Category: Goodness

It seems to me that the majority of hagiographies (Saint stories) fall into one of two categories: 1) he was so perfect his whole life that he practically walked on water, or 2) he bathed in a sea of his enemies’ blood until he met Jesus and became perfect. This can be discouraging for those of us who are just consistently jerks. We’re not holy enough or terrible enough to become saints, it seems, so we go on with our mediocrity.

But there are some–increasingly more, it seems, though perhaps I’m just meeting more Saints in general these days–who clearly struggled with sin and brokenness even after their conversion. Ven. Matt Talbot was an alcoholic, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity was angry, and St. Mark Ji Tianxiang was an opium addict. Really.

Moderns, mostly, but leave it to the Irish to understand sinning Saints before the rest of us. St. Columba (or Columcille, but not, it seems, Columban or Columbanus, as that’s somebody else) is a dear friend of mine, a powerful witness to our ability to fall even when surrounded by grace–and then to be raised up again.

Descended from an Irish high king, Columba (who lived in the 6th century) was educated by monks before deciding to join them himself. He studied under St. Finnian of Moville and then under the great St. Finnian of Clonard, one of the fathers of Irish monasticism and the “tutor of Erin’s saints.” After his ordination, Columba wandered the country preaching and founding monasteries.

So there he was, all educated and inspiring and fancy with his preaching. Everyone was amazed by him, but he was still very human. His former teacher, St. Finnian of Moville (not Clonard–try to keep up) had recently acquired a copy of St. Jerome’s translation of the Psalms and Columba was drooling over it. A very skilled copyist, he asked Finnian if he could make a copy. Finnian, an abbot and a Saint, said no. Evidently he was also something of a greedy jerk, refusing to allow others access to God’s word. But he did allow Columba to read it, so he did–by day. By night, he snuck into the room where the Psalter was kept and made a secret copy. Another monk saw him doing it and reported it to Finnian, who allowed it to happen. After all, Columba was a very skilled copyist.

When Columba had finished his copy, he got ready to return to his monastery. As he was leaving, Finnian approached. “I believe you have something that belongs to me,” he declared, and demanded the copy Columba had so carefully made. He argued that a copy made without permission belongs to the owner of the original.

This became a nasty quarrel and eventually the two “men of God” appealed to the king. He sided with the miser over the thief and told Columba to leave the Psalter with Finnian. Ever obedient (ish), Columba did. And then went back to his clan and incited a revolution. The ensuing battle left 3,000 men dead and the holy abbot with blood on his hands.

Overcome with remorse at what he had done, Columba submitted himself to the judgment of the bishops of Ireland. Though they considered excommunication, they ended by exiling him instead. (Many Irish people would be hard pressed to tell you which is worse.) Columba sailed with 12 companions for Scotland, where he established a community at Iona and proceeded to evangelize nearly the whole of Scotland.

You would expect Columba to have spent the rest of his life doing penance for his terrible, murderous sin, but he didn’t. No more than anybody else, anyway. He fasted and prayed and lived a terribly austere life, but he didn’t spend the next 30 years begging God for mercy. He had already received it. He had been forgiven and received his penance and there was no more need to lament his youthful misdeeds. They had been washed away by the blood of Christ and he was made new. Even though he had known better, even though he’d been given every advantage, even though he’d had no excuse for what he did–getting men killed because he wanted his own copy of the Psalms!–he refused to allow that sin to define him. He knew he was fallen and he knew God was merciful and he let the mercy transform the sin.

Would that we could do the same! So many of us live in the shadow of our pasts, forgetting that God sees only who we are, not who we were. We wallow in our shame and refuse to let God transform us. But St. Paul–himself a murderer–will have none of it. “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”¹ Columba is a powerful witness to me of the fact that Saints sin–sometimes dramatically, even after their conversions. I will sin, sometimes dramatically, even after my conversion. That doesn’t mean I’m SOL and I might as well resign myself to sliding into purgatory by the skin of my teeth. My sin will have consequences but by God’s grace I can start again and let him mold me into the image of his Son. 

God’s mercy is bigger than your sin. I hope your past isn’t as ugly as St. Columba’s but I know your future can be as beautiful. Lord, have mercy. Let’s go be saints.

 

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1. Philippians 3:13-14 [↩]

Cornelia Connelly is a woman who knew suffering and yet managed to live with joy. Born into a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1809, Cornelia Peacock married Pierce Connelly, an Episcopalian clergyman, when she was 22. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to frontier country: Natchez, Mississippi. Pierce was very unhappy at what seemed to be a dead end position and began to question his Episcopalian faith. Before long, he had decided to renounce his priesthood and enter the Catholic Church. But Pierce, always very focused on success and worldly recognition, felt convinced that he needed to become a priest, even though to do so would have required him to separate from his wife and small children forever. Despite his wife’s devotion (and misgivings), the family sold their home and belongings so that they could travel to Rome to pursue this dream of Pierce’s.

On their way to Rome, the Connellys spent some time in New Orleans, where Cornelia’s attraction to Catholicism was confirmed. She was received into the Church, despite the opposition she knew she would experience, just before the family sailed for Rome. Pierce himself became Catholic in the Eternal City before the family returned to America a few years later, Pierce still a layman but desperate to do whatever it took to be ordained.

Deeply in love with her husband, Cornelia was distraught: “Is it necessary that Pierce sacrifice himself and me too? I love my husband and my darling children. Why must I give them up?” Nor would this be her only suffering during this time. Shortly after they moved to Louisiana, their fourth child, Mary Magdalene, died in infancy. Not long after, their third child, John Henry, was knocked into a vat of boiling sugar. Cornelia held him as he slowly died, 43 hours of agony. But her suffering had only begun.

Pierce had resolved to become a priest and asked Cornelia to agree to a separation and a life of perpetual celibacy. Mourning the loss of her marriage, Cornelia agreed to give all to God. Though she several times asked him to reconsider for the sake of their family, Pierce was blind in his insistence that he could not be happy if he weren’t ordained. So Cornelia moved to England, at the prompting of the Holy Father, to found the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. In order to do so, her bishop required that she put her two younger children, ages 10 and 5, in boarding school.¹ In anguish, she obeyed, and made vows as a religious sister within the year, finding peace amid all her troubles.

But Pierce was not at peace. He was becoming more and more unstable, eventually demanding to see Cornelia despite restrictions against it. Cornelia refused to see him. When he couldn’t influence her with persuasion, he chose to punish her by abducting her children and poisoning them against her and the Catholic Church.

Enraged by her resistance, Pierce brought a lawsuit against his wife demanding his conjugal rights, despite having relinquished them years before. He renounced his Catholic priesthood and his faith and declared that he was attempting to rescue her from the Church. The English press naturally had a field day with this court case, particularly when Pierce won. Mercifully, Cornelia was granted an appeal and never made to return to the husband who had forced her to leave him and then attempted to force her to break her vows as a religious. Her reputation ruined by allegations of improprieties with the bishop, her heart broken, her children stolen from her, Cornelia returned to life as a Sister.

Pierce ended his life an Episcopalian priest in Florence, bitter and cruel to his death in his attacks on the Catholic Church. Merty, their oldest, died at age 20; Ady returned to the faith after the death of her father; Frank died as angry and anti-Catholic as his father.

And what of Cornelia? Despite constant attacks from within her order² and without,³ Cornelia was a woman of radiant joy. Asked once why she wasn’t miserable, with all she had suffered, Cornelia replied with a smile, “Ah, my child, the tears are always running down the back of my nose.” Cornelia grieved her suffering deeply but chose still to live in the joy of Christ risen.

From what I can tell, Cornelia wrote very little of the sufferings of her life except to offer them to the Lord and to remind her daughters in religion of the good suffering can do to the soul. “We have all a large share of suffering, and if we had not, we should never become Christlike as we ought,” she said, speaking volumes about her ability to forgive. Indeed, the joy Cornelia exhibited could only have been possible if she was a woman of great mercy.

I can’t think how I would react to the constant attacks Cornelia underwent, but I’m quite sure those who knew me wouldn’t describe me as radiant with the love of God. Most of us, I’m sure, would become terribly bitter in such circumstances. But Mother Cornelia was always a beacon of peace and full of smiles. She even viewed smiling as an offering to the Spirit: “Give to the Holy Ghost many smiles and offer each smile as an invocation–a fidelity–a cooperation with grace.” All this amid more suffering than most of us will ever experience.

Cornelia Connelly has become a dear friend of mine in recent months as I offer her witness of interior peace in a difficult marriage to friends who are suffering from difficult marriages themselves. Her ability to cling to the Lord and continue to trust him, even when trusting him seemed to have destroyed her happy life, is a witness to us all. More than anything, perhaps, I’m struck by her willingness to accept the circumstances of her life as a gift from God when I would have called them a curse.

Certainly Cornelia spent her life offering mercy to her husband, but I see in her also a desire, if it’s possible, to be merciful to God. Rather than curse, abandon, or resent him, Cornelia chose love. It seems silly to suggest that we ought to be merciful toward the Father as well as being merciful like the Father. And of course he’s done nothing wrong, nothing that could warrant our forgiveness. But many of us still harbor resentment against the Lord for suffering we see as his fault. Perhaps this week we can walk with Venerable Cornelia Connelly and ask her prayers that we might accept God’s will–even when it’s awful–and love him all the more for it.

 

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1. The oldest had been in boarding school for some time. [↩]
2. She was several times betrayed by a one of her sisters in religion; other sisters wrote to Rome to have her investigated. [↩]
3. Her husband, younger son, a bishop who distrusted her, and most of Protestant England, among others. [↩]

St Vitalis of Gaza is one of my very favorites. He was a 7th century Egyptian hermit, so I imagine most of us expect to have nothing in common with him. And perhaps we don’t, but lots to learn.

When Vitalis was about 60 years old, after many years in the desert, he gave up the hermit thing and went to Alexandria. There he became a day laborer. He would work all day at back-breaking tasks to earn a wage and then proceed to the local brothel to spend it.

Every night, this former hermit found himself with a different prostitute. You can imagine what the local Christians thought! Vitalis was ridiculed and harassed. People even approached the Patriarch to try to have him excommunicated, but the Patriarch refused to act on hearsay. Vitalis’ life became rather miserable until one day he was attacked in the street and killed. When he was found, he was clutching a paper with 1 Corinthians 4:5 written on it: “Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts.”

But the Christians of Alexandria had already judged. “Good riddance,” they thought, until his funeral. Dozens (if not hundreds) or former prostitutes attended his funeral, and each testified that she owed her soul to Vitalis.

As it turns out, Vitalis’ life wasn’t quite as debauched as people thought. Each night, after Vitalis had paid for a woman’s services, he would tell her he had bought her one night without sin. She was free to sleep. He, meanwhile, would hold vigil over her and pray for her. Naturally, some were curious. They asked Vitalis what he was about and he told them: God loved them and wanted them to be saved. He told them of God’s mercy, of his death on the cross, of the way he delighted in them. And when they were ready to accept this, he found them a way out. He worked to arrange marriages, provide dowries, even find monasteries willing to accept them. The only thing he asked was that they keep quiet about what he had done. If his good deeds had been known, after all, he would have been barred entry to the women he wanted to serve.

So he submitted to ignominy, willingly offering his reputation for the sake of their souls. Whether he was killed by someone who was angry at his success with a favorite prostitute or by a self-righteous Christian, we don’t know. Certainly he was a martyr, one who offered his life for the salvation of souls, and with great success.

There’s something so compelling to me about St. Vitalis’ story. Here was a man so concerned with the salvation of others that he offered not only his life but his good name. What humility, to be willing to be condemned as a lecher in order to save souls! It makes me wonder how willing I am to be shamed for the sake of the Gospel.

Then there’s the fact of his ability to see the dignity of these women who were considered scum. Long before people understood that victims of human trafficking are just that–victims–Vitalis was looking at them and seeing not fallen women but chosen daughters of the King. He wasn’t just trying to stop them from sinning, he was trying, whatever the cost, to show them what they were worth and how deeply they were loved. What if we took it as our life’s mission to convince people around us of the same thing? Even if they weren’t converted, their lives would be the more joyful because we chose to live like Christ.

When I tell people about great evangelists, Vitalis always ranks up there with Paul and Francis Xavier. His entire life was given over to preaching the Gospel and he chose to do it in ways that weren’t flashy. It’s all well and good to be a hobo missionary (like Paul! And Francis Xavier! And me!!) but the world needs people who are subtle, gentle missionaries as well. Vitalis went without sleep or food for the sake of telling broken, suffering women that they were loved and for his troubles he got a rock to the head. And a heavenly crown.

This week, I’m going to ask the Lord to give me his eyes so that I can see the suffering heart instead of the sinner. And in every encounter I have, I’m going to try to treat the other person with the gentle compassion that makes preaching the Gospel possible. St. Vitalis, pray for us!

 

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It seems every talk I give this year the requested topic is mercy. Which is great–it’s one of my favorite things to talk about. But if I just say the same thing over and over, it’s going to get stale. Besides, the love of God reaching out to a sinner is never dull and never looks the same. So since my two current obsessions are Scripture and the Saints–and since we’re already hitting the Scripture thing pretty hard–I thought it would be helpful to spend Lent sharing how different Saints expressed or received God’s mercy. And I’d love it if you’d join me!

Each Monday this Lent, I’m going to be sharing the story of a Saint whose life reveals more about God’s mercy to me. For those of you who are bloggers and want to share your own Saint stories, I’m going to make it a linkup. You just write your post, then come back here for the post of the day and add your post to the list. Then–if you don’t mind–link back to my post in yours so that people can click over here to find more stories of new Saint friends.

Ideally, I’d love some more obscure Saints. St. Francis and St. Thérèse are great but we’ve got thousands of Saints you’ve never heard of, so let’s get to know them. Also, anyone whose cause for canonization is open is fair game. So I’m looking at St. Vitalis, Ven. Cornelia Connolly, St. Josephine Bakhita,¹ and St. Columban to start. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share your Saints of mercy in the comments!

1. Is she too mainstream? [↩]