Mother Frances Streitel: "Going up to Jerusalem" with Jesus

Amalia Frances Rose Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, aka Sister Angela Streitel: In the last few blogs I shared with you Sister Angela’s way of embracing the cross of suffering, of walking with Jesus to “Calvary,” “going up to Jerusalem” with the Lord. Sister Angela, I believe, is a woman who gave 100-150%.  We have heard it said that if a marriage is going to work, both husband and wife need to give their all. Sometimes that “all” is translated into percentages!  Earlier in my religious life, I was taught a prayer that went something like: may I never count the cost.  All of us have mentors who never counted the cost of their discipleship as husband/wife, as members of a religious community, as lay ministers in the Church.  Sister Angela was that kind of woman, I believe. Truly an inspiration.  She says to her Superior General, after taking up her assignment at the Marian Institute:  “Before God I can declare that the occupying of the Marian Institute caused me absolutely no sorrow or pain” (Letter of July 8, 1879) We know from previous blogs, that a lot of pain preceded her and also surrounded her once she assumed full responsibility of bringing order back into a situation that had fallen into ruin.  No easy task for anyone. Resistances abound!  Jealousies rear their heads. Anger surfaces. Sister Angela was a young nun. “Who is this whipper snipper? I’m older than she? Who does she think she is?” are thoughts that could have emerged in the minds of much older religious. Of course, there were others who supported her 100% and were pleased that someone had the courage to “take the bull by the horns,” so to speak.  Sister Angela focused on what she was being asked to do. Her strength came from the Lord, “who made heaven and earth” (Ps 121) and from the fact, I believe,  that she lived a prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:  “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

Transformed by grace

Amalia Frances Rose Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, aka Sister Angela Streitel:  Sister Angela was strong in the practice of virtue already in the early years of her religious life, as evidenced by the way she handled rejection, misunderstanding, and human heartache, experiences in every person’s life.  As indicated in the last blog entitled “Bitterness transformed into holiness,” through her sufferings she was transformed into the heart of Christ. When her pain was so great that she believed “mind and body would have suffered ruin,” she was still able, through grace, to show love and grace to her fellow Sisters.  “I had a cordial manner, and, in all this, in a house with a hundred persons of every type, with a heart steeped in sorrow….for in the motherhouse no one was regarded with less favour than I….I came to the [Marian] Institute, but what a flood of pain and suffering, of harshness and humiliation followed me” (Ibid.). She tells us in a letter to Bishop Pancratius that her goal, in all of this, was to increase her praying and to draw closer and closer to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. What she accomplished at Marian Institute in a few short months revealed the potency of her prayer, the depth of her faith and strength of her trust in God. (Source: Walk in Love, p. 29)

Made in God's image

Today's Scripture (Wis 23-3:9) begins with the statement: "God formed [me] to be imperishable; the image of [God's] own nature [God] made [me]."  God's nature is goodness, love, reconciliation, forgiveness, honesty, integrity and much, much more. Evil, hatred, disunity, revenge, deceit do not exist in God.  Having been made in God's image means that if I am being truly myself I then act out of goodness, truth and integrity (my inside self and outside self match or are in harmony--who I am inside is who I am outside and is what others experience of me). When I am living from my God-centered self, my behaviors reflect my truth, I am not living a pretentious life, I am not living a life of duplicity. As Jesus said of Nathaniel: there is no guile in him.  To live more and more of the truth of my life, I need to be seeking the truth that exists in the depth of my being and in others.  No one person has the whole truth, nor do I.  Each person possesses a part of the truth.  My truth and their truth contributes to a greater portion of the truth.  That is why openness, listening, dialogue and obedience are essential elements of spiritual growth. I need to be listening to my interior self as well as entering into dialogue with others concerning issues shared between us to arrive at more and more of the truth and hence greater personal and interpersonal freedom.

Discernment: The role of excuses

That spirit that wants to block us from the good we are called to do will attack our vulnerabilities.  This spirit knew, for instance, that Moses was weak as a speaker (Ex 4:10), that Gideon perceived himself as the least of his siblings (Judges 6:15), that Jeremiah considered his youth as a reason for not being God's chosen one (Jer 1:4).  So the spirit that is in opposition to God's will used these perceptions to discourage the one called. Moses said to God: I can't be your instrument in freeing your people from Pharaoh; I stutter.  Gideon's response to God was: I can't do what you are asking in saving the Israelites from their enemies; I am insignificant.  Jeremiah argued that he was a mere youth; how could he possibly be a prophet.  What excuses surface within you when God is calling you to be His instrument in bringing about a good?  Source: Discernment of Spirits by Warren Sazama, SJ, National Religious Vocation Conference, Chicago, IL 60615.

Developing the contemplative dimension of our personalities

I am in Trinidad where we are having a retreat day—a day of solitude, prayer and reflection with the novice and pre-postulants.  Input is being given by Sisters Julie Marie, Delia Marie and myself. We are reflecting on the following elements of the charism—contemplation, service to the poor, sacrifice, Eucharist and obedience. The importance of developing a contemplative lifestyle was emphasized, that is developing an interior life.  On a daily basis, am I willing to become aware of who I am, what I am thinking, feeling, how I am acting and how those actions impact my relationship with self, others, God and creation? Am I engaging in life, fully participating in life each day or am I withdrawing, isolating? Am I listening (being obedient) to life and how it is impacting me and the messages from God that come to me through all of life, all of me (feeling self, thinking self, acting self, relating self, choosing self)?  We reflected on the importance of serving the poor, beginning with oneself. Am I aware of the poverty of my affective life, my thinking, my behaviors, my relationships and able to acknowledge this poverty?  Do I engage in the sacrifice of letting go by sharing my poverty with significant others: bringing it out into the open so that I can transform my poverty into a richness that comes from the truth, from dialogue, from engagement, from self-disclosure that leads self-integrity? Being Eucharistic people,  “bringing fuller life to others”—the tagline of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother—means that I am living a full life, not an impoverished life that manifests itself in an unwillingness to become aware of, acknowledge, and accept the pains and sufferings of life (bread broken and shared with others), an unwillingness to stand beneath the cross,  to hold my pain and the pain of others on my lap, so to speak, as Mary held the body of her dead Son, to let go of my pain as Mary let go of her dead Son and buried Him. Do I live my Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays (enter into my emptiness) and heed Jesus command “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother”—take care of each other, relate to each other, in a way that  leads to the experience of Easter—the resurrection of a new  way of being me and  a new way of being in relationships? From entering into this Paschal Mystery and living as Eucharistic people, we also experience Pentecost, that is, our persons are set on fire with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and we become both Good News persons and proclaimers of the Good News.

The joy of working with young women answering the call to religious life

Today I am in Trinidad at our new novitiate house.  What a blessing to be a part of this community. The rhythm of prayer and activity took me back to my years in formation.  What peace and what a great feeling of putting God at the very center of one's life, as symbolized by praying the divine office: morning prayer, midday prayer, vespers and night prayer.

I spent the day interviewing a young woman being called to religious life.  And what a blessing that was. Yes, there are many women out there being called to religious life--are you one of them? Answering that call is a challenge, takes a lot of faith and trust in the Lord. But what a grace for me to be with someone, who, above all, wants to be doing God's will and feels strongly attracted to St. Francis of Assisi and all that he stands for, especially his total commitment to God, his joy and delight in serving the Lord.  Like many, for a long time, this young woman was not paying attention to God's call to become a Franciscan but what a joy to now taking the first step in answering that call, that is going through the application process and becoming a pre-postulant.

Mother Frances Streitel: Bitterness transformed into holiness

Amalia Frances Rose Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, aka Sister Angela Streitel.  As a Maria Stern Franciscan, Sister Angela's last assignment before answering God's call to enter Carmel was at the Marian Institute.  Within a few months of assuming her administrative responsibilities, Sister Angela  put that mission on solid financial footing and transformed its domestic woes, as well. Her efforts to bring the Sisters to embrace radical poverty as lived by St. Francis of Assisi, however, caused much suffering for herself and for some of the Sisters.  She took her suffering to the foot of the cross. There in prayer, as she was complaining bitterly of "condemned without a hearing," she says to herself: "Enough of this."    She resolved not to allow bitterness to lodge in her heart and united her pain with Jesus' sufferings on the cross in reparation for her own sinfulness.  In no way was Sister Angela going to allow bitterness and anger to block her openness to God.  How have you dealt with anger and bitterness in your life?(Walk in Love,  p. 29).