The Hand of God and the Story of a Soul

In two inspiring posts, Fr Gordon MacRae wrote of Michelangelo and an ancient sculpture unearthed out of legend and a legend come true from St Therese of Lisieux.

Note to readers from Father Gordon MacRae: I recently wrote that a prison construction project has caused me and others where I live to be temporarily relocated for a few weeks to a crowded dormitory from where I am unable to write. Once the project is completed later this month, I will be moved back and will hopefully resume writing new posts.

I am currently living in a room with 23 other prisoners crowded into a small and noisy space. At first sight it reminded me of a FEMA shelter, but at least there was no disaster that preceded it. I cannot complain. Our friend Pornchai Moontri spent five full months in ICE detention in a similar space packed with 70 detainees awaiting deportation. You should not miss that nightmare and his final liberation in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

During my writing hiatus some relevant older posts are being restored at Beyond These Stone Walls and added to our various Library Categories. Our site developer thinks that some of these posts deserve a new audience or a second look. This week we are presenting two at a time when inspiration might be in short supply. I hope you will read and share them.

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Michelangelo and the Hand of God

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in 1475 in the small Italian village of Caprese. He grew up in Florence, the artistic center of the early Renaissance, a period of artistic innovation and accomplisnhment that began at the time Michelangelo was born. In many ways, the masterpieces surrounding him in Florence were themselves his best teachers. They included ancient Greek and Roman statuary and the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the early Renaissance masters.

As a child, Michelangelo preferred drawing to schoolwork which often earned his father’s stern disapproval. For historical context, Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492 just as thirteen year old Michelangelo was apprenticed to a sculptor in Florence. From there, he took up residence in the home of Lorenzo dé Medici, the leading art patron of Florence.

The Medici household was a gathering place for artists, poets, and philosophers. During this time, Michelangelo studied under Bertoldo di Giovanni, an aging master who had trained with Donatello, the greatest sculptor of 15th-century Florence. This exposure proved providencial when, at the age of 30, Michelangelo was on hand in Rome to help unearth and identify the excavation of a sculptural legend, The Laocoön (pronounce Low-OCK-oh-one), a massive ancient sculpture dating from the Second Century BC that had been missing for over a thousand years.

The Laocoön also had a massive influence on all future sculptures and paintings by Michelangelo that became the enduring treasures of the Catholic Church. The Laocoön stands today in the Vatican Museum. This is that story, and it is fascinating. Don’t miss:

Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.

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A Shower of Roses

Saint Therese of Lisieux was a French Carmelite nun called “The Little Flower of Jesus.” She became one of the most beloved saints of the Catholic Church in modern times. Born at Alencon, France, with the name, Therese Martin, she was deeply pious from childhood and entered the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux at the young age of 15.

Therese exemplified what she called her “Little Way,” a devotion to God both childlike and profound. She sought holiness through the offering of small actions and humble tasks. Her goodness was so remarkable that her superiors asked her to write an account of her life and spiritual journey.

The result was “Story of a Soul” written in French in 1898 and translated into English in 1958. It is today the most widely read spiritual memoir of our time. Therese died at the young age of 24 and was canonized in 1925. She is today a Doctor of the Church.

The many miracles attributed to Saint Therese gave meaning to her cryptic promise, “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.” One of them, a small one, fell to me. Please read and share anew,

A Shower of Roses.

A Shower of Roses

Saint Therese of Lisieux, a Doctor of the Church, left this life at the age of 24. She left behind A Story of a Soul, the most read spiritual biography of all time.

In the mid-1980’s, I spent a lot of time with Michelle, a seventeen year-old parishioner who suffered from a terminal brain tumor. In the last weeks of her life on Earth, I visited with her every day. It’s difficult to declare God’s love to a dying teenager and her family.

It was a humbling way to learn that I cannot give away what I do not have. I had no answers to explain their suffering, and could not pretend otherwise. For weeks, Michelle and I together drew closer to the precipice between life and death. I could be but a fellow pilgrim on that path, not a guide.

Michelle’s room was decorated by her loving family and scores of high school friends. It was filled with flowers, stuffed bears, and balloons that reflected their love for Michelle, and their broken hearts over what was happening to her. It was difficult to reconcile that room, with its flowers and gifts that screamed life, with the image of a young girl rapidly departing from it.

On the night before Michelle died, I was with her in that room. After Anointing and Viaticum, she held my hand as I grasped for something that would ease her fear, and give her hope. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I told her of the life of St. Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower.

I told Michelle all that I knew of Therese, which wasn’t much. She entered the Carmelite convent in Lisieux at fifteen, and left this world on September 30, 1891 at just twenty-four years old.

Her Story of a Soul became one of the most widely read spiritual biographies of all time. I struggled against tears as I spoke of Therese’s “little way,” and asked Michelle to practice it now by surrendering herself to God. By this time, Michelle had lost her ability to speak. She fought against the drugs meant to buffer her pain, seeming to drift in and out of consciousness as she tried hard to listen to the story of St. Therese.

I spoke of St. Therese’s cryptic promise, “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.” I told Michelle that I believed the young Therese will meet her on this path, take her hand from mine, and walk with her so she would not be alone. I asked her not to be afraid.

Michelle had not opened her eyes for some time. I wondered if she could even hear me. I told her that some people believe they will receive a rose as a sign that St. Therese has heard their prayer for her intercession. Perhaps I was trying to find hope for myself as much as instill it in Michelle. I looked around her room for a rose among the flowers sent by friends, but there was not one rose to be found there.

When I looked back, I was startled. Michelle was staring at me intently. Too weak to raise her arm, she rested it at her side, her index finger pointing upward at the ceiling as she continued to stare at me. There was an urgency to her stare that seemed to take all the strength she had left. I looked up. Among the several helium balloons tied to her bedposts, one had broken free and drifted to the ceiling. It was one of those silver foil balloons.

Emblazoned upon it was a large, brilliant, vibrant rose.

The balloon had arrived that afternoon, her mother later told me. As soon as Michelle could see that I noticed the rose, she closed her eyes. She never opened them again. The next morning, I was with Michelle as she surrendered her life.

In the days after celebrating the Mass of Christian Burial for Michelle and her family, I was haunted by the memory of the rose balloon. The sheer miracle of it felt so vivid, so alive at the moment it occurred. I had an overwhelming sense of awe, a sense that St. Therese really took Michelle’s hand from mine and walked with her soul the remaining distance. I never spoke of this to anyone until now.

The rose balloon can be easily dismissed now as coincidence, but it didn’t feel that way at first. I could feel what Michelle was feeling as she pointed to it. “Stop looking around my room. It’s right there! Hope is right there!” At that very moment, I felt Michelle’s fear give way to hope.

The days to follow stretched into weeks and months and years. My own trials became many, and heavy. They distorted that moment with Michelle, and hid it in clouds of doubt. In time, my own tribulations drove Michelle’s rose from conscious awareness. I didn’t forget it so much as it just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Haughty Minds and Simple Signs

Years later, my life and priesthood imploded under the devastating weight of false witness. I spent the eighteen months before my trial living with the Servants of the Paraclete, a community of priests and brothers in New Mexico. One of my housemates was Brother Bernard. He still writes to me. Well into his 70’s now, his Irish wit has not diminished at all, and age has only intensified his simple, trusting — and sometimes irritating — Irish piety. We who serve the Church with advanced degrees in theology and the sciences at times find the combination of sharp wit and simple piety to be, well, humbling. That’s the irritating part.

Brother Bernard has a sort of comic book-like league of spiritual super heroes who, in the simplicity of his faith, will always come to our aid. Clearly, the Wonder Woman of his team of saintly rescuers is Saint Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower” and a Doctor of the Church.

When Brother Bernard writes to me, he doesn’t miss a chance to proclaim that he prays to St. Therese for me. When I lived with him, he loved to take out his collection of St. Therese holy cards and other memorabilia.  Now  every one of his letters contains one of those cards.

We of haughty mind and proud heart have trouble wrapping our brains around the spiritual arena inhabited by Saint Therese. Her “little way” of transforming every moment into a prayer of union with God is hard to relate to when faced with painful and weighty issues — like an unjust imprisonment.

In one of his letters a few years ago, Brother Bernard reminded me of that cryptic promise: “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.” He told me that I should look for a rose as a sign that St. Therese hears his prayer.

I thought of the now distant memory of Michelle and the rose balloon. Whatever it had evoked in my own soul then was gone. I scoffed and mocked Brother Bernard’s letter. I am in prison in the harshness of steel and concrete. Roses do not exist here. In all these years in prison, I have never seen a rose. I put Brother Bernard’s letter aside, and put this pious nonsense out of my mind.

Two days later, well before dawn on the morning on October 1st, I emerged from my cell, cup of instant coffee in hand. The cell block was quiet and empty except for one young man sitting alone at a table. As I approached, he complained to me that he had been up all night with an attack of ADHD. A promising artist, the troubled young man had spent the night drawing a card with his treasured colored pencils.

“I’ll trade you this for a cup of coffee,” he said as he handed me the card. I sat down. I had to! On the morning of the feast of St. Therese, I was holding in my hand a stunning three-dimensional sketch of a magnificent, brilliant rose.

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