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Learning to obey from St. Jeanne
By Msgr. James P. Moroney
It was the time of the French Revolution. Jeanne Jugan’s father died when she was four. Her mother struggled to feed the six children and to secretly provide them with a Catholic formation. So little Jeanne learned from a young age to herd sheep, sew and spin wool. She could barely read and write.
Jeanne eventually went to work as a kitchen maid and a nurse, until she met the elderly Françoise Aubert and the teenage orphan Virginie Tredaniel and the three of them rented a house and formed a Catholic household of prayer, teaching and care for the poor.
Then she met Anne Chauvin, a blind woman with no one to care for her. She brought her home, put her in her own bed, and went to sleep in the attic. That was only the beginning. Within two years she had packed the house with a dozen elderly people for whom she and her companions would care, day and night. Next they rented a nearby cottage and before you knew it there were 40. Then, thanks to Jeanne’s begging in the streets, the Little Sister of the Poor opened three more houses, and more than 100 women joined her new order.
But then things changed. The bishop appointed Father Auguste Le Pailleur to supervise the work of this new order. Father Le Pailleur, a man of some ambition, removed Jeanne from authority and ordered her to do nothing but beg for money on the street. Twenty-seven years later few acknowledged the old blind lady who lived in a room on the third floor as the foundress, as Father Le Pailleur concocted a story about how the whole enterprise was his idea in the first place.
Jeanne was honest with the ambitious priest who had been chosen as her superior: “You have stolen my work from me,” she wrote to him early on, “but I willingly relinquish it to you.” When novices would ask her if she was really the founder, she would reply, “They will teach you all about our Congregation in your classes, dear.” And in her diary she wrote: “In our joys, in our troubles, in the contempt that others show us, we must always say, ‘Thank you, my God,’ or ‘Glory to God.’”
Jeanne died at the age of 86, not as an adored and glorious founder, but as the sweet old nun who seemed happy with whatever God would choose for her fate.
Now imagine Jeanne when she first left home to work as a kitchen maid. Imagine her when she took in Madame Chauvin. Imagine her when the Congregation thrived, and imagine her at 86. God chose the road. She just agreed to walk it, willingly and with joy.
Jeanne did not think she would start a great religious work which perdures to this day. But God had something else in mind.
And she died a happy death. Knowing that she had simply done what God had asked her: picked up the crosses he sent and got on with it. Giving all to God in an act of love, in imitation of the perfect sacrifice of him who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but who took the form of the slave, being born in the likeness of a little child, and who offered the perfect kenotic sacrifice upon the altar of the cross.
And what does this God have in store for each of you? Fame or ignominy? Admiration or infamy? Success or abject failure? In the end, it really doesn’t matter, does it?
All that matters is that we obediently follow the way he has set out for us, expecting only that his love and his grace will get us through. For we are not made for ourselves, but for him who first breathed life into these bodies and who teaches us how to live and to love in his name. We know not where the road leads. All we have to do is follow it.
– Msgr. Moroney, interim rector of St. Paul Cathedral, is the author of “The Mass Explained” (Catholic Book Publishing) and host of the CatholicTV program “The New and Eternal Word.” -
Learning to forgive, with St. Rita
By Msgr. James P. Moroney
Did you ever hear of Rita Lotti, also know as St. Rita of Cascia? She was born in a little Umbrian hill town about 700 years ago.
In those days, Cascia was inhabited by the Italian equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys, as frequent conflicts and family rivalries were routinely settled by the rule of vendetta ... that is, you kill one of ours, we kill two of yours. It was the ideal prescription for perpetuating violence.
Rita married Paolo Mancini, a good, if impetuous fellow, and they had two sons. The sons grew into their teens and one day as their father was returning from work he was ambushed and killed. Rita was overcome with grief, but even more by the fear that her two sons would seek to avenge their father’s death.
Only her tears and her begging kept them from seeking to kill their father’s killer. But her sorrows did not end there, for within a year both sons died from heart disease.
So there she was: within a year she had buried her whole family, and it all started with the murder of her husband. So did she seek revenge, did she become bitter, did she withdraw into a perpetual state of self-pity? No, she became a nun and dedicated the rest of her life to serving the poor and urging everyone she met to forgive, as God had forgiven them.
St. Rita understood and meant it when she prayed “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In the same measure I have shown mercy, Lord, show mercy to me.
And Pope Francis understood it as well: “The problem, unfortunately,” he wrote, “comes whenever we have to deal with a brother or sister who has even slightly offended us. The reaction described in the parable describes it perfectly: “He seized him by the throat and said, ‘Pay what you owe’” (Mt 18:28).
Here we encounter all the drama of our human relationships. When we are indebted to others, we
expect mercy; but others are indebted to us, we demand justice! All of us do this. It is a reaction unworthy of Christ’s disciples, nor is it the sign of a Christian style of life. Jesus teaches us to forgive and to do so limitlessly: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22).
What he offers us is the Father’s love, not our own claims to justice. To trust in the latter alone would not be the sign that we are Christ’s disciples, who have obtained mercy at the foot of the cross solely by virtue of the love of the Son of God. Let us not forget, then, the harsh saying at the end of the parable: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Pope Francis, Aug. 4, 2016)
– Msgr. Moroney, interim rector of St. Paul Cathedral, is the author of “The Mass Explained” (Catholic Book Publishing) and host of the CatholicTV program “The New and Eternal Word.”
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On forgiveness
By Msgr. James P. Moroney
A few years ago, Pope Francis proclaimed a Jubilee Year of Mercy for the whole Church, beginning on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and closing the following year on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
There are many fascinating aspects of this exciting and much needed year of reflection on the mercy God has shown to us through Christ Jesus his Son, and much to be explored in a world where, as one wag put it, “nothing is sinful, but nothing is forgiven.”
There are many dimensions to be explored in the application of the Holy Father’s Gospel of Mercy, but I would like to dwell on three realities of the meaning of mercy: God’s mercy on us; our mercy on those who trespass against us; and our mercy on all who need us.
There’s an important lesson on forgiveness in the pardoning of President Nixon by President Ford. In his 1975 article “On Executive Clemency: The Pardon of Richard M. Nixon,” Michael McKibbin provides the definitive juridical analysis of this important action by President Gerald Ford, which did, as he hoped, provide an end to “our long national nightmare.”
McKibbin provides a fascinating narrative of the events and legal issues, beginning with Nixon’s denial of guilt and the now famous subsequent events which brought the events of Watergate to the attention of the American people and the judgement of the Senate Watergate Committee, Attorney General, Special Prosecutor’s Office and even the Supreme Court.
He notes that President Ford’s pardon is rather broad in its scope, granting “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 10, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”
My present point in this extraordinary narrative is that this act of executive mercy had one foundational requirement: “the acceptance of a pardon is an acknowledgement by the grantee that he is guilty of the offenses contained therein. A denial of such guilt by the grantee will be construed to be a rejection of the pardon.”
Thus, Richard Nixon was forced to admit in writing that his “... motivations and actions in the Watergate affair were intentionally self-serving and illegal” in order to receive a presidential pardon.
The multiple Supreme Court rulings that underpin the establishment of confession as a prerequisite for clemency are rooted in the unwavering insistence by the Church that contrition and confession must precede absolution.
In other words, to be forgiven, by a court or by God, you must confess. Without confession, there is no pardon.
And yet, as a recent CARA study reveals, less than 2 percent of all Church-going Catholics go to confession every month. Just imagine the person who knows he has sinned. He’s denied it, anesthetized it, maybe tried to drink or medicate the guilt away. But like an aching tooth the sin sits just under the surface, gnawing at him and dragging him down. He tries to make his way through the world and even to strive for holiness, but this void impedes and distracts him, imprisoning his heart in a series of inextricable knots.
We live in a world aching for forgiveness, but petrified to confess.
But, as we have already prayed several times today, as we are forgiven, so we forgive those who trespass against us. You’ve heard the stories. Maybe you’ve even lived them. Of the mother disowned by her daughter, who for years refuses to speak to her because of what she did, or what she said. And then she hears the mother is dying. Sometimes the story ends with forgiveness. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Or of the brother who betrays his younger sibling. It cost him his job and his reputation and it almost broke up his marriage. It’ll follow him around for years to come. So he refused to have anything to do with his brother, even when his father begged him to. Sometimes that story ends with a reconciliation, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Or of the friends who stopped speaking to each other over that boy they were both dating, and how one of them married him and the other just clung to the jealousy and resentment and hurt for the rest of her life. Sometimes that story ends in forgiveness, and sometimes it doesn’t.
You remember when the disciples go to Jesus after one of them was acting like a fool again, and they ask him “How many times?! How many times do we have to keep forgiving him?” Then they try to impress Jesus: “We know, Lord, we’ll forgive him seven times!” “No,” the Lord smiles patiently at them: “Not seven times ... seventy-times seven times. Judge not, lest you be judged.” Love the one who nails you to the cross by praying for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
– Msgr. Moroney is the author of “The Mass Explained” (Catholic Book Publishing) and host of the CatholicTV program “The New and Eternal Word.” -