I spoke of the love of God, of his
tenderness, his mercy, his love for us. I spoke of faith, of hope, of love. I
spoke of the miracles he had performed. Do you know something? My voice, which
was fairly powerful, seemed to be absorbed into a huge ball of cotton like that
used in hospitals, and it died there.
For I was talking to people who were not
listening. They were utterly and completely indifferent to what I said. They
passed me by without even turning their heads. I felt scalding tears fall on my
face, and called out to God, “Lord, have mercy!” A quiet and peace–filled voice
answered, “That is who I am—the Lord of mercy.”
I understood at that moment, with a sort
of lightning understanding, why we of Madonna House exist. We exist to show the
face of Christ through all the fogs, through all the storms, through all the
rains and hurricanes. We exist, if need be, to be martyred. Because only
martyrs, bloodied martyrs, can penetrate that fog, can with their two hands
lift off from people the weight of gold and silver that was suffocating them.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Urodivoi
Reflection – Well, this speaks to my heart, anyhow. I don’t know if it does to
anyone else’s. Of course, I can just as easily be among the crowd who pass by
heedless and uninterested, as much as be the one preaching the Gospel.
There is something very strange, though, in our humanity, that
Catherine touches here most painfully. We are not really that interested in the
Good News. We are not that interested in God. We should be—this is our life,
our death, and our hope of life in death—but we are not.
Not most of us, not most of the time, not as interested as we should
be. It is easy in this to blame the sins and poor example of Christians who say
one thing and act another, the scandal of hypocrisy in the Church, especially
in its leadership. And there is certainly some truth in that.
But the reality of human indifference to God goes deeper than that,
I would maintain. There is a capacity in human beings for a simple deadening of
the spiritual impulse, a smothering, a suffocating of that which is the true
life of the soul. We can kill the life of the spirit in ourselves—this is the
true and only tragedy of our humanity.
Catherine specifies ‘gold and silver’ as the weight that does this
suffocating work. For sure this is so—the Lord Himself has no shortage of
warnings to us of the dangers of greed and avarice—but this hoarding of
possessions is itself merely a symptom of the deeper malady. And that deeper
malady is the persistent choice of self over God, self over neighbor, self over
all. ‘I am third’, we say in Madonna House, and hopefully try to live. God is
first, my neighbor is second, I am third.
Pride inverts this so that I am first, and God and my neighbor vie
for second and third place (we don’t really care, since I am first, and that’s
what matters). It is this which is the true root of all spiritual death, which
manifests itself most painfully in this dead, dull indifference to God and to
the things of God.
Well, what are we to do, we who do believe, who do care, who do want
God to be victorious in the world and in ourselves (even if we ourselves
struggle to some degree with this spiritual malady)? That is really what this
whole book Urodivoi is about, and why
I think it is one of Catherine’s greatest books, largely forgotten and unread
as it is.
To weep, to cry out, to love, and to keep going, keep preaching,
keep shining the face of Christ, the love of God, the Gospel of Jesus, no
matter what. Foolishly, uselessly, without seeming to make any impression or
have anything to show for it. Keep doing it, keep on the course, keep giving a
damn even if nobody else seems to, keep hanging on to Jesus, to Mary, to the
Father, keep pouring out our prayers and our love, and begging for the grace of
fidelity and perseverance in all this.
This is the only way the Gospel is proclaimed in the world, the only
way that those who have ears to hear will hear it, the only way that the
horrible fog of apathy and indifference can be pierced through by the luminous
light of faith, hope, and love. The only way our lives make a difference, bring
love into the world more profoundly.
Of course we do all this while ourselves contending against our own
pride and sin and indifference, and this is part of the painful struggle of
life. It is not only other people who are suffocating, but we ourselves may be
weighed down by self and greed and pride this day. So we have to preach the
Gospel anyway, cry out anyway, love anyway, always knowing ourselves to be the
first ones needing to hear it, needing to repent and believe, but not letting
that stop us from being his evangelists in the world.
All of Catherine's problems came from those within the church, primarily priests and not those denying Christ.
ReplyDeleteThank you for going in depth with this book. I had forgotten the many great things Catherine was trying to teach us through it. Think I will have to buy a copy of it and be awoken again.
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