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God
chose to enter into human history in complete weakness. That divine choice
forms the center of the Christian faith. In Jesus of Nazareth, the
powerlessness of God appeared among us to unmask the illusion of power…It is
through total and unmitigated powerlessness that God shows us divine mercy.
This radical, divine choice is the choice to reveal love in and through the
compete divestment of power. We keep praying to the "almighty and powerful
God" but all might and power is absent from the one who reveals God to us
saying, "When you see me, you see the Father." If we truly want to love God,
we have to look at the man of Nazareth, whose life was wrapped in weakness.
And his weakness opens for us the way to the heart of God.
~Henri Nouwen
Not
only did God become man, but God became a baby. This "divine choice" far
surpassed anything any of the prophets and those who awaited the Messiah's
coming could have deemed possible or even appropriate for an all-mighty,
all-powerful God. This gift of God was unlike any gift that we receive at
Christmas. Lacking all the appropriate external attire of beautiful paper
and ribbons, this gift was and is a gift wrapped in weakness, in
powerlessness, in poverty, and in a love that cannot be comprehended with
our human understanding… an absolute, uncompromising, unconditional, humble
love. Choosing to come to us as a baby is enough to boggle our minds until
eternity, but the circumstances that this all-powerful God chose for his
birth were nothing short of remarkable. He was born in a stable as an
exile, displaced from His home…born among animals where the smell of
donkeys, cows and manure would have been utterly nauseating. This bundle of
weakness and neediness was placed in a manger, the feeding trough for
animals. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes (another word for rags). Yes,
He came as a baby, but He could have arranged for a nice warm, cozy house,
if not a magnificent palace worthy of Himself and His Mother. He could have
even arranged for all the conveniences that we have available to us today
because He is God. But no, He chose the most despicable circumstances. The
situation could not have been much worse.
The Lord comes to us boasting of His poverty. On the cross, He was a man
with His hands seemingly tied, appearing helpless, powerless, and abandoned
before our very eyes. And now we gaze upon Him in the Blessed
Sacrament. He is not afraid to be poor, to be vulnerable, for His
omnipotence and power to be hidden...hidden under ordinary, common bread and
entrusted into our very hands. Our Lord chooses to be so poor, so vulnerable
and weak. He comes stripped of His glory, though by every right it is His.
And yet I appear before Him robed and veiled in glory that isn't mine,
stealing the glory that He so willingly laid down. I place these robes on
myself before this poor, naked God to prove that I am something when He who
is everything comes before me in total poverty on bended knee,
content to appear as nothing.
I was
hit very hard with this reality my second year as a novice. I was 25 years
old, and I discovered that I had no idea who I was. It was 2001. I remember
watching the Twin Towers fall and saying to myself, "That is me."
Everything that I thought made me worthwhile and lovable was crashing down.
This image of myself was being demolished and it was very painful. I felt
like the rubble of twisted metal and ash that was left on the ground.
I came to realize how much my identity was in everything I had left behind
when I entered religious life. I felt stripped of all that I believed made
me worthwhile. Without being aware of it, my identity was enmeshed in these
THINGS… my new black Honda Civic EX, my black thick hair, makeup, cute
clothes, guys I dated, the security and success of my work, my 4.0 GPA, even
the presence of my family. All of these gave me a sense of security, of
being loved, of being worth something.
And all these things suddenly were taken from me. I was forced to look
deeper beyond the externals and face my true self. Facing this truth
changed my life. Through a painful process I came to discover my worth in
Jesus' eyes. I uncovered something more beautiful, rich and precious than I
had ever known. It had been hiding beneath these layers of false securities
I had created. I was introduced to my poverty. I came face to face with my
own deep brokenness, helplessness, and powerlessness. I encountered the
frightening reality that I really had nothing to offer the Lord except this
bundle of nothingness. With much fear and trepidation I allowed Him to
expose and unveil this poverty before my eyes and I discovered that not only
did His love not change for me, but the more that I let Him see, the deeper
was my experience of His love. I met a God who chooses freely to love us not
despite our weaknesses but precisely because of our
weaknesses, our misery, and our poverty.
Not only was it a radical change in the way I see myself, but I began to see
others differently. Previously, I had always felt uncomfortable with the
poor, the handicapped, the sick, and the suffering. I didn't know what to
say to them when I was with them. I avoided them at all costs. I see now
that it was because I had not yet faced the reality of my own poverty,
weakness, handicaps, and brokenness. When the Lord gave me the grace to
embrace this in myself, a deep love for the poor sprang spontaneously from
my heart. I felt I was more like them than even my very own family. I
experienced a unity with the poor, the lonely, the mentally ill, and the
abandoned that I had never known before. Not only was I able to see Christ
within them, but I also saw myself. I experienced this union with the
spiritually poor as well- the prostitute, the murderer. I could say with
St. Francis, "But for the grace of God, there go I."
We often come before God robed and veiled in these false securities. As Adam
and Eve weaved themselves garments to cover their nakedness, we clothe
ourselves in things that we think He would like to see. Usually it goes much
deeper than material things. We are robed in our own accomplishments and
gifts, our need to be perfect, the delusion that we are in control, the
opinions of others, etc. We are afraid of Him seeing our darkness,
weakness, misery and poverty. Where is our hesitation and fear from? I know
in my own life it is a fear rooted in self-love and arrogance. I kind of
like the false images I have of myself. They are safe and secure. When He
sees me disrobed and naked, my security is shattered. By abandoning these
images of myself, I am jumping into the unknown where I have no control.
Yet I know it is a leap into a place where the truth that I am nothing
without Him lies waiting to be engraved within my very being to set me
free.
When we expose everything to His gaze and allow Him to take off the robes
and garments that preserve our illusion of self-reliant power and being in
control, we create a capacity for Him that we never knew we had. Hidden
within the poverty, weakness, brokenness, and helplessness; hidden within
the suffering, insecurity, loneliness, and desperation; hidden within the
nakedness, misunderstanding, darkness, and nothingness; hidden within
everything within ourselves that we think is despicable and incapable of
being loved; hidden here is the essence of all life, all joy, all peace and
the answer to all of our questions. It is Jesus Himself waiting to be
discovered… wrapped in weakness. And by His side we discover a loving
Father, a Father of the poor, and the "Spirit who comes to the aid of our
weakness" (Rom. 8) "…and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom"
(2Cor. 3).
My prayer lately has been "Tear this veil Lord and break open this heart!"
Our veils need to be torn and our robes discarded for He wants to love us
just as we are. We are not loved for our gifts or for anything that we do:
we are loved for who we are in Him! He wants me, not my gifts and
not even my perfection! Our expectations of ourselves need to be
lowered and our expectations of Him need to be raised. We are children. He
is all-mighty God.
When my nephew Michael was one and a half years old, he and his parents were
eating breakfast in a nice restaurant in DC. Instead of eating his food,
Michael began to throw it. In a firm voice my sister Cathy said to him,
"Michael, if you throw your food you are going to get in trouble." In a
teasing voice his father, Mike, chimed in, "Ooooo trouble." Michael mimicked
His dad in his one year old voice and said, "trouble," and threw his food
again. "Michael, do you really want to get into trouble?" his
father asked. Aware that little Michael was helpless to escape the trouble
awaiting him, Mike continued, "Who is going to save you if you get
into trouble?" Michael looked at his mom and then looked at his dad and
said with much confidence "Jesus!" The woman at the table next to them
dropped her fork in disbelief and said, "That just made my day!" Michael
knew that Jesus could save him in the midst of his powerlessness.
It is one thing to recognize the futility of these robes and veils we put
on ourselves; it is another to recognize that we are powerless to discard
them. Sometimes it takes a serious fall or being tried in the fires of
temptation to uncover the arrogance we are clinging to that preserves the
illusion that we are in control and can save ourselves. The Lord sometimes
has to pry this arrogance from our stubborn grasp. It is frightening, but
freeing to face the sin we are capable of and to admit that without His help
we would destroy ourselves.
This is why He comes to us as a little helpless infant instead of on fiery
cherubim flexing His muscles for the entire world to see. It is as if He is
saying, "If I can be weak and powerless so can you. I have become like
you." He is teaching us the secret of love and needing one another. Think
about it. This all-mighty, all-powerful God, our Creator "through whom all
things were made," out of love, chose to NEED us! He placed His life
in the hands of those He had created and gave us full control over
Him! May we His creatures, His children surrender to the grace of knowing
our desperate NEED for Him in our lives. We need God. This
is not a revolutionary thought, though at times I forget! How much do we
really know this? I know I am still learning this simple truth and probably
will be for the rest of my life.
This
divine infant has so much to teach us! This little bundle of poverty,
helplessness, neediness, and vulnerability is entrusted into our hands. He
entrusts His very self to us. May we in turn entrust our own poverty,
weakness and neediness to Him. Let us let Him strip us of the beautiful,
false wrappings and ribbons and be presented to him in all our nakedness and
poverty. This Christmas may we welcome this gift of Jesus wrapped in
weakness by welcoming and embracing the weakness, powerlessness, and
vulnerability we encounter within ourselves and others. We are gifts to Him
when we come before Him wrapped in nothing but weakness.
A
proud and self-reliant man rightly fears to undertake anything, but a humble
man becomes all the braver as he realizes his own powerlessness; all the
bolder as he sees his own weakness, for all his confidence is in God, who
delights to reveal his almighty power in our infirmity and his mercy in our
misery. ~St. Francis de Sales.
+ Sr. Thérèse Marie, TOR
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The
bell in the towering Kartause steeple is ringing out with enthusiasm its
willkommen to the new day our Lord is giving to us. It is 7 a.m. on
Friday, our hermitage morning. Visible from our chapel window, smoke is
curling from the chimney of a red-tile-roofed house framed by mountains of
yellow and burnt-orange trees scattered among the pines and evergreens. The
smell of fall is in the air. This is Gaming.
In August, Sr. Faustina and I joined our sisters who were here last year,
Sr. Anne Marie and Sr. Della Marie, on this lovely Austrian Campus of
Franciscan University's Study Abroad Program. The setting: a Carthusian
monastery that dates back to 1330. Our mission: to pray for the
re-evangelization of Europe, in union with our Holy Father Benedict XVI; to
pray for and minister to the students and the Faculty and Staff and their
families; and to pray for a return to the sacraments for this little
village of Gaming.
The members of the Staff and Faculty have warmly welcomed us. Fr. Dave
Pivonka, Fr. Dennis Gang, and Fr. Ron Mohnickey, all T.O.R.s, are
outstanding priests, preachers and ministers to the young people who come
here to study. The professors and administrative people and their families
provide an environment of holiness through their commitment to the daily
living out of their lives for our Lord Jesus Christ and their desire to
spread the Gospel to all the nations. As for the families, we have
never seen so many beautiful, happy children of all ages!
Getting to know the students, 168 of them, has been our joy. These young men
and women, seeking holiness and nourishing their faith through prayer and
study, hope to make a difference in our world. They are "capable of shaping
history according to God's plan" (John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte,
33). We have accompanied them on pilgrimage to Salzburg, which is rich in
churches, music, art and history, and is also the inspiration for the
well-loved movie, "Sound of Music." With them we visited Vienna, a center of
Christian and Austrian history; a city of classical composers including
Mozart and Beethoven among many others. The Treasury, a museum of earthly
power and trappings containing ornate crowns of temporal kings, has as its
greatest treasure a very large piece of the True Cross of the King of Kings,
our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Peter's Church in Vienna has celebrated Mass
daily for 1400 years. All glory to God!
On our patronal feast day, September 15, we four sisters visited the oldest
church in Europe dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which is here in Austria.
Together we prayed the Seven Sorrows of Mary. It was a deeply moving
experience.
It is an exciting new chapter in our lives, not without its challenges. It
is stretching for each of us as we settle into the new house and culture.
Overall we are adjusting to the "different but not wrong" newness and are
becoming a "missionary team." In this process of change there are the not-
so-ordinary details of daily living. The German language on all food
products is sometimes close enough to English to "decipher" for shopping and
cooking, sometimes not. We delight in the happy greeting of the local
people, "Gruss Gott!" (God greets you!) We marvel at the unerring honesty
of the Austrian people. For example, you can ride a bike and leave it
outside a store, or at the foot of a mountain path, unlocked, and it is
there when you return.
In the midst of all this, we miss you and pray for you, our sisters at home,
our families, and our friends. May God give you His blessing, now and
forever!
+Sr.
Grace Anne Wills, TOR
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Dear Sr. Faustina,
I have
a very exciting story to share … .you're going to love this.
Sunday night
at evening prayer while we were all praying the Mercy Chaplet I noticed out
of the corner of my eye Sr. Jean staring at me. I was curious as to why she
was staring at me, but I tried to ignore her. But she kept staring at me,
so I finally looked at her. Her eyes were really big and she was pointing
at my head and then her head, my head and then her head, over and over. At
that time I had no idea what she was trying to say and she figured that out.
So she tried to get Sr. Maria Teresa's attention (who sits next to me) and
again pointed at my head. Sr. Maria Teresa's eyes got really big, and I
picked up a look of horror in both of their eyes. At that point I came to
the conclusion that there must be something on my head, and from the look on
their faces I knew it must be big, really ugly, or dangerous (or all
three). My first thought was that it was a big, hairy spider. Meanwhile,
the other sisters were still praying the Mercy Chaplet, clueless as to the
exciting drama unfolding in the back of the chapel. My first response,
frozen by fear, was to shut my eyes really tight and clench my fists and to
say over and over in my mind, "Stay calm, Sr. Maria Teresa will get it.
Don't make a scene… stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm." I tried my
best to be cool, calm, and collected and waited for Sr. Maria Teresa to
knock it off of my head or to do something. I waited for a few seconds and
nothing happened. I finally opened my eyes and they were still staring at
me with that look of disbelief. And then I felt whatever it was begin to
walk on my head. From the feel of its legs clinging to my veil, I surmised
that whatever it was, was really big! I made
the necessary decision to take the situation into my own hands and I decided
to run. As I attempted to run for what I thought was possibly my life, I
forgot that I was still on my knees. As I ran on my knees from my little
corner and attempted to get onto my feet, I tripped over my footstool and
then fell over Sr. Maria Teresa into Sr. Jean's arms who was terrified of
whatever I had on my head and was trying unsuccessfully to get away from
me. I jammed my knee (it is all black and blue), let out something like a
scream, and created such a scene that Sr. Alexandra Marie thought I was
having a seizure and Sr. Mary thought I was having a heart attack. As I
settled into Sr. Jean's chair I looked at the wall by my chair and there was
a big grasshopper (4 to 5 inches long!!).* Sr. Maria Teresa then
caught it and carried it out of the chapel. I really couldn't believe what
had happened and we were all somewhat stunned. We began the Mercy Chaplet
again, but a lot of us could not keep the giggles under control and were
outside of the chapel for the rest of prayer. Everyone is teasing me and
telling me that we are having grasshopper pie for my feast day dessert.
It was
something else. You would have thoroughly enjoyed the free entertainment.
To top it off, at night prayer that night, Sr. Chiara, who sits in front of
me, sat on the cord to the fan that is on the windowsill above my chair.
The fan (which was still on) came crashing down on top of me creating a huge
noise and another scream. I was glad to get to bed that night.
Your graceful and shaken
sister,
Sr. Thérèse Marie
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