fasting – After This Our Exile

On this feast day of St. Teresa of Jesus (St. Teresa of Avila), I returned to the writings of my own patron saint, Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), who first introduced me to St. Teresa of Jesus, her own patron saint, in her essay, “Love for Love: The Life and Works of St. Teresa of Jesus“. Here, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross passed on to me a great love of and appreciation for this beautiful saint. The treasures to be mined from this saint are great, but I will only touch on the work she began, which Edith Stein saw as critical in keeping the spirit of St. Teresa of Jesus alive.

In the foreword to her essay, Edith Stein offers us a glimpse of her own experience as a Carmelite nun of the reformed order that St. Teresa of Avila established. The image St. Edith offers us is particularly helpful for us to see the importance of religious life and the work of monasteries in our modern time today, as she saw it in her own time during the Second World War. In the end of her foreward, she points us to St. Teresa of Jesus in Spain who lived during the time of the Inquisition and much division within the Church, that we might be moved by her life and her work and learn from this great saint.

“Yesterday in our monastery church we had perpetual adoration [forty hours devotion]. On such days, the faithful who are associated with our Carmel gather around the altar singing and praying from about six o’clock in the morning until about ten o’clock at night. Then the church is closed and during the night the sisters take turns keeping watch in the choir before the Blessed Sacrament. While outside in carnival’s frantic tumult people get drunk and delirious, while political battles separate them, and great need depresses them so much that many forget to look to heaven, at such still places of prayer hearts are opened to the Lord. In place of the cold, the contempt, that he receives out there, they offer him their warm love. They want to atone for the insults that the divine heart must endure daily and hourly. By their steadfast supplications, they draw down God’s grace and mercy on a humanity submerged in sin and need. In our time, when the powerlessness of all natural means for battling the overwhelming misery everywhere has been demonstrated so obviously, an entirely new understanding of the power of prayer, of expiation, and of vicarious atonement has again awakened. This is why people of faith crowd the places of prayer, also why, everywhere, there is a blazing demand for contemplative monasteries whose entire life is devoted to prayer and expiation… One almost feels transported into the time when our Holy Mother Teresa, the foundress of the reformed Carmel, traveled all over Spain from north to south and from west to east to plant new vineyards of the Lord. One would like to bring into our times also something of the spirit of this great woman who built amazingly during a century of battles and disturbances.” (29)

St. Edith portrays beautifully the work of the monastery, the beacons of light that they are as places of peace and conversion of heart. This is the work St. Teresa of Avila sought to increase and strengthen. In a time of great anger and polarization, and especially of great noise and distraction in the modern world, monasteries and churches are havens of rest for the weary. They are places of quiet contemplation of the face of Jesus, places where the lost might flock and find peace and love in the midst of violence and hatred. And they are places where a battle is fiercely being fought for the winning of souls and the strengthening of the Church militant, the Church here on earth.

St. Teresa of Jesus knew the kind of lives to which contemplative religious were called and she saw where they were lacking. Thus, she brought new life and enkindled love in what had become lukewarm in religious life, and she carried out the work God began in her for love of her Lord, Jesus Christ, and in the stead of the Church and the lost and suffering in the world. She could not bear the thought of Jesus being cast aside or of so many souls being lost, as she knew she could have been one of them, saved only by God’s mercy. She resolved to bring other devoted brothers and sisters around her to be in constant prayer for those in the work of saving souls and to fast for the sins of the world. As a result, she established many convents devoted to Our Lord all over Spain, and the fruit of her labors continues to this day.

I praise God that He calls people to dedicate their whole lives to praying and fasting for the Church. We can only imagine the mountains God has moved through the prayers of these saints, and the hearts that have been turned as a result of their unceasing prayers. I thank God that He offers us sacred places where He is present in the sacrament of the eucharist and in the prayers of the people. May we be inspired by the love of Christ to pray and fast also for the strengthening of the Church and the saving of souls, and may we flock to Him in the Blessed Sacrament where He feeds us, His sheep.

In the spirit of St. Teresa of Avila, let us pray and fast as we are able for those whom God has called to religious life, for the flourishing of monasteries and of the Church, and for the opening of hearts to Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

St. Teresa of Jesus, pray for us!

I highly recommend reading more about St. Teresa of Avila from The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, or for a more brief account of her life (though still quite comprehensive), see St. Edith Stein’s piece on St. Teresa of Avila in “Love for Love: The Life and Works of St. Teresa of Jesus“.

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Although there are countless other things I could write about for one of my first blog posts, it seems as though it would be dishonest in some way to write of anything without saying a word about the horrible things that have been going on in the Church for the past many years—the egregious acts committed by trusted priests, bishops, and even cardinals against young innocent victims, and the silencing of the victims and the cover given to those offenders by those in authority. These are the things that continue to be on every Catholic person’s mind every day since The Grand Jury Report came out just over one month ago.

As one who only just came into full communion with the Catholic Church at Pentecost this year, the horrors of the acts revealed in the Grand Jury Report and the deliberate defense and cover given to these offenders by clergy brought me quite quickly back to the brutal reality that many clergy in the Church care nothing for its members, that many in the clergy, including high-ranking members, create a culture of abuse and of power against their own flocks and against their Lord, the reality that many do not even believe Our Lord is indeed Lord, having no fear of him. The feelings of anger and betrayal are raw, for the things that were done to these young children and young men and women were not simply crimes—they were disgusting, twisted crimes committed by the very men people ought to be able to trust. These were offenses committed by the ones whose vocations it is to offer true life to the Body of Christ in the sacraments and to offer spiritual counsel. Instead, though, they have committed sacrilege against Jesus himself in the ways they hurt His Body, all with the support of high-ranking clergy. This is devastating, absolutely sickening, and it must be addressed.

With all that said, I have been so moved by the responses of so many of my Catholic brothers and sisters. Outraged and hurting, Christians are demanding actions be taken to get rid of the rot and stink that has been forming in the Church. Moreover, people have been calling their brothers and sisters to pray and to fast in reparation for the sins that have been committed against the Church—that is, the whole Body of Christ, which is the lay people and the clergy alike—and against the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Making reparation through prayer and fasting simply means that we offer up our prayer and fasting to God that He would repair what is broken, hear our prayers and console those who are hurting. We make reparation to Jesus for the increasing pain and sorrow He feels as a consequence of these sins against His Body, as a consequence of the ways He has been abused alongside the victims of the scandal—especially in the particular ways His Name and His Body were abused and used by the priests to abuse the victims. And we make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the ways His Body has been mocked and abused in the Sacrament of the Eucharist because of these priests. I have found this adoration prayer from Fatima (called The Angel’s Prayer) to be particularly appropriate and worth remembering for this time:

Most Holy Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences whereby He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

We can go to God in adoration, ourselves broken, and offer to God Himself, who gave up His only Son for love of us, knowing His Son would be mocked, His Body broken, His Blood poured out, and ask that God would mend what is broken in the Church, that He would take the sins that have offended Jesus and all their effects and blot them out, that He would purify His Bride, the Church and make her holy.

People are falling away because of bad priests, but Jesus asks us as He asked the Twelve, “Will you also go away?” But we must answer with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6: 67-69 RSV-2CE). I do not know what will happen as a result of this scandal, but I know that we must not abandon Jesus, whatever happens.. We must instead cling to him ever more closely, for He bears this burden with us. We are not alone. He bears these sins and wounds with the Church and still turns it all into Life.

Here is a homily in response to the scandal that I found particularly moving from a priest, Fr. Nick Monco, to his parish.