of the Canonical Novitiate ..................430
Role of the Novice Director ...................................542
Responsibilities of the Novice Director ........................... 650
for the bookshelf

January-February ........................................... 105
March-April ............................................... 220
May-June ................................................. 331
July-August ................................................ 442
September-October .......................................... 555
November-December ........................................ 661

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©2000 Review for Religious

LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES

575 The Dangers of Solitude

584 A Spiritual Direction

601 AVowed Response to the Postmodern World

Review for Religious

614 St. Catherine’s Letters:

627 Katharine Drexel’s Cultural Relevance Now

643 Vocational Support

Th~ Mitor~ and

Advont and ~hri~tma~

Retrieving the Practice

Jesus experienced the need for quiet. "In the morn-

Donald J. Goergen OP wrote on celibacy for our May-

Review for Religious

certainly whispered in your heart when you sat in contem-

Silence, Solitude, and Simplicity

True silence, the inner stillness, the still point, is an achieve-

Bonhoeffer once cautioned us to be wary of the person who lives

(verbal silence). The interior journey is in fact directed toward

Silence and Theology

Review for Religious

The Dangers of Solitude

~o~ e~oli! There is a long tradition of warning would-be hermits

Peter the Venerable’s Letter to Ghislebert

internal vacuum created by their withdrawal makes them

Bernard of Portes’s Letter to Rainald

of the marketplace. It does not want to be shut away with not

Application to Modern Hermits

solitaries identify themselves as hermits, most lay hermits have no

Mary Beth Moore SC writes from 3496 Jerusalem Avenue; Wantagh,

Review for Religious

"Som’e, as usual. The Cross Bronx is always crowded."

"Prayer is the balance of mind and heart. Perhaps you think

When Connie got to the community room, Sarah was watch-

not having even a modest paycheck to present for the running of

a witness At the end of each academic year, I leave my work at the

Dennis J. Billy CSSR, a frequent contributor to this review,

R~view for Religious

From Death to Life

Near the end of Mass, I looked around the room and

The Heart of the Church

Active and Contehaplative

Review for Religious

Tp hoe characteristics symptoms, and realities of our so-called

The Situation of Our Age

Andr,~ Maureen Soete SSND has ministered in Japan for thirteen

the direction in which it is heading. Envisioning ourselves living

How Our Foundress Would Respond

The Postmodern Age

Failure of the Modern Age

Our Vows as a Response

Today, amid questions about effective evangelization in

Lawrence E Barmann is a professor of American studies

Review for Religious

St. Catherine’s Letters:

O ne level of St. Catherine of Siena, perhaps her deepest, is

Stan Parmisano OP wrote about theology and faith in our September-

Revie’a, for Religiou,

that a lamp is narrow below, and so is our heart: to signify that

She writes to William Flete and other hermits at Laceto a