Universal Call to Holiness

Originally published in The Catholic Times Aug. 13, 2017

This week’s liturgical calendar celebrates the lives of three women saints: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), St. Clare, and Saint Bonifacia Rodriguez y Castro. If you’re like me, you’re familiar with the first two. But who was the third, Saint Bonifacia?

Her memorial is listed as August 7, 8, or 9^th, depending on where you look, but a little research provided an inspiring portrait of the woman. Bonifacia was born in 1837, the oldest of six children, to a poor couple in Salamanca, Spain. Her father was a tailor who worked in his shop at home. Bonifacia learned not only his craft, but she and her siblings also witnessed the deep faith of both parents, lived simply in their home and community.

Her father died when she was fifteen, and Bonifacia began working for others outside her home. Eventually, she set up a shop in the family home, making and selling cords, lace, and other trimmings to support herself and her mother. Inspired by the quiet life of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, she saw her home and shop as a little Nazareth where work and prayer were intertwined. Along with her mother, Bonifacia made daily visits to a nearby Jesuit-run church.

Other young women, attracted to her and her way of life, began to gather at her home on Sunday’s and feast days, finding a safe place to gather and support one another with prayer and Scripture, listening and encouraging as women do. The house-shop became a safe haven for women to work and pray.

Though Bonifacia longed to become a Dominican, the Jesuit priest at her church, Francisco Javier Butiña y Hospital (her spiritual director), had another idea. His deep concern for the plight of post Industrial Revolution factory workers and respect for the path to holiness through ordinary work resonated with Bonifacia. He suggested that together they establish a congregation to protect the women workers and promote a spirituality that embraced manual work as a way to holiness, not an impediment. The congregation became known as the Servants of Saint Joseph.

This was a new form for a women’s congregation, and while supported by some and by the local bishop at the time of its foundation, it later met with resistance from those more comfortable with women in convents. Like many before her, she suffered for her vision and determination to remain faithful to it.

As Saint John Paul II said in his homily at her beatification, “It was a form of religious life too daring not to have opposition. Immediately it was attacked by the then traditional diocesan clergy of Salamanca who does not grasp the evangelical depth of this form of life which is very close to the world of work.”

While this column doesn’t provide space to tell all her story, I can emphasize the importance her life and vision have for us today. Despite Vatican II’s insistence that the call to holiness is given to everyone and is found in all walks of life, many church faithful, clergy and lay alike, still think the path to sanctity is somehow separate from ordinary life. Holiness is seen best pursued in convents, monasteries, or rectories. Or at least in occupations connected with church or overtly religious activities.

Bonifacia knew better. Through prayer and reflection, she recognized God’s call deep within and trusted it, remaining faithful when others opposed and mistreated her. It’s easy to doubt the word that God speaks in our hearts, the call that directs us to bring God into the world in a way uniquely given to each of us, right where we are.

Bonifacia also knew that we don’t walk the path to God alone. We walk together. As she said, “We should be all for all, following Jesus.” But trusting God’s indwelling in the “other” is a challenge, especially if the “other” looks different than we do, speaks a different language, or has views different than our own. Despite its difficulty, this ordinary path transforms the world by our taking God’s Presence into it.

The world needs people committed to this simple way of prayer and bringing God we come to know within into the streets and workplaces. Not by heavy handed evangelizing and dogma, but by living with love and joy, responding to the needs of those we encounter. By truly listening to “others,” open to recognize and receive God who dwells in their hearts. And like Bonifacia, by having courage to speak our truth to power. To do something different in familiar places.

Saint John XXIII and the Holy Spirit

Originally published in The Catholic Times, Oct. 13 Vol. 64:2

This week we celebrate for the first time the feast of Saint John the XXIII. The day of his feast, October 11, was selected because it was the date of his opening the Second Vatican Council in 1962. His initiative surprised those who thought he would be a “caretaker” pope.

When Pope Francis canonized him in April of this year, he pointed to Pope John’s willingness to follow the Spirit: “In convening the Council, Saint John XXIII showed an exquisite openness to the Holy Spirit. He let himself be led and he was for the Church a pastor, a servant-leader, guided by the Holy Spirit. This was his great service to the Church; for this reason I like to think of him as the pope of openness to the Holy Spirit.”

A young student during those years, I loved the Pope. I liked his round brimmed hat and quick smile. I liked his visiting ordinary people in Rome. He reminded me of my grandma.

We drove to Pittsburgh to visit her. When we arrived at her home, which was on the second floor of what had been a hotel, we raced up the stairs to be the first to rest on her ample lap, wrapped in her strong, soft embrace. I thought Pope John the XXIII would’ve been that kind of grandpa.

In high school, I read the documents of the Council. After years of sitting in classrooms where vocations to priesthood and religious life were presented as the most desirable states of life and marriage was for those who couldn’t measure up, reading Chapter V of Lumen Gentium, “The Universal Call to Holiness,” was vindication of what I had already observed: Parents and families and single people were living lives every bit as challenging, grace-filled, and transforming as those of the priests in the rectory or the sisters who taught in our schools.

Pope John XXIII Calling for Vatican Council II

Reading the words felt good: “It is therefore quite clear that all Christians in whatever state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity…” “The forms and tasks of life are many but there is one holiness, which is cultivated by all who are led by God’s Spirit…”

Gaudium et Spes” offered more hope: “The invitation to converse with God is addressed to men and women as soon as they are born.” “The best way to fulfill one’s obligations of justice and love is to contribute to the common good according to one’s means and the needs of others…” “Just as God did not create people to live as individuals but to come together in the formation of social unity, so he ‘willed to make women and men holy and to save them, not as individuals without any bond between them, but rather to make them into a people…”

Vatican II began to move the Roman Catholic Church away from fear of and toward engagement with the modern world. The council reached out to all: “We cannot pray to God the Father of all if we treat any people as other than sisters and brothers, for all are created in God’s image.”

It’s fitting to reflect on Pope John XXIII’s courageous willingness to follow that holy lead as the church gathers in a synod to consider the family in today’s world. I wish those invited included more ordinary couples, more women, and more diversity of family experiences. Still, the gathering is hopeful. We’ll see.

Pope Francis’ address to the thousands of people gathered in the piazza to pray for the synod reminded me of John XXIII’s Spirit led effort. “May the Wind of Pentecost blow upon the Synod’s work,” Francis said, “on the Church, and on all of humanity. Undo the knots which prevent people from encountering one another, heal the wounds that bleed, rekindle hope.”

His homily at Sunday’s opening mass warned of the possibility that those charged with nurturing God’s people can bring harm instead out of their self interest, greed, and pride: “God’s dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants. We can ‘thwart’ God’s dream if we fail to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said. “The Spirit gives us that wisdom which surpasses knowledge, and enables us to work generously with authentic freedom and humble creativity.”

We can honor Pope John XXIII by praying for the continuing unfolding of Vatican II wisdom and for openness of all, no matter their position, to the Spirit who is blowing through windows and refreshing the air in our church.

Saint Bonifacia’s Ordinary Way

Saint John XXIII and the Holy Spirit