smmvolume2-10

Copyright 2008 www.MySecretisMine.comAll Rights Reserved Volume 2, Number 10

Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr June 2008

All That I Am I Owe to Her...........................

Meet: Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado...Page 3

Study: Proverbial Wisdom.............................Page 6

Pray: for Women in the Academy..............Page 8

Learn: Adrienne on a Bridge........................Page 9

Read: The Four Quartets...............................Page 10

Near the start of World War II, Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar was offered a choice: teach in Rome or serve as a student chaplain in Basel (Switzerland). The Swiss native chose to return to his homeland, which was surrounded by German troops.

During the summer of 1940, he was introduced to Dr. Adrienne von Speyr, the wife of Werner Kaegi, a history professor. She was recuperating after a serious heart attack. The potential convert had been unable to pray the “Our Father” since her first husband’s untimely death in 1934. Guided by Balthasar, she entered the Church months later on the Feast of All Saints. Balthasar became her spiritual director; she became the inspiration for the rest of his life’s work.

“All That I am, I Owe to Her...”Her faith and prayer crashed into his

life as if it were a tsunami. He later wrote of those early years, “Immediately after her conversion, a veritable cataract of mystical graces poured over Adrienne in a seemingly chaotic storm that whirled her in all directions at once.” She received graces in prayer and visions, all documented at length by Balthasar in daily dictation sessions.

It was as if she had been waiting her whole life for a confessor who could direct such an intense whirlwind. An angel visited her before Lent 1941, informing her, “Now it will begin.” Every year afterward, she participated in the passion and death of Jesus Christ, including his interior sufferings, and even the stigmata.

Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta) was a Jew who became Catholic in 1922 after reading

the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila.

When asked why she converted, she

wrote, “secretum meum mihi.” She became

a Carmelite in 1934, but was murdered at Auschwitz. Her feast

day is August 9.

Take a Break with Edith!

The experiences were life altering for her and her confessor. Balthasar helped her to form the Community of St. John in 1945, composed of laywomen dedicated to the obedience and submission of St. John and the Blessed Mother standing at the foot of the cross. The group is still active today. Balthasar provided sacramental support to the group, but Adrienne von Speyr provided the spiritual direction.

In 1947, Balthasar set up a publishing house, Johannes Verlag, to publish Adrienne’s works. Even so, he had trouble receiving an imprimatur for the final volumes of her commentary on the book of John. Gossip flew about Basel regarding the earnest, scholarly Jesuit who visited Frau Kaegi daily for “dictation” and meditation. Further rumors flowed from her medical practice, where certain miraculous cures were attributed to her.

About the same time, Balthasar was supposed to make his solemn religious profession in the Jesuit order. He claimed that his work with Speyr was a divine mission, and insisted that the Jesuits recognize this mission by taking on responsibility for the Community of St. John. They refused. He pushed the case all the way to the Superior General in Rome, requesting a formal investigation into the veracity of Speyr’s visions, to no avail. Hans Urs von Balthasar reluctantly left the Jesuit order on February 11, 1950.

He moved to Zurich and threw himself into the tasks of writing and publishing for Johannes Verlag. To finance the books, he hit the lecture circuit. Although he was offered several professorships, he stubbornly refused. Adrienne von Speyr and her mission completely reconfigured his own assessment of his academic work. All the work of his younger years now was recast in the light of her insights.

He initially received priestly faculties from the diocesan bishop of Chur, Switzerland (Liechtenstein) and was incardinated in that diocese. In 1956, he moved in with the Kaegis, helping to care for Adrienne as her health worsened. In addition to her weak heart, she was diagnosed with both diabetes and arthritis. She was no longer able to see patients and spent her days praying, knitting and reading.

For Balthasar, the work churned on, despite his own struggles with phlebitis and later leukemia, which nearly killed him. Nevertheless, the first volume of his acclaimed Theological Aesthetics was published in 1961. The majority of his colleagues were working on the Second Vatican Council. As a “lapsed” Jesuit, he would receive no such invitation. He doggedly kept at his work on the Aesthetics, working next door to Adrienne’s sickroom.

She died in 1967 from cancer of the bowel. Balthasar had refrained from sharing many of the details of her passion with others. Now free from the constraint of her effacement, he published most of the books she had dictated, corroborating the depth of her contribution to his own theological work.

The members of the Community of St. John were in awe. They had had no idea of the spiritual depth of their foundress. For them, she had simply been a friend and mentor, a humble and quiet woman who suffered much from her illnesses. Her quiet, mystical influence will be felt in theological circles for generations, thanks to her friend, Hans.

--Kristen West McGuire

June 2008

www.MySecretisMine.com

June 2008

(SHORT BIO: Dr. Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. From 2004 – 2006, she worked at a Catholic mission among the Mayan people of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. She is married and has two small children.)

Kristen: You are Cuban American, right? Tell me about your childhood.Michelle: I had a very Catholic family. My father became a deacon when I was 19. I became a lector at the family Mass when I was only ten years old. My brother was an altar boy. It was very much a part of our cultural worldview. Being Catholic was not just going to Mass on Sunday. We had a home altar to Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre (Our Lady of Charity, the patroness of Cuba) and my grandmother had one too. It was just part of the Cuban culture.

Kristen: Did you find the cultural Catholicism attractive?Michelle: As a child, it touched me both positively and negatively. Whenever anything was going bad, we would go to la Virgin del Cobre shrine in Miami, to our Lady. That was sort of interesting to me. The shrine was where you went when things went bad, not to see a priest. The women were petitioning her on behalf of the family. It gave me an understanding of Catholicism through the eyes of the women that was very different from what I was receiving in the institutional Church. I saw the sacred infusing the lives of women.

For my father, it was more of a Sunday affair. The institutional church is more intellectually driven. And the Sunday Mass was sort of the zenith of one’s devotion.

Kristen: Did you rebel as a teen?Michelle: When I was in high school, I remained in Mass. Sure, I was resistant, and I remember that my friends would not like to stay at my house because they had to go with us to church on Sunday. But I didn’t rebel, because respect for your parents was emphasized to me.

When I went to Georgetown for college, that became a time to intellectualize my faith. When I started to intellectualize it, I realized these ideas weren’t my own intellectual thoughts, they were imposed. I did so much work on feminism . It became problematic to claim a Catholic identity and be an active Catholic. I embraced the feminist ideologies. But finally I realized that I could have both in feminist theology.

Kristen: How old were you then?Michelle: I had skipped a year of high school, so I was 20 years old. I went straight to Union Theological Seminary, for the liberation theology discourse, and also, to be in an ecumenical setting. I had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church, but I wanted to understand the fullness of Christ. (more on page four)

Meet Dr. Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

Scholar at the Crossroads


Kristen: Was it what you expected?Michelle: Unfortunately, there are times when Catholic students have felt marginalized at Union. That was the case when I was there. It was an ok experience for me to have. We didn’t talk about or read many Catholic theologians. There was even a Catholic women’s caucus there, like all the other minority groups.

I took a year off and taught high school in Staten Island, because grad programs don’t teach you how to teach and I wanted some experience. I loved it. But I always wanted to be a professor.

I got my Ph.D. at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. There was great diversity there. While I’ve always been academic in my approach to religion, I realize that there is this whole other world in the faith that I need to be aware of—the experience of the faith.

June 2008

I had planned to do my dissertation on Nuestra Señora del Cobre, when my advisor suggested that I read Sor Juana de la Cruz.

Many argue that she was the first feminist of the Americas. What was more significant to me that she was a Latina. There was no intellectual tradition in Latin America, or if there was, I was never taught it. So, to discover Sor Juana as a Latina intellectual was exciting alone. The fact that she was a woman was just icing on the cake.

Her writing is just beautiful and the aesthetic was extremely important to me – it’s not traditional theology. I have often said that what we call theology is the probably the worst and the least capable means of expressing the sacred.

Kristen: I was fascinated that you chose to write about Sor Juana’s theology using the insights of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Michelle: Well, strategically I needed a European theologian. Most of the faculty needed an authentic male voice to legitimize her voice. His idea is that the aesthetic is fundamental for understanding the sacred in the world. Feminist colleagues were extremely critical of his work. After reading his work, he cannot be written off, critiqued and discarded. There was an impulse in him that I didn’t find in any other thinker.

Kristen: What has changed the most for you an academic in the field over the past eight years?Michelle: It becomes increasingly difficult to call myself a Catholic theologian. I’ve done a lot of research and teaching, but it’s not really about the Catholicism of the institutional church. For me, I still think of myself as a scholar of Catholicism. Calling myself a theologian is making a claim in terms of one’s institutional allegiance and I admit that I have distanced myself a bit.


Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695] was a Mexican nun, poet and philosopher.

Michelle’s Favorite Quote:

“Had Aristotle cooked, he would have written

a great deal more.”

--Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz(1651-1695)

June 2008


It’s a struggle for me. Someone asked me, “Are you a Catholic?” Of course I’m a Catholic, but I’ve distanced myself from the Church.

Kristen: Where’s the disconnect?Michelle: When I lived in Guatemala for two years, that’s when my understanding started to change. I lived for two years, in a rural area, where I was doing research for a book. I met my husband there.

The mission does a lot of social justice work. You don’t have to be Catholic to receive that aid; you only have to be poor. For me, it was a very important experience in terms of understanding the role of the church. It was a weird combination. From the outside, you could look at the social projects of the Church, and it was very liberationist, or that was the impulse. But among the people, things are much more fluid. They are extremely theologically conservative.

It was important for me as someone who wants to dedicate myself to the Latin American poor to honor that and respect it and not to criticize it. It was not for me to say to them, “You need to be more progressive.”

The faith of Latin American Catholicism is much less liberationist than we have been led to believe. What does that mean for us as scholars of religion? How do we tell that story, knowing it doesn’t fit into our theological worldview?

Also, my husband dedicated several years of his life to the mission, and taught me a lot about how to be be a Catholic in a different way. He lived it. So the question for me has become, “How do you live your life as a Catholic and let it infuse everything that you do?”

Kristen: That’s a tough question!

Michelle: Yes. Very few people really know the poor. Or understand what it’s like to be poor. When I was living there, I wasn’t poor, but there are certain things in that context that become great equalizers . When your child is sick and there is not medicine in the town, you have no medicine for your child. When Hurricane Stan caused mudslides, I was cut off from the outside world just like everyone else there. I think a lot of work done on the Latin American poor is not done in their own words…

Kristen: So, you’ve shifted more toward anthropology?Michelle: Well, that and the history of religion. I’m working on a Caribbean religious history, delving deep into historical religion in Cuba and the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. I find that it has been very difficult – trained theologians don’t have a lot of historical accountability.

I have no interest in studying the institutional church or writing about it. The impulse there is to prove that I’ve learned all the important European thinkers. The people I am interested in have nothing to do with the faith experience of Karl Rahner. Theology is not very helpful in giving you the language and the anthropology and other ways of approaching the faith for myself.

-- Kristen West McGuire

June 2008

Proverbs 8:22 - 9:6, 13-1822 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth;26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,30 then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.

32 And now, my sons, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways.33 Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.34 Happy is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.35 For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD;36 but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”

9 1 Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars.2 She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.3 She has sent out her maids to call from the highest places in the town,4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who is without sense she says,5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.6 Leave simpleness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

13 A foolish woman is noisy; she is wanton and knows no shame.14 She sits at the door of her house, she takes a seat on the high places of the town,15 calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who is without sense she says,17 “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”18 But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Study: Sophia Sets the Table: Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs

The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


Study: Sophia Sets the Table: Wisdom in

the Book of Proverbs


June 2008

Context: Wisdom “speaks” to us in these passages, as God. The style of Wisdom’s instructions is similar to some Egyptian sayings attributed to the Egyptian god “Ma’at” (justice or order). However, the content is unique to the Israelites, who had no confusion about the injustice and disorder of pagan rites involving temple prostitutes and the feasts that accompanied their “sacred” rites.

Translation: The references to kings probably indicates that it was not far removed from the Israelite royal line, no later than 500 B.C. There is some evidence that this passage and the last chapter (with the famous Proverbs 31 woman) were dated earlier than the rest of the wise sayings of the book. Perhaps that explains why some of the proverbial wisdom seems to contradict itself..

Vocabulary:master workman also could be rendered as “little child”Wisdom: The word in Hebrew, hokmah, does connote a woman. Sophia in the Greek is also feminine. high places: The temples in ancient times were usually placed in the highest places of a town, referring here to divine dwellings.stolen waters: The word for water is deeply contextual. It can mean water, juice, urine, even semen. In this context, it seems to be compared to the mixed wine of Wisdom, and clearly connotes forbidden fruit.

Meditation

Being simple is a double-edged sword, then as now. Sometimes, it can mean being single-minded on just one thing. Ahem! Or it can mean being foolish. Or, it can mean not being too haughty to accept teaching. The tandem voices of Wisdom and the “foolish” women beckon the simple.

Work is required to produce food, and back then, the equation was pretty stark. The hard work involved in tilling the land and raising beasts precluded much leisure, even in secret. Even if you were wealthy enough to have slaves, you had to manage them. Illicit tomfoolery in ancient times carried with it steep consequences. One might dream of “stolen” goodies, but in fact, the upright earned their own keep.

Wisdom here is juxtaposed with sensuality. Mixed wine had water in it, served to those who were not strangers to sweat and toil. The temples of the pagans had a message that didn’t recognize reality.

In our day, the exhaustion at dusk is just as likely to be mental as physical. Sedentary jobs in fluorescent cubicles are often follwed by dinners in styrofoam from the drive-thru. The work of producing and consuming daily needs is almost passive. We don’t even notice our physical neediness. Simplicity and insight are indeed related to one another.

The stolen water does look sweet. Yet, Wisdom’s table demonstrates the loyalty of the little child. Wisdom works hard to provide the fruit of her bountiful table, and delights in that very work. Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

Discussion Questions

1. What type of simple person are you setting your table for? Why? What’s on the menu?

2. Wisdom and prudence are often considered different things. Is these a difference? Should there be? Which is more important to you as a woman?


When I told my graduate school advisor of my pregnancy 18 years ago, I expected her to share my joy. I was shocked when she did not. Studies reveal that academics have vastly lower reproductive rates than the general population. Oh. Perhaps that explains it?

While there is some truth to the observation that colleges and universities are dominated by secular liberals who are somewhat disdainful of full-time motherhood, it is alarming that so many academics do not have families.

Some of the blame is squarely on the colleges and universities. One study found that nearly a third of educational institutions had maternity leave policies that did not meet minimum federal guidelines. Few provide any child care benefits. Simply because an academic job happens to mesh well with the local school district schedule is not an excuse for the failure to provide benefits readily available in the corporate world.

While women receive more degrees (at the baccalaureate, masters and doctoral levels), there are still studies documenting a pay equity gap among professors. Furthermore, the competition for academic jobs is high. Once someone falls off the “tenure” track, positions as adjunct lecturers are usually part-time and provide no health benefits.

The number of women professors who rise to leadership positions is not commensurate with their overall representation in the academy. Women earn nearly half of the doctoral degrees awarded each year; meanwhile, less than 25% of college presidents are women.

My daughter will head off for college next year. I pray for her female professors, and hope that all women will find full equality and their full potential, mentally and maternally.

The Mapping Project documents the unfriendly culture for family commitments at colleges and universities. Their research can be found at http://lser.la.psu.edu/workfam/mappingproject.htm

Conservative college women formed the Network for enlightened Women (NeW) in 2004, in response to the liberal bias on campus. http://www.enlightenedwomen.org/

The American Association of University Women has a report, Tenure Denied, that attempts to pinpoint some of the weaknesses of the tenure system, and how it perpetuates gender bias in the academy. http://www.aauw.org/research/tenuredenied.cfm

Lord, We Pray:• for women professors and students, that they would find support networks and mentors who can help them to engage the full potential of the feminine genius;• for women balancing the demands of work and family in the university setting, that they would have the courage to ask for the resources they need;• For women in leadership roles on campus, that they would receive the career development to be promoted; • for adjunct professors, that they would receive larger pay and benefits ;• That both men and women who have, knowingly or unknowingly, contributed to gender-based inequities for faculty or students at colleges and universities would repent.

Amen -- Kristen West McGuire

Pray: for Women Students and Professors at

Colleges and Universities

June 2008


June 2008


She just stood on the bridge, looking at the water. The Rhine River is not sparkling and clear, but vast, dark and hurried. It swells along, merely ignoring the bridges of Basel, too important to be bothered. For a long time, she merely considered the complaints that brought her to the precipice.

Adrienne von Speyr had faced death before, without fear, stoically. Her father died in 1918, and she had contracted tuberculosis that stole three years from her education soon afterward. The doctors told her she had only months to live. Amazed, she waited for death, but it never came. Nursed back to health by relatives, she dreamed of a medical degree.

Her mother criticized her constantly. The widowed mother had lost financial stability and needed a steady provider, but her passion for Adrienne’s career options was limited to secretarial work. After all, Adrienne was old enough, and, anyway, she was just one more mouth to feed.

Adrienne doggedly pursued her education in spite of it all. When she applied to enter the rigorous German high school (Gymnasium), she had to advocate for herself alone. Her mother would not accompany her, despite the fact that Adrienne’s command of German was insufficient.

They admitted her on probation, but she surprised them all. Her work ethic carried her through, and she made a few friends to sweeten her black coffee days, and worked as a tutor to pay her way. Piano lessons were her one joy. She recalled later that it was her one outlet to God in those years.

Many years before this period, she had had a vision of the Blessed Mother, surrounded by many saints she did not recognize at the time. The strain of the workload began to weigh on her. Perhaps the vision was just a dream? Her delicate soul struggled for air. What did it all mean?

Her Protestant background hindered her progress, by her own account. It simply was not whole; it did not explain to her the supernatural that she sensed in the world around her, in the neediness of souls. God was bigger than that; she was sure.

But so very far away. He was God; she was not-God. And her prayers for a relief in the tension seemed unheard. A particularly nasty quarrel with her mother prompted her visit to the railway bridge over the river, her life in the balance.

Her extreme sensitivity and natural generosity with others blinded her to her own strengths. Balthasar later said she felt she was in the way of others, accomplishing nothing.

Her utter lack of fear clarified things. As if it were the gift of grace, she noted the lack of courage in the option of jumping, and reluctantly headed home. No, she was not created to jump into the dark water, but to wait until God revealed the meaning of it all in good time.


Learn: Adrienne on a Bridge Over the River Rhine

June 2008

(Harcourt Publishing Co., 1944, 1971), 64 pp., $9.00

T.S. Eliot reminds us of what we do not know. And perhaps much we had forgotten. Even, things we did know, if only because they were written on our hearts..

For this review, however, I’ll start with what I do not know. Because I am guessing you are with me, dear reader. My American education is recent enough that I missed a lot. And even though I’ve been to London, my geography of England is, well, sketchy at best. (It’s an island, right?)

We aren’t ready to read Eliot’s masterpiece without the patient, passionate guidance of a friend who loves Eliot. Thomas Howard’s book, Dove Descending, still sent me fumbling for a dictionary, puzzled by a few rarified words that make Eliot opaque. But, he is so earnest, we’ll forgive him. Cover your desk with the poem, the teaching book on the poem, a dictionary and perhaps a Bible. This poem is worth the effort.

Burnt Norton

“Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.Go, go, go, said the bird: human kindCannot bear very much reality.Time past and time futureWhat might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.”

Apparently named for a burned down manor house, the first of the quartets points to the tension of being alive. Though we are created for Eternal Joy, we find ourselves here in lives that pay lip service to a million distractions. Guess who the one End might be? But not yet, for Eliot has more to say on this topic.

East Coker:

“And what there is to conquerBy strength and submission, has already been discoveredOnce or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hopeTo emulate—but there is no competition—There is only the fight to recover what has been lostAnd found and lost again and again: and now, under conditionsThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

East Coker is the graveyard of Eliot’s ancestors, and he evokes the cadences of Ash Wednesday in this piece. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” He brings us there and yet, like an unwelcome

READ: The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot


To order, call Ignatius Press :

1-800-651-1531


June 2008

relation at a funeral, won’t stop. He is heading for the all-encompassing nothing of St. John of the Cross and the dark night. With maybe a touch of Shakespeare. It is hard to follow.

The Dry Sauvages:

“Men’s curiosity searches past and futureAnd clings to that dimension. But to apprehendThe point of intersection of the timelessWith time, is an occupation for the saint—No occupation either, but something givenAnd taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.”

Surrender. Well, we reassure each other, “I am not a saint.” But we could be. Unless we ignore the annunciation, the revelation of the mission. Wash me in the cleansing tide, and then what will I become?

Who can truly say, “Let it be done to me according to your word?” But our “fiat” isn’t linear. And the restlessness within does not point to entropy, but to the Center. The still point. Our end.

Little Gidding:

“The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire.”

Little Gidding was a utopian Anglican lay community in the 17th century, centered on the Eucharist and divine office. I don’t believe in utopia. This sure ain’t heaven. But heaven bursts forth, and we catch a glimpse…and go back, to re-read it, in the hope we will see more each time.

So, Eliot leads us to the place we were, and are, and to which we are going. And it shall be well.

Discussion Questions

1. Does it bother you when academics show off their knowledge? Why? What qualities of writing keep you reading? Did you find them in Eliot?

2. In discussing this book, does age matter? If your group is intergenerational, try t match up partners to discuss their reactions to different parts of the poem. Is this an old person’s poem? Or, only suited to the courage of the young? Both?

3. Eliot takes us on tour of meaningful places in his life. What are yours? Describe them, both in terms of what others might see physically, and what you can share about them spiritually.


New! From Secretum Meum Mihi Press

Secretum Meum Mihi Press

Kristen West McGuire, Editor in ChiefBeverly Mantyh, Associate EditorJessica Maleski, Webmaster

Editorial Advisory Board

Alexandra BurghardtMeredith Gould, Ph.D.Genevieve KinekeMargaret McGuireSandra MieselAlicia V. Torres

Secretum Meum Mihi is a monthly periodical dedicated to fostering the spirituality of Catholic women. Subscriptions are $12.95/year for PDF download, and $24.95/yr for U.S. Mail delivery. (International mail delivery $29.95). Address all correspondence to: Secretum Meum Mihi P.O. Box 1501 Great Falls, MT 59403 [email protected]

Coming Next Month:Pope John Paul II

and Mother Teresa

Meet: Mary Breda, From the Novitiate to Motherhood

Study: “I Thirst”

Pray: For Elderly Women

Learn: Hospital Scenes, 1997 and 2004

Read: Dear James, by Jon Hassler

June 2008

“Logical thinking defines incisive concepts, but even these cannot

comprehend the Incomprehensible. Attempts to do so only move Him

off into that remoteness which still characterizes all that is comprehensible.

The path of faith gives us more than the path of philosophical

knowledge... ”

-- Edith Stein, in Finite and Eternal Beingtranslated from the German

by Susanne Batzdorff

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