Kathy Coffey

(Mt. 25: 1-13)

For centuries now, I’ve been called foolish. But you haven’t heard my side of the story… When my cousin Esther asked me to be part of her wedding party, I twirled with excitement. It was like the key to another country!

It was hard to understand marriage, because my parents detested each other. Often the last noise I heard, falling asleep, was my father beating my mother, her frightened, muffled cry. Her bruises in the morning were pitiful, but even worse was her attempt to hide them and protect him. When I caught the scent of something different in this wedding, I paid attention.

Esther’s groom Mical wasn’t handsome; in fact, he was pudgy. But he treated her like his dearest friend. When he wanted another opinion, he didn’t just ask his male friends: her vote mattered. They laughed together often; they walked with the same rhythm. He touched her with tenderness, and she shimmered. His voice was gentle; I couldn’t imagine him yelling like my father. Cool soup or moldy bread threw dad into a tirade that made me flee the house. But Mical was kind even to me, the snotty little cousin with the bad haircut. I guess I was secretly in love with him—all the bridesmaids were. In his company, we all felt beautiful and cherished, because we were important to Esther.

Since I’d never been in a wedding, I didn’t know about bringing extra oil. We’d all dozed off that night, ‘til my sister poked me, demanding my lamp. Half awake, I gave it to her grudgingly. They say when I was small, I’d toddle around behind her, repeating everything she said. I adored my big sister. I tried to imitate her actions, and surely she knew this wedding business better than I did. So I was puzzled when she told me to go buy more oil. Where could I get it at midnight?

Into my confusion gradually came one painful truth. I’d be locked out of the banquet. For months I’d fantasized about that feast. I’d imagine that world whenever my parents nipped at each other, or the food on our table was scarce. I would wear a special gown and eat the choicest meal. I might even dance with the groom. Guess I was so hungry for that wedding that losing it felt like a blow to the stomach.  

So I wept outside the hall. I could hear the distant music; I could picture Mical looking deep with care into Esther’s eyes. No one rescued me; there was no magic ending to the story. Except that several years later, the old sadness was somewhat resolved. I heard a man named Jesus tell my story, but he’d given it a new twist. “The kingdom of heaven,” whatever that meant, would be like the feast I’d missed.

That snagged my attention: would I get a second chance? Could I finally sail through that door which once was locked? But the next part made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. God, in the story, was like Mical. That call I’d heard in my sleep could come again: “Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!”

He seemed to be saying that God, like Mical was gentle, brimming with life and joy, energized by Esther’s presence. Could God still look tenderly on me, who had failed so miserably to be a wise bridesmaid? For years, I’d been taught that God was like my father, so I wanted to escape. But this comparison gleams with possibility! No more sleeping on the job; this is a God I want to run and meet. This God is bride and groom, wine and feast, lamp and friend, wedding and joy growing always.

Next time, I’ll be ready.

The joke about Alfonso was that the Jesuits couldn’t admit him as a priest, but OK as a saint. His early story is tragic: the deaths of his wife, mother and two children, a failed business. After several years of agonizing, he applied to become a Jesuit, but was refused for two years because of poor health and limited education. Finally accepted as a brother, he spent the next forty-five years as doorkeeper for their College on Majorca. That crowd of students parading through his door must’ve brought frustrations, disappointments, bright greetings and easy young grace. Apparently he welcomed all as Christ, and had a gift for turning what was bitter, sweet. He is perhaps best known through Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem:

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

His ordinariness is attractive, and prompts wonderment about the uncanonized and unsung women who also sacralized the ordinary. Their names are largely lost, except perhaps for a cherished memory of grandmother, sister or friend. One example with a name:

In The Sanctuary of Women, Jan Richardson describes the work of Harriet Powers, who grew up in slavery, and made one Bible quilt displayed at the Smithsonian, another at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She referred to her creations as “a sermon in patchwork,” to “show my Lawd my humbility” (p. 216) 

When women were denied any creative outlets like preaching, they worked with “the vocabulary at hand…a sermon in supper.” (223) Harriet took Scripture stories that were part of Sunday church and brought them to the county fair. (222)  That got me started, with variations on the theme Alfonso and many women developed when “official” church channels were closed to them. The gospel of the door, the liturgy of lunch, the homily of housekeeping? We could all write a litany of care with different versions: “How was your day?” “Sarah, got your lunch box?” “James, you need a warmer coat.” “Welcome home!”

If we ever recognize the holiness of the small gesture, it’s only dimly. Most of the time we’re oblivious when the timeless intersects time, or the radiance fills the routine. Even the maddening activities like negotiating traffic, doing taxes, or enduring customer dis-service keep us grounded in the world God loves, mess as well as miracle.

But Jesus, often kicked out of religious institutions, hallowed the home. He spent the greater part of his life there, and one of his first miracles was healing Peter’s mother-in-law at home. Richardson says he “crosses with great intention” into her world, “sacred domestic space no less than in the holy space of synagogue.” (222) She, in turn serves him, and the author of Mark uses the same word to describe what the angels do for Jesus after his 40 days in the desert.

Later defending the woman who anoints him with oil before his passion, Jesus says, “she has done what she could” (Mark14:8). Given restricted roles and limited resources, how many millions of ordinary heroes have done–and continue to do–just that?

What to do about rampant presidential corruption and greed, inhumane treatment of immigrants, disregard for the Constitution and betrayal of Ukraine? One thing all of us can do soon: vote. Another answer came from “Fight Back” the Thomas David & Judith Swope Clark symposium at Berkeley Law School August 28. The speakers there insisted, “if you push back, you can win against authoritarianism.”

They referred to a basic principle of U.S. founders like Hamilton and Madison who dreaded another demagogue like King George. They designed a system where, if one level of government fails, another steps up. In the current situation, with a president who shows little regard for the rule of law, state and local governments have the duty to challenge his illegal acts.

States and cities must safeguard their residents, providing education, health care, environmental protection and a social safety net. Thus, states can sue federal officials who violate the constitutional rights of citizens, for instance, killing them on the streets of Minneapolis.

When an “accountability desert” occurred there, with no federal agency willing to investigate the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the state of Minnesota filled the void; state legislators in Illinois, California and New York are considering similar courses of action. The framers of the constitution designed a way for states to sue the federal government when it violates citizens’ rights.

The system works both ways: we may be more familiar with federal agents escorting children into schools when southern states prevented integration. States and federal governments have always had the right to regulate each other. The same standards apply to officials at all levels, so states filing lawsuits now aren’t simply resisting current White House policies. Their actions show accountability to the constitution.

Nick Brown, attorney general of Washington and keynote speaker, has filed 74 suits against Trump; Rob Bonta, attorney general of California, 84. In the first Trump administration, the state of Washington led the fight against the Muslim ban. In February 2026, Sen Patty Murray (D-WA) rejected Trump’s proposal to cut cancer and Alzheimer’s research by nearly half, seriously jeopardizing Americans’ health. The Berkeley audience applauded an attorney there whose team had successfully prevented $15 billion in federal funding cuts to the University of California. Ongoing suits have preserved roughly $168 billion in federal funding for Californians’ education, transportation and health care, illegally frozen by the administration. Often these threats to funding are meant to punish states that voted for Trump’s opponent, but the New York Times in March ’26 tracked 198 cases that challenged the president’s spending actions. Those seeking emergency relief won in 80% of the cases, and of the 26 cases that reached a final judgment, 23 ruled against the administration.

Dean Erwin Chemerinksy of Berkeley Law who opened the seminar demonstrates how people who know the law can successfully challenge creeping authoritarianism. He underscored the duty of a state to protect its people by refusing to cooperate with ICE. A healthy society can’t thrive when people afraid of deportation can’t take their children to school or visit a hospital when they might carry a highly infectious disease. Congress and the Supreme Court have failed to act as checks and balances; the Dean characterized this as a time of “unconscionable capitulation (from some universities and law firms) and remarkable courage (federal district courts).”

Furthermore, he said, “the issues transcend this presidency.” Regardless of who occupies the White House, state and local governments have legal powers to resist economic or military bullying. They must challenge presidential overreach such as interference in elections when the constitution clearly gives that responsibility to the states.

This was not the kind of gathering which people forget the next day. Instead, each participant left with a pre-press copy of the book Fight Back which compiles essays by many legal scholars across the country in accessible language. All bear on the same theme: empowering state and local officials in a perilous historical moment. The book will be available in early 2027, and the symposium was offered again on September 25 at the University of California’s location in Washington, DC.  Because it offers practical tools and strategies, it offers hope that we aren’t simply victims: we can be bold actors and legal resisters. Rather than wring our hands about losing our democracy, we can do something powerful to save it.

An inner fizz of anticipation as little markers signal: “Oakland Airport: Next Exit,” “Economy Parking,” “Your flight is about to land.” A man in a neon vest holding a red flashlight guides a plane into its gate, a carefully orchestrated ballet which I seldom notice when I’m the one flying. But today is different: I’m meeting the flight of two “unaccompanied minors,” my granddaughters. When I filled in the form about their identity, I was tempted to write “heart’s delight” or “dearest treasure” in the blanks.

There’s a flurry of people disembarking as I wait close to the door, then Finally: first granddaughter in red sweatshirt, Big Hug, then a second close behind: group hug. It’s the culmination of several months of planning: the confluence of their parents’ 30^th college reunion in Colorado, a school holiday, the chance to reunite four grandchildren in the Bay area with two from Seattle, a beach house to hold us all in a favorite area. I sign the paperwork; the attendant takes our picture to reassure their parents, and we’re off to meet the rest of the family.

One of the special treats of summer at the beach is fresh strawberries from the surrounding fields; I’m thrilled to find the stand still open in October. Over the next three days, we buy three half-flats which we all devour with glee. Then the discoveries of a new condo: a kids’ room with bunk beds, a porch overlooking the ocean, boxes of beach toys on another balcony; the remote control to light the fireplace, and a well-hidden switch for the dining room light. Excitement runs high; everyone talks at once; we’re so glad to see each other since we haven’t been together since June. It feels like all the happiness one heart can hold.

Meaning comes from the braiding of word with experience, and this weekend, the two are well met. Earlier this week, I’d read on Richard Rohr’s website about “vestigia Dei,” the Latin term meaning that all things are likenesses of God. How true of special people in a beautiful place. He continued (October 5), that we experience incarnation everywhere and all the time, not only in religious, churchy spaces. The ocean is vast, deep and endless—like divine love. And the children are unique sparks of that love, each one with individual quirks and talents. The two meet when they run into the surf shrieking at the cold, jumping the waves, diving in, tumbling and fishing each other out. They never seem to mention the frosty water temperature, or tire of the activity. But their small dark silhouettes against the dazzling play of light on water speak powerfully of the shining in creation, which surrounds always, noticeable when we have eyes to see.

Some traditions have become ritual: opening the curtains to the first view of the sea in the morning, singing grace before dinner as we hold hands, building elaborate sand castles, playing board games by the fireplace, loading up from the welcome basket of candy at the main office, star gazing, tennis and running, gooey chocolate desserts, snuggling together with lots of blankets on the long couch for a movie at night. The oldest granddaughter paints beautiful watercolors so we’ll remember these scenes; the others follow her lead. I’d read N.T. Wright’s idea that heaven isn’t some distant future: it’s right now. Heaven seeds earth in peak moments like these. So when we finally die and enter paradise, it will seem familiar. It may look like a beach house full of children.

Teresa was the first female doctor of the church, named in 1970. A non-ordained woman was a departure from tradition, but Pope Paul VI said she exercised the priesthood of all the baptized. Thirty-five years earlier, under Inquisition scrutiny, the papal nuncio called her “a restless gadabout, a disobedient and contumacious woman who invented wicked doctrines.” Teresa seemed to inspire extreme responses.

Context

The Influence of the Italian renaissance on Spain produced a golden age of literature, and the Bible translated into the vernacular. Study groups led by women were like the Vatican II renewal. But the challenge to the clerical monopoly on God incensed the Inquisition, which became a doctrinal watchdog, forbade women teachers, and destroyed vernacular Bibles.

Given a rigid hierarchy and dangerous climate of suspicion and fear, Teresa danced nimbly around her critics. She became expert with coy disclaimers saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. How could others condemn when she beat them to it?

Biography

Teresa’s grandpa was a Jew, forced to convert to Christianity. Punished and humiliated in Toledo, Spain, he moved the family to Avila and became successful again.

Her youth was frivolous and flirtatious and she deeply regretted 20 years of indifference. But they were a “happy fault”—giving reason to praise God’s infinite mercies. In convents then, the wealthy had freedom to come and go, an entourage of family, friends, and servants, good wine, food and social life. Illness brought Teresa to deeper spirituality and by 1562, she founded her first reformed convent.  Despite lawsuits, she established 17 convents separated by muddy roads and terrible traveling conditions. These may have prompted her metaphor: “Whoever truly loves you, my God, travels by a broad and a royal road.”

Themes

At the time, prayer meant rote formulas; Teresa shifted it to intimate conversation with a friend. She introduced metaphors like the spiritual life as garden. We work hard at watering, but grace brings rain. One of her most popular books The Interior Castle shows Christ within, the soul’s radiant light. She reminded her sisters, “We are not hollow inside.” “The soul’s amplitude cannot be exaggerated.”

Among her enduring quips: “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord deliver us!” She learned to avoid scruples, and once digging into a feast, chortled, “there is a time for fasting and a time for partridge. THIS is the time for partridge!” Brisk, practical and fun, she admitted she was a sucker for affection: “I could be bought for a herring.” And that’s what makes the saints human and endearing.

The crop has been prodigious this year, ruby red jewels spilling over sidewalks and fences. Because I have a peculiar cast of mind, it reminds me of God’s abundance: not one crimson maple leaf but millions in this harvest season. In a reading earlier this week (Jn. 1:47-51), Jesus promises Nathanael, “you’ll see greater things.” Or: “Stand back. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Indeed: if we look back over the long arc of a life reflectively, we might well be astonished. The great blessing is seeing God’s generosity in human beings.  

I was an awkward only child, saved from isolation by cousins and friends. I saw one recently, which took me back over the 60+ years we’d been friends. As a teenager, I’d happily joined her large family for dinner—her dad an attorney who was the St. Thomas More of the 20^th century; her mom a gracious baker of apple pies, never bothered by an extra kid or two at the table among her own crew. Their conversations were always lively, and I was lucky to be included in such a vibrant group.

Fast forward: her brother and his wife invited me for dinner two weeks ago, and I felt the same way. He makes the hors d’oeuvres and entertains us in the garden while she cooks a delicious dinner of fresh, healthy ingredients and a home-made peach tart with cream she whips just before serving. In an era when so few people entertain, it was a welcome return to the warm courtesies of another time. My 13-year old grandson is learning: at a recent family lunch, he not only baked banana bread heavily loaded with chocolate chips, but also made a loaf for each guest to take home.

Another friend assures me of “my” room in her home whenever I visit her city. The home is exquisitely decorated; guest rooms  are stocked with plush robes and extra toiletries in case visitors have forgotten toothbrushes. I look forward to breakfasts with piles of pastry from a special bakery, and conversations with my friend and her husband, both in health care. I know little about their world, but admire the compassion, practicality and humor they bring to it.

A sister at a local retreat house welcomes guests with warmth, making them all comfortable despite their multiple needs. Some are visually impaired, some have mobility issues, some want to be left alone and some want to chat: she sorts it all and provides elevensies: mid-morning trays of scones. A whole team of housekeepers and kitchen staff back her up, creating a space where I can read or write to my heart’s content without domestic duties. The quiet, unheralded service reminds me of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, praised in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, who became a saint through years of watching the door in Majorca, attentive to each visitor’s needs.

My spiritual director exhibits an intangible hospitality by listening to my rambles and rants with a genuine, non-judgmental interest. He has welcomed the whole messy enchilada that is myself, month after month for eleven years. The way he sees, accepts and encourages all of me gives a heartening glimpse of a God who welcomes every last cranky corner of us.

What do these examples of hospitality teach us of the divine? We learn from the negative: the ungrateful tenants in today’s parable respond to the vineyard owner’s generosity with brutal violence to all his emissaries, including his son. In a minor key, picture the disappointment on a child’s face when the pre-scheduled zoom partner doesn’t show up or the invited guests don’t come to the birthday party. I am never like these, God says, and shows us a different face:  

Jesus was hostess at the last supper; his doing women’s work of washing feet and serving food epitomizes hospitality. God Creator welcomes us again and again into a beautiful world, and Spirit blesses us with rich relationships, creative ways to thrive.    

I go never knowing what to expect, only that there’s a purpose for the pause, and that time by the ocean will always be richly rewarded. In Northern California, summers are often cool and grey due to the marine layer. But in September the sun is a gift, and the beaches are deserted. Prime time for dozing and gazing.

The breeze brings a salty, fishy scent difficult to describe and unmatched anywhere. The waves surge, foam, plume, thunder, spray, cavort, buckle, twist, crash, froth in never-ending motion and vitality. Mary Oliver describes them in her poem “Winter”: “And the waves/gush pearls/from their snowy throats.” No uber-expensive, ultra-contoured mattress could match the comfort of warm sand on the back. Lying within the thrumming music of the waves, a nap is irresistible.

Perhaps the serenity here comes from knowing we’re all small waves in a big ocean; our moods and worries will peak and fall, peak and fall as easily, rhythmically. And all we’re seeing is the surface: what treasures the depths hold! Mary Oliver says in the same poem: “and the sea still streaming in like a mother wild with gifts–/in this world I am as rich/as I need to be.”

The shimmering play of light on water must be one of the most beautiful sights on our planet. A silvery, brocade carpet stretches gleaming to the horizon—maybe to Fiji or the Whitsunday Islands? Invitation to a mystery so lovely it aches…

In The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson explained our fascination with the sea: an adult human body is about 60% water; ocean beats in our veins. Mark Nepo adds, “the ribbon of God’s sea passes through my gills.” Swimming, a fish takes in water and its gill turns the water into the air it needs to live. As we swim through our days, Nepo says, we must turn “our experience into something that sustains us…pain into wonder, heartache into joy.” (The Book of Awakening, pp. 302-303)   

Beauty, power and vastness: aren’t these all attributes of the Creator? Words are small things to hold such magnificence; perhaps the only authentic stance is a contemplative silence. Once people deified “the circuit of the stars or the mighty water,” “out of joy in their beauty.” But the author of Wisdom 13:1-5 says, “let them realize from these things how much more powerful is the one who made them. For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.”

A seasoned yoga teacher was describing a new teacher: “he’s a natural. He doesn’t use that weird teacher voice.”

The same could be said for Henri Nouwen, who died 30 years ago, but whose voice and influence still resonate. A rarity when his books began to appear in the 70s, he never claims clerical privilege or uses that abstract, pontifical voice. Anyone genuinely seeking a healthy spirituality runs screaming from Pronouncements. But Henry saw himself and his readers as feeble, beloved. When we recognize ourselves in this “fellowship of the broken,” we sit up and pay attention.

Although his life was that of a traditional ordained priest, he never passes on the platitudes nor relies on the comfortable pieties. We read him because he still startles, challenges, reassures. In whatever situation we’re in, he consoles, “seek signs of hope and promise.” Of all his books, my favorites are Return of the Prodigal Son and Life of the Beloved. Now I start each day with a brief, free meditation excerpted from Nouwen’s work–https://www.henrinouwen.org/daily-meditations

One of Nouwen’s most striking themes is his own woundedness. He is boldly honest about his physical and mental health concerns, his craving for approval, his injuries and breakdowns. His view of God as a welcoming home was rare for his time. In contrast to the prevailing thought that we had to earn nearness to God by not sinning, Jesus freely gives “a union [with God] so total and full, there’s not the slightest place for the experience of absence or separation.”

It is impossible to cover work of such depth and breadth in a small space, so maybe a few quotations will serve as invitation to explore further.

Lord, you want to keep me, hold onto me, fight for me, protect me, help me, support me, comfort me, and present me to your Father. It is indeed your divine task not to lose me! 

Fear or despair is not of God. 

Prayer is the experience of knowing that God is the source of everything we claim as our own. Rather than prayer being drudgery or obligation, it’s “a great adventure, because God defies all our calculations and predictions.”

“I can let the experience of belonging to God be the place from which I can live the human pain of homelessness and estrangement.”

God molds us as the sculptor molds the clay. Our response is a careful attentiveness to the loving hands on our shoulders, sculpting and guiding.

Jesus’ ministry sprang “from his deep experience of being unconditionally loved and was in no way motivated by a personal need for affirmation and acceptance.”

We’re “at Home while still on the way.”

Happy Feast, Henri. Welcome home.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179)

Germany’s greatest mystic, scientist, and doctor, Hildegard was influential in theology, nature, medicine, cosmology, the human condition and the world-at-large. She also assumed ground-breaking roles for a woman of her time: artist, author, composer, mystic, pharmacist, poet, preacher, theologian, scientist, doctor, and political critic. Imagine being the HR director who got her resume! Named a saint and doctor of the church in 2012, she believed passionately in God’s presence and activity in creation, as well as being a life force within. One of her guiding concepts was “viriditas,” the greening power of God, a word which combines the Latin for “green” and “truth,” with connotations of vigor and freshness. While we can observe it in gardens and forests, Hildegard believed we could also cultivate it in our souls.[i]

During her seventies, Hildegard completed two medical texts, which catalogued over 280 plants, cross-referenced with their healing uses. She saw humans as “living sparks” of God’s love, coming from God as daylight comes from the sun. A poet and composer, Hildegard collected 77 of her lyric poems, each with a musical setting she composed in Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. Her numerous other writings include lives of saints; two treatises on medicine and natural history, reflecting a quality of scientific observation rare at that period; and extensive correspondence, with further prophecies and allegorical treatises. She also—just for fun–invented her own language.

Despite her vows of enclosure—which, in theory, restricted her to the cloister—she managed to remain very much in touch with the outside world. After approval of her book Scivias by Pope Eugenius in 1147, she began to receive visits from and correspond with hundreds of people throughout Europe, including Henry II of England, Louis VII of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the empress of Byzantium

Hildegard  thought connection with nature brings people a “primordial joy.” More than eight hundred years after her death, her message rings so true that she could well be considered patroness of environmental awareness. Although she would’ve been appalled by the destruction to the planet, she would’ve cheered robustly for efforts to save it.

Excerpt from More Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis, OrbisBooks.com, 800-258-5838.

[i] https://www.healthyhildegard.com/hildegards-viriditas

Her service seems as simple as the pure blue and white lines of her clothing. Mother Teresa cared for the poor, dying and homeless in the slums of Calcutta. To those who face daily the quagmire of business decisions, tangled relationships and complex scheduling, her work by contrast seems a clear, uncomplicated gospel following.

Yet few of us abandon our routines, don saris and join her movement. Perhaps we want to believe that something of Teresa’s spirit can invigorate our lives; some of her clarity can penetrate our shadows; some of her compassion can move through us to those we touch each day. Our contacts may not be as abandoned and diseased as those Teresa cared for, but they have the same needs for attention and affection.

Teresa apparently had the same luminosity that attracted people to Jesus. Everyone wanted to be near her in life, and after death she exerts the same attraction. Her biographer Malcolm Muggeridge believed that for people who have trouble grasping “Christ’s great propositions of love… someone like Mother Teresa is a godsend. She is this love in person.”

No one was less sentimental or more “earthy.” She would engage in lively discussion with beggars about their “take of the day,” eager to hear how it went. One of her favorite words was “beautiful”—in the squalor of Calcutta slums! Indeed, she believed her vocation was to be beautiful. She gloried in life-surviving-against-all odds, exulting when a tiny baby survived: “There’s life in her!”

Like ourselves, she often felt exhausted, alone and miserable. With the publication of her diaries after her death in 1997, we’ve learned she often felt abandoned by God, lost in the “dark night of the soul.” So to one like us we say, “Happy Feast, St. Teresa of Calcutta!”