Kathy Coffey

Today, she’d be the CEO of Google or Apple. Brilliant, outspoken, direct, she gave Jesus exactly the affirmation he needed to proceed to Jerusalem and his passion. But let her tell the story…

“I was at my worst then: exhausted, vulnerable, grieving for Lazarus, angry at Jesus. I was so outraged, I spewed pure venom when he arrived. Lazarus’s place at our table was empty, the brother I loved had vanished, and Jesus’ delay became the target for my fury.

People with better social skills might have welcomed him with, ‘Thanks for trying,’ or even, ‘Your friend is dead,’ but I dumped the guilt trip: ‘If you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.’

The accusation hurt; I could tell by the sadness in his eyes. Still it didn’t paralyze him; maybe he continued our conversation because he could trust I wouldn’t mask the truth. I would look him straight in the eye and speak without a shred of syrupy politeness.

Still, he hesitated. It was as if he needed something from me, some mysterious affirmation before he plunged ahead. The roles were reversed: just when I needed to lean on him in grief, he asked for my support!

Even if I’d lost Lazarus, I could still encourage Jesus. Maybe he had taught me how to give people exactly what they need. He had wept with Mary; he had discussed the afterlife with me; now it was my turn to answer the question he hated to ask. So few people understood him; all he wanted was one person to show some inkling.

And I did know who he was. In some quiet, sure place within, I was bedrock certain of his identity. So I said it aloud. Not to sound arrogant, but Jesus forged into that foul-smelling tomb as if propelled by my words. I ran after him, just in time to see Lazarus lurch forth. Three days before, weeping, I had covered my brother’s face with the same linen. Now, I unwound the burial cloths as if unwrapping a splendid gift.

I barely thanked Jesus or noticed him leave. But neighbors said he walked purposefully toward Jerusalem, driven as he had been to Lazarus’s grave. Did my words still echo in his ears? Had I ignited some fire within him? As I had a hundred times before, I asked myself, ‘Now what have I said?’”

Excerpted from Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Books, orbisbooks.com, 800-258-5838

Feast of St. Martha

Today, she’d be the CEO of Google or Apple. Brilliant, outspoken, direct, she gave Jesus exactly the affirmation he needed to proceed to Jerusalem and his passion. But let her tell the story…

“I was at my worst then: exhausted, vulnerable, grieving for Lazarus, angry at Jesus. I was so outraged, I spewed pure venom when he arrived. Lazarus’s place at our table was empty, the brother I loved had vanished, and Jesus’ delay became the target for my fury.

People with better social skills might have welcomed him with, ‘Thanks for trying,’ or even, ‘Your friend is dead,’ but I dumped the guilt trip: ‘If you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.’

The accusation hurt; I could tell by the sadness in his eyes. Still it didn’t paralyze him; maybe he continued our conversation because he could trust I wouldn’t mask the truth. I would look him straight in the eye and speak without a shred of syrupy politeness.

Still, he hesitated. It was as if he needed something from me, some mysterious affirmation before he plunged ahead. The roles were reversed: just when I needed to lean on him in grief, he asked for my support!

Even if I’d lost Lazarus, I could still encourage Jesus. Maybe he had taught me how to give people exactly what they need. He had wept with Mary; he had discussed the afterlife with me; now it was my turn to answer the question he hated to ask. So few people understood him; all he wanted was one person to show some inkling.

And I did know who he was. In some quiet, sure place within, I was bedrock certain of his identity. So I said it aloud. Not to sound arrogant, but Jesus forged into that foul-smelling tomb as if propelled by my words. I ran after him, just in time to see Lazarus lurch forth. Three days before, weeping, I had covered my brother’s face with the same linen. Now, I unwound the burial cloths as if unwrapping a splendid gift.

I barely thanked Jesus or noticed him leave. But neighbors said he walked purposefully toward Jerusalem, driven as he had been to Lazarus’s grave. Did my words still echo in his ears? Had I ignited some fire within him? As I had a hundred times before, I asked myself, ‘Now what have I said?’”

Excerpted from Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Books, orbisbooks.com, 800-258-5838

Hope this isn’t “beating a dead horse,” but her feast July 22 offers a good time to revisit what happened to this central figure in Christianity. In the seventh century,  Pope Gregory lent authority to a mistake: the conflation of texts about 3 women in scripture. The mud-slinging against Mary Magdalene continued until a correction in 1969, but the good news of scholarship takes a long time to reach the public. In many groups, one still hears the identification of her with a prostitute. Or in Dan Brown’s novel, the wife of Jesus.

All four gospels agree she was one of the first witnesses to the resurrection, apostle to the apostles. Why did early church fathers shift her role to financier/ crazy woman/Peter’s rival, or ignore her? Partial answers include sexism, misogyny, opposition to women’s leadership, growing emphasis on celibacy. For 1400 years, the authority of a major woman witness was sadly reduced. The amount of energy that has gone into suppressing Mary Magdalene’s voice indicates she must have posed a huge threat to the religious establishment.

Reclaiming her true identity, we can appreciate how Jesus calling her name in the garden after his resurrection is a pivotal turning point, not only for her but for all subsequent human history. She was the first to realize that God can vanquish even death. Which makes all other obstacles seem minor.

Soren Kierkegaard is no beach read. But one of the wisest spiritual directors I ever had quickly discovered that the fastest way to my heart was through metaphor. As every teacher knows, we learn by comparing the unfamiliar with the familiar. If a complex quadratic equation can be compared to 2 + 3 = 5, it’s the first step to understanding. For that reason, I was intrigued by Soren’s metaphors. Not that I’m an expert, but here are a few nuggets from his  book Provocations:

• We’re like children who play and talk together. But then comes the message to go home. “That is, God calls to us.” Just as the child can’t get stuck in the illusion that his relationship with the other children is the whole thing, so too adults must turn home to God.
• A desert wanderer is thrilled to find the refreshing coolness of a spring. So too, God is faithful and unchanging. Even more remarkable, God is like a spring that seeks the thirsty traveler, so is always available. This spring doesn’t stay in the same place; it follows wherever we go, and can be found wherever we are.
• And what if a desert dweller found a spring within his or her own tent? The person who is always turned outward thinks happiness lies outside him or herself. But turning within, one finds “water gushing up to eternal life.”

Kierkegaard has little sympathy for the institutional church, which he compares to a hospital where all the patients are dying. Efforts to find the cause of their illness fail, because it comes from the building. “This whole pile of lumber of an established Church, which from time immemorial has not been ventilated…the air has developed poison.”

No wonder the title is Provocations!

Admittedly, my approach to this feast is colored by 17 years of education with the Religious of the Sacred Heart. I could belt out “Coeur de Jesus” with the best of them, but secretly admired my parents for refusing to drive across town for the celebration of the feast at school. School? In summer? When we’d so recently been freed?

That wasn’t the only ambivalence. Ever the sensitive-to-hypocrisy teen, I noticed that though the talk was about love, the practical reality was a fierce discipline, a pervasive obsession with rules, silence and order. Wiser people have counseled, “Let it go!” That was simply the era, a perhaps desperate attempt to corral hundreds of chattering girls. Other writers have explained that the feast itself represents progress from 17^th century piety, with its emphasis on the externals of religion.

But somehow the rigidity softened at the front gate. There stood a statue which remains an icon somewhere deep in the psyche. It was a large representation of Jesus as the Sacred Heart, with the odd heart-outside-the-body typical of that art. But more important: his arms were flung wide in welcome. His hands didn’t hurl thunderbolts or brandish law books.

The stance epitomized St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s insight: “The divine heart…is an ocean full of joy to drown all our sadness…” When she tried to convince others of this broadly inclusive approach, authorities called her delusional. (If only the prune-faces could’ve been around when she was vindicated: for the feast proclaimed in 1856, her canonization in 1920.)

That set the stage. Then in adulthood, I could understand Richard Rohr’s superb book, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, where he explains that we can do nothing to make God love us more. “All is given all the time!” because God can’t not love.

If I could really believe that, live out of it, I’d have it made. We all would. So, thanks to the Sacred Heart for that good grounding.

Dr. Brené Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and author of three #1 New York Times bestsellers says her research shows that the people with the deepest compassion are also those with the clearest boundaries. Pope Francis demonstrated that visibly in his recent meeting with President Trump.

While the latter grinned broadly, the pope looked dour. His usual cheerful countenance was replaced by a look of the utmost gravity. He refused to smile for any of the photo ops., leading commentators to wonder what had happened to his sunny personality.

One expert explained it this way: Pope Francis spent most of his adult life fighting fascism in Argentina, so he can smell a fascist a mile away. He could not possibly approve Trump’s plans to take health care coverage from 23 million people, to enrich the billionaires (the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart empire, would receive a $52 Billion tax cut if the administration gets Congress to destroy the Estate Tax) and gut the safety net for the poor, to trash the environment, build an outrageously expensive and ill-considered wall with Mexico and deport even innocent immigrants.

At the time, when Francis gifted Trump with his encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,” he couldn’t have predicted how blatantly it would be ignored. Several days later, the president pulled the US out of the Paris accords on climate change. Trump might as well have tossed the careful, thoughtful document out the window of Air Force 1 over the Atlantic.

No one knows for sure the papal motives, but his stance seemed to say, “I’ll have this meeting because it is my job. But in no way will you imply my support for your terrible agenda with its total lack of compassion.”

Perhaps if the pope’s photo could be taken with the governors of CA, NY and WA, along with the numerous mayors who’ve independently signed on to the Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas, a trace of his smile might return.