an Advent like no other

[Note: these holy women are all part of my saint posse, 

the ones I call on and depend on to walk with me. 

They are all found at Clear Creek Abbey in Eastern Oklahoma]

It’s been a long time… I’ve missed chatting with you all. I’ll write more about the past few months soon, but today, let me put in a plug for ADVENT…

There is so much about the season of Advent that I have always loved. Waiting. Anticipation. Grace. Beautiful feast days. Incarnation. We are the only religion who make this bold radical claim. The son of God became flesh, like us, within a human mother. And He entered the world as a humble, fragile baby.

In the midst of this bizarre pandemic year, where nothing is familiar and everything feels unsteady, where the future is a mystery and it is impossible to predict or prepare for what comes next… I invite you to be still. 

Talk walks outside. Sit and feel the sun on your face. Break the usual habits and find space, time, silence to just be. 

 

To this end, I want to suggest two resources that you don’t want to miss!

 

·      I pray with the beautiful Magnificat Magazine daily. And this year, as they have in the past, the generous folks at Magnificat have sent me several FREE Advent apps to give away to my readers. Interested?  Just leave me a message here, or email me directly: mymaria@me.com

·      In the past few years, I have written biographies about three modern saints, and each one enriched and transformed my life in a very personal way. 

 

I humbly suggest, for your Advent reading… or as a gift for a friend, the stories of these amazing holy people:

 

Rosemary Nyirumbe: Sewing Hope in Uganda (Liturgical Press)

Sister Rosemary is a Sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ministering, to this day, in a special way to the women and children of her homeland in northern Uganda. Read her story. It will enrich your heart!  In Sister Rosemary's own words, “Love is the key!” [click here]

 

The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma (Our Sunday Visitor)

Father Stanley Rother, a priest from my home Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is the first American martyr. He was killed in 1981 at the Oklahoma mission to Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. But the gem of Blessed Stan is not how he died, but how he lived. We are all called to be saints, and he can show us the way through the ordinary living of our lives.

 

This book is available in Spanish and in English now! Please, help me spread his amazing story! [click here for Spanish] [click here for English]

 

Edith Stein, the Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Sophia Institute Press)

Perhaps you have heard about this brilliant, prolific, gifted woman philosopher. But I fell in love with her heart, through her letters written to friends, colleagues and family, as she shared with them her own conversion story. Always seeking the God, she could not see, she finally felt Him deep inside.   I’ll give you a hint, she read the biography of Teresa of Avila, put it down and said, “This is Truth!” [click here]

Whatever you decide to do for your Advent, just pick one thing. Please join me! And I’d love to hear about it once you decide!

 

Blessings to each of you from the Heartland.  I am thankful for YOU!

 

 

 

I'm here to remind you that it's only the beginning

“He who names Himself “God with us” 

never stops suffering with us.”

~Ann Voskamp

+   +   +

"No human heart has ever entered into such a dark night as that God/Man in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. No searching human spirit can penetrate the unfathomable mystery of Godforsakenness of the dying God/Man. But Jesus can give His friends a taste of this utmost bitterness...

A 'Scientia Crucis,' (knowledge of the cross) one can only acquire by getting to feel the cross thoroughly. Of that, I was convinced from the first moment and have said with all my heart: Ave, crux, spes unica (Welcome, cross, our only hope)."

~Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

+   +   +

I look at Palm Sunday as a sort of reset button.

No matter what this Lent has been about, no matter what I’ve done or not done well, no matter what my intentions were five weeks ago—I can give myself fully to this coming week.

So if you are like me and you’re wondering if it’s too late, I’m here to remind you that it’s only the beginning.

This is Holy Week.

Look at the rest of this week with new eyes.

Say yes to the quiet moments. They’re everywhere!

Look at your Bible (or daily readings) before you look at your phone in the mornings (Pope Francis’ suggestion, not mine!).

Take time to read the Passion story... perhaps watch "The Passion" movie.

Pray.

Spread joy -- in whatever circumstance you find yourself in this week.

Celebrate the Triduum… Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper… Friday’s Adoration of the Cross… and yes, if at all possible, go to the Easter Vigil.  It is the most beautiful liturgy of the whole Liturgical year!

[this post is a slightly modified repeat from April 9, 2017!]

may I introduce you to my friend Edith? today is her feast day...

"Thy will be done," in its full extent, must be the guideline for the Christian life. It must regulate the day from morning to evening, the course of the year and the entire life. Only then will it be the sole concern of the Christian. All other concerns the Lord takes over. This one alone, however, remains ours as long as we live... And sooner or later, we begin to realize this. In the childhood of the spiritual life, when we have just begun to allow ourselves to be directed by God, then we feel his guiding hand quite firmly and surely. But it doesn't always stay that way. Whoever belongs to Christ, must go the whole way with him. He must mature to adulthood: he must one day or other walk the way of the cross to Gethsemane and Golgotha."

                                   ~Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein

[Link to my biography of Edith]

“[O]nly in daily, confidential relationships with the Lord in the tabernacle can one forget self, become free of all one’s own wished and pretensions, and have a heart open to all the needs and wants of others.”

~Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

+     +     +

Like Christians in the early centuries, I was confirmed at the same time that I was baptized. Although in my case, it all happened on my way home from the hospital – and just a mere three days after I was born in the city of Pinar del Río, Cuba.

As my parents explained, everything was so uncertain and chaotic in 1960 Cuba that our pastor and family friend suggested it. Castro’s government had already shipped, literally, hundreds of priests out the country on a boat, and no one could predict how long, or if, any priests would be allowed by the communists to stay behind.

After moving to the United States as a teenager and seeing how confirmations here are done, I felt a bit cheated that I never got to pick a patron saint.

Fast forward a few decades. Writer and dear friend Colleen Smith contacted me with a book idea, one that had been offered to her fist—but that she discerned would be a better fit for me: a biography of a Jewish convert, Carmelite nun, and soon to be saint.

When I first began reading about Edith Stein, I was more than a little freaked out.  Edith was a gifted, renowned philosopher, a brilliant writer and speaker—and I was entrusted with the task of writing her story and introducing readers to this phenomenal woman.

I began by ordering all of her books that have been translated into English by ICS Publications (Institute of Carmelite Studies), which of course, did nothing to appease my anxiety.  Stein was a prolific author and her texts were rich, academic and spiritually profound.

I looked at how others told her story and found out that there had been a number of biographies already published by people much better versed in both philosophy and Carmelite spirituality. 

What would I have to offer that was new and different?

Everything changed when I picked up Volume 5 of Edith Stein’s Collected Works: “Self Portrait In Letters 1916-1942,” translated by Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D.

In her letters, I met a young woman who loved God so deeply, so profoundly that, like the original apostles, she dropped everything she had and knew in order to follow Him completely.

I fell in love with Edith, my self-adopted patron saint, reading her letters.

Today is the feast day of this beautiful woman, a saint who continues to teach me that everything, down to the smallest detail, has coherent meaning in God’s all-seeing eyes.

I invite you to come to know more about her in my biography, Edith Stein: the Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. 

I guarantee that you will fall in love with her, too!

Edith Stein, the Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

On this her feast day, I am thrilled to announce my new book, "Edith Stein: the Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross," published by Sophia Institute Press.

Here are a few thoughts from this beautiful Carmelite saint, on what it means to be a woman and a mother:

 

Every woman is meant to develop what Edith calls a common sense of spiritual mothering, of companion and mother, in order to help others develop to their fullest potential.

“The body of woman is fashioned ‘to be one flesh’ with another 

and to nurse new human life in itself."

“A well disciplined body is an accommodating instrument for the mind which animates it; at the same time, it is a source of power and a habitat for the mind. Just so, woman’s soul is… also fashioned to be a shelter in which other souls may unfold. Both spiritual companionship and spiritual motherliness are not limited to the physical spouse and mother relationships, but they extend to all people with whom woman comes into contact” (Woman 132).

Seeing motherhood as a universal calling for all women means it is not simply a duty to be exercised with one’s biological children. This has certainly been true to my experience. In Edith’s exposition, a woman’s concern for the good of persons must be universal, extending to all whose lives touch hers in some way.       

“The soul of woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings... it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to be numb fragile buds; clear, so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses; self-contained, so that no invasions from without can imperil the inner life; empty of itself, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call” (Woman 132-3).

 ~Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Read more about this brilliant, inspiring woman in my new book, “Edith Stein: the Life and Legacy of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.”

will you remain faithful to the Crucified?

 Pondering today's feast, the Exaltation of the Cross...

“More than ever the cross is a sign of contradiction. The followers of the Antichrist show it far more dishonor than did the Persians who stole it. They desecrate the images of the cross, and they make every effort to tear the cross out of the hearts of Christians. All too often they have succeeded even with those who, like us, once vowed to bear Christ’s cross after him… Therefore, the Savior today looks at us, solemnly probing us, and asks each one of us: Will you remain faithful to the Crucified? Consider carefully! The world is in flames, the battle between Christ and the Antichrist has broken into the open. If you decide for Christ, it could cost you your life. Carefully consider what you promise...The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity.”

 ~Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, 

written for the community’s renewal of vows, 

September 14, 1939, 

the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

“The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross doesn’t remove the cross. It points to a more difficult – and at the same time more hopeful – faith. We pray for the grace to embrace our suffering, ‘obedient even unto death,’ to make our pain an offering and believe that in God’s mysterious plan, it has the power to heal. When we are tempted to ask God why, we pray instead as Jesus did: ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’.” 

~Richard Reece, from 

today’s reflection in 

“Give Us This Day”

[photo © María Ruiz Scaperlanda -- San Alfonso Retreat House, 2016]

Edith Stein: a woman for our time

Edith holding her cousin's son, 1921

Edith the philosophy student

Like Christians in the early centuries, I was confirmed at the same time that I was baptized. Although in my case, it all happened on my way home from the hospital--a mere three days after I was born in the city of Pinar del Río.

As my parents explained, everything was so uncertain and chaotic in 1960 Cuba that our pastor and family friend suggested it. Castro’s communist government had already shipped, literally, hundreds of priests out the country on a boat, and no one could predict how long, or if any, priests would be allowed by the government to stay behind.

After moving to the United States as a teenager and seeing how confirmations here are done, I felt a bit cheated that I never got to pick a patron saint.

Fast forward to my early forties. Writer and dear friend Colleen Smith contacted me with a book idea, one that had been offered to her fist—but that she discerned would be a better fit for me: a biography of a Jewish convert, Carmelite nun, and soon to be saint.

When I first began reading about Edith Stein, I was more than a little freaked out.  She was a gifted, renowned philosopher, a brilliant writer and speaker—and I was entrusted with the task of writing a popular biography introducing readers to this phenomenal woman.

I began by ordering all of her books that have been translated into English by ICS Publications (Institute of Carmelite Studies), which of course, did nothing to appease my anxiety.  Stein was a prolific author and her texts were rich, academic, and spiritually profound.

I looked at how others told her story and found out that there had been a number of biographies already published by people much better versed in both philosophy and Carmelite spirituality. 

What would I have to offer that was new and different?

Everything changed when I picked up Vol 5 of Edith Stein’s Collected Works: “Self Portrait In Letters 1916-1942,” translated by Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D.

In her letters I met a young woman who loved God so deeply, so profoundly that, like the original apostles, dropped everything she had and knew, to follow Him completely.

I fell in love with Edith, my self-adopted patron saint, reading her letters.

If you want to read my biography of this beautiful saint, whose feast day is today, August 9, click here.

published by Our Sunday Visitor

“[I]t is always a small, simple truth that I have to express: How to go about living at the Lord’s hand.”  

~letter by Edith, 1931

“I do not use extraordinary means to prolong my workday. I do as much as I can. The 

ability to accomplish increases noticeably in proportion to the number of things that 

must be done. When there’s nothing urgent at hand, it ceases much sooner. 

Heaven is expert at economy.”  

~letter by Edith, 1930

[this blog post was first published here, under a different title, on August 9, 2013]