CATHOLIC NOBLE PRIZE WINNER- 2023

This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature goes to a Norwegian novelist and playwright who became a Catholic later in life (2012). JON FOSSE, while unknown outside Europe, was selected for his wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations, "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable."   The Nobel committee called him “one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world.” His works have been translated into over 50 languages.

It was a series of novels that Jon Fosse began writing after his conversion that brought him to the attention of readers in the English-speaking world.

In regards to his conversion, Jon Fosse told a New Yorker interviewer:

I had a kind of religious turn in my life that had to do with entering this unknown. I was an atheist, but I couldn’t explain what happened when I wrote, what made it happen. Where does it come from? I couldn’t answer it. You can always explain the brain in a scientific way, but you can’t catch the light, or the spirit, of it. It’s something else."

He also credits his conversion to Catholicism with helping him in his struggles with alcoholism and anxiety.

Jon Fosse was born in 1959 in Haugesund, Norway, and grew up in Strandebarm. His family were Quakers and Pietists,  which he credits with shaping his spiritual views.  A serious accident at age seven brought him close to death. This experience significantly influenced his writing in adulthood. He started writing around the age of twelve, despite his claims that he was not very concerned with books and much of his teenage writing practice involved creating his own lyrics for musical pieces.

He was interested in becoming a rock guitarist, but once he began to dedicate more time to writing, he gave up his musical ambitions.  He gained a master's degree in comparative literature in 1987 from the University of Bergen. 

Gregory Wolfe, the publisher and editor of the imprint Slant Books wrote: (as told to Aleteia):

Jon Fosse is a highly deserving Nobel laureate in literature. While he has been a widely produced playwright, his renown has spread in recent years through his fiction, including the masterful Septology. While his style may not be to everyone’s taste, it is not because he is intellectual or political. In fact, Fosse’s prose has been compared to liturgy: it uses a lot of simple words and images and repetition to evoke memory, longing, and a spiritual search. And indeed as a convert to the Catholic Church he includes prayer directly into stories. Readers willing to accept the brief “learning curve” of adjusting to his narrative style will be well rewarded by a writer of an almost mystical sensibility.

Septology is a series of  seven novels about  the aging painter Asle, a widower, who over the course of seven days tries to make sense of religion, identity, art, and family life, with strong autobiographical undercurrents, including a literary tribute to Jon ’s late first wife and his own work as a painter. The daring work is written as one extraordinarily long run-on sentence. “You don’t read my books for the plots,” Fosse once told an interviewer. 

He refers to his writing style as “slow prose” and as “mystical realism.” Jon Fosse is the second Norwegian Catholic to win the Prize for Literature, the first being (one of my favorite authors), SIGRID UNDSET.

VALIANT WOMEN IN WAR

 

                    The Deluge  -   Winifred Margaret Knights-  British (d.1947) 

 

Months ago, when addressing of the mess in the Ukraine, Pope Francis spoke of the plight of the women who carry so much of the burden of war:  keeping family safe while the father is fighting, fleeing with children. His words can certainly be applied to the present mess in Israel/Palestine.

 “For women of this generation, who have lived through past wars, it must be unbearable to see what has happened and is happening...

 There is a fundamental need to change, following the lessons on peace taught by Jesus and “the saints of every age, who make humanity grow through the witness of a life spent in the service of God and neighbor.

 But it is also the school of innumerable women who have cultivated and nurtured life; of women who have cared for fragility, who have healed wounds, who have healed the human and social wounds; of women who have dedicated mind and heart to the education of new generations.”

ANOTHER PRAYER

 

 

PRAYER FOR PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND

        Mary Queen of Peace Icon written by Father Richard G. Cannuli, OSA, MFA

 

Queen of peace, Chosen daughter of a land still devastated by wars, hatred and violence.

We confidently address our plea to you: Do not allow Jesus to cry at the sight of the Holy City which did not understand the gift of peace may, once again, fall into indifference and political calculation.

Look at the afflictions of so many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, victims of destructive energies that are blind and without a future. Inspire ways of dialogue, a vigorous will in solving problems and a collaboration of certain hope.

Don’t let us ever to get used to oppression, to consider the struggles as inevitable and the victims they produce as collateral.

Make sure that the logic of aggression does not prevail over good will and that the solution of many problems is not considered impossible.

Just like with Your prayer in the midst of the Disciples on Pentecost, obtain from the Almighty that situations, even if apparently insurmountable in the Holy Land, find ways of happy solution.     AMEN.

           Fernando Cardinal Filoni  (Grand Master of the Holv Sepulchre of Jerusalem)

Note on Icon:  The icon, "Mary Queen of Peace," was written because all Christians and Muslims, especially in the Middle East, venerate Mary (Maryām‎), the mother of Jesus.  She is considered one of the most righteous and greatest women in the Islamic religion.  She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran, and her names appears more often in the Quran than in the New Testament.      (Villanova University)

 

PEACE FOR ALL

 

Painting- Yahon Wang, age 17

Pope Francis’ Prayer for Peace

Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!

We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried… But our efforts have been in vain.

Now, Lord, come to our aid! Grant us peace, teach us peace; guide our steps in the way of peace. Open our eyes and our hearts, and give us the courage to say: "Never again war!"; "With war everything is lost". Instill in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace.

Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love, you created us and you call us to live as brothers and sisters. Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness.

Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words "division", "hatred" and "war" be banished from the heart of every man and woman. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Renew our hearts and minds, so that the word which always brings us together will be "brother", and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam!

Amen.

RARE BUTTERFLIES IN OUR ISLANDS

 

In 1998, the ISLAND MARBLE (Euchloe ausonides insulanus), thought to be extinct since 1908, was discovered during a prairie butterfly survey at American Camp on San Juan Island. The only known specimens had previously been found on Vancouver Island and Gabriola Island in British Columbia. Scientists now believe American Camp, along with scattered locations on San Juan and Lopez islands, to be the only viable population in the world. This finding is based on multiple studies and monitoring since 2008. 

Scientists believe there are only about 200 of these butterflies left in the wild.

The Island Marble  does not migrate and is only known to now be found only in our San Juan Islands. It lives its entire life cycle in upland prairie-like habitat, but prairies, like the butterfly itself are becoming rarer and rarer. It is also found in sand dunes or coastal lagoon habitat.

The Island Marble’s wings have a fascinating color scheme of marbled green and white. It feeds on the flowers of  wild mustard. It has a wingspan of between 1.5 and 2 inches, and the caterpillar is about 3/4 of an inch long. It is green or blue-gray and dotted in black with white with yellow stripes down its back and sides. The marble butterfly can be confused it with the more common Cabbage White, which is mostly white with a yellow underside and feeds on the same plants.

After their long overwinter, the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis but only fly for 6-9 days, which means, the butterflies spend their time feeding, finding their mates to fertilize eggs, and then laying the eggs of the next generation.

 It will lay its eggs on two non-native mustards, field mustard (Brassica rapa) and tumble mustard (Sisymbrium altissimum). Virginia pepperweed (Lepidium virignicum) is the only native plant they will successfully lay eggs on.

The park has established a captive breeding program at American Camp where butterflies are reared and then reintroduced into the prairies. It is approximated that only 5% of eggs laid each year will survive to become adult butterflies. And yet the discovery of this lovely butterfly is a symbol of hope in a world where so many species are disappearing.

 Another butterfly found in our islands, which is not as rare as the Island Marble, but is considered  regionally rare, is the imperiled PROPERTIUS DUSKYWING (Erynnis propertius), a chocolate-brown skipper found only on the Pacific Coast of North America. Most of the Duskywings in Washington state are found in San Juan County, principally on San Juan Island. It is classified as a state Species of Greatest Conservation Concern.

The Duskywing is the only animal species that cannot survive without Garry Oak trees. Adult butterflies, which emerge in May, mate around oak trees and lay their eggs on the leaves. The caterpillars then roll themselves up in leaves to pupate. The leaves fall to the ground in the autumn with the pupae, still rolled up inside, stay dry and safe through winter, awaiting spring.

Duskywings are threatened by climate change and the loss of Garry Oaks, which is expected to shrink even more over the next century. Unlike the Island Marble, the Duskywing does not limit its food supply and feeds on many varieties of flowers.

 Several dozen old oaks remain at Mount Young (elevation of 650'), where they support most of the island’s Duskywing population. A few Duskywings have been seen on the south of Turtleback Mt. on Orcas Island. While the major part of the San Juan Island Duskywing population is still likely to be in the National Park, small numbers of these butterflies may establish in Garry Oaks elsewhere on the island, and care should be taken not to disturb fallen oak leaves until June.  Burning, and bagging leaves are to be avoided, as well as any spraying near the oaks.

 

SWISS CONNECTIONS

 

Father introduced me to a mystic I had heard of but never looked into- I think mainly because her books are out of reach  in cost.

SISTER MARY OF THE TRINITY (Luisa Jaques) was born in 1901 in South Africa, where her father was a Protestant pastor and founder of missions in Pretoria and Johannesburg in the midst of the Second Boer War.

Her mother died in childbirth, and Louise was raised in Switzerland, her family’s country of origin, with her two elder sisters, by an aunt whom she calls her "little mother". Luisa completed her schooling in the summer of 1917 without a state certificate, as her education had been limited to private schools. She matured to be a subtle and highly sensitive person with lasting health problems caused by a weak lung.

 At the end of 1917, the sixteen-year-old Luisa took up her first job as a secretary with a socially and politically committed couple named Horber, who helped organize the founding of a "Swiss Federation for Transitional Reforms" in the Swiss post-war period. Weakened by anemia and with the beginnings of tuberculosis, the following year Luisa went for treatment at the sanatorium "L'Espérance" in Leysin, run by a Dr. Olivier. There she made the acquaintance of Bluette de Blaireville, who became her lifelong friend. She also met, among others, Adrienne von Speyr, cousin of Dr. Olivier and a classmate of Bluette..

After her dismissal in May 1919, Luisa took a short-term job as an accountant with a notary in Lausanne. In 1920/21, she took care of her elderly and ailing aunt Alice. In March 1924 she again found work as a typist with the theologian and later pastor Lydia von Auw, a friend of her family. An acute hemorrhage shortly after she started work resulted in her being referred to the "Béthanie" house in Lausanne, run by deaconesses, for tuberculin treatment.

 Repeated disappointments at work, a failed relationship with a married man, and great loneliness due to her beloved family being so far away, brought her, at the age of twenty-five to not understanding the meaning of life and to make the bitter pronouncement: “There is not God”.

During a stay with her friend Bluette, on the night of February 13/14 she had a mystical experience – a kind of vision of a religious woman wearing a deep brown garment, belted with a cord – which gave her the inner certainty that she must enter a contemplative order.

 From this moment on she was reborn in an “irresistible attraction” to the cloister, and an ardent desire to receive the Eucharist. Thus began the journey that would lead her into the Catholic Church.

Having moved to Milan in October 1926 because of a job, Luisa decided, through the mediation of a priest, to take catechism classes with the Sisters "Nostra Signora del Cenacolo" in that city. Mother Reggio prepared her for baptism.

Although she was invited several times by her father to South Africa and by her sister Alice to America, she decided to stay in Italy. A change in her job as a tutor and educator introduced her to the world of the Milanese aristocracy, particularly the family of Countess Agliardi. In this context, she completed a kind of Montessori training with Countess Borromeo, who was a sister of her new employer.

Amazingly she tried three orders in one  but through the help of Bluette, Luisa  met the community of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Mary, which she entered in 1931. There  she obtained a state diploma at the Teacher Training College. She then taught at the Catholic parochial school in Neuchâtel. In this religious community, which offered her the framework of solid intellectual and spiritual formation, she remained for a total of five years, twice renewing her temporary vows but leaving before final vows.

Due to her unquenched longing for a contemplative monastic life, she left the community in 1936, after having met in Neuchâtel the priest Maurice Zundel. He was known for his (then) controversial books of mystical theology.  He encouraged her to join the Poor Clares and from this point on, Father Zundel was her spiritual advisor.

On September 1, 1936 she joined the Poor Clares in Evian as a postulant, but remained only until April 10, 1937, when the mentally ill abbess dismissed her. After this upsetting convent experience, Louisa worked temporarily as a nanny in Lausanne with a working-class family which had six children, and then again with Countess Agliardi in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Her prospects for a convent life seemed to have disappeared.

Luisa decided to visit her family in South Africa, together with her sister Alice and her children, and arrived in Johannesburg on August 28, 1937, where she was reunited with her parents and siblings. Still uncertain about her future, she took up employment as a home teacher in various Jewish families over the next few months.

In 1938, motivated by reading the writings of  (St.) Charles de Foucauld, she decided to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land reaching Jerusalem. There she entered the convent of the Poor Clares on June 30. 

In the Poor Clare monastery in Jerusalem, Sr. Marie of the Trinity finally found refuge where God was awaiting her and an interior voice, the Lord Jesus. On August 28, 1939, she was clothed as Sr. Mary of the Trinity. Two years later she made an extraordinary vow of total devotion. In June 1942, typhus fever broke out in the convent. Sr. Maria died of it on June 25, 1942.

 She found direction in the day-to-day of a life offered up in in fraternal charity, silence, service. In His own time, the Lord Himself revealed its meaning: “You must forget yourself and discover My Voice” In obedience to her spiritual father, Sr. Marie wrote these “Notes”.

Through her confessor, Fr. Sylvère Van den Broeck, she was urged in the last two years of her life to put down in writing her vocational journey and also to record the words of the "inner voice" she heard. After her death, he published her writings. This edition of 1943, translated into various languages in the years that followed, brought about an unprecedented awareness and engagement with the spiritual content of these writings, especially in Italy through the work of the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land.

The works of Sister Mary of the Trinity have been published in French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Slovenian, Croatian, German, Arabic, Hungarian, Portuguese and English editions.

 This notebook, with the story of her conversion and vocation, has been published and translated in over seven languages.

In his preface to the French edition Hans Urs Von Balthasar emphasizes the main lines of her spirituality : listening to the interior voice of the Lord, profound awareness of the free will God allows his created beings in choosing to respond to him, and the Vow of Victimhood considered as “a high degree of availability and non-resistance to all God’s decisions” within a profound Eucharistic orientation.

 In her short life, she experienced much suffering, and one wonders how much joy, until her last few years. She is an example of fortitude and perseverance in one's call to the Lord.

Notes:

Adrienne von Speyr (d. 1967) was a Swiss Catholic convert, physician, mystic, and author of some sixty books of spirituality and theology.

 Father Maurice Zundel  (Swiss- d. 1975) was one of the great, if often-forgotten, theologians of the 20^th century. Sometimes student of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, he wrote various works of Catholic philosophy in conversation with existentialism, Protestantism, and personalism. This wide-ranging and erudite scholarship led soon-to-be-Saint Paul VI to call him “a mystical genius.”

Hans Urs von Balthasar ( d.1988) was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who is considered an important Catholic theologian of the 20th century. Pope  St. John Paul II announced his choice of Father Balthasar to become a cardinal, but he died shortly before the consistory.

ADORATION

 

 

In his recent trip to France (once called the daughter of the Church), the Holy Father urged the faithful to get back to adoration, and to use time with Jesus in the Eucharist to intercede for others. He said today “we have lost the meaning of adoration a little bit and we need to get it back”.

“One cannot know the Lord without the habit of adoring, of adoring in silence. I believe — if I am not mistaken — that this prayer of adoration is the least known among us; it is the one we engage in the least. To waste time — if I may say it — before the Lord, before the mystery of Jesus Christ. To adore, there in the silence, in the silence of adoration. He is the Lord and I adore Him.”

I can’t speak for the Church in France or other countries, but I do know there is a resurgence of Eucharist adoration in our country, from Hawaii to Connecticut.

More and more we see young priests and laity who go to frequent adoration. And statistics show that where there is Holy Adoration, there are vocations.

A new study shows that almost two-thirds of adult Catholics in the United States believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This is a significantly different result from the 2019 Pew Research study that suggested only one-third of adult Catholics in the U.S. believe in the Church’s teaching on the Blessed Sacrament. This study comes amid the second year of the U.S. bishops’ Eucharistic revival, which was launched in part because of the Pew Research poll. Could it be that people are waking up and listening to the Holy Spirit?

 It seems the Revival is making an impact as it stresses  Eucharistic devotion  by strengthening our liturgical life through the celebration of the Mass and Eucharistic adoration.

“So I recommend it to you – all these forms of prayer will be crowded with the faces of those whom Providence places on your path. You will bring with you their eyes, voices, and questions to the Eucharistic Table, before the tabernacle, or to the silence of your room, where the Father sees you.”