Category Archives: Family Spirituality

According to the proto-gospel of St. James, Joachim and Anna are the grandparents of Jesus. Their daughter Mary was born late in life, a long-anticipated gift like the child of Abraham and Sarah or Elizabeth and Zechariah.

My most vivid image of the couple, understandably, appears on the cover of my book, A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting. With understated humor, artist Micky McGrath gave Anna big hoop earrings and both grandparents are cloaked in vivid symbols of mountains, sun and stars. Held in that cosmic embrace, the child Jesus endearingly wears bunny slippers to symbolize his resurrection, and holds tiny stuffies in his hands, the lion and lamb, of Isaiah 11:6. The title of the art, “Jesus Has a Sleepover with his Grandparents” places today’s tired, bewildered grandparents in a long and sacred line.

Anna and Joachim must’ve been puzzled when their daughter told them the strange circumstances of their grandchild’s birth. And Joseph’s parents must’ve looked for their son’s resemblance in the mysterious child. In short: confusion is OK, maybe even holy.

When Pope Francis established a World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, celebrated on the Sunday closest to this feast, he must have been remembering his own Nonna Rosa. Rosa, her husband, and her son Mario had emigrated from Turin, Italy to Buenos Aires in 1929, fleeing poverty. Although it was high summer in the southern hemisphere, she wore her fox-collared coat for the journey because she had sewn in the lining the money from selling their family home.

Many consider Nonna Rosa the most important woman in Pope Francis’ life. Rosa lived around the corner from his childhood home in Buenos Aires, and looked after little Jorge as his four younger siblings were born. She continued to play an influential role until she died in his arms in 1970, when the future pope was thirty-four. When Cardinal Bergoglio moved to Italy to become Pope Francis, it brought his family history full circle. In many ways, Italian language, food, and customs must’ve felt familiar. His Nonna Rosa had prepared him long before for a life no one could have predicted. So too, grandparents have no idea what the century ahead holds for their grands—but they give them a firm foundation in love, a launching pad in care that can carry them far.

Let’s give the pope the final word here: “Grandparents are a treasure. Often old age isn’t pretty, right? There is sickness and all that, but the wisdom our grandparents have is something we must welcome as an inheritance.” And: “One of the most beautiful things… in the family, in our lives, is caressing a child and letting yourself be caressed by a grandfather or a grandmother.”[1]

Excerpts from A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting. Orbis Books, 800-258-5838, or website: https://orbisbooks.com/

[1] https://www.osvnews.com/amp/2021/07/08/pope-francis-offers-tip-of-the-zucchetto-to-grandparents-and-the-elderly/

Let’s hope that on the Feast of Mary Magdalene July 22, we all do our part to correct the misperception of her as prostitute. That error, a conflation of three Biblical texts, was given authority by Pope Gregory the Great in the seventh century, and not corrected for 1400 years, until revisions to the Roman calendar of 1969.

Luke’s gospel names her as one of several financially independent women who supported Jesus’ ministry. But her role is more important than financier. Dan Brown’s best-selling Da Vinci Code gave her a romantic role, but again, her centrality in the early Christian community was more than simply a private relationship.

All four Gospels agree she was one of the first witnesses to the resurrection. When Jesus calls her name in the garden, it is a pivotal point of human history. Her name is the hinge to a new order. She was the first to realize that God could vanquish even death, and to tell the other disciples. She convinced them and skeptics throughout history that “love is stronger than death.” To silence her voice and discount her primary role does her a great disservice. She calls us instead to the vision of a world free of sexism, suffering, exploitation and death. Arguments over authority simply distract from that larger hope.

Sandaled but Stinky

Send-off scripts are fairly standard: “Got your phone? Don’t forget your keys/lunch/directions!”  That’s why Jesus’ parting with his disciples seems a bit off: he tells them what not to take. Some Christian churches will hear this weekend from Mark 6: no money, no food, no sack and no second tunic. Whoa—no clothing change in the heat of the middle east? They must’ve been a fragrant bunch when they returned!

Perhaps he wants them to avoid entanglements with the crutches that often buoy us up: our achievements, possessions, treats like the granola bar tucked away in the backpack.  Instead he focuses on what they do need: each other. Or as Pooh said to Piglet, “Life is so much friendlier with two.”

Although Jesus never mentions it explicitly, he too will accompany them. They must’ve suspected that presence and power when they cured the sick and cast out demons, actions way beyond their human scope. As Henri Nouwen points out, Jesus in John 15:15 doesn’t say he’ll reveal some of what he knows about the Father, but “everything that I have heard from my Father.” Furthermore, he promises: “You will do greater things than I have done.”

Life is often a balance between going forth and coming home. One wonders about the other bookend for this passage: the return. The disheveled bunch must’ve been hungry, eager to shower, relax, have a beer and tell tales of their adventures. Let’s hope they didn’t boast, but wondered what sort of mystery enfolded them. And who this was who’d sent them?

They may have remembered the psalm, “you lead me along right paths…” Totally unexpected, but absolutely marvelous trails. Do we have similar questions, parallel awe? We too can look back at stirrings in childhood or seeds in adolescence that materialized into lifelong attractions, interests or careers. We can recall familiar ways taken so often they wore grooves in our psyches and shoes—or those so breathtakingly new we had to read signposts in a foreign language. All the journeys of feet or mind part of a longer arc, pathways into God.

How can one encounter radically diverse universes in two days, within an hour of home? God must find ways to stretch us if we ever grow too complacent or stuck in the familiar…

Let’s just say I didn’t go to the local car show intentionally, but the main road in town was closed for it, and I wanted to get to yoga. Made it there on foot, which gave me bird’s eye views of gentlemen displaying their cars. Many antique, all glistening. The hoods were open for engine inspection (though I wouldn’t know what to look for?) and the owners hovered nearby with white handkerchiefs, lest a speck of dust fall therein. Clearly a great amount of time and energy had poured into these vehicles. I must admit that I simply want my car to start and get me where I’m going with minimal fuss. In short, I don’t want to think about it. So the ardent devotion and dedication was a glimpse into another mindset.

Next day, I was overwhelmed in a different way, at Stanford University’s commencement. After the huge event for over 5000 students in the stadium, each department held their own smaller gathering in tents scattered around the campus. Tables were filled with abundant refreshments, background music played quietly, and the pride of parents was on full display.

It quickly became apparent why they were bursting at the seams. Many students seemed to be first generation, and a majority were women of color. They were pursuing fascinating research and futures full of potential. (One Latina for instance, after receiving her Ph.D. at Stanford, was going on to Harvard within the month for an MBA, then planned to open a non-profit. Some received their law degrees and Ph. D.’s simultaneously, and brought their knowledge to amicus briefs and AI.) Although I’d known in my mind that the face of higher education was changing, I saw it with my own eyes: among the 30 graduates at all levels in the Linguistics department ceremony I attended, only one white male. (Cue Bob Dylan: “And the times, they are a changin’…”) A sampling of backgrounds: Lakota, Hong Kong, Burma, Cuban part of Miami.

That might have been simply one department, but the impression was borne out afterwards, by the waves of students crossing campus: again, without a scientific count, many graduates were people of color. Their mothers dressed in garments unique to their cultures, wearing a wide variety of beautiful saris, elaborate embroidered aprons over long skirts, with their offspring in mortarboards decorated for individual ethnicities.

I hope what I saw there was the emergence of a tremendous force for good in some of the brightest youths at one of the world’s finest universities. Of course at such an event, all is potential: waving banners, displays of rich colors in academic hoods, balanced by long traditions, family and institutional launching pads built over generations.

Our worlds can grow narrow without our noticing—unless we’re lucky enough to have a large nudge and potent reminder that “in the Father’s house, there are many rooms.”

Let’s shift the focus on this Gospel slightly from the usual Thomas’ doubt to Jesus’ wounds. Clearly, Thomas was skeptical, but how does Jesus respond? Not with Mandatory Written Assent to the Doctrine of the Resurrection. Not with sly scolding. But with a “touch my wounds,” implying “touch yours too.”

Touch the wounds? Some of us hesitate to admit we even have them, but probing seems too intimate. Unless you know your own, Jesus might ask, how will you soothe another’s? How will you recognize—beneath the belligerent teenager, the contentious colleague, the arrogant pastor, or the cranky spouse—the hurting child? Will you intuit how many people in prison were victims before they became perpetrators?

Interestingly, there’s no record that Thomas actually touched the wounds. Maybe all he needed was for Jesus to see and accept him completely, his need for tangible proof, his shaky “outsider” status. We don’t know Thomas’ backstory—did a feeling of being “stranger and sojourner” prompt his arrogant demand?

The Adverse Childhood Experiences scale shows how childhood trauma leaves long-lasting scars. Adult behavior that seems bizarre may have been triggered by abuse or abandonment long ago. Even those lucky enough to have avoided early disaster understand Jesus’ question to Mary in the garden, “Why do you weep?” At some level, we all weep. Compassion for ourselves precedes reverence for the heartbreak many carry beneath the surface.

When we see ourselves and everyone else as limping and bandaged, that’s a step toward “the household of God” described in Ephesians. We are built together into God’s dwelling place through Christ Jesus, who is unafraid to show his wounds.

Kathy Coffey, “Showing Our Wounds” from the July 3,2024 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024). Used with permission.

Back to the feminine influence on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, unusual for a priest in his era to acknowledge. The first woman to play a major role was Marguerite, Teilhard’s cousin and childhood playmate. She was a rarity for women then—a brilliant student at the Sorbonne University in Paris, who studied under the noted philosopher Henri Bergson. She was Teilhard’s confidante when he served as a stretcher-bearer during World War I, the first listener to his ideas, his first audience and critic. Since 1 million died at Verdun, his time at the battlefield gave him a compulsion to write, fearing he might not return. Teilhard’s biographer Ursula King says of Marguerite, “without her, he might not have survived the war as well as he did.”

After the war, Teilhard enjoyed the intellectual circles of Paris, his teaching and doctoral studies, but his struggles with authorities stripped him of the life he loved. Deeply disappointed, Teilhard was exiled to China—which would ironically become a time of stimulation and flowering. International circles of scientists there transcended national and religious backgrounds; his field research led to the discovery of Peking man, a “perfect proof of evolution.” And he met Lucile Swan, a recently divorced North American sculptor.

They loved each other deeply; their relationship enriched what he called “our” work. Her influence broadened and deepened him. Lucile didn’t share Teilhard’s beliefs, so he stretched and expanded as he tried to articulate for her. She described him as alive and joyful, writing, “his ‘credo’… seems to me the best expression of a faith that I have yet found.” She found church censorship baffling: “his beliefs are so sane, intelligent and appealing to the world of today—which needs and longs for the very thing that he has to give.” She couldn’t understand his fidelity to the Jesuits, and hoped they’d kick him out so the couple could have a more “normal” relationship. He wrote her that his “internal evolution [has been] deeply impressed by you,” and felt lost after leaving Peking when they could no longer have their daily tea together. Teilhard promised Lucile that their love was forever, and perhaps its effects live on in his books.

Their relationship would change over time, but Lucile was one of the ten people at his funeral in New York City. After the communist takeover in China, he was exiled to the US, forbidden to return to his beloved France. He who wrote eloquently of the divine milieu was robbed of his own milieu. Sadly, this creative scholar and mystic was curtly informed, “No lectures. No publishing. Stick to Science.” Such a boycott led Teilhard to question himself, “has the vision been a mirage?”

Miraculously he maintained his astonishment at the juice of life. His biographer Kathleen Duffy writes in Teilhard’s Mysticism that “something as simple as a song or sunbeam would…heighten his awareness of an unexplainable presence.”(23) In a letter to the Father General trying to explain where he stood, Teilhard wrote, “what might’ve been taken as obstinacy or disrespect is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my own feeling of wonderment.” Even at the end he was dazzled by beauty; one of his favorite words was “sap,” for the divine energy welling up through appearances. And to their credit, the Jesuits have done a complete turn-around; they are among the sponsors of the documentary streaming for two years on PBS and website, https://www.teilhardproject.com.

No wonder Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made the Vatican nervous. They must’ve had their knickers in a knot over a Jesuit priest who wrote shortly after World War I, “I have experienced no form of self-development without some feminine eye turned on me, some feminine influence at work.”                    

And that wasn’t even what flummoxed the hierarchs who condemned his new ideas. They simply couldn’t handle Teilhard’s three alternative ways to think about original sin, or joy in the dynamic process of evolution, when their theology was medieval, static, entrenched.

But to start with the controversy jumps too far ahead. Let’s focus for now on a stunning new documentary, ten years in the making, filmed in a total of 25 locations where Teilhard lived, including more than 35 interviews and archival footage. Reading Teilhard is rewarding and can also be difficult, but the film clarifies his key insights with marvelous directness. After watching it, I went outside in twilight to look in wonder at the luminous full moon, the distant hills and sculpted cypresses. My prayer was simply, “Thank you God for Teilhard.”

I’d been reintroduced to his writing earlier this year by the splendid work of Sister Ilia Delio, Franciscan theologian. Interviewed in this documentary, she points out that Teilhard was way ahead of his time. Now, the PBS film by co-producers Frank and Mary Frost makes him accessible to an audience far beyond his era (1881-1955) and the realm of churchgoers. This broader audience is appropriate, since The Divine Milieu was originally written for “waverers.”

Teilhard’s mother gave him traditional Catholicism, and his father, walks in the woods to explore the geology of the Auvergne, France. When his mother was cutting his hair by the fire, Pierre at six noticed how quickly the locks that fell in burned, and began his life-long search for something more permanent. He turned first to iron, but found it would rust. Then he found rock which lasted—and a distinguished career as a geologist and paleontologist.

His scientific studies created tension with a religion whose dominant teaching then was contempt for the world and flight from it. He loved the earth and found God’s fingerprints in all his explorations. He saw Christ at work in unfinished creation, drawing all matter to himself; as humans make the evolutionary journey into God, God “humbly becomes increasingly incarnate.” The work of human hands, nothing scorned, contributes to this gradual unfolding. Teilhard would often use the word “zest” to refer to “the spur or intoxication of advancing God’s kingdom in every domain of humankind.”

Field research–riding mules for weeks into the Chinese desert and sleeping in tents–didn’t bother Teilhard , because he was captivated by his quest for fossils and rocks that would tell the human story. What devastated him were the criticisms, silencings and exiles enforced by Vatican officials and Jesuit superiors. Previously, friends had described Teilhard as exuberant, charming, vivacious, kind.  But his close friend Pierre Leroy, S.J. (the only one to accompany his body to the burial site) described him as “bereft and broken” when he realized around age 70 that his major works like The Divine Milieu and The Phenomenon of Man couldn’t be published in his lifetime.

As a writer, I can’t imagine the pain and frustration of being forbidden to publish. For someone whose ideas were ground-breaking, prophetic, an infusion of life the stale church desperately needed—devastating. He wanted the church to embrace the gift he offered, but that came only after his death. Fortunately, he’d willed his work to his secretary who got it published immediately. Many have speculated that if it’d gone to the Jesuits, it might’ve vanished into the archives or been destroyed. Sales of his books skyrocketed; he was recognized by four popes; his influence and phrases are found in Vatican II documents and “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment.

To be continued next week in Part 2.

Even after more than 60 years since my education by the Religious of the Sacred Heart, this feast still captures my attention, still intrigues by its contradictions. On the negative side, the fierce discipline, the obsession with rules, silence and order might have been simply the products of an era when few schools were enlightened or creative. Some friends have worse horror tales from crazier nuns and more uptight Catholic schools. We may not have been encouraged to be especially innovative, but we were never physically punished. We may have sung maudlin hymns, but we were never subjected to a Mel Gibson-style obsession with the grotesque details of the crucifixion.

On the positive side, I still remember a statue of Jesus as the Sacred Heart which stood outside our school. It had the odd heart-outside-the-body typical of sentimental art. But more important: his arms were flung wide in welcome. His hands didn’t hurl thunderbolts, tick off lists of wrongdoing, or brandish law books.

The stance epitomized the insight of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, credited with popularizing devotion to the Sacred Heart. “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. Indeed, she had made a huge stride forward from 17^th century piety, with its emphasis on the externals of religion.

The inclusive tone of today’s feast is consistent with Julian of Norwich’s writing in The Showings about God as mother. “In the sight of God, we do not fall” (p. 222) because we are always graciously enfolded in love. Just as a mother brims with pride in her child, so we too are God’s joy, treasure and delight (p. 228). I’ve written about Julian in other places; thanks to a Sacred Heart education for the assurance that God can’t not love.

On this feast, it’s traditional to exalt the Eucharist and the church settings in which liturgies occur. Here’s a different take: the church of Sao Domingo in Lisbon, Portugal. It’s located cringingly close to the building, now a theatre, which was once headquarters of the Inquisition, but its inside is refreshingly damaged. With little of the gold that gleams from many Mediterranean churches, this one is scorched and battered. After two earthquakes and a fire, someone decided to leave it unrepaired. (Imagine the committee meeting discussing that decision!) While there’s still a bit of the obligatory glitz, it’s nicely offset by the wreckage. Statues of saints look worn and scruffy—no ruby collars nor jewel-encrusted robes.

Perhaps the appeal lies in its silent response to the question many of us have, seeing other overwrought and opulent sanctuaries: what about the children starving while the church money poured into marble decorations? Or maybe we recognize a kindred spirit, knowing ourselves to also be as battered and bruised as these columns and walls. When we’re honest, we see how we can be a quirky, beloved mess. If the church reflects that inner state, we feel more at home there, instead of feeling unfit, like the klutz out of place in a spiffy setting.

We come to this feast, or to any Eucharist out of need, not self-glorification. Jesus knew exactly what to give us: not another code of law, gleaming sword or eloquent book, but the simple nutrition of bread and wine. Then as he accomplishes his work in us, we are often unaware. See photos of the dinged church, its tattered beauty for yourself:                 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g189158-d3876940-Reviews-Igreja_de_Sao_Domingos_Santa_Justa_e_Rufina-Lisbon_Lisbon_District_Central_Portug.html

“ And behold, I am with you always…”

We’ve grown so overly familiar with Bible quotes, we sometimes miss their stunning affirmation of Good News. Jesus’ last reassurance in today’s gospel aligns with what I’ve been reading in a book called Home Tonight by Henri Nouwen. I’d read his classic Return of the Prodigal Son many years ago, and often used the combination of Rembrandt’s art and Nouwen’s interpretation of it in talks and retreats. Hallmarks of that art are the concentration of light in the Father, his hands touching his woebegone son’s shoulder, one hand masculine, one hand feminine, his red cape framing them like a Gothic arch.

Nouwen began working on the material for Return more than three years before its publication. He’d suffered a breakdown during his second year at L’Arche, spent seven months in solitude, then gave a three-day workshop on what he’d learned from that time alone with the Gospel and the painting. That workshop formed the basis for Home Tonight.

Nouwen points out there that Jesus never said, “I know God fully; you can know a little.” Or “I can do great things in God’s name; you can maybe do a few.” Instead, there is a full outpouring of all God’s rich presence into us. We can enjoy the same relationship of unconditional love with our Father that Jesus had with his. Jesus shows us “a union so total and so full that there is not even the slightest place for an experience of absence or separation.” (p. 94) As I have frequently quoted Julian of Norwich, “between God and the soul, there is no between.”

Why then do we wander off track, so quickly forgetting God’s yearning to be in us and with us? We know “we have not here a lasting city,” no permanent security. We get busy, stressed, anxious and tired, missing the signals that surround us: music, laughter, health, surprises, the clean curve of a bird’s silhouette against the sky, books and nature swelling with beauty, the ordinary efforts of family and friends, delicate threads elegantly woven into the skein of life. We want the promise to be more visible, audible, tangible. But we mustn’t miss the faint signals, unique to each person, which Nouwen calls “a fleeting taste of home on the way home.” (p. 90)