feminine-genius

God Beyond All Praising

Father Z has the account of the miracle that will be was attributed [thank you, Fr.] to the intercession of Gianna Beretta Molla, and will raise raised her to the altars of God as a saint. Not surprisingly, it has to do with pregnancy, since her own heroic virtue was tied to her motherhood.

In mid November 1999 a Brazilian woman named Elisabete Comparini Arcolino discovered she was pregnant for the fourth time. An echogram on 30 Nov. showed that the developing child was within a small sac only .8 cm in length and 2.3 cm in diameter. The doctor said that it was doubtful that with such a beginning for the gestation that child would come to term. On 9 December a echo showed the embryo a 1.0 cm in length but also a huge increase in coagulation of blood (blood loss), measuring 5.2×3.5 cm. On 19 Dec they found the beating heart of the child, but also a deterioration of the placenta in the lower region of the uterus. A pessimistic prognosis was given. The doctor following the case, Dr. Nadia Bicego Vieitez de Almeida, who had handled Elisabete’s previous pregnancies, said that with the great loss of blood Elisebete would probably spontaneously abort or they would have to do the procedure sooner or later.

Contrary to expectations, the child’s heart kept beating and the pregnancy continued.

On 11 February 2000 Elisabete realized there was a serious problem and went to the hospital. The echo showed that the gestational sack’s membrane had broken at 16 weeks of gestation and, while the fetus was alive, there was now a total absence of amniotic fluid. The radiologist testified that there was no amniotic liquid to protect the child from exposure to the outside world and from the external pressure of the uterus itself. This meant that both the child and mother were in serious danger of infection, etc.

Take the time to read the account, when possible. There was no "aha moment," nor a magic wand transformation, but a long slog through pregnancy with few realistic hopes and many opportunities to "throw in the towel." So many of our own answered prayers are such gradual gifts, that when all is said and done, you realise that the miracle was equally the ability to persevere against dark odds -- transforming the one  who is asking. I think I am more taken by the fact that Gianna's intercession still mandated tremendous trust for so long on the part of the mother than the outcome for the child.

A beautiful account for our dear one's cause. May she intercede for all mothers, children, and families.

For Christian Unity

This convert and Blessed had an ardent desire to work and pray for Christian unity.

Having finally become certain that the fullness of grace and truth are found in the Catholic Church, Elizabeth waited no longer to enter. She spoke to Father J.G. Hagen, a Jesuit, who would become her spiritual Father, and asked him to receive her immediately into the Catholic Church before she was to leave shortly for Europe.

"My dear daughter, how could I do that?" the priest replied. "I have just met you…"

"My Father, forgive me, but I have fought in darkness for twenty years; for many years I have studied the Catholic faith and have prayed for a strong faith… I now possess this faith, and I am ready to submit to an examination on all the points of doctrine."

The priest thus questioned the ardent neophyte. Finally, he told her, "I see no reason not to receive you into the Church. Today is August 12, and the 15^th will be the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That day, I will receive you into the Catholic Church; the following Sunday, the 17^th, you will be able to receive Holy Communion. Spend these few days in retreat and come to see me twice a day for lessons."

During the ceremony of admission into the Catholic Church, Elizabeth received a particular grace that she translated in these terms: "I returned to kneel in my place, and the entire world seemed to me to disappear. It would be impossible to describe this impression. The only reality that I saw, that I felt, was God; my sole desire from then on was to see Him as we will see Him face to face, on the eternal morning."

Fascinating story and a friend to keep in mind as intercessor.

A rule I could live with

I've always been quite taken with the Bridgettines, beginning with the habit, and then their history. While having reservations about sending young children away for formation elsewhere, Saint Bridget was the mother of eight who did just that. Her fourth daughter, Catherine, loved the convent where she was educated and wanted to be a religious, but she was given in marriage to an invalid, with whom she lived for some years. Her husband gave her freedom to visit her mother, and he died shortly after that.

Soon Catherine was her mother's devoted, reliable, and constant assistant, and served her for the next 25 years. In 1372, she and her mother made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, returning by way of Rome, where Saint Bridget died the following year. Catherine returned with her mother's body to Sweden and there she became abbess of the convent of Vadstena, founded by her mother, and the motherhouse of the Bridgettine (Salvatorian) Order.

Now followed intense work to promote the Bridgettine Order. Bound together in double monasteries, men and women pledged themselves to live in poverty, save for the right to buy as many books as they needed for study and devotion.

Heh. How many of us could find that poverty less, um, stark! (I'm talking about the books, folks.) I do admit that I ought to stop judging past centuries by present criteria, but I've always held a grudge against Saint Bernard for breaking up the marriages of all his siblings in order to get them all into monasteries. Saint Bridget sounds like she was bouncing about while still  married and tucking her own children into various nooks and crannies. Different, but Catherine seemed to roll with it.

The Reed of God

Elena Vidal has done an excellent job in summarising the life and theology of Caryll Houselander. Any book of hers to be found is a treasure, and she provides one of those remarkable lives that are obviously attributable to God's grace well-received.

Born to a pair of attractive, extroverted and athletic parents ill-equipped to deal with a homely,introverted and artistically-sensitive child, throughout her childhood and adolescence Caryll endured protracted sieges of psychological and physical suffering. Caryll's relationship with her mother was a particularly difficult one. Always impulsive and erratic, yet capable of great generosity on her own terms, Gertrude Houselander was the classic type of Englishwoman who could treat animals and assorted misfits with great tenderness and her own children with massive insensitivity.

And yet through it all, God will provide. Not only would the wounds be dressed and soothed, but their very presence would be the foundation of a heroic empathy that could have grown no other way. All things can work together unto good, as the Scriptures promise.

I liked especially the irony that was revealed, in that she well understood the tragedies in the world and yet never lost her biting wit. It seems to be a wide-spread Catholic attribute: to be able to chuckle at ourselves while weeping all the same.

This should encourage many who have lived through trials or have witnessed the deficits in the lives of so many others. We can pray like mad for children who endure much, while resting in the confidence that God can make something of it -- something beautiful and life-giving. For where there's life, there's hope.

Saint Leo and the Church

For any who might think that the theology of the body, with its nuptial elements and emphasis on the feminine is newly contrived, he would do well to look into the Church Fathers, who were immersed in the Motherhood of the Church. Today, on the feast of Saint Leo the Great (d. 461)we might consider his inspired words on baptism, composed when he was a deacon:

The Church, Virgin-Mother, brings forth from the river the children she conceived by the breath of the God.

Later, he wrote more on the topic:

For every man who is born again, the water of baptism is the symbol of the womb of the Virgin: for it is the same Spirit that gives power to the fountain as gave power to the Virgin to conceive... It was the power of the Most High and the shadow of the Spirit that enabled Mary to give birth to the Redeemer: by the same power the waves of regeneration are able to give birth to the faithful.

Every woman is a part of this mystery as each is called to manifest the feminine-genius, to be an icon of the Spotless Bride, whose vocation it is to populate heaven by means of the Word of God. A lofty call -- and more authentic dignity than in any other religion. A privilege, and a sacred trust. Live your motherhood well!

A faithful bride

V.  In thy comeliness, yea in thy beauty.
R.  Go forth, ride prosperously, and reign.

V.  The righteous shall flourish like a palm-tree.
R.  And shall spread abroad like a cedar in Líbanus.

R.  Ride on because of the Word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness : * And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
V.  In thy comeliness, yea, in thy beauty, go forth, ride prosperously, and reign.
R.  And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.

R.  Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity : * Wherefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.
V.  Because of the Word of truth, of meekness, and of righteousness.
R.  Wherefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.

R.  After her shall virgins be brought unto the King : * Her fellows shall be brought unto thee with gladness and rejoicing.
V.  In thy comeliness, yea, in thy beauty, go forth, ride prosperously, and reign.
R.  Her fellows shall be brought unto thee with gladness and rejoicing.
V.  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
R.  Her fellows shall be brought unto thee with gladness and rejoicing.

Antiphon:  Come, thou bride of Christ, receive the crown which the Lord hath prepared for thee for ever.

Today's other saint

Besides Ste Therese of Lisieux, who is feted everywhere -- as she should be, we have today the feast of St Rémy, who had the distinct honour of baptising Clovis, King of the Franks. Despite 74 years as bishop and the decades of prayer and sacrifice, this special event couldn't have taken place without the help of the Queen, Clotildis. The good bishop constantly exhorted the King to live virtue and to honour the holy things of God, and Clovis did what he could given his nature.

Clovis must have respected Rémy's advice even if he did not follow it: During his march on Chalons and Troyes, Clovis bypassed Rheims, Rémy's see. It is possible, though, that only his wife's civilizing influence prevented him from burning Rheims.

Clovis married the radiant and beautiful Christian, Ste Clotildis, by proxy at Chalons-sur-Saone, while she was still living in Lyons under the tutelage of Saint Blandine. It was not a peaceful union. Clovis, an ambitious autocrat, allowed his rage to lead to ill-planned actions. The young, pious Clotildis showed him how much wiser it was to struggle with this wild beast than to give way to his emotions. At first Clovis resisted being tamed by his wife.

In 496, Clovis, supposedly in response to a suggestion from his wife, invoked the Christian God when the invading Alemanni were on the verge of defeating his forces, whereupon the tide of battle turned and Clovis was victorious at Tolbiac. St Rémy, aided by St Vedast, instructed him and his chieftains in Christianity. At the Easter Vigil (or Christmas Day) in 496, Rémy baptized Clovis, his two sisters, and 3,000 of his subjects. (Most seem to agree on the year, but not the day or place.)

[from Richard Miller]

Contagion of holiness

Father Mark has an amazing account of Dame Alice, who was afflicted with leprosy.

Today's Saint Alice of Schaerbeek, a Cistercian-Benedictine nun, was one of a constellation of holy women who in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries set the Low Countries all ablaze with love for Christ and, in particular, for the mystery of the Eucharist. Dame Alice died on June 11th, 1250; the Cistercian Order began celebrating her feast in 1702.

Her isolation was due much to the fear of contagion, but even so it sounds like everyone involved could have been somewhat more charitable in the way she was treated.

For Alice, leprosy was but the beginning. It brought in its wake other sufferings, sufferings of the heart, of the mind, and of the soul. It brought, more than anything else, a great loneliness. Her biographer says that the first night of her reclusion “her heart was so severely crushed and bruised, that her spirit fainted away, and her mind remained forcibly in shock.”

A Great Loneliness

Alice had entered her monastery to live with others, to share life, to love and to be loved in the communion of a Eucharistic body. Cistercian-Benedictine life meant, more than anything else, life together. Because of her illness, Alice was obliged to forsake life together, the very thing she thought would be her lifelong path to God. I often think of the loneliness of Alice, of her feelings of rejection, of isolation, of fear. Unlike Blessed Damien of Molokai who lived within a community of lepers, Alice had to live a great loneliness.

Refreshed with the Blood of Christ

I look at Alice in the little hut prepared for her outside the monastery, and I see an icon of the suffering Christ, the Christ of Gethsemane, the Christ who, in solitude, surrenders to the will of the Father for the salvation of the world. For fear of contagion, Alice was deprived of drinking from the chalice and of receiving the Precious Blood. One day, before her isolation, Dame Alice approached the altar with the other nuns for Holy Communion. The priest refused her the chalice of the Blood of Christ out of fear of contagion. Alice complained bitterly to the Lord in her heart. She burned to be inebriated with His Precious Blood, and was inconsolable about being deprived of the holy chalice. At that very moment, the voice of Christ sounded in her ears, saying:” Oh most loving daughter, do not be disturbed. Cease complaining as if something had been withdrawn from you. Firm faith calls for any who have tasted of My Body to rejoice in the belief beyond doubt that they are also being refreshed with My Blood.”

Father Mark comments on how appropriate it is to celebrate her feast (yesterday) within the octave of Corpus Christi. Please read the entire entry and consider how we can join our [small] sufferings with those of Christ, Who bears all things with us.

Immolation of motherhood

There are few contemporary women who can shed more light on the privilege of motherhood than Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, who died in 1962 rather than endanger her unborn child with treatment for her own cancer. In 1973, Paul VI referred to her gift of self as a "conscious immolation" in imitation of Jesus on Calvary and in the Eucharist. Her husband and the daughter for whom she gave her life attended her canonisation in 2004.

It was a way of life, rather than a singular decision, which is instructive:

Gianna Beretta Molla made a heroic choice, but it was something her family members and friends testified she prepared for every day of her life. Her heroic virtue, genuine holiness of life, selflessness, and quiet joy remind all of us that God entrusts us with a personal vocation. Each and every day presents us with choices that have the power to prepare us to take heroic action whenever it will be called for. We can do that, however, only if we surrender ourselves and what we desire to God and His will for us.

The website about her offers this prayer:

Jesus, I promise You to submit myself to all that You permit to befall me,
make me only know Your will.
My most sweet Jesus, infinitely merciful God, most tender Father of souls,
and in a particular way of the most weak, most miserable, most infirm
which You carry with special tenderness between Your divine arms,
I come to You to ask You, through the love and merits of Your Sacred Heart,
the grace to comprehend and to do always Your holy will,
the grace to confide in You,
the grace to rest securely through time and eternity in Your loving divine arms.

Saint Gianna, pray for us.

Anything but irrelevant

Yesterday was the feast of Saint Agatha, patroness of bell ringers and bakers. Fr. Dwight had some lovely thoughts as he said Mass for a group including students.

I had often thought that these ancient virgin martyrs were a little bit irrelevant to our day and age. But this morning at 7am I celebrated her memorial by saying Mass at St Joseph's Catholic School. In the congregation were about thirty people including a good number of our Middle School and High School young people. Like St Agatha, they are struggling with all the battles of purity and chastity in an increasingly pagan, decadent and sexually rampant society.

I only had a moment to speak of St Agatha's life and sacrifice, but I suddenly knew that she was anything but irrelevant. Instead she fought the very same battles that the teenagers today are fighting. They may not face immediate martyrdom, but they face exclusion and ridicule should they stand up for chastity, sexual purity and the higher and more noble ideals that their faith offers them.

Yes, it's the battle of the day -- for parents, educators, and the kids -- to focus on something more noble than the immediate gratification of baser instincts. This effort has to counter the nearly ubiquitous references to flesh and desire in our culture.

Saint Agatha is also the patroness for those who suffer with breast cancer (good to know) and she endured her own suffering (having her breasts hacked off as a punishment for not giving herself to a pagan husband). Life has never been a cake walk for those who pursue virtue, and this dear girl could be a tremendous intercessor for those who need the graces in this day and age.