Have you ever sat in adoration, waiting for Jesus to say something to you, to make himself known? Have you ever just needed to know he loves you, and in desperation you felt like shouting, "Please, tell me!"?

It can be difficult when God is silent. You feel like you're doing something wrong, like there's some magic code that will get you into the place where he speaks clearly and you hear easily, and you just don't have it. Sometimes you just wish he would walk into the chapel and sit next to you, and look into your eyes. And say it.

In my sonic search for the voice of Jesus, I've been turning to the pages of Scripture. Recently I was surprised to discover, or rediscover, situations in Jesus' life when he was silent. So much of the Gospels are made up of parables, discourses, sermons, and sayings of Jesus, that sometimes we can gloss over the times when he is silent. It's like reading one of those Bibles with the red ink for the words of Christ, and the black ink for everything else, and having eyes only for the red. But what about all that black ink?

Jesus spoke to teach about the love of the Father and life in his kingdom. But he also conveyed this through his actions: his healings and other miracles, and ultimately in his Passion, death and Resurrection. Jesus' crucifixion was the fulfillment of all he said. Doesn't a simple crucifix speak so much to us? The whole Gospel is contained in it.

There are other moments, too. Take John 13, when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. John, who writes so eloquently of the Word, and gives us so many of his beautiful words, pauses for a moment here, midway through the Gospel. He stops to look, not at Jesus' face or his mouth, from which the Word comes, but at his hands. His hands, so accustomed to chisel and plane, reach down to labor once more for his own. Jesus' hands speak. His flesh speaks. The Word became flesh ...

John 13:3-5: "Jesus ... rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded."

He says not a word. But grow very still, as the disciples do, and listen to the movements of Jesus. Hear the rustle of his clothing as he lays it to the side. Listen to the water as he lets it fill the basin. Hear him unloosen the thongs of the sandals. These are the sounds of his love. Jesus, bending low to serve, says everything.

Of course, we do not always understand. Peter refuses Jesus' offer at first, and so the good Teacher explains. Then Peter wholeheartedly accepts. There are times when he will help us understand. But that doesn't mean he loves any less when he is silent. When you are in adoration and it is hard to hear his voice, don't think, "Nothing is happening! He has left me alone!" but think, "I believe You are with me in the silence, Lord. I trust that You are acting to love me, to do me a great service. I do not understand, but I will let You wash my feet."


Jesus, from the monstrance You silently love us, You silently wash our feet. You have laid aside the dazzling white garments of heaven so as to appear before us as a servant. You serve us with Your presence. You speak through Your silence. You are the Word-become-Flesh, dwelling among us. Your emptied hands, frail and fixed, can no longer hold the orb and scepter. Your hands, nailed to the cross, do us the greatest service: they wash us clean so that we can sit at your table, so that we can be with you forever. Thank you for your silence. Thank you for your love.

The Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, is immediately followed by Christmas when the Light of the World comes and shines into the darkness of our lives.


So, be not afraid! Christ is the light that is never dimmed. He is the Savior who made Himself weak, poor and broken. When we find ourselves in darkness may we always have the courage to say, "Come Lord Jesus! Come into my heart and life of brokenness and darkness. Come be my light! Come make me whole! Maranatha!"

"Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me Lord, a correct faith, a certain hope, a perfect charity, sense and knowledge, so that I may carry out your holy and true command."  -St. Francis of Assisi

                                                                                                                 -Sr. Chiara Joan, novice

I've had the opportunity to visit many, many churches during my first semester serving Franciscan University in Gaming, Austria. Every time I walked in, my goal was to find the tabernacle and pay a visit to Jesus, if only for a moment. But on one visit, instead of a tabernacle, I found a stripped-down, empty room. Nothing but walls and windows, ceilings and floors. It was now just a museum for those interested in 13th-century architecture. It was one of the saddest moments of my semester.

Even when I was in magnificently-decorated Baroque cathedrals, they would have felt absolutely empty without the presence of Jesus. Today, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, it got me to thinking. Mary was the perfect tabernacle for the presence of the Lord, prepared at her conception for Jesus to come and dwell within.

Each of us, flesh and bone that we are, was also made for this purpose. And we are nothing without Him.


These walls will stretch 'till you abide
Vast, vaulted ceilings higher climb
Beams and bricks without you there
Beams and bricks without you living there


This dust was made with you in mind
These stones are but a waiting bride
Empty if not filled with you
Empty if not filled with all of you




Who am I, that my Lord should come to me?
Who am I, that my Lord should dwell inside of me?
Take my body, take my blood
Take these sticks and all this mud
And build a shelter where your heart can come to rest


Basilicas and sanctuaries
Cathedrals, shrines, are just so many
Empty shells without your presence, Lord
Marble, gold I don't possess,
But, Lord, it is my happiness
If you would make this humble heart Your home
Make me your home


So find a candle, strike a flame
And leave it here to light your name
Jesus walks along these halls
Jesus lives and loves between these walls


-Sr. Mary Gemma, T.O.R.

I walk in and find myself immediately flooded with many tasks to do.

While people come over to say hello and give hugs, I'm given instructions for the day. Before I can start any of these tasks, I have an unhappy customer complaining about this or that and two people waiting to receive food and clothing assistance. This might seem like a mad house, but it's really just another day at Samaritan House, a thrift store and emergency food bank our sisters assist at in Downtown Steubenville.

After meeting with a client in need of food and clothing, I soon find out they can't find much of what they are looking for in the way of clothes. I make up a list of their needs and decide to run downstairs where we have a bit of an "overflow" supply. As soon as I step our of the door, another client is awaiting clothing assistance. Asking him to please wait, I ask one of our volunteers to fill out the food order for the first client while I run downstairs to find clothing. It's been a few years since she's done an order, so we decide to do it together. When I come back upstairs, there are more people asking for food and clothing assistance and people wanting to know if we help with this, that or the other. The other sister I'm working with comes to the rescue and helps some of the people needing assistance. I hear glass shatter behind me. The first client says none of the clothes I brought up would work and they will come back another day. I desperately seek out the shattered glass being told by 3 people they heard it shatter from 3 different spots. As I was searching for the glass, I realized the clothing I brought up needed to go back downstairs. Once finding the glass nestled between some boxes on the floor, I begin to do clean up. As soon as I begin, I receive a phone call. When 3:00 hit (the time we usually pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet), I found myself in the middle of a clothing order, needing to take clients downstairs for their needs, finding no rest even at that time. I was starting to wonder -- is this what a mother of many young children feels like?

With so many tasks to be done and not enough time to do it. Never have I wanted to receive the gift of bilocation so badly. Being overwhelmed on days like this is an understatement.

The rest of my day continued in a similar fashion with many people needing assistance and only two of us to meet the many demands of the day. Before I knew it, my 2 1/2 hour shift was over and it was time to clean up and go home. Our usual clean-up crew however went home early, leaving Sr. Maria Clare and me to fend for ourselves, taking us twice as long as normal.

On days like this I can't help but wonder, "Lord, did I really make a difference today? Did I really build up Your kingdom today, feeling very overwhelmed and running around like a mad woman attempting to give everyone the love and attention they need while still getting my work done? Is sweeping up shattered glass and sorting through clothes really sanctifying myself and others?" 

The Lord gave me a very beautiful word for the beginning of this year -- that faithfulness to the little things we do in life is our path to sanctification.

When we change diapers, hold our tongue with the co-worker who rubs us the wrong way, love our spouse and children in the midst of a hectic day, study for an exam, or do dishes for our parents, we are showing the love of Christ.

I realized on this day that being with the clients who come in won't solve their problems. They will still be poor, still be hungry, still be sick. Mopping the floor isn't exactly bringing about world peace, but little acts done with great love does build up the body of  Christ in a mystical fashion we will never fully grasp on this side of Heaven. The smile from the high-schooler who had been living in a bad situation for months; the relief of a mother to have food for a few weeks for her children; the love and attention received when answering a question for someone; the grandmother whose eyes fill with tears because she knows her granddaughter will have adequate clothing; none of these are earth shattering! They are all the product of simple acts done with love.

At the end of this very hard and trying day, I read a letter from one of the clients at Samaritan House ensuring us of her love for us and calling us "angels sent from God". I don't know about being angelic, but we can all be saints when we live a life of faithfulness to our vocation. No matter how monotonous, trying or difficult our daily tasks may be, we are all called to sainthood. We are all called to love.


"Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one... Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person... Intense love does not measure; it just gives. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."  -St. Teresa of Calcutta

                                                                                                                       -Sr. Chiara Joan, novice

A relief of Jesus and St. Faustina at the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Krakow

"Jesus loves you!"

The room, filled with more than 100 college students, was absolutely still. All listened with rapt attention as the sister with her Polish accent told us of the greatness of the Lord's mercy and love. Our pilgrimage group from Franciscan University's study abroad campus in Austria was visiting the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland on Saturday, the second day of our trip.

We weren't listening to St. Faustina herself, but Sr. Marie Vianney was close enough, keeping the message of mercy alive with her simple and joyful words. She shared about Faustina's diary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and the sacraments of mercy: Confession and the Eucharist.

Sister wanted each of us to return home with a word of love from Jesus, so she printed slips of paper for each one of us with a line from St. Faustina's diary. Mine said: "Tell me about everything, be sincere in dealing with Me, reveal all the wounds of your heart. I will heal them, and your suffering will become a source of your sanctification" (#1487). I was comforted by Jesus' compassionate invitation. I knew I could entrust myself to Him, because "all things work for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28).

Perhaps our ears and hearts were all the more ready for such a message because of what we had already experienced together. 24 hours earlier, we had walked silently through one of the most infamous places of evil and suffering in Poland and in the world: Auschwitz.

I had read stories of what took place there and at other concentration and death camps, but nothing compared to walking through Auschwitz myself. As our guide spoke of the sufferings of the victims and the cruelty of the guards, I felt as though Jesus had suffered His Passion again and again in each person there. Jesus was stripped, beaten, starved, tortured, and killed there. Such rejection of love; such untold evil. What good could come from this?

And yet, even before all of this happened, Jesus was already appearing to little Sr. Faustina Kowalska at her convent. He was already telling her of His mercy for Poland and for the world. Precisely in this place, this place of suffering, Jesus chose to reveal His heart. He told St. Faustina: "Because you are such great misery, I have revealed to you the whole ocean of My mercy" (#718).

From the misery of Auschwitz came the sacrificial love of St. Maximilian Kolbe and perhaps many other unknown saints. From the terror and losses of the war blossomed the vocation of Karol Wojtyla, our beloved St. John Paul II. From the hardships, large and small, of our own lives, come the knowledge of our need and of the Lord's mercy.

Friday afternoon, we walked down the railroad tracks to the ruins of the Birkenau gas chambers. On our right, we saw only chimneys left from the death camp buildings. The tour guide told us the wood from the barracks had been carefully dismantled after the war and used in the restoration of Warsaw, which had been mostly destroyed by Nazi bombs. It was as if Jesus was silently telling us that the wood of the cross must be the means of redemption and the road to resurrection.

At the memorial at the end of the tracks, we stopped to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy together. It was a golden afternoon, and the light made the grass on either side of the tracks more green and alive. I wondered that there could be beauty in such a place, but then, isn't that what God always does?

-Sr. Mary Gemma, T.O.R.

"Silk" (Samuel Hayes Johnson) October 20, 1946- September 14, 2016

Silk died, early on the morning of the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. I appreciate that to most people that sentence probably seems funny, like a typo or a strange grammatical error. It isn’t. Silk was my friend, and more than that – he was Christ for me, in a very unique way. For over a year, I had the privilege of caring for him by shopping for him each week. The last year or so, this also meant I brought his groceries to his apartment, as he had become too weak to carry anything of any weight. I was not there when he died, though I was quietly awake, wondering why I was awake at 4:30 in the morning. But my sister was there, was able to be present to him at the end. She, like the wise virgins of the Gospel, kept vigil for the bridegroom as he came to bring Silk to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Who was Silk? This question has plagued me for my whole time in community, but extends even further, to my time as a student at Franciscan University. I used to see him at St. Peter’s Church, where he attended 8:00 Mass every day for more than three years without an interruption (he was quite proud of the statistic, and actually knew the exact number of Masses in his “streak”). In those days, I knew him without knowing him – he was the shabby, skinny guy with a wispy gray ponytail who wore cutoff jean shorts and a blue sweatshirt every day and always waited until the end of the line to receive communion. He was a mystery to me then, but not a personal mystery – more like a curiosity. I think I would have been afraid of him, had he ever come up to me to speak.

I got to know Silk the summer of my first year in community, when I first spent some time at Samaritan House, our thrift store. He was a regular volunteer at Samaritan House, where he was a perpetual nuisance – arguing with and occasionally frightening other volunteers, insisting that he ran the place, and often keeping us late at the end of the day as he would insist on praying for the dead (especially dead celebrities! I have a sharp memory of praying for Shirley Temple when she died a few years ago). Actually, we all thought that we were doing him a favor, letting him come in to close the store. We realized when he first got sick and didn’t come in for a few weeks that we actually relied on him to remind us of many of the little tasks involved in closing up: every day something would be forgotten, whether it was cleaning some area or emptying the till or cleaning out the coffee carafe. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure we still forget the coffee sometimes.

I’m not really sure how I started shopping for him, but that’s the way it was with Silk – only after he’d talked you into doing something did you realize that you’d been roped into it. And the fact is that he just didn’t seem to have anyone else he could rely on. He had great charm beneath his rough demeanor and vague, cryptic language, and a way of bringing you into his world. After time with Silk, I would find myself referring to things in his special lingo, where sisters all had nicknames, St. Peter’s was “the basilica” (it’s not a basilica!), and any activity – however mundane – was a “run” (as in, “we need to run on this one!). Shopping for Silk was totally mortifying for me. If that seems like a funny statement, allow me to paint a picture for you: imagine a lone religious sister, shopping at Walmart. In her first order, she has typical “nunnish things” – frozen vegetables, generic cereal, and discount meat. She quietly pays with her debit card. In her second order, she has chocolate donuts and milk, a variety of candy bars, Hostess cupcakes, and two or three large containers of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. She pays with a hundred-dollar bill. Do you see now why it was an awkward experience? Afterward, I would bring Silk his things and chat with him for a few minutes about whatever was on his mind: usually something related to his car (he always had a car that was on death’s door); to the sisters and their assignments (he truly believed that his opinion about these things carried great weight with Mother Mary Ann and the council and was deeply grieved when sisters were moved away or when he felt they weren’t in jobs they liked); or the Blessed Mother, who was the great love of his life. We would sometimes pray for the dead, but Silk did not think I was an especially good pray-er, so he usually omitted prayer time if I was the only one there, sometimes adding commentary about the excellence of Sr. Carrie Ann and Sr. Magdala Marie’s prayers.

My time with Silk was usually exasperating, frustrating, and totally heart-warming. He was intractable and impossible to reason with: I’ve often modified Paschal’s quip to refer to him, “Silk has reasons of which reason knows nothing”. He was like that to the end, scheming about how he could get a new car the last time I saw him, a week before his death. I guess he was his usually querulous self even in the hours before he died. When the sisters saw when they stopped to see him that he was dying, one stayed with him. Apparently, he kept telling her to leave. But she stayed, waiting like the wise virgins for the coming of the Bridegroom. In a sense, though, she was also waiting with him. Silk was Christ for us all in so many ways, so as Sister sat by his side, she kept watch not only with a lonely old man, but with Jesus himself. There is no way to explain this mystery, but it is the truth: Silk was Christ’s presence for us, and Jesus gave us so many opportunities to love him in Silk that I am overwhelmed by the privilege I had in knowing him.

And I can’t believe he is actually gone, now the object of my (apparently mediocre) prayers for the dead. Perhaps, then, I will borrow Silk’s prayers. Please join me in praying for my friend with the prayers he used each time he prayed for the dead:

Mary’s gonna take him for a ride.

Gone but not forgotten, forever in our heart.
-Sr. Agnes Therese Davis, T.O.R.

 

The fact of the matter is that our eyes don't always see the truth or the full reality of a situation. A few days into our mission this year, a student came to me. "Sister," he said, "can I ask you something? Isn't it like totally depressing seeing this stuff every day? Doesn't it get heavy?"

I had to think about that for a minute before answering. How do I feel about seeing so much suffering every day? Does it get "heavy"? Of course, there are moments that are just plain sad, like when you learn that a young woman has chosen to abort her child, or when you hear that a job opportunity fell through, or when the volunteer you've spent hours with doesn't come in to work because he's drunk again. But that's not what I see when I look at my life.

"No," I answered the student, "It's not totally depressing." And I went on to explain about the beauty I have discovered in my life living and serving in downtown Steubenville. Actually, we who live at our mission house downtown like to say we are "living the dream" because we are blessed to spend our days with the same sort of people that Jesus chose as his friends. If you read the Gospels, you will notice that most of the time Jesus was completely surrounded by people in need. He was followed by crowds of the sick, he sought out a tax collector of ill repute to be his apostle, and he did not shrink from inviting beggars to follow him or the demon-possessed to be his missionaries.

In other words, Jesus did not flinch from any aspect of human reality, no matter how raw, and in every person he saw something beautiful, something precious, and something worth saving.

Our relationship with Christ begins when we allow him to look at our particular human reality and discover the beauty there, hidden though it may be under sin and suffering. And as we learn what love is from Love Incarnate, we, too, begin to have eyes to see the beauty hidden in others. That is why any life involving contact with the "poor and marginalized" is far from depressing and heavy. Such a life is a privileged encounter with hidden beauty. When I listen to people's sorrows and share their pain, it is like I am receiving a precious artifact covered in dust and grime. My listening and sharing are a kind of dusting and polishing, whereby the beauty of the person is revealed once more. This is living the dream.

In this year of mercy, may we all have eyes to see the beauty of our neighbors, near and far. May be all discover the beauty stamped on each heart and be willing to give of ourselves to reveal that beauty to others.

Sr. Agnes Thérèse Davis, T.O.R.