Franciscan at Home

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By the time Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl was 20, she had converted to Catholicism from the strict atheism of her youth. Nine years later, in 1933, she was living as a missionary with two companions in Ivry, “the first Communist city and more or less the capital of Communism in France.” She decided to live in this community because she remembered the pain of not knowing God; her goal was not simply to evangelize them, but to befriend them. She lived there until she died in 1964.

Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl had an exceptional love for the Church and perceived that there was a profound link between Christ, the Church, and evangelization. “The work of the Church is the salvation of the world; the world cannot not be saved except by the Church.” In our current atmosphere of skepticism towards structures of authority and of the Church herself, she is a voice that reminds us how to love the Church, and how to bring Christ to the world in and through her.

Madeleine considered each person in the Church to be an essential part of the Church’s mission; there was no one who did not have a part to play. “We are not the Church unless we are the whole Church: each member belongs to the whole body.” Each person’s part was specific and vital: “And we are not the whole Church unless we are in precisely the place meant for us in the Church, which is the same as saying that we are precisely in our place in the world, where the Church is made present through us.”

These words are comforting and hopeful, but we always seem to struggle to find our purpose and direction. Delbrêl’s view is that we do not have to go crazy finding exotic projects: “Mission means doing the very work of Christ wherever we happen to be. We will not be the Church and salvation will not reach the ends of the earth unless we help save the people in the very situations in which we live.” These situations, these people where we live, have been entrusted to us. When we don’t take this mission seriously, the world suffers.

Her words profoundly challenge me. I am often dreaming of my next “important project,” but fail to see the people and the situations that are very truly before my eyes.

Every Ash Wednesday around the globe—in lavishly tiled basilicas, in wood planked chapels, in modest oratories with dirt floors, and in carpeted and cushioned suburban parishes—Catholics are called by Christ himself to reflect on the three great activities of Christian discipleship:

“When you pray…”

“When you give alms…”

“When you fast…”

For nearly two thousand years, Catholics have read, re-read, and reflected upon these three passages from the sixth chapter of Matthew. When the Ash Wednesday Mass concludes, the following forty days—all of Lent—is observed within this context.

How many Catholics understand that a normal living of the Christian life is to be composed of a healthy dose of all three? Sure, we’re supposed to pray. Everyone believes that. Giving alms (once we get past the archaic word) is also commonly accepted. In the United States and many other countries, giving to charities and doing service work is considered a normal part of our civic life. Nothing too unusual here.

But fasting? Who fasts? And if we do fast, isn’t it just obedience to some minimal Church norms during Lent? But where does Christ or the Church say that fasting is to be done exclusively during penitential seasons such as Lent? Where does Christ say that it should be so rare and so minimal? And where does he say that it is to be exclusively penitential? Nowhere. Yet for some reason these things are precisely what most of us think. Let’s take another look at what he and his disciples actually said and did when it comes to fasting.

When Jesus was preparing for his public ministry, where did he go and what did he do? He went out into the desert and spent forty days praying and fasting. Was Jesus doing penance? Of course not. He never sinned. He was preparing himself spiritually, seeking closeness to his Father in heaven. So, while doing penance is a very good reason for fasting, Jesus gives us other good reasons to fast.

How important was his fasting in this time of preparation? Consider Matthew 4:1-4: when the devil appeared to Jesus to try to thwart his mission, the very first thing he tried to do was to get Jesus to break his fast! Yes, fasting is that powerful and the devil understood this profoundly.

Later in his ministry, when Jesus’ disciples discovered that certain demons could resist their prayers of deliverance, Jesus informed them that some demons can only be cast out by prayer and fasting (cf. Mt 17:21). Obviously there is a power in fasting that goes beyond prayer alone.

To pray is good. To give alms is good. But fasting is the glue. In striving for holiness, prayer lifts us up. Almsgiving coupled with prayer is a selfless movement of love that powers us higher; but fasting allows us to soar to supernatural heights otherwise unimaginable! This is not because we ourselves are in control, but because fasting is an abandonment of control. It is a radical letting go that, coupled with sacramental confession, allows all barriers to our acceptance of God’s love to be broken.

Maybe it’s too much of a stretch to say that an unmarried tailor who lived with his mother is the reason communism fell in the west. Then again, maybe it’s not.

Venerable Jan Tyranowski was, in many respects, an ordinary working class bachelor. But when he was 35, a homily changed his life. “It is not difficult to become a saint,” the priest said, and Tyranowski believed him. He began reading the Carmelite mystics and praying up to four hours a day. When many of Poland’s priests were sent to death camps in 1940, one of those left behind asked Tyranowski to become more involved in youth ministry.

That’s where he met Karol Woytyla. The young man who would become pope was just a 20-year-old in youth group, but his relationship with Tyranowski changed everything. Karol had become unsure about the wisdom of putting so much emphasis on the Blessed Mother, but Tyranowski pointed him to St. Louis de Montfort, thus shaping the life and papacy of the man who would be the most Marian Pope since St. Peter. Perhaps more importantly, Tyranowski’s work with the young Woytyla (especially after Karol lost his father in 1941) greatly influenced Wotyla’s vocational discernment. A friend of St. John Paul’s from that same youth group insists that John Paul owed his priestly vocation to the single tailor.

Tyranowski died only a few months after Fr. Woytyla was ordained. He didn’t live to see his young friend consecrated bishop or elected pope. He didn’t see the work of the Polish pope break the stranglehold of communism on Poland and her neighbors. Through it all, though, St. John Paul kept a picture of his youth minister on his desk, a single man whose life changed the world.

This mysterious painting by Leonardo depicts a non-biblical meeting between Our Lady, the Christ Child, and an angel with St. John the Baptist in a rocky grotto. It is the second version of a painting originally commissioned in 1483 to be the central panel of a large altarpiece for the Franciscan Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan, Italy. While the subject of the Madonna and Child with an infant St. John the Baptist was celebrated throughout the Renaissance, the presence of St. John in this particular setting makes the inspiration for the painting difficult to assess. Though the infant St. John is not recorded as being present in Scripture, Leonardo’s version could possibly be following a medieval tradition of portraying the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt, hence the rock-strewn landscape. While the exact source of the narrative is uncertain, the painting’s rich iconography and harmonious design contain a wealth of meaning. In addition, the unique method of observation Leonardo has employed to the scene sets the painting apart from other artists’ interpretations of the theme.

An Extraordinary Scene
Our Lord is sitting on the ground supported by an angel. The position of Mary’s hand above the Infant’s head as well as her drooping cloak, which stops just short of his extended right hand, produce a vertical movement within the composition that stresses the Christ Child’s importance. Both Christ and the angel look in the direction of St. John; a silent dialogue we are blessed to witness. The environment around them serves to reinforce their otherworldliness. Clark adds, “Like deep notes in the accompaniment of a serious theme the rocks of the background sustain the composition, and give it the resonance of a cathedral.”[9] The fantastical nature of this “cathedral” of caverns points to the profound mystery of the beings in this drama. It is not strange for its own sake; rather it heightens our awareness of the supernatural. The rocks themselves are standard symbols of Christ. Revisiting Ferguson, this attribute “is derived from the story of Moses, who smote the rock from which a spring burst forth to refresh his people. Christ is often referred to as a rock from which flow the pure rivers of the gospel.”[10] The cool body of water in the background recedes into a far-off misty mountain scene not unlike a landscape one would find in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Leonardo’s imagination seemed to know no bounds.

It was an imagination informed by his relentless investigation of the natural world. To heighten the aforementioned three-dimensionality of the painting, Leonardo incorporates his perceptive studies of light, shade, and perspective. These studies can be read in the publication of his numerous notebooks. He writes, “Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight: darkness and light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and nearness, motion and rest.”[11] This painting contains all of these elements. When the results of Leonardo’s explorations into sight and of the natural world are united with religious subject matter, the effect is a true masterpiece of sacred art.

What is holiness? In our lead article, Dr. John Cavadini describes holiness as the Second Vatican Council did, as “the perfection of love.”[1]

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“We, the ordinary people of the streets, believe with all our might that this street, this world, where God has placed us, is our place of holiness.”

On September 23, 2017, the Catholic Church celebrated the beatification of a farm boy from Oklahoma. Thirty-two years earlier, in a small town in Guatemala, “Padre Apla’s” was martyred in his rectory in the middle of the night.

Stanley Rother was born in 1935 in Okarche, Oklahoma. His bucolic family was very faithful and prayed a Rosary every night after dinner, kneeling at the table. Unbeknownst to his family, Stanley contemplated a call to the priesthood while he rode the tractor in the field. In 1953, he went to seminary in San Antonio. There he worked in the seminary’s bindery and built a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Feeling more at ease working outside than in the classroom, he struggled with the academics in seminary and wrote in his journal, “Am thinking about another vocation,” later adding that his director, “set me straight on another vocation.”[1]
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After returning to Oklahoma City, Stanley met with the director of vocations and with his bishop. Nothing is recorded of that meeting except a single mention in Rother’s journal: “Saw Bishop and he will send me on next fall.”[3] Whatever happened, Stanley convinced the bishop of his calling and was admitted to another seminary. He was ordained a priest in 1963. Five years later, he was sent to the diocesan mission in Guatemala and flourished as a pastor, learning to speak Tz’utujil (the local language) and even aiding in the translation of the New Testament into that language.

God knew what he was doing with this Oklahoma farm boy. Having learned about crops, irrigation, and proper planting practices on his family farm, Stanley put his knowledge to use by helping the Tz’utujil people better their farming techniques. He knew the value of hard work and was frequently seen eating and working alongside his parishioners. Decades before Pope Francis called for priests to “smell like their sheep,” Fr. Rother was working side by side with the men and women God gave him to shepherd.

Sofia Cavalletti was arguably the most effective catechetical theorist and practitioner of her era. Born in 1917, she belonged to a noble Roman family, who had served in the papal government. Marchese Francesco Cavalletti had been the last senator for Rome in the papal government, prior to its takeover in 1870 by the Italian state. Sofia herself bore the hereditary title of Marchesa, and lived in her family's ancestral home in the Via Degli Orsini. In 1946, the young Sofia Cavalletti began her studies as a Scripture scholar at La Sapienza University with specializations in the Hebrew and Syriac languages. Her instructor was Eugenio Zolli, who had been the chief rabbi of Rome, prior to and during World War II and who had become a Catholic after the war. Following her graduation, Cavalletti remained a professional academic for the whole of her professional career.

Cavalletti's involvement with catechetics came about by chance, in 1952, after she was asked to prepare a child for his first communion. Soon after this experience, Cavalletti began collaborating with Gianna Gobbi, a professor of Montessori education. Together, they developed what came to be known as the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, painstakingly creating materials that would serve the religious needs of children from the ages of three to twelve years. Taking the Montessori sensitive periods as a starting point and guided by the response of real children as the “reality check,” Cavalletti refined her understanding of the religious experiences that children were likely to respond to at each stage of their development. She would create materials and make them available to the children. If the material was not used, she determined that it had not met the mark and she would dispose of it, irrespective of how much effort she had put into it.

Very early in her work, Cavalletti discerned the central role of “wonder” in a child’s religious development and she realized that for young children (and indeed for every human being), wonder is evoked by “an attentive gaze at reality.”[i] Consequently, young children were encouraged to begin their relationship with God by recognizing, one by one, the gifts offered to them in the created world. To meet this need, the Montessori “practical life” works were found to be ideal. Children were given tasks such as flower arranging, slow dusting, leaf washing and the like. The experience of Montessori classrooms for over a hundred years has born witness to the effectiveness of this approach. Engagement with concrete “hands on” activities seem to be the basis not only of religious development but for learning of any kind.

The careful observation of the needs of real children by Montessori had identified the basic stages of learning, (outlined in my previous article). Cavalletti summed this up in a simple axiom: first the body, then the heart, then the mind. As the twentieth century progressed, she evaluated new ideas in education, Biblical scholarship, and theology. Cavalletti did not easily fall prey to a widely reported educational phenomenon, the “band wagon effect.” She was an “action researcher” who allowed herself to be guided by the reactions of the children she was working with. If a learning material failed to engage the children, it was discarded and alternatives sought.

One of the most striking and commonly reported phenomena of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is that children seem to be able to arrive at profound theological understandings for themselves—without being told.