A 7th Sunday after Pentecost Thought to Start the Week Off Right
Today's entry for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost in The Inner Life of the Soul brings a kind of sadness. It focuses on the orders of religious - mainly monks and nuns - that have served the Church for centuries.
The ancient history and the descriptions of the various orders aren't the cause of this sadness. We read of the centuries-long ora et labora - prayer and work - of Benedictines, Cistercians, Carthusians, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans - and more - some dating to the 5th century AD. We're then introduced to some of the "modern" orders: Oratorians, Jesuits, Sisters of Charity, Little Sisters of the Poor, Sisters of Mercy, and so many more. All of these devoted their lives to God. Some remained behind closed monastery walls. Some directly served their Catholic brothers and sisters.
Besides personally knowing some monks and nuns, my early education included being taught in grammar school by the Sisters of Charity. These dedicated individuals did the best they could with us sometimes unruly Catholic children. We learned our Catholic Religion. They drilled into us a solid knowledge and understanding of the Three Rs. I emerged reasonably well educated, with a basic love for Christ and His Church.
Now, don't get me wrong. I was no angel. But when I think of what I would have become without the Sisters' assiduous efforts to keep me on the straight and narrow (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much), I get, without exaggeration, shivers up and down my spine.
I've never understood those of my contemporaries who found the Sisters overbearing, even cruel. Sure there was some excessive corporal punishment. Yes, a few laid their personal emotional instability on us, sometimes in a heavy-handed manner. But I survived. Maybe those contemporary critics were the first of what we call today call snowflakes. I don't know.
The Inner Life of the Soul identifies three common characteristics of the religious orders: perseverance (which encompasses age and stability), divine abundance, holiness.
Focusing on the good sisters, at the time of its writing, their orders were flourishing, both the ancient and the more contemporary. Despite periods of laxity, even corruption, most of the orders managed the reformation they needed to continue serving the Lord and others (perseverance). As a result or their devotion and hard work, most of their numbers increased (divine abundance). As for holiness, we read:
"But for the third mark, holiness, where shall we begin? where end? what shall we say? The ordinary, commonplace, everyday duties of these Catholic nuns, and sisters are poverty, chastity, obedience, self-forgetfulness, self-abnegation. What others call heroism is to them duty, love of their neighbor, imitation of their founders, the thing they expect to do, and could do in no other way. What St. Elizabeth of Hungary did to the lepers seven hundred years ago, her Franciscan daughters do today to many lepers in plague-haunted Molokai; and in Trinidad the Dominican daughters of St. Catherine of Siena imitate her saintly, heroic charity to the lepers. The Sisters of St. Louis devote themselves to the care of the most corrupt and diseased children, considered incorrigible in other schools..."
And the examples go on. Talk about perseverance, divine abundance, and holiness! What a rich, inspiring legacy our religious forbears left us...which bring us to the sadness mentioned when we began.
For the most part, that rich and inspiring legacy has not simply dwindled in our own time, it has been outright belittled and rejected. Most teaching orders, like the Sisters of Charity, imploded beginning in the 1960s. The solitary devotion of cloistered religious no longer makes sense to our wired, connected world. Personal holiness and devotion has been denigrated, replaced by social consciousness and action.
If you're a serious Catholic, you know this. If you're a serious Catholic of a certain age, you witnessed the destruction of that legacy. Hence the sadness.
Will we ever recapture what was lost? Well, some green shoots have sprung up in recent years. Men and women who understand the importance of personal holiness, who are willing to give up what the world offers to pursue a life of ora et labora - prayer and work - have either established new orders of religious, or attempted to reform those that still exist. There's hope.
After years of disappointment, sadness, even anger over what's been lost, I can honestly express at least a modicum of optimism about the future - aided by the virtue of hope. While we may never undo the destruction our contemporary culture has wrought, we can lend our prayers and financial support to those attempting to revive our religious patronage. The numbers may be minuscule compared to the descriptions in The Inner Life of the Soul for this 7th Sunday after Pentecost. But they're not zero.
With no illusions of seeing some sort of great awakening or great revival - at least in the West - we can still pray and do what we can to assure at least some remnant of our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in these trying times.
Have faith! Have hope!
The ancient history and the descriptions of the various orders aren't the cause of this sadness. We read of the centuries-long ora et labora - prayer and work - of Benedictines, Cistercians, Carthusians, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans - and more - some dating to the 5th century AD. We're then introduced to some of the "modern" orders: Oratorians, Jesuits, Sisters of Charity, Little Sisters of the Poor, Sisters of Mercy, and so many more. All of these devoted their lives to God. Some remained behind closed monastery walls. Some directly served their Catholic brothers and sisters.
Besides personally knowing some monks and nuns, my early education included being taught in grammar school by the Sisters of Charity. These dedicated individuals did the best they could with us sometimes unruly Catholic children. We learned our Catholic Religion. They drilled into us a solid knowledge and understanding of the Three Rs. I emerged reasonably well educated, with a basic love for Christ and His Church.
Now, don't get me wrong. I was no angel. But when I think of what I would have become without the Sisters' assiduous efforts to keep me on the straight and narrow (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much), I get, without exaggeration, shivers up and down my spine.
I've never understood those of my contemporaries who found the Sisters overbearing, even cruel. Sure there was some excessive corporal punishment. Yes, a few laid their personal emotional instability on us, sometimes in a heavy-handed manner. But I survived. Maybe those contemporary critics were the first of what we call today call snowflakes. I don't know.
The Inner Life of the Soul identifies three common characteristics of the religious orders: perseverance (which encompasses age and stability), divine abundance, holiness.
Focusing on the good sisters, at the time of its writing, their orders were flourishing, both the ancient and the more contemporary. Despite periods of laxity, even corruption, most of the orders managed the reformation they needed to continue serving the Lord and others (perseverance). As a result or their devotion and hard work, most of their numbers increased (divine abundance). As for holiness, we read:
"But for the third mark, holiness, where shall we begin? where end? what shall we say? The ordinary, commonplace, everyday duties of these Catholic nuns, and sisters are poverty, chastity, obedience, self-forgetfulness, self-abnegation. What others call heroism is to them duty, love of their neighbor, imitation of their founders, the thing they expect to do, and could do in no other way. What St. Elizabeth of Hungary did to the lepers seven hundred years ago, her Franciscan daughters do today to many lepers in plague-haunted Molokai; and in Trinidad the Dominican daughters of St. Catherine of Siena imitate her saintly, heroic charity to the lepers. The Sisters of St. Louis devote themselves to the care of the most corrupt and diseased children, considered incorrigible in other schools..."
And the examples go on. Talk about perseverance, divine abundance, and holiness! What a rich, inspiring legacy our religious forbears left us...which bring us to the sadness mentioned when we began.
For the most part, that rich and inspiring legacy has not simply dwindled in our own time, it has been outright belittled and rejected. Most teaching orders, like the Sisters of Charity, imploded beginning in the 1960s. The solitary devotion of cloistered religious no longer makes sense to our wired, connected world. Personal holiness and devotion has been denigrated, replaced by social consciousness and action.
If you're a serious Catholic, you know this. If you're a serious Catholic of a certain age, you witnessed the destruction of that legacy. Hence the sadness.
Will we ever recapture what was lost? Well, some green shoots have sprung up in recent years. Men and women who understand the importance of personal holiness, who are willing to give up what the world offers to pursue a life of ora et labora - prayer and work - have either established new orders of religious, or attempted to reform those that still exist. There's hope.
After years of disappointment, sadness, even anger over what's been lost, I can honestly express at least a modicum of optimism about the future - aided by the virtue of hope. While we may never undo the destruction our contemporary culture has wrought, we can lend our prayers and financial support to those attempting to revive our religious patronage. The numbers may be minuscule compared to the descriptions in The Inner Life of the Soul for this 7th Sunday after Pentecost. But they're not zero.
With no illusions of seeing some sort of great awakening or great revival - at least in the West - we can still pray and do what we can to assure at least some remnant of our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in these trying times.
Have faith! Have hope!
Happy Sunday!
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