It’s
Thursday, and that means it’s movie time on the blog. I am hosting the twelve
short films about Madonna House that we hired a film company to make last year.
This week we
have what I consider one of the best of the lot, the film introducing Catherine
De Hueck Doherty, the founder of MH. It is a fine, fine introduction to her,
giving not only the basic facts of her rather thrilling life, but a real sense
of the person and the impact she had on others. I could see this particular video being very useful in a classroom setting, introducing high school students to contemporary Catholics or something.
So here it is, followed by some
thoughts of mine:
Notable Quotes:
“Catherine
Doherty was a prophet, still is a prophet through her writings… she was a very
exciting human being.”
“The main
thing is to understand somebody who was transformed by her relationship with
God.”
“At first
you were drawn to her, and then you were drawn to what she was showing you. You
would get caught up in this personality, and then you would get caught up in
this vision of God and love and renewing the earth and restoring all things to
Christ. And then you would see what she would see.”
“Catherine would
call the people on the streets ‘Christophers’ – Christ bearers, and we have
continued that tradition, because where else are you going to find Him, but in
the poorest of the poor?”
“She didn’t
set out to establish a community, but at a certain point she accepted that that
was what was happening – these people were coming, and they were not going
away!”
“It was just
an ever-expanding experience, living at Madonna House, in every way.”
“The tragic
events she went through did not diminish in any way her love for Christ or make
her pessimistic about the world. That’s why I trust her, because she came
through all these things with her faith still very much alive and flaming until
her dying day.”
“My
definition of a saint is somebody who puts down a path of light for their
neighbour’s feet, and she certainly put down a great path for my feet, a trail
of light for me. That’s what I think a saint is, so in my opinion she’s a
saint!”
The latter
quote is from a woman named Mary Davis (everyone who knows MH, knows Mary), who
first came here when she was 17, joined as soon as she reasonably could, and
has been here ever since. She has mostly worked in the gardens, a heavy physical
job which still happily does now in her 80s.
Hi Father Denis,
ReplyDeleteI am just now getting to your MH movie series - thank you for posting it! When I try playing this movie I get the message that it 'does not exist.' I wonder if you could look into this and see if you can fix it, because I would love to see this one. I have enjoyed the others I've seen although I still have a few to go. It's something I have been looking forward to for Easter weekend for quite awhile.
Thank you for your blog :)
Yeah - they took a bunch of them down, did some editing (I presume?) on them, and them re-posted them, which screwed up the links. Try this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlG6wGp1hM
DeleteThanks for your kind words about the blog, and Happy Easter to you!