House Sacristan

I live at the Marquette University Jesuit Community with about 50 other Jesuits--administrators, faculty, students from other countries, and people like me who work in other apostolates.  Most of us have "house jobs" in which we serve our brothers in various ways.  My job is "house sacristan." Every week that I am in town I go around the three small chapels on the second through fourth floors of our residence and into the main chapel on the first floor and I make sure everything is in order: that there are enough hosts and wine, that there are clean purificators and corporals, that the candles are OK. I pick up the used altar linens and replace them with clean ones. I wash the linens and then iron them.

While it takes some time, I enjoy the ironing part. It slows me down and is a simple task that is so
different from my apostolic work of preaching, writing, and office work.  Often, while I'm ironing, I think of the second patron saint of the Apostleship of Prayer--St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.  She too was sacristan for her community at the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, France. She found great joy in serving her community in this way. This service was a labor of love in which her devotion to the Holy Eucharist grew. I feel privileged to be serving my community in the same way.

St. Therese wrote a poem called "The Sacristans of Carmel."  I'm grateful to Maureen O'Riordan who told me about this poem and the picture of St. Therese and the other sacristans of her community, and whose website is a treasure trove of information about St. Therese and her family.  In the following excerpts from the poem we see not only her deep devotion but also her good grasp of Eucharistic theology. Jesus gives us His Body and Blood in order to transform us. We become what we receive--the Body of Christ.

The Sacristans of Carmel

1 Here below our sweet office
Is to prepare for the altar
The bread and wine of the Sacrifice
Which brings "Heaven" to earth!

2 O supreme mystery, Heaven
Hides in humble bread,
For Heaven is Jesus Himself,
Coming to us each morning.

 4 This world's greatest honors
Cannot compare
To the deep, celestial peace
Which Jesus lets us savor.

 6 But his love has chosen us.
He is our Spouse, our Friend.
We are also hosts
Which Jesus wants to change into Himself.

Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus

I am in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where I am in the middle of a retreat for the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus. The Central Province is headquartered here and I gave the sisters a retreat back in December, 2005.  I know this religious order which unites two of my loves--Carmel and the Sacred Heart--not only through this particular community but also because I've given retreats to the Sisters of the Northern Province in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and the Canadian Province in Missassauga, Ontario.  Whenever I'm in the Milwaukee area for the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (July 16), I celebrate it with the community in Wauwatosa and I was privileged to be there for special celebrations of the beatification of their foundress, Mother Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, in 2006 and for the 100th anniversary of their foundation in the U.S.A. in 2012. 

Bl. Maria Teresa was an amazing woman. She was born in East Prussia in 1855, the daughter of a staunch Lutheran minister.  She decided to become a Catholic on June 17, 1887 without knowing that this was the feast of the Sacred Heart that year and was received into the Church on October 30, 1888. Prior to this she had spent some time in a convent in Cologne where a deep love for the Eucharist grew.  She wrote about this in her autobiography:

"During the first days of my stay at the convent, the Forty Hours' adoration was observed. It was the first exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and the first nocturnal adoration I had ever attended. I cannot find words to describe my feelings. I was so filled with holy joy that I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament from nine o'clock in the evening until two o'clock in the morning without realizing the time. God inflamed my heart with such fervor that later on, all the sorrows sent to me, or allowed to happen to me by His grace, seemed to be only a drop of water on a glowing iron. They can only cause a momentary flare,  a human twitch of nature, and nothing else. The real fervor stays like the real heat of the iron. When I awoke in the morning, my heart was filled with a burning love for God."

This love impelled her to follow God's will at all costs.  One of my favorite stories of Bl. Maria Teresa is how shortly after this experience in adoration and before she had become a Catholic she, in her words, "desired to become a holocaust of love for God."  She concluded all her prayers with the following words: "O Lord, send me wherever You will, to work for the salvation of souls. Fulfill the ardent longing of my soul, O God, to prove my love and gratitude to You. But if it is possible, do not send me to Berlin. However, Your will be done, not mine."  And where did God send her? That's right. To Berlin, where she began her work of caring for abandoned children and also encountered much opposition.

Pope Pius XII said the following about her: "Never in the history of humanity have events required on the part of a woman so much initiative and daring, so much fidelity, moral strength, spirit of sacrifice and endurance of all kinds of suffering--in a word, so much heroism."

A Croatian Jesuit, Fr. Mihaly Szentmartoni, in his book Even Then Will I Trust, compared her to a locomotive: "As I read the autobiography of the Venerable Anna Maria Tauscher/Mother Mary Teresa of St. Joseph, the image of a hurtling locomotive appeared before my spiritual eyes. This fairly frail woman rumbled through this world like a hurtling locomotive, not only in the figurative sense. She actually crisscrossed old Europe who knows how many times, and also went to America. Travel became a symbol of her life. Like the good old steam locomotives of her time, she whizzed by, overcoming every obstacle in her path, pulling her train, i.e., her associates, candidates, nuns and thousands of impoverished children, old persons and others who suffered from spiritual or physical misery.  Like a good old locomotive, she could fume at those who tried to block her path. No one and nothing could stop her until she reached her final destination, the last station on her journey."

The Eucharist was clearly the fuel for this locomotive of a woman.  When she was finally able to establish her first convent and received permission to have the Blessed Sacrament there, she wrote about that first night in which the Eucharistic Presence of our Lord was in the building:

"Joy filled the hearts of all the guests.... At last they were gone, and I was alone. No, not alone, and as I believed, I would never again be alone. I was with Him whom I had longed for so ardently, and over whose absence I had shed so many tears since leaving the convent in Cologne twenty-five years ago. He was here now, the great King, hidden in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Oh, I felt unutterable bliss; He was mine, and I was His!"

The locomotive kept racing along until September 20, 1938. Her last words to those gathered around her deathbed were: "All that God does is good! Always praise and glorify God!"

For more about Blessed Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, see the St. Agnes Home website. 

"A Stupendous Gift"

I am blessed to be in the second day of an eight day retreat that I am giving to the Carmelite Sisters of Flemington, New Jersey.  So far I have been reflecting with the Sisters on a beautiful 1999 document, "Verbi Sponsa"--an instruction from the Congregation  for Institutes of Contemplative Life and  for Societies of Apostolic Life.  From beginning to end this document, subtitled "Instruction on the Contemplative Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns, is filled with gratitude for this special vocation.

The first section says that "cloistered nuns" are "a unique grace and precious gift within the mystery of the Church's holiness."  And the conclusion contains this tribute which contains a quote from the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consacrata: "The intention of this Instruction is to confirm the Church's high esteem for the wholly contemplative life of cloistered nuns, and to reaffirm her concern to safeguard its authentic nature, 'that this world may never be without a ray of divine beauty to lighten the path of human existence'."

Next week, using the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and excerpts from Pope Benedict's first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, I will reflect with the Sisters on the Our Father. The Sisters live a cloistered life, apart from the world for which they offer intense prayer. I celebrate Mass and present my conferences through a grill.

I'm especially blessed to be here today, the World Day for Consecrated Life. In 1997 Blessed John Paul II called for this special day on which to remember and pray for all those who are called to the consecrated life like these Sisters and like myself, a Jesuit.  In his Message for the first such World Day, Pope John Paul gave three reasons for instituting this special day.

First, to give praise and thanks to God for the vocation to consecrated life which the Holy Father called a "stupendous gift." He followed these words with a quote from the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, the foundress of these Discalced Carmelites: "What would become of the world if there were no religious?"

Secondly, Pope John Paul wrote, "this day is intended to promote a knowledge of and esteem for the consecrated life by the entire People of God."  From such "knowledge" and "esteem" it is hoped that many more young people will hear God calling them to this life.

The third reason for this special day concerns consecrate people themselves. Blessed John Paul II hoped that this celebration would help them "to acquire a more vivid consciousness of their irreplaceable mission in the Church and in the world."  He wanted them each year "to return to the sources of their vocation, to take stock of their own lives, to confirm the commitment of their own consecration." Doing this, the pope was convinced, "they will be able to give witness with joy to the men and women of our time, in diverse situations, that the Lord is the Love who is able to fill the heart of the human person."

What a blessing it is for me to celebrate the "stupendous gift" of a religious vocation at the Carmel of Mary Immaculate and Saint Mary Magdalen in Flemington, NJ! What a blessing it is to give a retreat to these Sisters during the Year of Faith!

For Greater Things You Were Born

Last weekend I was in Alhambra, California giving a retreat to 94 women at Sacred Heart Retreat House. This evening I'll be giving a retreat to about 50 men at the Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

While the retreats in Oshkosh always follow the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius, the ones in Alhambra have a different theme every year. This year's theme is "For Greater Things You Were Born," a quote from Mother Maria Luisa de la Pena, also known as Mother Luisita, the foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who run the retreat house in Alhambra. Archbishop Jose Gomez, who will be installed as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles next Tuesday, quoted Mother Luisita when he was installed as the Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles last year. Before the retreat the Sisters provided me with a quote from Archbishop Gomez that helped me prepare the five talks I gave. Here's the quote:

Venerable Mother Luisita will tell everyone, "For greater things you were born." That's it, my friends. That is the Good News we are called to proclaim to our city, to our country, throughout this continent and world, "Para grandes cosas hemos nacido." Each one of us has been made for love and for great and beautiful things. There is no soul that God does not long to touch with this message of love. But He wants to touch those souls through us. So let us make our lives something beautiful that we can offer it to God. Let us do everything, even the little duties of our days, out of love for him and for the love of our brothers and sisters.

As I prepared my talks, I couldn't help thinking how well this quote captures the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer. Here's a brief summary of the retreat:

Talk 1: "Put Out Into the Deep" Using the challenge of Jesus (see Luke 5: 4), which Pope John Paul II took up in his Apostolic Letter at the turn of the millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte), I spoke about the call that all Christians have to go deeper in their prayer lives. The Sacrament of Baptism has transformed us. We are now called to be who we have been made to be--children of God. We are called to be holy as our heavenly Father is holy.

Talk 2: "Your Sins Are Forgiven You" In this talk I spoke about the obstacle to holiness--sin--and how in the Sacrament of Reconciliation Jesus waits for us in order to forgive us. In going to that Sacrament we give Jesus the pleasure of healing us spiritually, the thing that He most enjoyed doing when He walked this earth.

Homily at Saturday Mass: "I Believe. Help My Unbelief" I talked about how faith is a virtue, a spiritual muscle, which, like any muscle, physical or spiritual, needs to be exercised in order to develop and be healthy. Faith, like all the virtues, is not an "all or nothing" reality, nor is it a feeling; rather, it is an act of the will, a decision, a choice.

Talk 3: "Abide With Me" This talk was given right before a long period of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. I talked about the amazing gift of the Eucharist and how, according to Pope Benedict's Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, the Eucharist is a mystery to be believed, celebrated, and lived. I focused on what we believe and how we celebrate the Eucharist.

Talk 4: "I Am With You Always" In Novo Millennio Ineunte, Pope John Paul said that in order to go deeper in our spiritual lives our parishes and communities need to be "schools of prayer." I went through seven ways of praying that the Holy Father mentioned: "imploring help," "thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly 'falls in love.'"

Talk 5: "Be A Living Sacrifice" Here is where I talked about the Daily Offering as a practical way to implement Archbishop Gomez's challenge: to do everything out of love for God and love for our brothers and sisters.

Homily at Sunday Mass: "Be Perfect" Sometimes "the perfect" can be the enemy of "the good." The devil loves to discourage us and make us think that we should give up our efforts because the ideal of holiness to which we are called is too high for us. It is. We are weak. But God's grace is powerful. What is impossible for us, is possible for God who gives us His grace through the Sacraments. With our eyes fixed on our goal of holiness, we walk one day at a time, not giving in to discouragement but striving to make progress little by little.