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It’s October, and the long sunlight in the afternoons and the coming chill in the air sing the approach of autumn. Fall has always been my favorite season, with hayrides and visits to the apple orchards south of Chicago with my family. It brings me deep joy.
Did you ever have one of those days where the whole idea of God was just too much to think about? As if trying to “get a handle” on God was like trying to kiss the moon? If the mystics are right (and usually they are because they see things much differently than we do) then you were probably closer that day to God than any other day in your life. How is this possible, you ask? How can God be close to you (or you to God) when God seems so far away or not at all? Even better, how can God be close to you when you are totally confused? This is my answer to you: God is a mystery of humble love.
Thérèse has much to teach our age of the image, the appearance, the “self.”
God’s creative will is an eternally sustaining will, namely, that my existence will not end, summons me to humble acquiescence and dialogue—or to proud, illusory self-sufficiency, which is a kind of hell because it severs the bond of love and results in a turning in upon oneself.
Mother Marie de Gonzague, the superior at the cloistered convent at Carmel, wrote this of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: “Tall and strong, with the air of a child, with a tone of voice and an expression that hide in her the wisdom.”
The mystics teach us that one who tries to know and love God sooner or later becomes aware that God is unknowable, but one can love God intimately despite God’s ultimate unknowableness.
The young religious sister whom Saint Pius X described as “the greatest saint of modern times,” spent nine years in a cloistered convent in northern France.
Francis follows in the footsteps of Jesus, and that is where most of us falter. We want to follow Jesus’ footsteps, but we know ahead of time where they lead, and we are afraid. We hold back. In his writings Francis never uses the word imitate in relation to Christ; instead he uses the phrase, “to follow in the footsteps of Christ”; Christ’s invitation was to “follow me” (Matthew 10:38), not “imitate me.” In following Christ the self one thinks has been lost is actually found, so that as one walks in the footsteps of Christ a whole and realized true self begins to emerge.
Francis went about the world following the footprints of Christ, not so he could look like Christ, but because they were the footprints of divine humility. He discovered that God descends in love to meet us where we are and he found God in the most unexpected forms: the disfigured flesh of a leper, the complaints of a brother, the radiance of the sun, in short, the cloister of the universe. The wisdom of Francis makes us realize that God loves us in our incomplete humanity even though we are always running away trying to rid ourselves of defects, wounds and brokenness.
Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP, reviews Parasite, Spider in the Web, and Don’t Be Nice.
