To Be Seen

To Be Seen

The neurologist pulled her chair around to face me. Then she gently told me that the difficulties I had been having writing equations on the blackboard and tying my shoes were not arthritis but the result of an incurable, progressive neurological disease. Oh.

I left her office feeling curiously relieved—grateful for the small mercies she offered to ease the symptoms, but thankful above all because she had so clearly seen my affliction. So often our sufferings go unseen by those around us. We fear, perhaps, that God does not see our struggles either.

But from the opening antiphon to the Gospel, all of today’s readings promise us otherwise. We are seen, we are known, and, even in the face of mortal danger, we are held close by God, who Isaiah tells us delights—exults!—in his people.

Unlike the heart-stricken father in John’s Gospel, I do not come to God these days seeking a miracle, or even signs and wonders. I come to see. And I come yearning to be seen.

St. Augustine said of the Eucharist: See who you are, become what you see. So I stand before the altar and see Christ lifted on the cross, suffering and fearing he was abandoned. I see who I am, suffering and afraid of what the future might hold—and know I am not alone. I hold out my hands and realize that I am seen in return, called forth from the depths of the netherworld, bound not only to the cross, but promised life. I am seen in my affliction. That is miracle enough, so I believe.

Michelle Francl-Donnay is a wife and mother, a professor of chemistry, and an adjunct scholar at the Vatican Observatory. She is author of Prayer: Biblical Wisdom for Seeking God in the Little Rock Scripture Study Alive in the Word series. michellefrancldonnay.com. 

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This reflection appeared in the March 2026 issue of Give Us This Day and is used with permission.

The reflection had its roots in the Entrance Antiphon: "As for me, I trust in the Lord. Let me be glad and rejoice in your mercy, for you have seen my affliction." The psalm for the day is the one that I could not stop running through my head the terrible night that Tom died. The dance of tears and joy, of fear and trust. And I kept thinking in the Gospel about the long walk home that the father in the Gospel had, not knowing whether his son lived, had his miracle been granted? Would he still have believed if his son had died?

Mary of Magdala Aflame

Happy Feast of Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles!

— Excerpt from Rejoice and Be Glad 2019 reflecting on John 20:11-18

St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene “the apostle to the apostles” because she was sent from the garden to tell the apostles the good news. Magdala means tower in Aramaic, and I find the image of Mary the Tower a potent complement to Peter the Rock. The church may be built on the rock of Peter, but Mary of Magdala ignited it with these words: “I have seen the Lord.”

Every time I hear this gospel I wonder what happened to Mary Magdalene next. Medieval legends say she retreated to pray in a cave in France, where she was fed by angels. The Orthodox Christian tradition places her with Mary, the Mother of God, in Ephesus.

“Go,” Jesus told Mary Magdalene in the garden. I doubt Jesus meant for her to take a walk and deliver his message to the disciples and then vanish. Poreuou, the Greek word translated in today’s gospel as “go,” carries the sense of heading out on a journey. Its ultimate root is “pierced through.” It is a call to reorder your life’s direction, to push a message out into the world despite barriers and with a piercing clarity. Go out, Jesus demands of Mary Magdalene, I want you to proclaim again and again, “I have seen the risen Lord.”

So I doubt Mary Magdalene stopped proclaiming the Good News when the disciples laughed at what they thought was nonsense, to quietly retire to a cave or a small house in Ephesus. I imagine her so aflame with the Gospel that wherever she went and whoever she met she could not help but deliver the message for all ages to come, “I have seen the risen Lord.” And I cannot imagine that Christ expects me to do anything less.

Taking Augustine for a bike ride

 

At a celebration of the Liturgy of the Word earlier this week, the presider mentioned that St. Augustine said you should live your life with your death always in front of you. 

These days I get from place to place by biking. I love its portability. I can park in my office, or in the rack just outside, not hunt for a spot in the parking lot or lug my stuff up or down the hill. Biking on the Main Line is, however, a memento mori. At every stop sign, for just a fraction of a second, my death flickers before me. 

I have safe routes to church and school and the local grocery store. I am careful. But I am amazed at the blatant disregard for stop signs, through which barrel huge black SUVs driven by mothers, bright blue Porsches, and silver BMWs piloted by men with more important things to do than stop. I presume Augustine got from place to place by walking, at least in his daily life, at a time when the dangers were horses and not horsepower under the hood.  But I live as Augustine would have it. Remembering that I am dust.

Salt and ashes

The images the prophet Jeremiah uses in today's readings are harsh: bushes that bear no fruit, lava wastes, fields sown with salt.  They feel all the more so to me after hiking through lava fields a few years ago, blackened, fissured swaths of land scoured clean of life winding through lush grasslands.  With no soil to hold the rocky surface in place, the gravel rolled under my feet, leaving me off balance, unstable, at risk.  The ground had been cooling since before I was born, yet I still burned my hand on steam roiling out a crack in the earth. Sulfurous mist swirled around the crater, eating away at skin and lungs.  I longed to dive into a pool of cool water.

I have tasted salt and ashes in my life, too, stumbling when I encounter uncertain ground, looking for life and breath in places where there was none. I have committed sins that created seemingly uncrossable fissures between me and those I love. Between me and God.  

Like the rich man in Luke's gospel, who begged Abraham for drop of water from Lazarus’ hand, I long for the cool sweetness of consolation.  Just a drop of holy water from a saint’s hand and all will be well, I think. But as a single torrential rain storm will not bring life back to the lava waste, neither is one drop enough to restore my soul, even from the hand of a saint.

Tolle lege, a voice called to St. Augustine in the garden one afternoon: take and read. “You have Moses and the prophets,” I hear Abraham say.  Meditate on God’s law day and night, urges the psalmist.  Let these streams of running water wear away the roughness of your stony heart.  Root yourself deeply in the rich soil of the prophets. The readings encourage me to pick up the Scriptures: Take and read! Read to go beyond what is presented to me at Mass, and read to actively seek out the Word.  Find ways to let scripture’s cool comfort wash over me day and night.

— Excerpted from Not By Bread Alone (2020), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

Column: Advent 2: O nata lux

I wrote the first draft of this while listening to Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, which includes a setting of the traditional hymn for the Tranfiguration, O nata lux, but which seemed as appropriate for Advent. It is, to quote a friend, an ineffable piece of music. You can listen here and if your week is anything like mine, do!

I recalled the Our Father in so many languages on the wall at Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I thought, too, of the mosque I visited in Abu Dhabi years ago where one gold splashed and white wall was covered with words, ninety-nine attributes of God:  the All Merciful, the Truth, the Maker of all things.  Peace.

A column for the first week of Advent which appeared at CatholicPhilly (along with some suggested materials for additional reflection) on 7 December 2016.

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What came to be
through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:3b-5

“And by light you mean photons, right?” asks the student in the first row. “Yes, I do.” At least in this context. There is always a bit of irony in these last classes of the semester. I’m lecturing about light as the winter darkness grows deeper. Or maybe not.

As I packed up to return to my office, the lines from the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel ran through my head, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” Chemists see light as active. It doesn’t just illuminate, driving away the darkness, it can fundamentally change what it touches. One molecule becomes another. Yet more wonderfully, once the light has soaked in, it can shine forth again, in new ways and new directions.

The Light has shone in the darkness, and we are fundamentally changed. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God. What’s more, we are called to be beacons of light: You are the light of the world.

We have been kindled, we hear in St. Matthew’s Gospel, not to be hidden under a bowl, or within the walls of our parish churches, but to shine forth, banishing the darkness around us.

Reflecting on these lines from John in his “City of God,” St. Augustine tells of St. Simplician, a late fourth century bishop of Milan, who recalled a pagan scholar once told him that the opening lines to John’s Gospel “should be written in letters of gold and hung up in all the churches in the most conspicuous place.” This is where our faith begins. In the darkness, yearning for light, life and God to come among us.

As Advent moves more deeply into the darkness, I imagine John’s words, written in letters of gold, shimmering on the walls of churches everywhere. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory … full of grace and truth.

I look for the Light dwelling among us, praying that it might change me; that I, too, might be aflame with the Word, filled with grace.

Column: Summer reading

Fra Angelico The Conversion of St. Augustine

If you haven't encountered Pope Benedict's school of prayer, a series of general audiences from 2011, I highly recommend browsing them.  A convenient list with links is here. So far my favorite is the one about summer reading, linked below.

At the moment I'm reading The Hopkins Manuscript an early SF novel reprinted by the delightfully elegant Persephone Press. What's on your summer reading list?

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly on 6 July 2015, check there for more resources related to this column.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. —John 1:1

Chris was curled up on the sofa, recovering from getting his wisdom teeth out and reading. “Why did you pick up that book?” I wondered aloud. Biographies and American history are not his usual fare and we are finally past the summer reading list stage in my house. “It’s the book for all the first year students next fall.” Ah, and since he will be a new student advisor, he thought he’d get on board, too.

Summer with its long light-filled days seems the perfect time for reading, even for those of us no longer bound to lists. Many communities, from colleges to cities to entire states, take up a single book to read. This year, Philadelphia read Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train.

Reading one book gives us common ground to start conversations. It also lets us travel to new places and hear new voices together. Reading can move us, even transform us.

In July of 386, St. Augustine was sitting in his garden in Milan. He was ill and torn by indecision. Should he continue to teach, or should he follow St. Anthony’s lead and abandon everything for the sake of the Gospel?

Then over the garden walls he heard the voices of children calling out, “Tolle, lege!” Take and read. Augustine walked over to where he’d left his copy of St. Paul’s letters, picked it up and opened it at random to the 13th chapter of the letter to the Romans and read, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And he did; he was baptized at the Easter Vigil the following spring.

This summer, my pastor, who is an Augustinian friar, invited us to “take and read,” to read one book from sacred Scripture from beginning to end. In the summer of 2011, Pope Benedict XVI, as part of his general audience comprising a “school of prayer,” made a similar summer reading suggestion, “to enjoy (the Bible) in a new way by reading some of its books straight through.”

My pastor proposed we try the book of Psalms, the 150 hymns and sacred poems the People of God have been praying for almost 3,000 years. In his remarks Pope Benedict recommended trying some of the lesser known books, even giving short teasers for the books of Tobit, Esther and Ruth. (Spoiler alert: he gives away the endings for all three!)

Whatever is on your summer reading list, stir in at least one by the best-selling author, God. May it move you, transform you and give you common ground with centuries of other faithful readers. Tolle, lege!

Augustine in weal and woe

Augustine giving the rule.  Detail, stained glass window.

Today is the Feast of St. Augustine, and for various reasons I couldn't be at Mass or morning prayer to celebrate with the Augustinian community.  I sat on the back steps and prayed the office, mostly sheltered from the rain that had just begun to fall.  I spent a bit of time reflecting on Augustine and his influence on my life, marveling a bit at how such connections seemingly breach the constraints of time.

Augustine has challenged me and comforted me.  He's been a source of consolation when faced with difficult questions.

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Photo is of stained glass window on the south wall of my parish church.

Feast of All Saints of the Order

The order in question would be the Order of St. Augustine, and today, the birthday of Augustine of Hippo, the Augustinians celebrate all the saints and blesseds of the Augustinian family.   In recent years, this day has also been one to pray for vocations to the Augustinian orders.



At Morning Prayer, we pray daily for vocations:

All glory and praise are yours
God of truth, light of our hearts,
for you guide your people
in the ways of holiness.

Help those who follow
in the footsteps of Augustine
to seek you through mutual love and worship
and to be servants of your Church
as examples that others may follow.

Enlighten men and women
to see the beauty of common life
in the spirit of Saint Augustine,
and strengthen them in your service
so that the work you have begun in them
may be brought to fulfillment.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

I'm not an Augustinian, but after praying the Office with them for more than a quarter century, I'm Augustinian.  I am grateful to all the friars over the years who have shown me, in the beauty of their common life, and in their worship, the ways of holiness.  I have been supported and strengthened in my own work by their steadfast prayer.

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For my take on what it means to be follow in the footsteps of Augustine, you could read what I wrote about Augustinians when Robin and I began our discussion of Marty Laird OSA's beautiful book, Into the Silent Land.

Photo is of Augustine giving the rule, the stained glass window on the north wall of the main sanctuary of my parish church.

Column: God pitches his tent within us

The root of tabernacle is the Latin for tent, tabernaculum , which derives from taberna, hut. The photo is of a stamp for making hosts found in Jerusalem, dating to the time of the Crusade (the hands are mine, reflected in the glass.)

This column appeared on CatholicPhilly.com, the Philadelphia Archdiocese's news portal on 24 July 2012. CatholicPhilly has launched a weekly electronic newsletter, to get it, sign-up here (link is at the end of the text).

Then He took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me. — Luke 22:19

“Is there anything I can bring you?” I asked my friend Maryann, who had been hospitalized without a chance to pack a thing and was now facing major surgery. “A scrunchy to keep the hair off my face?” “No problem.” She turned momentarily serious. “And the Eucharist?” Absolutely.

So this morning after Mass, with the blessing of the pastor, I retrieved a pyx from the sacristy, and in it placed a tiny fragment of the host consecrated just a few minutes before. Two of us went from the church to Bryn Mawr Hospital to bring Maryann word of our community’s earnest prayers for her, and Christ, cradled in our hands.

The custom of bringing the Eucharist to the sick and homebound is an ancient one. In the 2nd century, St. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, tells of the deacons who made arrangements to carry “the consecrated bread, wine and water” from the Eucharistic table to the absent.

It’s the original reason for having a tabernacle in churches, so that the Real Presence of Christ could be ready on a moment’s notice to be brought to those in need, day or night. And later, so that those in need could find Christ, and sit in His Presence, outside of the Mass.

The Mass is a sacrifice, inextricably wound into the Sacrifice made for us on Calvary. The Hebrew word used in the Old Testament for sacrifice, korban, comes from roots that mean “to draw near.”

I know that when I hear the words of consecration at Mass, what comes first to mind is the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, but the sacrifice Jesus made for us extends far beyond those moments, pivotal as they were in salvation history.

At the beginning of John’s Gospel, we hear that the Word became flesh and “pitched his tent among us” (Jn. 1:14). It’s a reminder that the entire Incarnation is one long sacrifice. The way in which God chose to “draw near” to His people is not restricted to Calvary or an upper room in first century Jerusalem, or in the present time, to the celebration of the Mass.

This Sacrament makes ever present to us God-in-the-flesh. So we pitch sacred tents in our churches, in tabernacles, so that Christ can dwell in our midst and we might draw near to Him.

God pitches his own tents as well. When I held up the host and said, “The Body of Christ,” I heard in Maryann’s firm “Amen!” an echo of St. Augustine’s exhortation: “to that which you are, answer, ‘Amen!’ … Become what you receive.”

Here, in my hands, is Christ. Here, in your hands, is Christ. Here, in this hospital bed, lies Christ. What was sacrificed on the altar this morning, continues to draw us near, His tent pitched within each of us, present at the table and not.

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Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. — From St. Patrick’s Breastplate

Column: Out of the depths

The venerable Catholic Standard & Times' last issue was published at the beginning of June, and with it, perforce, my last column. (You can read about the challenges the paper faced here.) The CatholicPhilly web site continues the paper's mission to inform Philly area Catholics about what is going on in the Church local and global. My next column, intended for the Standard's July issue is posted there, and God willing, I will continue to write regular reflections for them.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
Lord, hear my voice! — Psalm 130:1

I huddled in my sweatshirt in the garden of my tiny hermitage, as the dawn cautiously crept over the Santa Lucia Mountains behind me. Steam swirled over the cup of tea cradled in my hands, a tiny mirror of the roiling mass of gray fog that lay before me, cupped in the basin formed by cliffs that dropped a precipitous 1,400 feet down to the Pacific.

Echoes of the opening words of the final psalm from last night’s prayer rose up from the mist, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord ….” Suddenly I had a sense of just how deep are the depths that stretch out before me, down to the water, and beneath — almost 7,000 feet.

That God could hear my voice from such a distance, could find me in the darkness that holds sway so deep in the abyss, hidden even from the rising sun, took my breath away.

In his commentary on this psalm, St. Augustine reassures us that God’s ear is truly in the hearts of those who pray. God is never far from us in these interior depths, even in the darkest of spaces and times. Still, he says, “we ought to understand from what deep we cry unto the Lord.”

From my aerie, I can barely hear the crash of the waves on the rocks a quarter mile below me. Yet Augustine says that our prayers can penetrate anything, burst through any barrier, pierce depths of sin or despair greater than any I can imagine. Somehow God, in His mercy, lends His strength to my voice.

Part of what gives a laser beam its ability to penetrate unlikely targets is the way in which the waves of light are pulled into step with each other. The psalmist sings of God’s mercy and redemption, which similarly pulls us into step with Him, giving a sharp strength to our pleas. Much like the photons in the laser, we don’t fall into step by what we do, but by how we are created and by the community in which we dwell.

The psalmist counts on this strength, longs for it, as for the dawn: “My soul is longing for the Lord more than those who watch for daybreak.” In these days where I can have light with the flick of a finger, I admit that I sometimes greet dawn with a groan, rather than waiting gratefully upon a light that is not wrung from hard-hewn wood or precious pressed oil, as my great-grandmother did.

So in these days of retreat, I am surprised to find myself aligned with the psalmist, a dawn-watcher. I am drawn from my bed before sunrise, awakened not by the monastery bells, but by a longing to join my voice to the psalms arising from the depths of our tradition, to offer my very self to God’s Being. As Robert Alter’s powerfully spare translation of this line cries, “My being for the Master — more than the dawn-watchers watch for the dawn.”


In the chapel, a monk in his white habit stands at the ambo for the first reading, a glimmer of light against the profound darkness of the sanctuary. Our voices, still creaky from the night’s silence, slowly find their way into step with each other, as we pour psalm after psalm into the abyss before us.

The second reading follows and I look up to find that the dawn has come, the walls of the sanctuary glow with its warmth, the cross hidden from sight moments before is now clearly visible before us. From the depths I can see what my being longs for more than the dawn — my God.

Lord, hearken to me, and have mercy on me, O Lord my God, at once light of the blind and light of those who see, so too, strength of the weak and strength of those who are strong. Give ear to my soul. Hear me as I cry out of the depths. Amen. — St. Augustine in The Confessions

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The photos are from the back of my hermitage, just after dawn. For a photo of the chapel rotunda in the brilliant light of day - see this photo at Flickr.

Via Crucis VI: Become what you seek.

Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Hands reach out, seeking the face of God, holding it tenderly within hand and heart. Become what you seek.

St. Augustine on the Eucharist: "You are saying "Amen" to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. When you hear "The body of Christ", you reply "Amen." Be a member of Christ's body, then, so that your "Amen" may ring true! ... Be what you see; receive what you are."

What am I reaching for outside of Mass? Does it ring true with what I reach for at the Eucharistic liturgy?

Become what you receive.

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A study for the sixth station of the cross by Henri Matisse for the Chapel of the Rosary.

Phaith: Tending to a prayer life

My next Spiritual Fitness column is up at Phaith. Origen's discourse on spherical angels (for whom the current debates on kneeling/standing posture are moot, as they have no knees) can be found here.

“No more clutter. Guaranteed!” “Streamline your routine: 30 minutes a day to a tidier home” Waiting in line at the grocery store, I sometimes imagine the magazines are jumping up and down like overexcited students, sure they know the answers. Call on me and I can tell you how to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes, with elegant napkins and candles. No, no, read me and you’ll never misplace the choral schedule again!

Facing going home to the semi-permanent mound of sneakers by the garage door and another taco dinner, I too often succumb to those bright promises and add a magazine or two to my cart — with predictable results. The sneakers still lurk just outside the kitchen, and while I can get dinner on the table in under an hour, the table decor is decidedly not a candidate for a magazine spread, except as a “before” picture.

Last weekend I was browsing my shelves at home, looking for some resources for the students in my course on contemplation. As I pulled books on prayer and meditation for various of their final projects, I found myself paging through a couple and wondering if I might find some helpful hints for my own current prayer dilemma in them. Or, like a sure solution for the clutter that comes with living with three guys who wear size 11 sneakers, am I looking for something that doesn’t exist?

You can read the rest here.

The illustration is of St. Augustine...reading. Did he succumb to the clamoring magazines?

Column: Expansive blessings

I really was terrified of choking on a fish bone when I was little. I ate fish reluctantly in those days and only once it had been smothered in bright orange Kraft French dressing.

The spelling of Blaise here is not the spelling that is used in either Butler's lives on the saints (I have all 5 volumes on my iPad, is that at all eccentric?) or in the Roman breviary - both of which use "Blase"...

This column appeared in the February 2012 issue of the Catholic Standard & Times.

With the crossed candles touched to the throat of each person, the celebrant says immediately: Through the intercession of Saint Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness. — From the Book of Blessings

Difficult to come by in my tiny landlocked Midwest town, and not within the grocery budget when it was, fresh fish was not often on the menu when I was a young girl. Instead Friday dinners alternated between tuna casseroles and macaroni and cheese. My mother, raised on the East Coast, missed fresh fish, and she couldn't figure out why I didn't share her enthusiasm when it made a rare appearance on our table. For this, I blame St. Blaise.

My childhood memories of the feast of St. Blaise are ones of damp wool and beeswax, of a warmly lit church and cold dark winds that sullenly shook the windows, hoping to find a way in. But it was the story of the fishbone that really stuck.

Little is known of St. Blaise's life, he was perhaps the bishop of Sebaste in the 4th century, who died a martyr for the faith. The story of St. Blaise that captured my imagination was of a mother brought her son to the bishop with a fish bone stuck in his throat. St. Blaise prayed and the young boy was healed.

When I was five, the enduring message of the story of St. Blaise (alas) seemed to be, "watch out for bones when you eat fish." Almost five decades later, it reminds me that the stories we tell of the saints and blesseds have an enduring power to them, a way of engaging our imaginations. St. Augustine wrote that we remember the particular deeds of the saints and martyrs "to excite us to imitate them and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers."

St. Augustine's commentary challenges me to think beyond the assistance that St. Blaise may offer me or what merits he might be inclined to share with me, and to wonder in what way a suburban mother of teen-agers might be moved to imitate a 4th century bishop. What is there in St. Blaise's life that could excite me to similar feats of virtue?

In the many miracle tales told of St. Blaise, from the healing of the young boy to the return of a widow's stolen pig, he looks for help from God not only for the situation in front of him, but for the broader world. His prayers were always simultaneously for the here and now and the people of God in difficulties in every place and time. I'm quick to pray for the safety of my children each night, but do I remember to pray for other mothers' children? In asking for healing for my father, do I think to pray for the elderly who suffer with chronic pain?

I still get my throat blessed each February 3rd. No longer terrified of choking on a fish bone -- hoping that St. Blaise would notice the prayers of one small girl in a town far away in time and space — I find now in the crossed candles and Triune blessing more than an assurance that God is concerned with our worries (even if they are as irrational as mine over stray fish bones). God's grace spills over, reaching beyond the needs of one to all His people until the end of time.

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Hear, O Lord, the supplications your people make,
under the patronage of the martyr Saint Blaise,
and grant that they may rejoice in peace in this present life,
and find help for life eternal. Amen. – From the closing prayer for the feast of St. Blaise.

Column: A fierce and wondrous light

The photo was taken last winter at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. There is an article in this weekend's NY Times on making an Ignatian retreat at Wernersville. If you've wondered about what it might be like to go on such a retreat, this is a graceful, albeit slightly quirky (sphinxiness?), description of a first time retreat. And I added a new word to my vocabulary, adytum.

I can relate to her description of showing up a bit late and not knowing where to go. The very first time I went on retreat at Wernersville (many years back) I arranged to arrive a day late. My bag and I wandered the halls (without noticing the posted list) until I ran into a random retreatant and asked for help. He kindly pointed out the list and suggested I go to my room. Where a delightful note from my director for the week awaited me.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times, January 2012

He has spoken to us through the Son,
whom he made heir of all things
and through whom he created the universe,
who is the refulgence of his glory,
the very imprint of his being,
and who sustains all things by his mighty word. Hebrews 1:2b-3a

A virtual jungle of tropical plants lines the south wall of my family room. Earlier this week, as I made room for the family crèche on the windowsill, I realized that every plant had turned its leaves until they were plastered to the window, their faces toward the sun, hungry for whatever light they can find in these short and dim days.

Yesterday, listening to the words of the second reading at Christmas Mass I was struck by the this line in Hebrews, Christ is the refulgence — the shining radiance — of God’s glory. The Latin, refulgere, implies more than just a light that shines forth brightly; this is a light that shines fiercely and intently. And like my plants, this is a light we hunger for; this is the Light that sustains us.

Standing to the side at the cantor’s stand, I could see that hunger in the faces of those who came to receive Christ in the Eucharist. The grandparents holding hopeful grandchildren in their arms, the convert received into the Church last Easter still beaming with joy, the exhausted mothers bent over holding the hands of toddlers determined to walk the aisle on their own two feet, the new widow veiled in grief, all reaching out for that fierce Light that sustains us in all things.

John’s Gospel begins with the Word resounding through the chaos, creating the heavens and the earth. But in a homily on the letter to the Hebrews, St. John Chrysostom reminds us that the Word did not cease to speak, “He holds together what would fall to pieces, for to hold the world together is no less than to make it, but even greater.” Even the discordant pieces we cannot imagine being part of the whole are held in that Light and fastened together. Proof, says John Chrysostom, of God’s “exceeding power,” of Christ’s refulgence.

I’m always tempted in the days after Christmas to give over waiting, to be done with watching. But this ancient homily reminds me that just as the Word continues to sustain what He brought into being, the end of Advent does not bring an end to being attentive to where the Light is, to where I should turn my face, for what I should be reaching.

For the next few weeks the manger scene sits among the plants on the window ledge. Each morning as I drink my tea, I contemplate the infant in the crib, brushed by the light that day by day grows in intensity. I wonder what happened to the shepherds who saw the glory of God around them and went to seek the child in the manger. Such an outpouring of Light, such a Word spoken could not have left them unchanged.

And I wonder what will God’s exceeding power make of me in the coming year? What fragmented parts will be fastened together? I hear the familiar words of St. Augustine, “become what you receive” and I know where to look for that fiercely wondrous and sustaining Light.

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Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not
A lightning of fire hard-hurled.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., from The Wreck of the Deutschland

Watching still

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. Is 30:15

"Though Advent’s expectant hush has passed, St. Augustine reminds us not to give over that sense of quiet and stillness just yet: “See what God became for your sake; learn the lesson of such great lowliness, learn it even from a teacher not yet able to speak. …for your sake your Creator lay speechless, unable even to call his mother by her name.” As I look toward Ordinary Time and the start of the next semester, I am tempted to move on to Christ preaching and teaching and healing, to my life packed with the practical and engrossing. Isaiah and Augustine remind me not to rush on, to remain engaged with the lessons of the infant. To experience again being unformed, speechless, of necessity trusting that what I need will be given. To grow slowly, to watch the child to see the signs of what He will become." — from my Christmas reflection of 2009

Today starts nine months of sabbatical leave, of time for writing and reflection, a time for rest and growth. I'm tempted to dive into the projects that hang (some of them literally) enticingly on the walls of my office and mind, but am reminded by this passage to start slowly, to learn the lessons of the child in the crib. As yet wordless...

Column: Flustered for joy

I have very vivid memories of the tailored, lined pink tweed coats, and of the sled ride to Mass, but couldn't precisely place the year. A search of the Chicago Tribune archives turned up the story of the surprise Easter snow storm. My mother, tucked away in the basement sewing would have had no idea that snow was falling on her Easter parade.

Augustine's commentary was (and is) truly consoling, I often imagine how difficult those early days must have been for the disciples. Could they believe their eyes?

The full quote from Martin Laird, OSA is from Into the Silent Land:

"This is why most people don't stick with a contemplative discipline for very long; we have all heard all sorts of talk about contemplation bringing inner peace but when we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary, not snorting of lines of euphoric peace."

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 4 May 2011.

He himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you!” In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, “Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?” — Lk. 24: 36b-38


“The weather bureau reported itself at a loss to account for the sudden snowfall….” read the article in the Chicago Tribune on Easter Monday 1964. Easter that year had dawned on an unexpectedly snowy landscape. My mother, seven months pregnant, had been up all Holy Saturday night, putting the finishing touches on our Easter outfits. She’d heard the wind howling, but hadn’t realized it was a near blizzard outside.

I still remember my mother’s insistence that, despite the bitter weather, we would wear the new spring coats she’d spent all night finishing, blue tweed for my brother, pink for the girls. My father, knowing he was outmatched, bundled the three of us up in a blanket, put us on the sled and towed us through 10 inches of snow to St. Luke’s for Easter Mass. It may have looked like winter, but the springing to life of Easter was not to be so easily thwarted.

In retrospect, I wonder if it was that early Easter of contradictions that set the tone for later Easters. Easter is a feast that often leaves me feeling like the disciples in this scene from Luke, frightened by the sudden appearance of the risen Jesus, while simultaneously trying to grasp His joyous greeting, “Peace be with you!”

Two decades after that memorable surprise Easter snowstorm, my celebration of Easter was once again paradoxical. I spent Easter morning eating brunch in a local hotel where the noise of families celebrating in their Easter finery burbled merrily around me, and Easter afternoon in the hush of a funeral home greeting mourners at my husband’s wake.

St. Augustine, reflecting on how the disciples faced the reality of the resurrection, well captures these contradictory emotions, “they were still flustered for joy; they were rejoicing and doubting at the same time.” I struggled that Easter, and struggle still, to reconcile my own grief at Tom’s loss with my joy for him, now at rest in God. So I find Augustine’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment of the tumultuous reactions of the disciples in the aftermath of the resurrection to be consoling.

In fact, Augustine notes, within this swirling chaos is an opportunity for grace. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were also troubled, and poured forth their confusion to a Christ they could not recognize and in “the depth of their despair, all unwitting, they showed the doctor their wounds.” Even if I could not fully comprehend Christ resurrected in my life at such a moment, Christ could yet work on the wounds that my very struggle to grasp the realities revealed.

Sixteen hundred years later, Augustinian Father Martin Laird echoes Augustine’s wisdom to those seeking to find Christ’s “Peace be with you!” in prayer and contemplation: “When we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary...” The resurrection does not obliterate the pain of Christ’s passion, or of our own travails. Instead, like the disciples in the upper room, and on the road to Emmaus, it is a place where those of us who are flustered by joy in sorrow, who are simultaneously mourning and rejoicing, meet Christ. It is the place where Christ works within us.

Even in their fullness, the first disciples’ lives would be marked by contradiction and chaos. Nourished by joy, filled with grace, nevertheless they would be tried by fire. Perhaps Easter snowstorms shouldn’t be so unexpected after all.

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All-powerful God, help us to proclaim the power of the Lord’s resurrection. May we who accept this sign of the love of Christ come to share the eternal life he reveals. Amen. — From the Opening Prayer for Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

Podcast: Episode 7 Christmas, Through the Cross, Joy

We're enraptured by the gentle baby, not to mention the angels singing in the heavens and the wise men bearing gifts, but do we really grasp the enormity of this first sacrifice, where God pitches His tent among us? One Christmas, an elegant marble carving of Mary holding the infant Jesus in her arms as they flee for their lives resting for a moment on the altar brought into sharp relief for me the connection between the Nativity and the Cross.

Podcast: Episode 6 O Antiphons

O Wisdom! O Lord of Light! O King of the Nations! Since at least the 12th century the magnificent “O antiphons” have traditionally preceded the chanting of the Magnificat at Evening Prayer on the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve. The antiphons in the Liturgy of the Hours are like keys to the psalms and canticles; each one opens a door into a slightly different place in its corresponding text. But the “O antiphons” are far more to me than a familiar litany of titles for the Messiah. As these antiphons slowly unfold in the last days before Christmas, I find in them both invitation and challenge.

The illustration is a mash-up of a photo of a stained glass window at my parish church with a sketch from an illuminated manuscript I was working on.

Column: If you would, you could become all flame

This snippet from Emily Dickinson, which I found after the piece was written, is not a bad summary of my sense of the light:

By a departing light
We see acuter, quite,
Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight
And decks the rays.

The light at this time of year always seems extraordinary to me, revealing much that is hidden.

The story of Abba Joseph in its full form is here. Or if you can get your hands on the latest issue of Dappled Things, read Sabrina Vourvoulias' Poem with a line from the Desert Fathers which takes its breath from the same story. Alas, it's not online....you need to find/order a paper copy!


This reflection appeared as part of the Catholic Standard & Times' Advent series on 16 December 2010.

Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. — Isaiah 8:23a, 9:2


In the last six weeks I’ve been half way round the world and back again. The trip was amazing. I took walks in the jungle where lizards the size of cats slunk liquidly down the path ahead of me and macaques hid among the trees. The jet lag was brutal. I crossed 12 time zones. Twice. For several weeks my body and the sun disagreed seriously about what time it ought to be. My perceptions of day and night, light and darkness, were thoroughly muddled.

The internal and external clocks finally realigned, but something still seemed amiss. I finally realized it was the light. At the equator, the sun soared high in the sky. The ground lay unshadowed at noon, the dawn was a quick dash from darkness to full light. Here the morning light lingers, and even at noon, the sun hangs low in the sky, barely skimming the tops of the trees. In this winter half-light, I’m vaguely aware of the possibilities, aware there could be more.

This is an unrushed light, one that lingers in space as well as time — tracing its way through miles more atmosphere than it will on the sharp edge of summer. It is a paradoxical light; despite its dimness, it reveals rather than obscures. The few leaves that remain on the trees appear lit from within. The stained glass windows in the small chapel glow in the early morning light, making the very air luminous. This gentle light sets the world afire.

Writing on the psalms, St. Augustine reminds us of our destiny — to be alight: “[O]ur light does not come from ourselves, it is you, Lord who will light my lamp.” Like the glowing leaves, what sets us alight is not anything within ourselves, but the Light that is gradually dawning in these Advent days.

We are poised at the point in the year where the darkness will cease to extend its reach, the days will grow longer. What might we do with the light we are about to be granted? Evelyn Underhill, an early 20th century English spiritual writer, echoes Augustine along with some blunt advice: “Ye are the light of the world — but only because you are enkindled, made radiant by the Light of the world. And being kindled, we have got to get on with it, be useful.”

This time of year where light and darkness ebb and flow in the stillness is beautiful, but there is an insistent edge to it. As tempting as it is to hunker down, to drowse in the half-light, we know there is more to come. In our memories of summer we’ve been given the measure of the brighter days to come.

We’re almost to Christmas, we might even be almost ready to celebrate the great feast. Gifts are wrapped and waiting to be opened, the cookies are baked. We’ve swept our houses and souls clean, literally and sacramentally. What do we do now?

I’m reminded of a similar question asked of Abba Joseph, a hermit living in the desert in the fourth century. Abba Lot, another hermit, came to seek his advice. “I fast,” he said, “I pray and meditate, I live in peace…what else can I do?” Abba Joseph stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven; suddenly light flickered from his fingers like ten lamps. “If you would, you could become all flame.”

Like Abba Lot, I’ve done what I can; now I have to ask myself if I’m willing to recognize that what will happen next is not up to me. It is only the Lord who can fan the embers in my heart into a fire that can be of use. Could I dare to become “all flame,” dare to let Christ be at work not only in me, but through me?

At Evening Prayer next Tuesday the entire Church will call out, as she has for centuries, “O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness….” It’s a risky prayer. We are not asking merely for a light to see by, or even for a light that reveals our failings, but a light to guide us out to do God’s work: a Light to set us aflame.

Come, Lord, light my lamp. Let me become all flame.

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Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not
A lightning of fire hard-hurled.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., from The Wreck of the Deutschland

Column: Provisional Realities

The photo is of my nephew, no longer quite as much a mystery to us all as he was then.


This reflection appeared as part of the Catholic Standard & Times' Advent series on 9 December 2010.

Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name. — Isaiah 49:15-16a

I was pregnant with Chris over a winter, still teaching as my sweaters stretched ever more tightly over my swelling stomach. One afternoon, deep into a lecture on quantum mechanics, one of my students tentatively raised her hand. Hoping I could clarify what was confusing her before she — and perhaps the rest of my class — was hopelessly lost, I called on her.

She pointed at my stomach and squeaked, “Is that the baby?” I looked down to see a clearly visible bump moving under my sweater as Chris executed his signature in-utero flip. “Indeed, that would be the baby.” Physics took a sudden backseat to biology.

“Is that a foot?” she wondered. Me, too. All those months I carried Mike and Chris within me I wondered about what was hidden from me. Was that a foot, or a hand I saw? A full flip or just a leisurely stretch in those tight quarters? What did this mean — should I expect a calm baby or a fidgety child? Boy or girl? I devoured the “what to expect” books, but almost everything about my children remained a mystery during those days when they were tucked inside my womb. Who would they be? Just what was stirring within me?

These Advent days I read Isaiah with similarly wondering eyes. God is stirring within me, stirring within the world; what should I expect? Much remains a mystery: “You are a hidden God,” says Isaiah (Is 45:15). Theologian Father Karl Rahner, S.J., reminds us we are always in Advent, our lives encompassing “faith, expectation, patience and a longing for what is not yet visible.” We are all pregnant with possibilities and with hope.

In due time, my sons were born. Still, in many ways they remain as much a mystery to me now as they were when they were in my womb. Father Rahner reminds us that Advent people are those who nurture an ability to love the provisional, to be patient with a reality that is hidden in the figurative, and in small, unimpressive signs. Parenting teens in particular is an excellent way to hone your skills in patiently reading the elusive, in bearing with the obscure, of living in hope of what might burst forth.

Most of all, I’ve grown to realize I can never know the fullness of who my children are or will be. To consider them “finished” or to hold one image of them in stasis is to have failed. Similarly St. Augustine points out, “God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.” You can read the books about what to expect, but I suspect with God, as with teens, the more you think you know, the less you are willing to discover.

In a Lenten meditation on Isaiah, Dominican Father Edward Schillebeeckx tells of an abbot who challenges a young monk, “How will you love the Creator if you have never been capable of loving a creature?” Being a parent has taught me much about how to love — and be loved by — a God who is hidden.

Bearing my children was a profound lesson in how completely I could love someone whose face I had never seen, whose being was nearly entirely hidden from me, who expressed himself in small stirrings and tantalizing clues. Isaiah turns the image around to underscore the immense depth of God’s love for us. Though God knows us entirely, we can only express our longings in uncertain words and awkward deeds, in small stirrings.

What can I expect to come of these provisional realities? St. Ignatius of Loyola suggests what it might take to find out — letting go of my expectations: “There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace.”

God has written my name on His hand, holds me within Himself, like a child within her mother’s womb. As this Advent deepens, I am contemplating the unsettling mystery that not only is God stirring within me, but I am stirring within God.

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You have made us to desire only you,
you, our beginning and our end,
you, our food and our rest,
you, our joy and our peace.

Turn us from our desires that obsess us.
Unburden us that we may know
our true desire and end in communion with you.

— Walter Brueggeman, from All Desires Are Known in Prayers for a Privileged People