Kathy Coffey

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)

One of the most striking sentences in the first reading from Acts (2:4) describes people speaking different languages, yet still being understood. We all know that even those who speak the same language can have a hard time communicating. Pentecost reverses the Tower of Babel story, which tries to explain why people began speaking in different languages. The people that day achieved understanding, despite their linguistic differences.

Pentecost continues today, as African students in an EAL classroom learn English and across the hall, North Americans learn Spanish. Movies streamed into our homes educate us on the cultures of Iran or Korea.  Small Californians learn to eat dumplings with “cheater” chopsticks.

One way to celebrate Pentecost is to appreciate the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in our lives. The processes of ordinary living are so fragile, so immensely significant, so fraught with terror, that we desperately need someone beyond ourselves. We need the warmth and power of the Spirit to help us in whatever we have undertaken.

With whoosh of wind, the Spirit barrels through the US in the Pentecost I imagine. Just as faith leaders of all traditions once joined to march with M. L. King Jr. and enact Civil Rights legislation, so Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists and agnostics rise together as a concerted public voice for gun safety. They move past “thoughts and prayers” to concrete legislation to reduce the skyrocketing death toll. They don’t want their country to be known as the nation where guns are the #1 cause of death for children.

Hopefully, we’ll look back on these efforts and say, “So you, life-giving Spirit and Guide, were there all along.” A phrase later in Acts describes a Spirit-guided way of making decisions: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). That might sound arrogant, or even cynical (If this backfires, we can always blame the Spirit). So too, we make decisions with the Holy Spirit, maybe not naming that presence or guessing that strength. But in the long run, what hope, power and grace!

On this day in 1610, Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci died in Beijing and was the first Westerner honored with burial in the capital. His story is an intriguing one of openness to another culture, of asking how one could ever bring the gospel to someone they didn’t know. His “friendly conversation” style of evangelizing makes all the other efforts of his era seem clumsy, intrusive, disrespectful and violent.

Sent to China in 1583, he spent 15 years becoming proficient in the language, learning Confucianism, Chinese customs, literature and etiquette. A scholar of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and geography, he dressed in appropriate silk robes like other mandarins. His world map astonished and impressed the Chinese, who were unaware of other lands beyond their own. Ricci believed that the 4000 year old tradition of China converted him. Despite maintaining armies, the Chinese didn’t wage wars of aggression, in contrast to European nations consumed with the idea of domination.  

Furthermore, Ricci worked out a synthesis of Confucianism and Christianity, and adapted liturgy to the Chinese style. Today it’s called “inculturation”; then it was mind-blowing.  Throughout the age of discovery, the track record of Christian missionaries was abysmal: baptism by force, widespread slaughter, alliance with military rule. How might it have been different if Ricci’s attitude prevailed: enter lands new to Europeans, housing other cultures, with wonder and appreciation, curious about what westerners could learn?  Instead of branding native peoples “savages,” and plundering the resources of their lands, missionaries could’ve acted on the Christian belief that the indigenous, like all humanity, held the spark of God within, and respected the beauties of God’s creation in uncharted terrains.

It’s probably no surprise that the Vatican, epitome of a “closed system” hostile to new ideas, condemned Ricci’s efforts in 1704 and more vehemently in 1742. They seemed especially troubled by filial respect to ancestors and called the rites to honor the dead superstitious and idolatrous. Ironic, in a church with a long history of honoring its saints and founders, erecting statues to them in every church. But Robert Ellsberg describes the prevailing attitude in All Saints: “When in China, do as the Romans.” What underlying fears of difference motivate such arrogance? Whatever happened to the deep security of the beloved child of God, curious about God’s varied creations?

Several centuries later, a similar scenario recurred. French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a respected scholar, paleontologist and geologist was sent to China because his creative ideas ruffled hierarchical feathers. There, he made marvelous discoveries and happily worked with native scientists. The Vatican forbade him to publish, suppressing his writing as they had in 1704 shut down a fresh infusion of eastern ideas that could have enhanced western spirituality.

In the complex and lengthy process of naming someone a Catholic saint, Ricci reached the stage called “Venerable,” or close to the finish line, in 2022. It took only 412 years for the Vatican to recognize him, but perhaps one should be grateful they reached this point at all. When oh when will they canonize St. Teilhard?

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” John 15: 11

Sometimes a dip into contemporary culture can affirm the gospel message of joy. For a rollicking dollop of it, see “Wicked Little Letters,” a British film which has been showing in theaters, and maybe by now is streaming. Olivia Colman stars and gives us her first dire glimpse of religion along the lines of, “if our Blessed Savior suffered, then we who must suffer grow closer to him.” It might not be so funny if it weren’t expressed with such eye-rolling piety. Olivia plays Edith Swan, who lives with her parents in the early 1920s and has been beset by a plague of anonymous nasty letters.  

The film is more or less based on a true story of the Littlehampton Libels, a scandal in Sussex filled with battling neighbors and lots of profanity. (If this bothers you, then the movie may not be your cuppa.) Edith and her parents immediately blame their neighbor, Rose Gooding. She’s a perfect target: rambunctious, irreverent, bawdy, obscene, often drunk, and newly arrived from Ireland. It’s enough to swing the townspeople and police into glorious self-righteousness. In the real case, Rose was convicted and served four months in Portsmouth Prison. But the letters to many people continued, and the issue was not so neatly resolved.

Enter policewoman Gladys Moss, who with an unlikely and hilarious band of women detectives cleverly cracks the case. Edith Swan remains a model of stiff propriety, flinching at the disgusting language she must nobly endure. But as her domineering father becomes more emotionally abusive, and she appears more repressed, one starts to wonder… When a grown woman is forced to copy out Bible verses as punishment for some minor infringement, might she in turn spew venom with glee?

To question any more might reveal deliciously wicked plot twists. See for yourself, and may your joy be complete.

One phrase from Richard Rohr and I’m on a roll. He writes of resurrection revealing “just enough now to promise.” In other words, the small “r” resurrections that suffuse our days give an initial experience to prepare us for Jesus’ “Capital R” Resurrection, and are perhaps glimmering offshoots, sparks of his. These can be beloved faces, books that open new windows for mind and heart to explore, travel that reveals unimagined beauties, medical diagnoses not nearly as bad as we dreaded, sweeping vistas of oceans, gardens or mountains, the energy of exercise, the ease of sleep, the accomplishment of tasks large and tiny, the surprises we never thought we’d see…

I marvel at a granddaughter I first cared for when I had to support her wobbly head with my hand on her neck. Eight years later, she starts a load of laundry and makes my breakfast before I’m even out of bed. She wins the readathon for third grade, swims on a team, draws and writes with precision. There’s always such hubbub and commotion around small children—“Do you have your water bottle?” “Where are your shoes?” that we somehow fail to notice the incremental growth, the miraculous unfolding, inch by inch, day after day.

The joyous news of resurrection is now underscored by research on neuroplasticity. Humans have a “negativity bias” that dates back to the days when the survival of the species meant being attuned to warning signals like the approaching footsteps of a hungry lion. In other words, we’re more sensitized to red lights than green lights. But Rick Hanson explains in Hardwiring Happiness that we can build on positive experiences, placing them in the “treasure chest of the heart” to strengthen the neural pathways that heal and uplift. He compares it to growing more flowers and fewer weeds in our inner garden. Mary ran towards joy in a garden and encouraged the other disciples to run away from fear. Similar message in a different, scientific language?