I Have a New Job... Or Do I?

So, I have a new job! At least, theoretically, that is. I am now the official director of the “Spiritual Formation Program” (henceforward SFP), run by Madonna House since 1980 for young men considering a vocation to the priesthood but not quite ready to begin their seminary studies. The reason I am only ‘theoretically’ in charge of it yet is that God has not yet sent us anyone applying for the program for this coming year, so it is unknown at this point if we will run it or not.

I am pretty sure that I haven’t mentioned this program except in passing on this blog, but now that I am in charge of it (theoretically), I thought it was time to highlight this hidden contribution MH makes to the Church at large.

It was in 1980 that the idea came to Catherine Doherty, all in a flash, that MH could have a role to play in the formation of men for the priesthood in Canada and beyond. Her initial formulation of it, that we would be a ‘seminary’, proved beyond our means at that point (and still is), but a year of spiritual and catechetical formation was not. 

Unbeknownst to her and us, the Vatican had just around that time come out with its own recommendations for priestly formation, and was suggesting exactly that thing. So Catherine asked Fr. Jim Duffy to develop a ‘pre-seminary’ program, and from 1980 onwards we have offered this service to the Church.

I do not have statistics in front of me at all, but quite a number of men are serving as priests now who passed through the SFP, or are seminarians on their way to that happy state. Quite a number of men are now loving husbands and fathers, and a good few others are in other vocations. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who has done the program over these decades who has not reported, sometimes years later, that it was a formative influence in their lives that has helped them persevere in serving God.

The program runs more or less from Canadian Thanksgiving in early October to Easter Sunday. The men come, and for the most part live our MH life of work, prayer, and community life. They have, as all our long-term visitors have, a spiritual director from among the priests. They live with the other MH men guests at St. Anne’s, and in most regards their life is that of any guest to our community. Our belief, and it is a belief tried in the fires of long experience, is that it is our community life that is the principle formator of anyone who walks in the door to spend time with us.

But they have a meeting one evening a week to discuss their experience and to read together and reflect on significant texts on the priesthood or other key spiritual matters. They have a study day on Wednesday—in the morning all the MH guests have classes first on the Fundamentals of the Spiritual Life, then on the Catechism. A time of prayer or reading follows. In the afternoon the SFP men have a second class, which may be on the priesthood, the liturgy, Scripture, or Our Lady. A second time of study follows, then a holy hour.

During the year there may be special field trips—a visit to the Companions of the Cross, or to the bishop of Pembroke. Some years we get ambitious and do a pilgrimage to St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. But meanwhile outside of these special events, there is the ‘real work’ of the program—the Nazareth life of prayer, work, and learning to love one another in community (this latter always proves to be the toughest part of it all).

The men go away, generally, at Christmas for a break, and often this is a significant point of formation, as when they come back in January they are coming back with a new level of commitment to the process. We always end at Easter (even though some years, 2016 being one of them, the early date of the feast means the second half of the program gets a bit compressed), and a long-standing feature of our Easter feast is the young men giving a short speech to reflect on what the program has meant to them and to thank the community for its support.

It’s a really good program, and it has done a lot of good for an awful lot of young men over the years, some of whom are in turn doing an awful lot of good for the Church now. So this program has been entrusted to me now, after passing through the hands of Fr. Jim Duffy, Fr. Robert Wild, Fr. Robert Sharkey, and Fr. Tom Zoeller.

So I’m mostly asking for prayers at this point—it is just a bit daunting to find myself in this position along with everything else going on in my MH life and work. I rather suspect I won’t be going out nearly as often to give missions and talks, if this program actually happens this year.

And of course I am writing this in case any young man (by which I mean, more or less, 19-35) reads this who is looking for just what I have described or something close enough. Or any vocation director of a diocese who may have a man making inquiries who would benefit from this program, or any priest of a diocese who can forward this to his vocation director, or any lay person who knows a priest who knows the vocation director… well, you get the idea. Spread it around, in other words, folks! Get the word out! Use that share-y thing-y at the bottom of the post there…

Don’t let Fr. Denis Lemieux languish in idleness and torpor – give him a program to run! That’s the spirit! And yes, do pray for me as I take up this very beautiful and awesome work MH has done for these past 35 years.

You Want Me To Do What?

Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love... love... love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.

Pray always. I will be your rest.

The Little Mandate of Madonna House

Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you. Our weekly journey through the Little Mandate of MH, the core words we believe God gave our foundress Catherine as the guiding spirit of our community, is winding to a close.

These sentences of the mandate were the ones above all that, when I first joined MH, seemed like essentially a dead letter to me. Go… where? And without what… fear? Why? How? For what good purpose? Mind you, I was 22 years old when I became an applicant here, and somehow not too many people want a socially awkward, barely out of high school young man blundering around in the depths of their hearts. I would have just broken something in there, which come to think of it was more or less of a leitmotif of my early years in the apostolate.

And ‘I will be with you’… well, Jesus, since you’re in there already how’s about I just let you handle it, then! And so it was, with only the most mild and moderate growth in the matter for the longest time, for the first ten to fifteen years in the community. In the meantime, though, and this is the important thing, this line was working on me in a way that was most necessary for my being able to live it in any meaningful way.

Namely this line pushed me to go into the depths of my own heart in a consistent, deep, and often very painful way for the longest time. The long work of coming to know myself, what was going on inside me, and what I needed to do and be to be healed and freed to love and serve God and neighbour. And this was what was needed—we cannot go into the hearts of other people if we have not dwelt at some depth in our own hearts, confronted to some degree at least our own darkness, brokenness, sin. And come to know that, miracle of miracles, He is with us there and has been with us there all along.

When Catherine De Hueck received the Little Mandate in the 1930s, she had already been forced deeply into her own heart of suffering and darkness by her life experience. Her painful marriage, the horrors of war, the nightmare of the revolution, exile, starvation, being a stranger in a strange land—all of this had pushed her at a very young age deeply into the depths of her own being. And it was through all of that pain and suffering that her faith, always strong, grew to its fullness.

So as a young woman in her late 30s she was well prepared to receive this word of the Lord, and in fact had been living it for some years, as hear large and loving heart was a refuge and consolation for many people already at that time.

And this is how it is in life: we have to go through the things we have to go through—it is utterly different for each person—and out of this come to be able to console others in what they are going through. We are pushed into the depths of our own hearts, meet Jesus there, and then have the capacity in this to accompany others into the depths of their own hearts so that they can meet Jesus there, too. Mostly by just listening and praying, praying and listening, occasionally offering a word of advice or two. But mostly, listening.

What I am describing is so much the daily work of a seasoned member of MH, so much what we are really doing while we are doing all the humble ordinary tasks of our daily life. In Combermere it is the hidden fabric of the place, and in our mission houses the constant work, whatever else they are doing.

And of course, 25 years later, as a priest in this community, I am simply more and more given over to my daily work being precisely here in this line of the mandate that, when I joined the apostolate, seemed to be utterly beyond me and completely irrelevant to my life and capacities. Our God is an awesome God.

The beautiful thing we learn in this is that Jesus really is with us, in our own hearts and in our efforts to love and serve others in the depths of their hearts. And that the simple act of listening to a person with profound respect, praying with them in a spirit of faith, and blessing them is powerful beyond measure. We don’t have to solve people’s problems—most people know what they are supposed to do, I have found—but the very act of listening and loving helps give people the clarity and the courage to do what it is they need to do next. It is light to our neighbours’ feet, and it is the deep work of this apostolate, a work that has benefited thousands of people over the years.

Msgr Thomas Rowland - 1926-2015

Well, we are in a time of it in Madonna House, with yet another of our members going to meet Jesus last night. Msgr Thomas Rowland died last night around 9:30, after a long struggle with acute leukaemia.

This is our third funeral of the year (fourth if you count Fr. Jim Duffy who died at Christmas time late last year). So we are in a season of saying goodbye and giving thanks, really, for the beautiful men and women who God has allowed us to share life with in this community.

Fr. Tom was a great man in many respects. He was first and foremost a man of the liturgy, a pioneer in the liturgical renewal movement following Vatican II, and a strong advocate of the active participation that was and is at the heart of this movement.

I don't have facts and dates at my disposal as I write this, but he was very active throughout the American Southwest in promoting precisely the kind of liturgical education and sacramental theology that the Church mandated in its constitution Sacrosanctum Consilium. He was a pastor through and through and in his home diocese of El Paso, Texas did great work in building up parish life around the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

His one book, God Acts, We React, contains his insights around these subjects, and has been well regarded in liturgical circles. His concern always was to not overly focus on the precise rubrics and texts (although he was a stickler for doing things correctly!), but to understand the mystery of faith being expressed within them - the reality of God acting in Jesus Christ and this action creating in us a 're-action' - an imitation of the action of Christ that is both worship returned to God and sacrificial love and service for the world.

I would simply say on a personal note that Fr. Tom was my great teacher on the liturgy, and my writings on that subject on this blog and elsewhere are simply my own regurgitation of his basic insights.

How did this man get to MH? He came quite early, actually, to visit his sister Mary Catherine who had joined the fledgling community. He himself joined it in the late 1950s for some years, but was recalled to his diocese by his bishop. He remained an associate priest in the subsequent decades. It was in the late 1980s that he was allowed, finally, to pursue his sense of call to be a full-time member of MH.

Here, he worked in a variety of jobs--he was the bee keeper for a while!--wrote his book and travelled extensively giving workshops on liturgical theology all over North America. He went to Ghana and taught in a minor seminary there, and later was assigned to our house in Edmonton. He had unflagging apostolic zeal, and in fact the one thing he could not do easily was sit still. He loved parish life and was always the first one to volunteer to go out and fill in whenever a local parish needed a substitute.

It was just about two years ago that he went down to the West Indian island of  Carriacou, at age 87, to help out, since they had no priest on that small island. And he was quite ready to stay there as long as needed, and was unflagging in offering the sacraments, and bringing communion to 'the old people', most of whom were considerably younger than him. It was there that he began to feel tired and sick for the first time in his life. As he put it to me, he finally went for a blood test, since he had no energy, and found out that "I didn't have none!" Blood, that is. Upon returning to Combermere, he was quickly diagnosed with acute leukaemia and told he would live for a month or two more.

That was a year and a half ago. He was a strong man, and death did not come easily to him. But the last weeks his strong heart and iron constitution finally began to lose the battle, and he quietly slipped away last night into the arms of the Lord who he tried to serve all his life.

Fr. Tom was a unique character, an original. His other passion aside from the priesthood and the Mass was flying--he was a licensed pilot all his life. Coming to MH meant giving that up, so he become an avid hobbyist building remote controlled model airplanes which he flew all around the priest house on any fine day. He was famous for his prodigious appetite and could pack away ice cream (pralines and cream!) with the best of them. He was a lively conversationalist, a very funny man, a great story teller with an unbelievably detailed memory for past events. He was a Texan through and through, long and lanky and with a drawl that was undiminished no matter how much time he spent in lesser environs than the Lone Star state.

He was unlike anyone else in MH, really, and he will be missed. For those who might have known Fr. Rowland and who are in the area, I will be posting funeral information on my Facebook page when we have it. Pray for us as we say goodbye to another of our family, and pray for Fr. Tom that he quickly find his place at the banquet feast of heaven, the liturgy that knows no end.

How To Make a Real Splash

Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love... love... love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.

Pray always. I will be your rest.

The Little Mandate of Madonna House

Be hidden. With this line of the Mandate, we come to an aspect of MH spirituality and life that sometimes annoys our friends and supporters, and even ourselves on a bad day. This call to live a hidden life is so utterly counter-cultural in the North American scene.

In North America, bigger means better, and if you want to have an effect on things, you have to make a splash. You have to market, advertise, have publicity, generate buzz. This is not new in our culture, but the Internet and social media have made democratized and universalized the phenomenon and its attendant ethos.

It’s all about going viral now. And the people who ‘count’, the ones who make a difference, are the ones who capture the spotlight and command the big speaker’s fee, the celebrities, the big names.

To all of this, MH says, basically, ‘No thanks!’ Partly it is because we just don’t believe that that’s how it works. After all, in the words of Paul Simon “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” and yet somehow the world doesn’t really change all that much from generation to generation. Making a big splash generates lots of noise and ripples, but does it really effect a sea change?

Meanwhile, I cannot tell you how often we get letters in MH from people basically saying the same thing: “I spent a week in your community in 1975. It has shaped my whole life, and I think about my time there and your way of life constantly.” Our life is so ordinary—in an hour’s time I will be kneeling on the floor of the chapel, waiting for Morning Prayer to start; then we have breakfast (oatmeal and yogurt… again!).

Then we go to work—today pretty much the whole community is working out at Cana Colony to get it ready for the families coming there. Lunch happens, and then Mass and supper and then various evening chores… and repeat tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day…

An ordinary, simple life revolving around love of God (prayer, worship) and love of neighbor (humble service, hospitality and friendship). And it’s not all that different in our eighteen mission houses.

It is our firm but simple belief that it is that, and not generating buzz, that changes hearts, and that it is changing hearts that changes the world. We’re not opposed, exactly, to publicity—after all, I am writing this blog, we do publish books, and just made a series of videos about our MH life. It’s just that we know that the real action of our life is not there, but in the direct and basic choices we make (or alas, don’t make) to love and serve in the duty of the moment.

Mind you, our choice to ‘be hidden’ is not exactly based on everything that I just wrote. Fundamentally, it is a matter of obedience to God. He is the one who has ‘hidden’ MH—first by planting us in the Upper Ottawa Valley which is hard to get to (harder all the time as they keep cutting down bus service to rural areas in Canada), and second by keeping us a small and humble community. We are getting vocations, thanks be to God, but it seems that our incoming vocations, balanced with the deaths of our older members and the inevitable departures from the community, are just enough to keep us at a stasis of about 200 members.

Which is enough for us to live our MH life in all its glorious hidden ordinariness, which seems then to be exactly what God wants for us. We have also all had the experience here that, even when we do get a moment in the spotlight, when there is some brief moment of ‘publicity’ that comes our way, it a) doesn’t last; and b) doesn’t really matter. God has made it clear to us that MH’s real work and real effectiveness happens when nobody is looking at us and we ourselves don’t even know what’s going on. We’re as much hidden from ourselves as from anyone else.

Oh, it’s all so gloriously counter-cultural, such a wonderful contrast to the desperate quest for fame and fortune that dominates our world today. And it is the very pattern of Christianity, of course. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Golgotha, the empty tomb—who knew about these things? The world was saved, and the world continues to be transformed, not by power but by love, and love is an affair hidden deep in the soul of the human person.

Love Is Stronger

Are you between the ages of 19 and 35? Are you in reasonably good health? Finding yourself at a bit of a loose end this summer, or part of it? Wanna have a spiritual adventure?

Well, don't just sit around looking at Twitbook, Feeding the Buzz,  Hashing the Tags, and uh, Flicking the Nets! Come to Madonna House!

We are hosting our annual summer program for young adults, July 4-August 9. Come for one week, two weeks, the whole five week shooting match, or whatever you can manage. We are offering a truly superb program this year (if I do say so myself) with the theme "Love is Stronger: Hope and Faith in the World Today."

The inspiration for this theme was this event way back in 1987, when most of the 19-35 year olds we are holding this program for were not born or were in diapers. For those who don't click, Pope John Paul II was saying Mass in Chile and was disrupted by violent protesters. At one point, he simply said into the microphone, over and over "Love is stronger. Love is stronger." And the million-numbered crowd there for the Mass picked it up and repeated it, drowning out the angry violent shouts.

Well, 1987 is a long time ago, but this all seems more than a little relevant to me in the summer of 2015. Militants are chopping people's heads off in the Middle East. White supremacists gunning down church goers in South Carolina. Serious tensions remain in Eastern Europe and many other places. Our social and civil discourse too often degenerates into angry shouts and hateful invective on all sides.

In the face of all this, MH chooses to proclaim, loud, long, and clear, for five weeks this summer (and the rest of our lives, too) that LOVE IS STRONGER. Stronger than it all - all the hate, all the killing, all the divisions and ugliness that more and more is the hallmark of our times.

Each week has its own sub-theme around the theme of love--the details of the program can be found here. The reason I am posting this on the blog is that, in spite of it shaping up to be one of our best and most utterly relevant summer programs yet, our registrations for it are way, way down. And this makes no sense to me.

So, come on, young adults! Come get a word of truth, of hope, of love and encouragement to radiate the charity of Christ into the world that so needs it. Or, if you are already fully booked for the summer, consider sharing this post on your social media site (buzz that face! snap that chat! tweet! tweet!) so that all your friends can see it and - who knows? - come and have a life changing, or at least life-enriching experience at MH this summer, as so many thousands of people have had over the years.

All details of how to contact us and register are available at the link.

Consecrated to Mercy

“For the glory of God, and because I desire with all my heart to respond to the call of Jesus Christ to preach the Gospel with my life, I, N., promise with the help of Our Lady to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience (for one year, two years, forever) according to the Madonna House spirit and mandate.”

Yes, it is June 8, the anniversary of the blessing of the statue of Our Lady of Combermere, and hence Promises Day in MH. This year we are very blessed, with four making first promises and receiving the Pax-Caritas cross, four making final promises and pledging their whole lives to this vocation, and six making temporary renewals here and in our mission houses. God is favouring us with vocations at this time, and it is truly a great and joyous thing.

The house is packed with guests already for the big event—families and friends of the eight firsts and finalists mainly, and there are quite a few coming up just for the day today. There will be a festive Mass, with our bishop Michael Mulhall as the celebrant, followed by a reception. Unfortunately it is looking like a pretty wet and soggy day which will make the reception an indoor (and hence very crowded) affair. 

Later on, weather permitting, we will gather at Our Lady of Combermere and pray the rosary together, followed by supper with all the trimmings. Trimmings, in MH language, means such luxury items as… butter… and cream for the coffee… and napkins (!)… and wine. When your daily life is relatively simple and austere, it is amazing how these little touches make for a feast day atmosphere.

I had the great privilege of coordinating the retreat for the promise-making people. I chose the theme, based on the current year of prayer for consecrated life and the coming jubilee year of mercy, of Consecrated to Mercy: A Two-fold Jubilee. That really is what it’s all about. Our MH life, so simple and little and ordinary 95% of the time, is all about making God’s mercy visible.

As I said in my Little Mandate series last week, putting love where there is not love. Expressing that love in a thousand little acts of service and direct care of those God sends us. Doing little things well, and in that building a house of love, a place where God is loved and where people are loved. The Gospel on Saturday, the last day of the retreat, was the widow putting her two coins into the treasury of the temple. It’s that kind of thing—giving all we have right now to create a house for God to live on earth.

We are not alone in this work, of course. It is no part of the MH spirit to pretend that we’re the only people who are doing this kind of thing. All sorts of people lay down their lives every day to build a house of love on the earth.

But it is the only point of MH’s existence to do this, and in a sense we are unique in that we understand that this and this alone is what counts in all of our lives, all our vocations. The parish priest, the consecrated religious, the married couple, the single person living in the world—whatever else they are doing, the value of what they are doing lies in the love they put into it, the love they are bringing into the world by doing what they do. Mercy is the face of God’s love in this world, and that is why the last three popes have put such strong emphasis on this work of mercy.

MH has a certain prophetic quality to it, in that we really have nothing else to offer—our lives are about this, or they really are about nothing at all (it’s a pretty pointless place apart from that, to be quite honest). So pray for our four first promisers and our four finalists, and the six renewers, that they may make their promises with full and sincere hearts, and live them out with ‘the help of Our Lady’, and so restore all things in Christ by their lives of love and service ‘according to the Madonna House spirit and mandate.’