Hymn-Playing

Quite a nice post about organ accompaniment of hymns on The New Liturgical Movement by Michael E. Lawrence.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and the Suffering Foundresses

On the 10th anniversary of the death of Blessed Mother Teresa, I thought I would blog a little about an unusual category of Catholic saint: the suffering foundress. Much as St. Paul suffered in founding the early Christian communities, these nuns suffer in bringing forth new religious families of prayer and service.

A classic telling of the story of a "suffering foundress" is the book Foundations by St. Teresa of Avila, a very candid first-hand account of this very paradoxical holy woman. She was cloistered, but always travelling. Debilitated by constant, serious illnesses, she worked against many difficulties to found an average of a monastery a year for her last 16 years. (Imagine setting up a new household every year.) She was a mystic, in Spain, under the very eye of the Inquisition. Uneducated, she wrote treatises and is honored as a Doctor of the Church.

But Blessed Teresa of Calcutta was not named after "the great Teresa", but after Teresa of Avila's daughter, St. Therese of Lisieux, whom Teresa called "the little one." She was so little that she did not worry if Jesus ignored her, or tossed her aside like a toy. That is how she felt, and she accepted, with a very willful freedom, the "mystical abandonment" that is the purification of the saints. Her life's story--which was brief enough, as she died when she was 24--has converted many people of all backgrounds, including many French intellectuals.

A similar abandonment must have been experienced by Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli, who founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, a community of Carmelites. This is what happened to her:

The political leaders of Montevarchi, who frowned upon the Carmelites' presence, confiscated their school in 1859 via the law of partial suppression and obliged them not to wear the religious habit. But the Sisters would not admit defeat, and the Foundress opened a house and private school in Montevarchi. Due to lack of space in the new premises and to avoid further difficulties, several Sisters and Mother Maria Teresa lived at her family home. In 1862 individual citizens were deprived of the right to earn a living - let alone to run a private school -, and the Religious had to close their school and return to their respective families.

When Sr. Maria Teresa died, after a lot of trouble, the new congregation consisted of two sisters, a novice and a postulant. It must have seemed like it was all over. But it was not. The sisters serve in education, health care, prison ministry, and eldercare in 8 countries around the world.

Last October, Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli was beatified by the Catholic Church. My collaborator, the Roman composer Aurelio Porfiri, was commissioned to write an oratorio for the celebration, and in view of recording the oratorio he asked me to write 2 songs and translate one of his. My translation of Aurelio's song is very direct, and, unusually, it is a song about the painful difficulties of the spiritual life. Here's the first verse and refrain:

The earth has become like a desert

No fruit coming forth from the land

What will become now of the life I gave you?

What will I become?

If grain will not fall to the ground

To die, to give all of itself,

No fruit will come, and nothing remains for us:

Nothing will remain...

Tonight I attended a special Mass for Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. The pews were full: partly of the "regular" crowd of students and area residents, but mostly with the Missionaries of Charity (Blessed Teresa's community) and some of the people to whom they minister. I sat next to a little girl brought by one of the sisters. Throughout the Mass, the little girl often moved her arm so it pressed against mine. Kids often do this when they would like contact with someone older--some affection and quasi-parental devotion. I should her what kindness I could, but it was nothing at all, really. What matters is the generosity of the women who care for her every day, whose lives of joyful service are made possible by the mystical graces of those who preceded them in faith--mystical graces, gifts of God, that often seem so mysteriously wrapped in darkness.