Feb 21, 2018 |
By Rosemary Kate.
Dear Leonie’s Longing Readers, I feel like I have been keeping a secret from you, and that secret is this book. I first heard about Hurting in the Church through a book review, and my reaction was, “I have to read this book!” Father Thomas Berg is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York with a history not unlike our own. He spent 34 years in religious life as a member of the Legionaries of Christ. This priest, I thought, will have something to say to me. He did.
Hurting in the Church is divided into three sections. The first section shares personal stories of the ways we, the lay faithful, hurt in the Church today. The second is a grouping of several chapters on personal healing, and the third speaks of the hope for healing the Church at large. The book masterfully draws you in with stories that anyone can identify with in some aspect, thus providing the authority for what Fr. Berg says in the following sections.
The first part is where Father Berg shares his story. If you are familiar with the recent past of the Legionaries of Christ, you will know that Father Berg left the community during a time of deep turmoil. In the end, though, his reasons and the circumstances for leaving were deeply personal and unique, just as they are for each of us. Father Berg courageously allows his wounds, like the wounds of Christ, to be a source of healing for others. He also assists in sharing the stories of others, including those wounded by the scandal of priestly sexual abuse. Later in the book Father Berg does not shy away from this topic, and contributes to the ongoing discussion of how the Church can move forward. But this review is not meant to focus on that piece. Ultimately, the connection between Father Berg’s personal journey and the journey of anyone who has left religious life gives this book a voice that particularly spoke to me, and I think could speak to you.
The second part of the book is where I found much food for thought. Father Berg continues to share anecdotes from his personal healing, and his words said to me, “what you are experiencing is to be expected.” I found in these pages a mirror of my own journey, a source of reflection where I could name my experiences and grow from them. One example is on page 110:
“One of the effects of suffering a severe emotional trauma such as betrayal is the sense that our life has been upended. Our compass seems to fail, and we lose our north. Long-held convictions about life, love, and purpose—once foundational for our own self-understanding—can be abruptly shattered. It can give us the terrifying sensation of being held to the precipice of an existential void. Anxiety attacks and depression are not uncommon responses to such interior turmoil.”
Yet all of this is written with the underpinnings of hope. A few pages later, Fr. Berg writes, “I rediscovered that, at my core, my life was anchored in that experience of the love of Jesus” (p. 113).
The third section looks at the universal Church. After providing guidance on how one can personally heal, Father Berg expands his vision and speaks of what the Church is, can, and will be if and when her members heal individually and help each other heal. I found the first section a draw into the book, the middle a “deep dive,” and the third a gentle exit to the reality of the world we live in as well as a roadmap of where it could go.
Hurting in the Church is a much-needed book for our time, and a great tool for anyone, as Father Berg masterfully explains in his note at the beginning. With its rich content, it took me a few months to read it; therefore, dear readers, I hope you will forgive me for not sharing it sooner. It was only published in 2017, so I have not kept silent for very long after all. Father Thomas Berg’s writing has been a much-needed companion, teaching me, as he writes, “the wound and how I chose to deal with it would have a lasting influence on who I would become from that point on in my life” (p. 109, emphasis in the original). I have left religious life, which, no matter how peaceful or not, created a wound in my life, and both that wound and my time in religious life will have a lasting influence on me. With Father Berg’s inspiration, that lasting influence will be a positive one. I hope he can assist you in coming to the same conclusion.
Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholics, by Father Thomas Berg, published by Our Sunday Visitor – Website: http://fatherberg.com/
Aug 15, 2017 |
By LumenChristi.
When I was in college, a good friend told me that we don’t have to find the saints – they find us. God places them in our lives at pivotal moments, to shed light on our own following of him. Since she said this, I have found it to be true on multiple occasions.
After six adventurous years of serving as a missionary, youth director, and other such exciting positions, I now work as a secretary at a church. I’ve realized God is calling me to a time of being still, and to use the advantages of a stable schedule to allow him to speak to me more deeply. While I am profoundly grateful for this position, and confident that God placed me here (through uniquely providential circumstances) I still feel that I am not doing enough. I miss my adventures. I am in tension between the peace that I am where He wants me, and yet a gnawing feeling of “not enough” that creeps in. I am happy to serve in the hidden tasks, yet can’t help noting the irony between the grandeur of what I did before (giving talks to teens, counseling others in their walk with Christ etc) and the exasperating minutiae of what I do now (fighting with the copier, spending hours on hold with Comcast!).
Underneath all this, is the ever-present tension that surfaces about what I am doing with my life in the long-term. I am at peace that I have given God all I can for now, but plagued by the same gnawing of “not enough.” I want to know the answer to the all-important question – what is my vocation, my purpose in life. I want to know why God will still not reveal it despite my earnest and faithful seeking.
Recently, into all these tensions, across the years, through a powerful thing called the Communion of Saints, came the perfect heavenly friend for me. While on hold yet again on a call for the parish, I was sorting through piles of paper on my desk and stumbled across an article about the life of a woman named Julia Greeley. I learned that her cause for canonization was currently underway, and was instantly intrigued. (For what is more fascinating than a canonization process currently underway in your own country?)
Julia Greeley was a Catholic, African-American laywoman who lived a poor and humble life. Her path to holiness was the epitome of the “hidden yes.” Recently recognized as “Servant of God” by her archdiocese in Denver, Colorado, Julia Greeley’s life was lowly and uncelebrated. She was born into slavery sometime between 1833 and 1848, and finally freed in 1865 by the state of Missouri’s Emancipation Act. Little is known about the intervening years, except that when she was a young child, she lost her right eye to the whip of an angry slave owner. Once freed, Julia made a living cooking, cleaning, and caring for children as a nanny.
In 1880, she became Catholic and was received into the Church at Sacred Heart Church in Denver. The Sacred Heart then became the central mystery and mission of her life. She would walk for miles to share devotional Sacred Heart pamphlets and medals with as many people as she could. She was also a dedicated servant of the poor. Though she herself lived in poverty, she gave of what she had, and also went begging for the needs of others. Friendship was a central characteristic of her life, in which she transcended the racial and societal divides of her time. White and black, Catholics and non catholic, rich and poor, old and young alike were numbered among her friends. Young children in particular were drawn to her and delighted in her presence. Her funeral overwhelmed her tiny parish church as over 1,000 people from all walks of life came to pay their respects.
She attended daily Mass faithfully, and in fact, died on her way to Mass, on the feast of her beloved Sacred Heart in 1918.
Fast-forward to June 2017 – nearly 100 years later – her remains were recently transferred to the Cathedral in Denver. She is the very first person to be buried there. As the bishop, Jorge Rodriguez, who presided over the ceremony pointed out “[Julia Greeley] will be the first person buried in Denver’s cathedral. Not a bishop, not a priest – a laywoman, a former slave. Isn’t that something?”
The humble are exalted. The last shall be first. Even to this day, few people know about Julia Greeley. In her life, she served in the lowliest (and even despised) roles. She had no “status” in secular society. In the Church, she was never a religious, theologian, or leader. And yet, it is her, whom God has lifted up and placed before our eyes.
Her life intersected with mine at just the right moment, to teach me what truly matters. Not only are the hidden yesses more powerful than we realize, but they are enough to bring us to Heaven. Julia Greeley’s life was all about the hidden yes.
The “yes” to forgive the grave wrongs of slavery and physical abuse that she suffered. . .
The “yes” to lead a joyful and charitable life in the midst of an unjust and still-segregated society. . .
The courageous “yes” to enter a Church in a time when there were few to no Catholics of her culture and racial background. . .
The “yes” to literally walk across the societal divides of her time. . .
The “yes” to travel miles on her errands of mercy and evangelization despite painful arthritis . . .
(this particular “yes,” in fact, remained hidden until the very recent examination of her bones during the exhumation process for her canonization!).
And the overarching “yes” to be the love of the Sacred Heart to all whom she encountered.
She has given me a different perspective. Everything has value. Where I am now could, as I believe, just be yet another stop along the way to where God ultimately wants me. Yet even if eternity were tomorrow, it could be ENOUGH to make me a saint. If I but choose to respond.
So, I now try to make jokes, when I finally get through on the Comcast call. Their customer service agent is a person too, whom Julia would have seen as a friend. I win my fight with the copier, knowing that I’ve made the pace of life smoother for everyone else even if they never know about it. And when anxiety about the future creeps in, I try to whisper, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in You!”
Servant of God, Julia Greeley, Pray for Us!
Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!
Sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190311232414/http://www.juliagreeleyhome.org/whyjulias-1-1/ (Archived by the Wayback Machine.)
Former slave Julia Greeley first to be buried at Denver’s Cathedral
Dec 1, 2016 |
By Penny.
It was the day before I was due to leave Walsingham, England’s Nazareth, and head back down to London for my flight home. I’d hoped that by that stage I would have figured out some answers: do I have a religious vocation? If so, where? And when? My pilgrimage was almost over, though, and no clear answers were in sight. Instead, during my penultimate Mass in Walsingham, the priest gave a homily about waiting that has stayed with me for months.
“Some of you,” he said, “may have heard of a boy named Jack Cornwell.” A lot of the older people in the congregation nodded. “He was a Boy Seaman, First Class, on board HMS Chester in 1916. The ship came under heavy fire from four German battleships, and all the sailors who were on deck manning the Chester‘s guns were killed or fatally wounded within fifteen minutes. Jack Cornwell was in one of the most exposed positions on the ship, but he remained at his gun awaiting orders from his captain – and that’s where they found him after the battle, barely alive and with his chest full of shrapnel, but still standing at his post, quietly waiting for orders.” He died two days later, at the age of sixteen. The priest went on to add that Boy Seaman Cornwell was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the highest – and rarest – military honour in Britain, for “gallantry in the face of the enemy.” (According to Wikipedia, he was the third-youngest person ever awarded the VC.)
Jack Cornwell’s gun, aboard HMS Chester.
“I often feel,” the priest continued, “that I’m not doing a very good job of following God’s will – so often when I try to find out what He wants me to do, and to do it, I end up falling short. I want to push harder and try and force things to happen, but end up getting nowhere instead. You may find the same thing sometimes. But all of us – priests, laymen, religious – we are all called by God to stay at our posts, waiting for Him to give us our orders. Even when we’re wounded, that’s the way we are called to live: whoever we are, we are all standing where God has placed us, and quietly waiting for orders.”
The readings for the first Sunday of Advent, too, are about watching and being ready, “for no one knows the day or the hour.” Sometimes we are called to take action and make a leap of faith, but more often, we are called to wait: to remain alert and watchful, so that we are ready when the time comes and God calls us to move. I’m grateful to the priest for his openness about the sense of falling short in service to God, and for cutting through my own impatience with the reminder that we can’t force our lives forward, even in paths that might be His will, before His time comes. The greatest honour lies, instead, in remaining steady and awake at the post in which God has placed us, knowing that when it is time, His orders for each of us will come.
May 27, 2016 |
By Lucia
“You will not be alone, because I am with you always and everywhere. Near to My Heart, fear nothing. I Myself am the cause of your departure. Know that My eyes follow every move of your heart with great attention. I am bringing you into seclusion so that I Myself may form your heart according to My future plans” (Jesus to St. Faustina, 797)
April 27, 2014- One of the most difficult days of my life, and yet, a very important day for the Church- Divine Mercy Sunday when St. John Paul II, the “Divine Mercy Pope”, was canonized. This was the day that I came home from the convent, and yet as I reflect on it more and more, I see it as a reflection of God’s Mercy and love to me.
Mercy, we hear it so often at Mass and in Scripture. It is one of the greatest attributes of God, and yet, how many of us plunge into the depths of what it means? The Latin, Misericordia, comes from “miserere”, which means “misery”, and “cor”, which means “heart”. So, this word literally means the act of a heart entering into another’s misery. So Divine Mercy is the message that not only does God enter into our misery with us, but that He comes and brings an even greater good out of every evil and suffering.
Coming up on the two year anniversary of my leaving, God blessed me with the beautiful grace to go on pilgrimage to the country that radiates God’s Mercy. He truly took me on a journey to experience the reality of this heart reaching out to me in my misery, especially in the experience my coming home from the convent. How? Redemptive Suffering. The people of Poland have experienced so much suffering, from the destruction of cities like Warsaw during World War II, to the incomprehensible terrors that resulted in concentration camps like Auschwitz. And yet, while these people have been through evils unimaginable, they have a heart for the Lord and hope unlike any other I have experienced.
This really blew me away… How can people who have experienced such immense suffering live like this? How can they have joy and hope, when everything they loved seemed to be taken away from them? How can they rejoice in Christ when they clearly came face to face with their own weaknesses and lived through so much fear?
In my own pain coming home from the convent, I have found that it has brought me face to face with fear and my own weakness. I have often given into discouragement, thinking that I can only love God once I move past the “ups and downs” of grieving the convent. But the people of Poland really helped me to see things in a new way through the lens of God’s Mercy.
As I progressed through my pilgrimage, the answer to my questions became clear to me. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Maximilian Kolbe, Faustina, John Paul II…These people were not immune to fear or death…Actually they were steeped in it. But what made these people saints they were meant to be?
They encountered the immense power of Divine Mercy. They experienced evil, came face to face with fear and suffering, and yes, knew ever deeper of their helplessness amidst such evil. But they made a choice- they chose to use it as an opportunity to cling to Christ and to take part in His suffering with Him. They saw their crosses in life through a twofold lens- that God was with them in their cross, and that they could unite their cross for another. They made the decision to allow the merciful Christ to be with them in their own pain, to receive His love gushing forth from his heart, and to be one with Him on the cross. And not only did they live out their suffering with Christ, but they had faith in God in whom they trusted would keep His promises. They had the hope in the reality that the resurrection comes after the cross, and that Christ not only brings good out of evil, but an even greater good!
The image of Divine Mercy shows this reality well. In this image, Jesus is appearing after He rose from the dead, and yet, He bears his wounds…the wounds of His Love. His wounds are glorified, and radiate the depths of God’s Mercy to us. It is Jesus saying to me and to you, “I love you this much. I am here with you and will lead you through this.”
And perhaps what is most important is the words at the bottom. “Jesus, I trust in You.” Yes, these words seem to reflect the attitude and call that Christ presents to us in this Jubilee Year of Mercy. Jesus is asking us to trust Him, amidst worries, struggles, and even joys! When coming face to face with our weakness in our own specific journeys coming home from the convent, He wants us to trust in His goodness and in the reality that the resurrection comes after the cross. Just like Himself, He wants our wounds to be glorified- we need only to entrust them to Him!
Jan 14, 2016 |
By a cousin of an LL board member, written after she was called to leave a mission field that she loved.
My precious daughter, all I want is you.
I want you to know me more.
I want you to trust me more.
I want you to love me more.
That’s all I want from you.
Everything else is secondary, it flows out of that.
Being a missionary … serving me … being my hands and feet in this world,
its all secondary.
I want all of you.
And if it takes breaking your heart that’s what I am going to do
because I love you.
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