"ARE WE HOLY MEN?"
A Bishop Reflects on the Spirituality of the Priesthood
by
Bishop Edward K. Braxton
(This reflection is based upon a homily the Bishop gave on the Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, October 1, 1998 at the Convocation for the Priests of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.)
Dear Brothers in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ:
I.
Do you think I am a holy man?
Do I think that you are holy men?
Today we must talk about, think about and pray about Thérèse Martin, who was clearly a holy woman. In the brief span of her life, from her birth in 1873 in Alençon to her death from tuberculosis at the Carmelite Convent in Lisieux in 1897, she seems to have become, in the words of her friend Maurice Bellière, a "lovely home of holiness." It is meaningless to celebrate the holiness of her life as a "saint" without examining the holiness of our own.
More than three years have passed since I came into your midst as a stranger called to Episcopal ministry "as one who serves." Over these years I have met almost all of you. I have visited with many of you at major liturgical gatherings such as Confirmation. We have had lively conversations about the common concerns of our pastoral ministry. I have shared my personal experiences as a pastor with you in our discussions of ways of making parish councils, liturgy teams, sacramental preparation, adult religious formation and other pastoral activities more effective. I have always benefited from these conversations, which I hope contributed to making our parishes "homes of holiness."
In some instances I have been able to assist you in areas that were of importance to you either personally or pastorally. I am happy for that. But I am sure that there have been circumstances when something that I have unwittingly said or done, or not said or done, has hurt or offended a few of you. Perhaps this has created barriers to our communication. Inspired by Thérèse’s example, I apologize to you and ask your forgiveness. I hope that we can begin anew. With many of you, I enjoy the easy rapport of fellow workers for the harvest of Christ. For this I am truly grateful. Happily, there are a few of you who have shared with me some of the "major truths" of your soul-space. I have shared "major truths" of my soul-space with you, as well. Thus, I know you, as you are and you know me, as I am.
In spite of our many fruitful exchanges we have rarely, if ever, talked heart to heart about what it really means for us to be holy. We have not shared our thoughts about whether or not we are growing in holiness. Indeed, it does not seem to be easy for priests to talk with each other about their interior lives. Our personal responses to God’s call to holiness, our daily efforts to live as men who really believe that we share in the unmerited gift of Divine Life is off limits in most conversations. It is unfortunate that we, like most Christians, are hesitant to share our spiritual journeys with fellow pilgrims. Hopefully, informal gatherings like this Convocation help us to break down barriers and put aside masks and roles behind which we may hide, so that we may speak of our unquenchable appetite for holiness. Perhaps here, "far from the madding crowd," we can "waste time" in the company of brother priests who may be, like Thérèse, "friendly households of holiness."
Those who make extraordinary progress on the road to holiness seem to spontaneously attract others, even if they are in a cloister. Thus the "halo" by which artists of the past designated saints manifests not only the Divine Goodness radiating from them, but also the aura of holiness which draws others to them.
Consider the great variety of people whose lives were radically changed by being caught up in the holiness of God radiating from the frail body and singular life of Thérèse Martin. Jack Kerouac, denizen of Greenwich Village, author of On the Road and a leading voice of the "Beat" generation, wrote that the extraordinary simplicity of her holiness and her singular life of prayer and service intrigued him all of his life. Edith Piaf, the French chanteuse, who charmed the clubs of Paris and soothed the hearts of many during World War II, made no secret of the fact that she kept a picture of Thérèse on her night table wherever she was in the world. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, wrote in her life story that reading the autobiography of Thérèse was the primary influence in her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. In his masterpiece, The Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos takes a great deal of the dialogue word for word from Thérèse’s Last Conversations. When Graham Green wrote his last novel, Monsignor Quixote, he made Thérèse the hero’s secret "dulcinea." The Jewish philosopher, Henri Bergson, was a lifelong student of Theresa of Avila. But when he read the works of Thérèse, he concluded that she was the great mystic of holiness. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, whose Christocentric vision of all creation converging on Christ has been an inspiration to so many, acknowledged that his spiritual vision was profoundly influenced by his early readings of Thérèse. Hans Urs van Balthasar, one of the great theologians of this century, argues that her spiritual vision is comparable to that of Augustine of Hippo and Paul of Tarsus. Pope John XXIII called his autobiography The Journal of a Soul in imitation of hers, The Story of a Soul. And in 1997, during the centenary of her birth, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church.
Today Thérèse of Lisieux asks us: are you holy men? As priests we know, from our earliest spiritual formation, that certain activities are fundamental to our life-long effort to participate in the holiness of God. Holiness in our lives is rooted first of all in the mystery that we have been created by a loving God who sustains us in existence, every moment of our lives. This "natural" closeness to God is transformed and elevated by Baptism, the wondrous gift by which we became "new born" in Christ, by the Eucharist, which nourishes us at the table of the Lord, by Reconciliation, which returns us to intimacy with Christ, when we have fallen from grace through sin, and by Confirmation which strengthens us to live our Christian vocations faithfully through the power of the Holy Spirit, the very love of God. Our ordination as deacons, priests and as bishops gives us the extraordinary opportunity of continuing the ministry of Christ Himself in word, sign, sacrament and deed. It also allows us to play vital roles in the lives of the Christian faithful, as they grow in holiness.
On this feast, St. Thérèse reminds us that prayerful reflection upon the Word of God, fidelity to the Liturgy of the Hours, meditation in the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and seeking out new and effective ways of personally appropriating the heroic example of Mary and the saints are irreplaceable guides on our pilgrimage from God to God. She tells us that we are deceiving ourselves if we think we can make authentic progress in the spiritual life without vital and authentic spiritual direction and regular participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. From the wisdom gleaned at Carmel, the Little Flower certainly knew that yearly retreats, which really are retreats and personal days of recollection during which we really do recollect ourselves, must never fall from our schedules because we are too busy. These disciplines, all familiar elements of Thérèse Martin’s personal life, are the foundations of mature growth in Christian holiness.
II.
This essential foundation is enriched by being attentive to the pattern of ordinary human experiences, which can be profound occasions for moving us deeper and deeper into the Mystery of God. When we are startled by wonder and amazed by joy, we become aware that our whole being is caught up in the Presence of the Holy One. This can take us to the threshold of the "Cloud of Unknowing." Everything we know about Thérèse, the patroness of the Missions, suggests that she was responsive to the call to holiness in all of life’s moments.
—We are called to holiness whenever we experience singular beauty in the magnificence of nature—a riot of flowers on a hillside, rivers of stars on a dark night, the bite of autumn’s chill, the tranquil quiet of a peaceful lake, the many shades of green that delight us on the golf course. The form and symmetry of music, art, theater, and poetry also stir up our awareness of a world "charged with the grandeur of God." The holiness of the creator is as close to us as the air we breathe.
—We are called to holiness whenever we attend to the agility, strength and decline we experience in the inexhaustible complexity of our own minds and bodies. When we work-out, play sports, take long hikes in the woods, learn languages, play musical instruments, test our wits in a game of chess, get lost in a great novel or grapple with a work of serious theology, we have the immediate experience of the great capacity and the real limitations of memory, imagination, intelligence, and physical prowess. Youth, maturity, illness and recovery, the constraints and resilience that come as we grow older, eventually announce our mortality and evoke our reverence before The Unknown. The great Augustine was right when he said our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
—We are called to holiness even in our struggles for personal discipline and moral goodness in our daily lives. We seek to use our time well, overcome inertia, prepare sufficiently for our various responsibilities, and get sufficient rest and exercise. Yet our reach is often beyond our grasp. The tension between detachment and materialism, abstemiousness in the enjoyment of food and drink, true discipline in the consumption of alcohol, overcoming addiction to cancer causing tobacco products, avoiding dependence upon drugs (legal or illegal), the proper understanding and integration of our need for acceptance, affirmation, love, intimacy and our sexuality can all be the struggle of a lifetime. The struggle is not made easy by faith, but it is made easier because we know we are not struggling alone. Our successes as well as our failures underscore our absolute dependence on the All Holy One who dwells in unapproachable Light.
—We are called to holiness in our efforts to get along with other people. We live in networks of complex interdependent relationships. Time and again we may find ourselves stereotyping or even rejecting someone because of their religion, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, income, intellectual skills, athletic abilities or personal appearance, even though we know this is the opposite of what Christ would do. Our ongoing efforts to overcome lingering biases and prejudices in our lives impels us to turn to Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God, to help us with the power of His redemptive grace.
—We are called to holiness when we let go of anger and the desire for revenge and embrace forgiveness. Every day we pray to "Our Father" to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Yet, we all know how distressingly difficult it is to forgive someone who has hurt us deeply and expressed no remorse. Only God working in us can turn our hearts from revenge to loving forgiveness. Conversely, when we are forgiven by those we have offended, we experience whole new possibilities in a relationship we thought was dead, a kind of rebirth that can only be the work of grace.
—We are called to holiness in the experience of genuine intimacy. In the exhilarating self-transcending experience of authentic love and intimate friendship, we are drawn inexorably into holiness. The give and take of growing in a human relationship, the gradual development of deep seated trust and the insatiable desire to know and be known by the beloved, is a deeply moving experience of our need for the absolute love that comes from God alone. The radical loneliness and aloneness of those whose lives are bereft of genuine love can also be a painful cry for the companionship of God. This pain may be particularly acute for priests who do not know the love of wives and children, if they have only "pals" but no friends, if their parents, sisters and brothers are strangers to them. They long for the radiant smiles of those who truly care for them. They long for the "hints half guessed" offering intimations of Divine Love.
—We are called to holiness in the midst of excruciating pain. When sudden, tragic and seemingly senseless death overtakes someone young and in their prime, the dearest of the dear in our lives, we are brought low by unspeakable grief, overwhelmed by the great suffering of our lives. We are utterly helpless in the face of the "unbearable lightness of being." Human comfort, though well intentioned, may be of little help. We never get over such sorrow, though we might get through it in the community of the Church celebrating its enduring belief that for those who enter fully into the life, teachings, suffering, death and resurrection of Christ, life is not ended in death, but merely changed.
—All of these experiences of the call to holiness are shared in some way with the people we serve in our pastoral ministry. Of course, they themselves can be singular examples of lives lived in the holiness of God. Sometimes they may even put us to shame.
If we are to hear and respond to the call to holiness in our lives, if we are to grasp the relationship between "holiness" and "wholeness," there must be Silence. Make time for Silence! Cultivate Silence! The call of God is more likely to be in a whisper than in a whirlwind.
III.
Are we holy men? We are gathered in this far away place, so we can be by ourselves for a while. We know well that for most of us, however, Christian holiness does not come about quickly. It is not a matter of rapid growth. It is a high and distant goal that is not attained in a short time. A few modest steps forward can be followed by a large number of discouraging steps backwards.
When we are discouraged by the sometimes-slow progress we make on the journey to holiness, we may be tempted to stagnate in self-pity. Instead, we should take strength from the words of the Lord in the first reading from Isaiah. "I will comfort you, as a mother comforts her son." When we hear in the gospel of Luke that "the harvest is great, but the laborers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that he will send more laborers into the field." We must pray, as well, that these new laborers are willing to strive with us for holiness. The church needs no escapees in her pulpits.
Thérèse Martin is truly a model for holiness in our time and the new millennium. Sadly, for many, she is a devotional image from the nineteenth century. A pale and sickly young woman of Carmel in a veil standing on a church pedestal holding a bouquet of roses. But she is, in fact, a woman for our time and a saint for our season. Had she lived to be eighty like her sister Céline, she would have lived to witness the horrors of the Holocaust, the power of the Civil Rights revolution, the pain of the war in Viet Nam, and the assassination of President Kennedy, all defining moments of this century. Her contemporaries were Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Fredrich Nietzsche, and Charles Darwin. These thinkers were major shapers of modern consciousness. From her cloister, she created a "Copernican revolution" in spirituality. Pope Pius X identified the heart of her holiness, when he wrote that "her sanctity consisted in readily, generously, and constantly fulfilling her vocation without going beyond the common order of things."
No out of the ordinary feats are attributed to her. Her extraordinary way of doing the ordinary is exemplified in her letters. Since the hectic pace of modern life does not lend itself to letter writing, many of us may not think often of their unique spiritual power. Read by strangers from the distance of time, they are emotions recollected in tranquility, confidential conversations and intimate disclosures overheard from the past. From her correspondence with her mother, Zélie, we know how much she enjoyed checkers, how she delighted in taking her cocker spaniel, Tom, for walks and how dashing she thought she looked in her favorite blue hat. She even wondered if her deep love for God could be sincere, if she loved her hat so much.
Her most significant correspondence consists of the eleven letters she received from Maurice Barthélémy Bellière and her ten letters in response. Maurice was a young French priest, soon to depart for the missions in North Africa. Though they never met, they developed a very deep friendship. They became spiritual confidantes to each other.
They exchanged letters right up to the final stages of her illness. After reading a letter in which Thérèse tells him she is near death, Maurice pours out his grief and shock in his letter to her, declaring that he is closer to her than to his own family. "Oh, how happy is my heart to feel near it the friendly hand which consoled, strengthened and ennobled it. Know that I have found a lovely home in your holy friendship." Thérèse responded, "Soon I shall be doing more than writing to you, dear little brother. I shall be very near to you. I shall know your every need. I shall give God no rest until he gives me everything I want. I will be with you forever, to be a support to you, not for a mere two years, but until the last days of your life." As it happened, Maurice died in 1907, at the age of 33, after suffering from multiple illnesses, just ten years after Thérèse. Her photograph was among his few personal possessions.
IV.
Can we not imagine St. Thérèse here with us writing letters in our hearts about the "common order of things?" Participating in the Holiness of the Triune God, she now knows our every need. She knows the "little things" that are obstacles to our holiness.
The God who calls us to holiness knows what we are thinking about our brothers who are not here. He knows the judgements we are making about those who were here the first night and then disappeared. He knows the motives of those who absented themselves. He knows what we are thinking, when we decide where to sit or not to sit at our tables for meals or presentations. "I don’t want to sit with them." "They’re too young." "They’re too old." "He’s too liberal!" "He’s too conservative!" "He offended me the last time we talked and never apologized." "He was my pastor and we didn’t get along." "He was my associate pastor, and he didn’t work." "That’s a click. I won’t be welcome there." He knows whether or not we as priests are truly striving to make a "lovely home in each other’s holy friendship."
Surely Thérèse will "give God no rest" until He prompts us to break down the barriers that prevent genuine communication between us and our brother priests, no matter how different we may be. Wouldn’t she want priests and bishops to speak openly to one another? What would she make of our talk of "downtown" and "The Chancery" as if there were some intrinsic opposition between the pastoral and administrative life of the church? Wouldn’t she want us to strive to overcome any traces of a "we\they" mentality. "We must be careful what we say around the bishops. They have a big say concerning our future." Doesn’t this attitude impede the fraternity we so urgently need for the priesthood in the new millenium? Are we not are here for each other? Are we not Christians and priests with you before we are bishops for you?
Perhaps St. Thérèse would remind us of the example of Blessed Ambrose and Augustine. Ambrose of Milan was a bishop when he converted Augustine, who became a Christian, a priest, and a bishop under Ambrose's influence. But surely Ambrose did not convert Augustine simply by the eloquence and rigor of his preaching. The eloquent homily of Ambrose’s life and his caring sensitivity for his brother must have played an equally important part in Augustine’s conversion. Ambrose, in turn, could not have been drawn to Augustine by his towering intelligence alone. Augustine’s openness of heart may have been more significant than his brilliance of mind. Thus, as bishop and priest, they became true companions on the road to holiness.
Am I a holy man? Are you holy men? We know well that God and God alone is Absolute Holiness. This is why we prostrate ourselves before the Lord and utter in awe, "Holy. Holy. Holy! Sanctus. Sanctus. Sanctus! Kadosh. Kadosh. Kadosh! I have been in your midst long enough to be confident that, with God’s help, you are on the road to a fuller participation in Divine Holiness. By my association with you and imitation of your example, I hope that I am continuing to make progress on that road, as well. Know that when I think of you my memories are happy ones and when I pray for you my prayers are full of joy.
These slightly altered words of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, himself a priest, are apt for the holiness Thérèse has attained and that for which we strive.
Those who are Holy
Keep grace: that keeps all our goings graces;
We act in God’s eye what in God’s eye
We are—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand
places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s
faces.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, ora pro nobis. Amen.
