Kathy Coffey

In the Catholic tradition, the last Sunday of the liturgical year honors Christ the King. The following Sunday will start the new year with the first Sunday of Lent.

This day is a good time to remember that our own longing for justice mirrors God’s deepest desire.  We can be confident that in God’s own time, God will see justice done.

The musician David Haas once told of visiting a friend who was dying. He asked, “how ya doin’?”
His friend replied, “the bad news is, I don’t feel so hot.  The good news is, Christ reigns.”

The next logical step if we believe in Christ’s kingship is letting go of the anxiety we carry around like a heavy backpack. Even seeing Christ’s sacrifice, we prefer lugging the burden, holding it closer than him.  If we can hand over the worries to the divine parent who cares for us more than anyone has ever loved us, then we belong to Christ. Then Christ is King. Even if our world looks desolate, God created and sustains it, Christ died for it, and the Spirit invigorates it. News worth celebrating!

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Do we make decisions and initiate actions from a frightened, reptilian brain or from a prayerful center? What may help movement towards the latter is a new book called Prayer in the Catholic Tradition, edited by Robert Wicks, www.FranciscanMedia.org. Full disclosure: my essay, “Prayer in Chaos, Commotion and Clutter” is the last in the volume.  Especially fine are the opening chapter on prayerfulness, Joyce Rupp’s article on praying through difficult traditions, and Richard Rohr’s “How Can Anyone Pray ‘Always’?”  Numerous articles by thoughtful people who have seriously studied their own tradition will make this a treasure trove for months to come.

Half of North Americans found the events of 11/9 as shocking as those of 9/11. For them, some directions towards healing:

• Reaching into that deep reservoir within, that spacious sanctuary where always and everywhere, we are God’s beloved children, no matter what. This secure identity, which transcends political, gender, age or race distinctions, is the only secure place from which to step into the future.
• Borrowing Anne Lamott’s phrase, we don’t “buy a cute throw rug to toss over the abyss.” In other words, legitimate mourning is appropriate. Denial is not. We acknowledge that this mysterious threshold in the national history may summon all the intelligence and courage we can bring to it.
• Recalling a long and noble history of resistance: the Christian martyrs, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam war protests. As civil war raged in El Salvador, Ignacio Ellacuria, SJ (later murdered by the military) said, “when the violence increases, we must think harder.” We must also pray harder. The current situation in the US has not led to bloodshed, but we can follow the spirit of his idea: studying more, practicing inclusion more deliberately, engaging in sane and courteous conversations, hoping fiercely, praying because we need intense help.
• Remembering that historically Christians have been strongest when oppressed. Groups that will resist attacks on immigrants, targeting of minorities and assaults on the environment are clear and articulate in their opposition now. Depending on what happens in the months ahead, they’ll need our support to continue.
• Turning to life-giving sources: each other, reflection, music, the sacred texts of each tradition, whatever has helped in difficult transitions before. For some, it’s poetry: Palestinian-American Naomi Shihab Nye reads “Gate A-4,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwDXJ50U22o. The touching story of cooperation among different ethnic groups concludes, “All is not lost.”

If you cringe at shameless self-promotion, quit reading now. But if you’ve ever had the slightest titch of a problem with control issues, stay tuned…

The first e-course I’ve ever written starts Nov. 14 at the Redemptorist site, http://bit.ly/MarysLens. It’s called “Through the Lens of Mary;” the designers have made it easy to access (just create your own password) and beautiful with art.

Five sessions follow pivotal moments in Mary’s life, seeing how splendidly she trusted God when her initial, human response must have been to seize control. The sessions, which can be used individually, include self-assessment, discussion, questions for reflection, prayer prompts, and practices.

Although not specifically tied to Advent, the course would make a fine Advent practice, and can all be done at home. No driving to church in a blizzard—just make a hot cuppa and cozy up to the computer, proceeding at whatever pace you like.

There’s a minimal charge–$8, but that’s only one and a half Starbucks lattes! Do something inspiring for yourself: sign up at http://bit.ly/MarysLens.

“I don’t much like the saints,” admitted an eighth grader. “They’re too perfect.” Isn’t it high time our young folk met the real saints, who are just as filled with flaws and quirks as any other human beings? But many of them would’ve been really interesting to hang out with!

We in the U.S. are fortunate to brush elbows with many saints–both officially canonized and not quite there–who grew and flourished here. It’s intriguing to imagine them sitting down together at a heavenly banquet, unbounded by the usual human constraints. Their shared values, hopes, beliefs and actions are strong membranes connecting them beyond time and space.

Elizabeth Ann Seton and Pierre Toussaint exchange news about their parish, St. Peter’s in New York City; she thanks him for donations to the orphanage staffed by her sisters. Katharine Drexel and John Neumann chat about their home town, Philadelphia. Marianne Cope, the first to admit alcoholics to the hospital at a time when they were jailed instead, thanks Bill W., Dr. Bob and Sister Mary Ignatia for founding Alcoholics Anonymous. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez discuss with Henry David Thoreau his essay, “On Civil Disobedience.” He preferred jail to paying a tax which would finance the Mexican War and extend slavery; his stance on resisting injustice underlay their movements. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and Elizabeth Ann Seton compare notes on their shared experiences of being widowed, converting to Catholicism when it was most unpopular, losing a child, and constantly caring for the sick. Frances Cabrini discusses immigration with contemporary experts and marvels that the issues of her day still have not been resolved. Thea Bowman and Katharine Drexel roll their eyes about black women being denied admission to religious communities in the early 1900s. Sister Mary Luke Tobin and  Rachel Carson measure women’s progress in the arenas they pioneered: church and science. Dorothy Day, Helen and Cesar Chavez reminisce about their visits to each other, and her imprisonment in 1973 for picketing several California vineyards. Dorothy Stang and the sisters martyred in Liberia talk with Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel about the ties that bound them so closely to their people, they couldn’t leave their missions even when their lives were endangered.

Lest anyone consider them superheroes, let’s remember that saintly people walk with all the longing and limitation, reluctance and resistance of ordinary human beings. They share (and have documented in their letters and journals) the failures, fears and frustrations, effervescent joys and stinging pains of all humanity. Looking way back in church history, the fifth century Council of Carthage insisted that saints remain sinners who rely on God’s mercy. If not, they’d be too distant to imitate. And isn’t that the point?

A question which arises naturally in this context is, what makes North Americans unique in the larger communion of saints? Typical of our nation’s settlement and growth was a fluidity, vitality, and sense of possibility previously unknown in Europe. Historian Daniel Boorstin comments: “By the early 19^th century, in crowded, pre-empted Europe, ‘No Trespassing’ signs were everywhere; control by government covered the map. America offered a sharp contrast.”[1]

Old World nations knew clearly defined boundaries. But the sense of geography in the U.S. was vague at best. “The map of America was full of blank places that had to be filled.”[2] This unique mix of hope and illusion became fertile ground.

Few clucking rulers murmured, “it can’t be done.” Call it, if you will, less of a “wet blanket effect.”   Americans often seem happiest when on the move, and this was certainly true of John Frances Neumann or Frances Cabrini—who began as immigrants, and served their new country by difficult journeys through it.

The frontier has always been vital to the North American experience. So let’s broaden the idea of frontier to unexplored realms of holiness. In the North American context, the quote from Revelation 21:5, “See, I am making all things new” takes on richer meaning. Our saints went into what some would term North America’s “hell holes”: the raw frontier, the leper colony, the squalid slum. They were “explorers” in many realms: civil rights, science, education, health care. There they brought the vigorous, transforming energy of the Resurrection.

Shouldn’t our young people have heroes like Marianne Cope, Pierre Toussaint, John Neumann, Dorothy Stang, Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez and Mychal Judge? Don’t these pioneers have more to teach the soul than a sports or film hero? Let’s read their stories, model their actions, praise them like honored family members!

Excerpt from When the Saints Came Marching In Liturgical Press, 2015, litpress.org, 1-800-858-5450

[1] Daniel Boorstin, THE AMERICANS: THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE (New York: Random House, ’65), 65.

[2] Boorstin, 223

“In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.” — Thomas Merton

As the jangle of politics hits a feverish pitch, let’s turn to something timeless, human values that uplift and endure: the feast of five recent martyrs. On Oct. 23, 1992, three Adorers of the Blood of Christ were killed in Liberia, after two others in the order had been shot three days earlier. They were innocent victims caught in the craziness of civil war.

When I gave retreats to this community, both in Ruma, IL and Wichita, KS, I was impressed by a spunky-wonderful bunch of women. As I learned their history, that first impression turned to awe. One background note among many: in 1985, the Adorers of Ruma became the only Catholic organization in the area to defy the law and offer sanctuary in their houses to Cuban and Central American refugees.

In limited space, it’s impossible to write about all the martyrs (see When the Saints Came Marching In for the fuller picture.) But here are brief cameos of two:

Sister Barbara Ann Muttra was a nurse who wasn’t above bribery. At her clinic, she discouraged the common practice of driving off evil spirits by placing pepper in a newborn’s mouth, (which caused blisters) and mud on the umbilical cord, causing tetanus. She encouraged  parents’ cooperation with baby clothes donated by friends in the U.S. Eventually, she cut infant mortality from 80% to 20%, from two deaths a week to two a year.

Sister Shirley Kolmer loved Liberia because the gap between her front teeth was considered a sign of beauty there. A Ph. D. in Math, she taught it at St. Louis University, and first went on a Fulbright to the University of Liberia in 1977 and 1978. As provincial, her vision was of “loving the comfort, but ready to get up and go at a moment’s notice–women who dream dreams and continue to promise.” In Liberia, Charles Taylor’s rebels had recruited child soldiers as young as 10, and revived ancient practices of torture and mutilation. So Shirley started a counseling program for boys pressed into war, both perpetrators and victims.

Asked, “what made them tick? Why would they return to Liberia after a dangerous escape a year before?” the sisters who knew them well respond: “If there were five martyrs, there were probably eight motives.” The words “pious” or “prissy” never come up. “Bold” and “tenacious” are more likely to surface. They had practical work to do: teaching poor, illiterate, powerless women, staffing medical clinics, counseling, feeding the hungry. (By 1990, 40,000 civilians in Monrovia had died of starvation.) Over and over, one hears of a love for the Liberian people, the drive to meet their needs and share their lot.

Their persistence also characterizes an ASC sister who, as principal of an East St. Louis school, got garbage collection where there had been none, and celebrated as merrily as the neighbors on the day the trash cans arrived. Let’s praise and celebrate and follow  women such as these.

Excerpt from When the Saints Came Marching In Liturgical Press, 2015, litpress.org, 1-800-858-5450

“From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, Good Lord deliver us!”

“May God preserve us from stupid nuns!”

No matter how hard they try, hagiographers can’t camouflage Teresa’s tart brusqueness. In her day, the sixteenth century, the Inquisition tried to force change through threats, imprisonment and violence. One suspects that Teresa’s humor had longer-lasting effects.

She reformed not only the Carmelite order, but also attitudes about women and approaches to prayer. Because her early training had shoe-horned her into trivial conversation with too many women jammed into one house, she created orderly spaces where her sisters could turn inward. “My daughters, we are not hollow inside,” she reminded them.

Then she took on the prevailing ideas of prayer: mindless repetition of rote formulas imposed by the clergy. Most people considered direct experience of God, without priestly intervention, subversive. Teresa gave images of contemplation that were close to daily life: the watered garden, beehive, interior castle, heart of God like the innermost, edible core of the palmetto. The face of God that Teresa reveals is not punitive or distant, but precious as a lover, close as a friend.

All the while she was dancing around the Inquisition, coyly claiming she had no idea what she was talking about. How could others condemn her when she beat them to it? Meanwhile, probably grinning self-protectively, she focuses on God’s generosity: “Do you think it’s some small matter to have a friend like this at your side?”

Excerpt from Women of Mercy by Kathy Coffey,  art by Michael O’Neill McGrath, Orbis  Books, 800-258-5838

When I lived in Colorado, autumn was defined and clear as a political opinion. Labor Day meant pack away the shorts and retrieve the ski sweaters. The third weekend of September brought peak aspen-changing, when mountain roads clogged with leaf peepers and newspapers inevitably captioned photos, “Colorado’s Other Gold.” By Halloween it often snowed, so the costumes were buried under down jackets, and hot chocolate sounded better than a Hershey bar.

Now I’m puzzled when Californians speak of seasonal change. It may get a bit cooler, but trees are green in December, flowers still bloom in January, and by February fruit trees are flowering. The changes must be so subtle, I’ll need to explore them more carefully.

So too for seasons of life. Once I was the Wage Earning Adult, teaching classes that began strictly at 9 am. No waffling in the “I’m Mom” department either. “Do it because I’m bigger.” Roles were rigidly defined, without much room to breathe.

So does semi-retirement make one a quasi-adult? My next deadline isn’t ‘til end of October, and I can write the article in my pajamas. My four children are the busy ones, with responsible careers and heavy obligations. I get delegated to chauffeur, supervise the playground, and build sand castles with Louisa while the grown-ups clean the beach house.

My more responsible side resists the change. But the better self likes lingering on this threshold. I can observe and delight in grandchildren as I never could when my constant mantra was, “I don’t have time!” With the surprising gift of time, I can find out if “California fall” is an oxymoron. I can glow with professional pride when the 4-year old tells his mom, “grammy made us a great dinner!” meaning she nuked the mac-n-cheese in pre-measured plastic bowls. I can look forward all day to 5 pm, not for faculty cocktails or the end of a work day, but to the explosive joy when a 20-month old barrels across the day care center, knocking over smaller children and yelling, “Gammy!” Not to brag, but I’ve measured just the right amount of gravel to voice Thomas the train engine for the 3-year old.

Once I was quite serious about my resume, listing every award and publication. Our society values achievement and by gum, I was an Olympic ladder climber. Now the tiny steps downward into being more fully human won’t be recorded. But a threshold beckons, mysterious as autumn in California.

Someday it may seem mild, but a priest who openly admitted being alcoholic and gay, then went rollerblading in his sixties was pushing the narrowly defined boundaries of priesthood in the seventies and eighties.

At one time, Mychal Judge drank so heavily he had blackouts. The drinking began in the seminary with little sips of altar wine. By 1976, “his alcoholism had become so serious that it became both crisis and opportunity.” After joining AA, Judge later attended as many of its meetings as he could. Some thought he was more familiar with the AA book than with the Bible.

The risk was dramatic at a time when “if a friar had drinking problem, it was hushed up or he was sent away for therapy.” So too for his second frontier: being gay. Judge was open about his gender preference even at a time when Archbishop O ‘Connor was quoted in the  New York Post as saying, “I would close all my orphanages rather than employ one gay person.” At first hesitant to march in New York’s first inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2000, Judge received wild acclaim from the crowd—and nervous disapproval from the church.

That continued when he was reported to the diocese for not wearing vestments at firehouse Masses. Judge told the young clerical bureaucrat who called him on the carpet: “if I’ve ever hurt the church I’ve served and loved so dearly for 40 years, I want to be burned at the stake on 5^th Ave., at the front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.” “No matter how many robes Cardinal [O’Connor] put on or how much power he tried to exert, he still could not… quash Mychal Judge.”

The story of his death is well known: Judge rushed to the World Trade Center to be with the fire fighters responding to the disaster. Some speculate that he removed his helmet to pray the last rites over a dying firefighter, was struck on the head by debris and died. Five rescue workers carried him out through the rubble; Shannon Stapleton’s photo of them was widely published. (His friends joked that even in death, Mychal still loved a photo-op.) Firefighters laid Judge’s body before the altar in a nearby church, covering it with a sheet, his stole and badge. His eulogist pointed out how appropriate it was that Judge died first; then he’d be in heaven to meet over 400 first responders who arrived later.

Judge’s biographer comments on the impromptu ritual of two cops praying over his body at Ground Zero. It’s not only OK for laity to give last rites in an emergency. It “was, in fact, entirely in keeping with Father Mychal’s own sacramental theology of hallowing the moment and was typical of the way ordinary people generated light in the darkness of that day.” [1] The overflow crowd outside Judge’s funeral proved what his eulogist said: “When he was talking with you, you were the only person on the face of the earth.. . . We come to bury his heart but not his love. Never his love.”

Excerpt from When the Saints Came Marching In by Kathy Coffey, Liturgical Press, 800-858-5450

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. So to one of us we say, “Happy Feast, St. Teresa of Calcutta!”

Excerpt from Women of Mercy by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Books, 800-258-5838

Human trafficking means the enslavement of the innocent, the child made in God’s image, in God’s very likeness, who bears within the spark of the divine. If we truly believe each child is sacred, what are we doing to save and protect them?

Children who have been trafficked have multiple wounds: physical, emotional, spiritual. Thus, their healing is complex and must be guided carefully by highly trained professionals. As one who works in the field says, “If this were easy, everyone would be doing it!” Indeed of 160 Catholic Charities nationally, only one has tackled the question of housing victims after their rescue. (Please correct if I’m wrong!)

There are only about 300 beds available nationally for those who are rescued. There are none in the Oakland, CA area, which ranks #3 nationally for trafficking. Therefore, Nancy O’Malley, DA for Alameda County, who has prosecuted over 400 traffickers locally, asked Bishop Barber for help.

He responded in the only way a Christian could: “Of course. The whole diocese will help.”

And so, Catholic Charities of the East Bay will open Claire’s House, a safe haven for minor girls who are victims of trafficking. These children need more than a bed; they need a home. An institution can’t repair deep psychic and physical damage; that’s the work of a trained and merciful staff. Here, victims will receive respite, hope, trauma counselling, medical care, educational and vocational training, and a spiritual dimension without which their healing is incomplete.

In the ancient Latin, “Adsum” means “I am here.” No matter what the evil has been, the Catholic community has across centuries, arisen to meet the challenge. This is one effort that can make us all proud.

Remember: if you have suspicions that someone, especially a child under 18, is forced to engage in sex or a labor activity and cannot leave, call:

National Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888