LAST FALL

"This is the worst fall of all.  It comes at the worst moment of all.  It tears open all the wounds in his body; the shock dispels the last ounce of strength that he had mustered to go on.  It shatters the last hope, the last remnant of faith, in nearly everyone in the crowd.  It is triumph for his enemies, heartbreak for his friends. 

The effect on the crowd is terrible.  From having been an object of compassion, of admiration, he has become an object of contempt.  Hope has given way to despair, struggling faith to bitterness and derision: “He has saved others, himself he cannot save!”

Now Christ gets up, he does not turn his head, he does not heed the disappointment of the crowd.  He gets up, weaker than he has ever been, almost too exhausted to go on, all the old wounds open and bleeding; more abject than he has ever been, a greater disappointment to his followers than he has ever been, in their eyes a complete failure.  He gets up and goes on; lays his beautiful hands, those hands of a carpenter, on the wood of the cross for the last time, and without looking round begins the ascent to the summit of Calvary.

The last fall is the worst fall.  In it Christ identified himself with those who fall again and again, and who get up again and again and go on – those who even after the struggle of a lifetime fall when the end is in sight; those who in this last fall lose the respect of many of their fellow men, but who overcome their humiliation and shame; who, ridiculous in the eyes of men, are beautiful in the eyes of God, because in Christ, with Christ’s courage, in his heroism, they get up and go on, climbing the hill of Calvary.

In the third fall, the showing of Christ’s love is this: He does not indwell only the virtuous, only those who are successful in overcoming temptation, only those who are strong and in whom his power is made manifest to the world; he chooses to indwell those who seem to fail, those who fall again and again, those who seem to be overcome even when the end is in sight.  In them, if they will it, he abides; in them he overcomes weakness and failure, in them he triumphs; and in his power they can persevere to the end, abject before men but glorious with Christ’s glory before God." (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Jan Toroop (d. 1928)  Dutch

THE WEEPING WOMEN

 

"Now Christ is followed by a great multitude of people, among them women who mourn over him, who weep loud for him.  A strange thing happens.  He turns to them and says, “It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and for your children”: strange because at first sight it seems that he, who accepts every straw of compassion with pathetic gratitude, refuses the brave, open compassion of these women!  It is, or seems to be, a contradiction; it is not like him to refuse anything from anyone.   

 We have seen how until now, and indeed all through his passion, he has accepted the compassion of anyone at all who would give it to him, accepting even the forced helped of Simon.  But this accepting on Christ’s part began long before the hour of his passion struck; it was part of his plan of love from all eternity, his plan to depend on his creatures, to need them, to need all that they could and would give to him to fulfill that unimaginable plan of his love!

What, then, is the meaning of this curious refusal of the compassion, of the tears, of the women of Jerusalem?  “It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and for your children.”  Is this a refusal, a rebuke, or a warning?

In a sense it is none of these, but a showing, a pointing to something which, if these women miss, and if we miss today, they and we will have missed the meaning of Christ’s passion.   Which if we miss, all our devotion to the person of Jesus Christ in His historical Passion, all our meditations and prayers, will be sterile and will fall short of their object to reach and comfort the heart of Christ.  He is pointing to His passion in the souls of each of those women, in the souls of each of their children and their children’s children all through time.  He is pointing to all those lives to come through all the ages in which His suffering will go on.

For Himself the consummation of His love for the world is close: He is very near to Calvary now, in a few hours it will be over; He will be at peace and He will have entered into his glory.  But in the souls of men His suffering will begin again, and it will go on all through the years to come.  Evil will go on gathering strength all through the centuries to come; the Christ in man will be assaulted and threatened by it.

There will be many who will follow literally in Christ’s footsteps, who will enter into His glory with Him through His sacrifice – martyrs who give their lives for their faith, young men who willingly give their lives for their country, children who die Christ’s own redeeming death because they die in the full power and splendor of innocence.  It is not for these that we must weep, though we may weep for ourselves in our seeming loss of them.  They are the privileged ones whose love is immediately consummated in Christ’s love.  We must weep for ourselves, and for our fellows in whom Christ suffers on, still laboring, stumbling, falling on the Via Crucis, still mocked and goaded and assaulted on the way, still in the midst of the struggle.

There are those in every age in whom the suffering of Christ is manifest, almost visible, the beauty of His love shining through the ugliness of their circumstances.  It is not for Christ in them that we must weep.  It is for Christ whose beauty is hidden, Christ in the outcast, in the man who is wrestling with temptation, who is unrecognized, uncomforted; Christ in those whom we pass by without seeing, without knowing, whom we allow to stagger on, on His way, loaded with His too heavy cross, unhelped, unwept, uncomforted.

It is in order that we should seek Him and give our compassion to Him, weep for Him in these, that Christ showed His need for sympathy in His Earthly life and on the way of the cross.  We must weep for Him in these and in our own souls, in these days, the days of the dry wood: “It is not for me that you should weep; you should weep for yourselves and your children.  Behold, a time is coming when men will say, It is well for the barren, for the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never suckled them.  It is then that they will begin to say to the mountains, “Fall on us,” and to the hills, “Cover us.”  If it goes so hard with the tree that is still green, what will become of the tree that is already dried up?”  (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Virgil Cantini- Pope Paul  Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.

 

ANOTHER FALL

 

"Christ is down in the dust.  This second fall is harder than the first; He is nearer the end of His tether now, more dependent than before on others to help Him to get up and go on.  It may have been something trifling, almost absurd, that threw Him down.  Perhaps something as small as a pebble on the road; yes, that would have been enough to send Him hurtling down, with that terrible burden on His back, and His own exhaustion as He nears the end of His bitter journey.

It is the same today, the same for those “other Christs” who have gone a long way on the road and who fall, not for the first time now, under the heavy cross of circumstance – those who have carried this cross for a long time, who have become exhausted by the unequal struggle and fall, who with him are down in the dust.  It is for them that Christ falls for the second time and lies under the crushing weight of his cross, waiting for those who will come forward to lend their hands to lift it from his back and enable him to go on to the end of his way of suffering and love.

The crushing weight of circumstances today makes the Christian life a cross which, even though it is a redeeming cross, is hard to carry: the economic conditions; the weight of public opinion – the contempt for those who choose the hard way because it is Christ’s way; the weight of material hardship – the weight that grows heavier and heavier as those who must carry it come nearer and nearer to the end of the journey: the weight of the cross – the sheer material weight that was heavy enough to throw Christ down, to throw God face down in the dust.  If something as trifling as a pebble in the road or a false step could throw Christ down on the road, so may a tiny provocation, a sudden temptation, a mocking word – a fragment that adds to the struggle – bring the man staggering under the cross down: the servant is not greater than his master.

It is not only soldiers and warders under orders who can lift the cross from Christ’s back today, not only they who can help Christ to his feet again.  Everyone who labors to lift the burden of material misery from the backs of the poor gives his hands to free Christ from the crushing burden.  Everyone who concerns himself to change public opinion and to make the Christ-life honored in the world helps Christ to his feet again.  Everyone who forces his way against the indifferent mob, against the unthinking multitude who see nothing but folly in Christ and his cross, helps to drag back the great burden from his exhausted body.  Everyone who approaches Christ fallen under the cross, coming to him in friendship and love, to relieve him of the burden of the Christian life lived in isolation and loneliness in opposition to the whole modern environment, helps Christ to his feet in the world again and sets him on his way.

Everyone who recognizes who it is that has fallen there, who it is for whom the burden of circumstances, of materialism, of temptation has proved too persistent and too heavy, lends his hands to lift the cross from the prostrate Christ and to set Christ on His way to the consummation of His love once more." (Caryll Houselander)

Art: Tea Sciano- New Mexico

ANOTHER CARLOS?

 

 

 

So many young people are popping up who are an example to the youth of our day, especially those with grave illnesses.

Church authorities are in the process of reviewing the life of PEDRO BALLESTER, a British university student who died of cancer in 2018, to gauge whether his canonization cause should be opened. Pedro, who died in 2018 at age 21, was remembered by those who knew him as an ordinary young man whose response to suffering revealed a profound faith.

Born in Manchester, England in 1996 to Spanish parents, Pedro was described by his father, as "a very normal guy" whose holiness came not from extraordinary talents, but from allowing God to guide his life. And he did that through prayer."

 Both parents are members of Opus Dei and greatly influenced the boy’s spiritual formation.

"Pedrito," as his father affectionately called him, grew in prayer and discernment as a teenager. At age 16, he surprised his family by announcing he felt called to become a numerary in Opus Dei, committing himself to celibacy and a life dedicated to God.

 Although he would have to wait until he was 18 to formally join, his father said Pedro's joy only deepened. "He became happier, more joyful. He had that joy, the kind that you think your son is in love."

 Pedro was also an academically gifted student. In September 2014, he began studying chemical engineering at Imperial College London. But just months later, he developed severe back pain and was diagnosed with advanced pelvic cancer.

He returned to Manchester for treatment, hoping eventually to resume his studies. He endured continuous medical care over the next three years, alternating between the hospital and Greygarth Hall, an Opus Dei center in Manchester, where he lived with other numeraries.

Despite intense pain and fatigue, he remained focused on others, never showing his own suffering.  His joy and faith had a transformative effect on others, including fellow patients. Before he died he asked to see Pope Francis.When the Holy Father heard of this young man,  he agreed to meet him. Pedro gave him a card signed by the patients, doctors and nurses of Christie Hospital’s adolescent cancer ward where he was being treated.

After three years of treatment and suffering, Pedro died on Jan. 13, 2018. His funeral Mass was packed. A diocesan inquiry into Pedro's life is underway and is currently interviewing witnesses.

Pedro’s father (also called Pedro) stated the one thing he wants people, especially young people, to understand about his son's life and spiritual journey "is that the secret of life is to trust in God."

 "When Pedrito was diagnosed  he had it so clear. He said, 'Mom, Dad, I gave my life to God, and God gives the cross to his friends.' So, if you have a much bigger cross, that means that you have much more glory (awaiting). Not the glory of pride, but the glory of God. You're going to help so many more people because of that suffering that God has allowed you to carry.,"

THE WOMAN WITH THE VEIL

We have seen Jesus’ Mother, a stranger (Simeon) made to help His load lighter and now a woman struck with compassion breaks through the crowd and past soldiers to offer her veil to wipe His face, perhaps even risking her own life, as one never knew what the soldiers would do. Each of these people and the weeping women of Jerusalem soon to come into play, make up the “Way of the Cross”  Each gives us an insight into the suffering of Jesus as He makes His way to His death.  

"Now that face of infinite majesty and compelling beauty is unrecognizable.  The eyes which could see into the secret places of men’s souls are blinded, swollen from the long sleepless night of trials and judgment and filled with sweat and blood.  The cheeks are bruised and dirty, the mouth swollen, the hair “like ripe corn” is tangled by the crown of thorns and matted with blood.  Certainly there is no sign now of the beauty that could win a man’s heart by a single glance, or of the power that can rule the tempests and give life to the dead.  On the contrary, here is a man who is the very personification of humiliation, who is ugly with wounds and suffering, who is in the hands of other men who have bound Him and are leading Him out to die, and who is not even able to carry His own Cross alone.

It is all this, from which His close friends have fled, which drives this woman to Him.  It is the ugliness and the helplessness, which frightened those whom He called His “own” away, that draws her to Him; it is her compassion that gives her the courage to come close to Him. 

She comes with a veil in her hands, a cloth on which to wipe the poor disfigured face.  She kneels as we kneel to wipe the tears from the faces of little children.  Gratefully the head bowing over her sinks into the clean linen cloth and for a brief moment is covered by it.  Then He raises His head, and she kneeling there, her own face lifted, sees the face of Christ looking down at her, and behind it the great beam of the cross.  The two are together within the shadow of the cross on the street, Veronica and Christ. 

She sees the majesty that was hidden, for now she has wiped away what she can of the blood and sweat and tears, she sees that they hid a face that is serene in its suffering, calm, majestic, infinitely tender.  The swollen mouth smiles; the exhausted eyes are full of gentleness; the expression, after all, is not one of defeat and despair but of triumph and joy....

 Until someone comes to reveal the secret of Christ indwelling the sufferer’s soul to Him, He cannot see any purpose in  His pain.  There is only one way to reveal Christ living on in the human heart to those who are ignorant concerning it.  That is Veronica’s way, through showing Christ’s love.  When someone comes – maybe a stranger, maybe someone close at home but whose compassion was not guessed before – and reveals Christ’s own pity in herself, the hard crust that has contracted the sufferer’s heart melts away, and looking into the gentle face of this Veronica of today, the sufferer looks, as it were, into a mirror in which he sees the beauty of Christ reflected at last from his own soul.

 Until Veronica came to him on his way to Calvary, Christ was blinded by blood and sweat and tears.  The merciful hands of Veronica wiped the blindness from His eyes; looking into her face, He saw his own beauty reflected in it.  He saw His own eyes looking back at Him from hers.  She had done this thing in the power in which alone she could do it, the power of Christ’s own love.

 In the compassion on her lifted face, Christ saw, in the hour of His extreme dereliction, the triumph of His own love for men.  He saw His love, radiant, triumphant in her, and in all the Veronicas to come through all time, in them and in those sufferers in whom His own divine beauty would be restored by their compassion." (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Church of the Holy Cross, Sisak, Croatia

A STRANGER HELPS

 

"He is laboring under His cross.  It is too much for Him to carry alone.  Everyone can see that, but no one offers to help Him.  Someone, then, must be forced.  The soldiers seize upon Simon of Cyrene.  It has, or he thinks it has, nothing to do with him.  He was simply about his own business in Jerusalem.  It seems to him mere chance that he met this tragic procession – an unlucky chance for him, but there it is!  He is made to take up the load and help this man, a stranger to him, and whom he supposes to be a criminal on the way to his execution.

Really there is no chance in the incident.  It is something planned by God from eternity to show men the way of Christ’s love: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  It means that no one is meant to suffer alone.  No one is meant to carry his own cross without some other human being to help him.

Again Christ is proving to the world that He has come to live the life of all ordinary men on the simplest human terms.  Now as He accepts the reluctant help of Simon – accept it because He perforce must, and yet in His humility gratefully – He is showing each one of us whom He will indwell, what He asks of us and what He wants us to give to one another. 

Simon of Cyrene saw only three criminals (of whom Christ was one) on the way to die.  He could not know, until he had taken up that stranger’s cross, that in it was the secret of his own salvation.  Simon thought at first that Christ was no business of his.  He did not even know him; he did not seem to be worth helping; his own interrupted business in Jerusalem that day seemed much more important to him.  Why should he put his own business aside, why give his strength, his time, and even his suffering for this man?  (He must have suffered.  The hard, heavy wood would have torn and blistered his hands.  Or if one end of the cross was laid on his shoulder, it would have bruised it as it bruised Christ’s.  The way to Calvary must have been exhausting, and have sapped the energy he wanted for his own affairs.  Again, he must have suffered mentally: the frustration of his own plans, perhaps those on which very much depended; and the humiliation of being ordered to do this thing by the hated Roman soldiers – bits of boys anyway, who found it amusing to inconvenience and make mock of a Jew!)

We must be ready to carry the burden of anyone whom we meet on our way and who clearly needs help, not only those who “deserve,” or seem to “deserve,” help.  Everyone is our “business,” and Christ in everyone, potentially or actually, has a first claim on us, a claim that comes before all else.

We are here on Earth to help to carry the cross of Christ, the Christ hidden in other men, and to help in whatever way we can.  We may, like Simon, have literally a strong arm to give, we may help to do hard work; we may have material goods to give; we may have time, which we desperately want for ourselves but which we must sacrifice for Christ in man.  We may have only suffering.  Suffering is the most precious coin of all.  Suffering of body, suffering of mind, paid down willingly for Christ in man, enables Him to carry His redeeming cross through the world to the end of time. 

Suffering contains in itself that Simon gave: our mind and body, frustration, and identification with someone else.  That last is the germ of our own salvation, that way to transform the self-pity that is the danger in all suffering into the love of other people which reaches out a hand to Christ, and saves us.

We do not look for Christ only in saints; we look for Him, perceive Him by faith, and try to help Him, most of all in sinners.  It is in sinners that Christ suffers most today, in them that His need is most urgent.” (Caryll Houselander) 

                Art: Ang Kiukok- Philippines

PATRONESS OF DIABETICS

 

 

Our next saint, who suffered greatly in her lifetime was ST. PAULINE of the AGONIZING HEART of JESUS, C.I.I.C. She was born Amabile Lucia Visintainer on December 16, 1865, the second daughter of Antonio Napoleone Visintainer and Anna Pianezzer in the town of Vigolo Vattaro, then in the County of Tyrol, part of Austro-Hungary, now in Italy. Her ancestors were Germanic, who had settled in the region of Vigolo Vattaro as early as 1491, their surname being originally spelled Wiesenteiner.

Like many others in the area, the Visintainers  were very poor  practicing Catholics. In September 1875, the family, along with a hundred other people of the town, about a fifth of its population, emigrated to the State of Santa Catarina in Brazil, where they founded the village of Vigolo, now part of Nova Trento.

Amabile was known even at a youthful age for her piety and charity. From an early age she spoke of giving her life to God. While she had very little education, she had a great love for the Catholic faith and for the suffering and poor. After receiving her First Communion at about age 12, she began to participate in the life of the local parish, teaching catechism to children, visiting the sick and cleaning the local chapel.

On 12 July 1890, Amabile  and her friend, Virginia Rosa Nicolodi, under the spiritual direction of a Jesuit priest, Luigi Rossi, committed their lives to religious service, under Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. They began by caring for a woman suffering from terminal cancer, in a small house which was donated to the small community and the young girls began a schedule of religious living. After the woman's death the following year, they were joined by a third friend, Teresa Anna Maule.

In 1895, seeing the need for a more formal and secure organization of the young women coming to them, it was decided they should  establish a religious congregation called the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, which was approved by José de Camargo Barros, Bishop of Curitiba.

 In December of that same year, the founding trio took religious vows. Amabile took the religious name by which she is now known. The congregation, Brazil's first locally founded, grew quickly throughout the state, and in 1903  Sister Pauline was elected their Superior General for life. She moved from Nova Trento to Ipiranga, São Paulo, where she opened a convent of the congregation in order to take care of orphans, the children of former slaves.  Slavery having been ended by the Empire of Brazil only in 1888, the aged slaves were left to die because they could no longer work.

In 1909 Sistere Pauline was removed from her position as Superior General by Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, Archbishop of São Paulo, following a series of disputes within the congregation. She was sent to work with the sick at the Santa Casa and the elderly of the Hospice of St. Vincent de Paul at Bragança Paulista, without being able to assume an active role in her own congregation. She spent her spare time praying in support of the congregation. 

In 1918, with the permission of Archbishop Duarte, she was brought back by the Superior General, Vicência Teodora, to live at the General Motherhouse of the congregation at Ipiranga, where she would remain until her death. 

Sister Pauline's health began a long, slow decline in 1938, as she fought a losing battle with diabetes. In two operations, first her middle finger and then her right arm were amputated. She spent the last months of her life totally blind. On 9 July 1942 she died with the last words, "God's will be done".

Sister Pauline was acknowledged as the "Venerable Mother Foundress", when the Decree of Praise was granted by Pope Pius XI on 19 May 1933 to the Congregation of the Little Sisters, establishing it as one of pontifical right.

 She was the first Brazilian to be proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church when she was canonized on May 19, 2002, by Pope St. John Paul II. She is the  patroness of diabetics.  Her feast day is July 9. 

Shrine of St. Paulina, Nova Trento, Brazil