"No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person."
-- John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte
Lessons of the Trees #3: Trust
There is a passage in the book of the prophet Jeremiah that once you’ve read or heard it, you never forget. It has that kind of imagery. It is an image of a tree that grows near enough to a river that its roots grow and stretch toward the life-giving waters, receiving all the sustenance it needs to weather any drought and bear fruit in any season. Jeremiah personifies the tree – it “does not fear” and “it is not anxious.”
The tree is a metaphor for those who trust God. Like the tree, they are well-placed. They need only “send out their roots” to reap the benefits of the waters, which flow unceasingly from the One who refreshes the soul. Reaching out for those waters – it stretches us – it is uncomfortable. We are tentative at first. But when we begin to feel the cooling effects of the river, we are soothed and encouraged. Our roots reach ever farther, deeper into the soil where there is always plenty of water in reserve, farther toward the river where waters flow freely.
This is the nature of trust. It is a slow growth which roots us deeply in the one we depend on. At first we are unsure, but when we discover that our reaching out never leaves us dry or parched, then, when the drought comes and the heat pelts us, we can stand tall and stoic, our roots soaking up the life-saving waters. We discover that we not only weather hostile conditions – but that in the end we may even flourish.
The Cross of Jesus was one of these well-placed trees. Here trust played out between a Father and Son, between human and divine, between a dying thing and the Author of all life. Faced with drought and ruin, roots reached deeply into fertile soil and drank abundantly from the river of God. And in the fertile conditions of trust, the dead wood of the Cross again sprouted green leaves, and bore the first-fruits of eternal life!
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit (Jer. 17:7-8).
When It Hurts, Remember You Are an Eternal, Living House
C.S. Lewis has a special way of explaining things….
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
Take a Pilgrimage...Into Your Past
In the last blog post, I wrote about the friendship between Catherine Doherty and Dorothy Day. They prayed for one another and visited on occasion, but the “maintenance” of their friendship took place in the letters they exchanged throughout the years.
Below is an excerpt of a letter from Catherine to Dorothy. In it Catherine describes a beautiful way of praying. Catherine was known for bringing Russian Orthodox traditions to the west and “translating” them for Catholics in North America, who she felt were spiritually hungry but lacking in the deep spiritual practices she had experienced growing up in Russia. In the passage below, Catherine writes about taking “pilgrimages” into her past and visiting the “shrines” she found there: the graces, gifts, sorrows and joys that she had experienced throughout her life. In her book Poustinia, Catherine wrote that Russians were serious about pilgrimage – they traipsed all over the huge country – pilgrimage was a way of life. But even the most seasoned religious traveler discovered that in the end, to be a pilgrim means to journey within.
I invite you to reflect on Catherine’s words and consider praying this way, too. Which shrines of your past should be revisited – what joys and sorrows? Can you look back and recognize God’s presence in your life in the people, places and events that shaped you?
“It has been now over a month that a great desire to write to you has come to my heart. I have been making, as you know, ‘pilgrimages’ into my distant and not so distant yesterdays, stopping now here, now there, to render thanks to the Lord of Life, for this special grace or that, for this wonderful gift or sorrow and for that infinite moment of joy. Short as my life is, as any human life is, there are, strange to say, many a shrine in it before which, as is the custom of my people, I can bow low from the waist, touching the earth with my hands, and singing alleluias in my heart for each…. Amongst the memories of my yesterdays is a shrine that I reached into today, at which, in a manner of speaking, I still worship. Long ago and far away I arose in search of the Lord…. [O]ut of nowhere, you came, and hand in hand, we walked together.”
You can read the full text of Catherine’s letter to Dorothy in an article about the friendship between Catherine and Dorothy, written by Fr. Bob Wild, the postulator for Catherine’s cause for canonization.
Fr. Wild has also written a book assembling the letters of Catherine and Dorothy entitled “Comrades Stumbling Along: The Friendship of Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Dorothy Day as Revealed Through Their Letters.”
Catherine Doherty and Dorothy Day, 1957
Catherine Doherty & Dorothy Day: Friends, Servants of God
Some friendships were just meant to be. Such was the friendship between Catherine Doherty and the better-known social activist Dorothy Day (click here for previous posts about Catherine). Fr. Bob Wild, the postulator for Catherine’s cause for canonization, wrote of Catherine and Dorothy: “They were almost mirror images of each other: their apostolates covered roughly the same historical period, from 1930-1980, totally loyal Catholics, serving the poor, conditioned by the Great Depression, women of prayer, dedicated to the Church, founders of movements that continue to this day.”
Dorothy and Catherine
Although Catherine and Dorothy never had as much time together as they would have liked, they maintained a deep friendship through correspondence and an occasional visit. They supported one another through thick and thin, experiencing many of the same challenges in their common work of serving the poor and marginalized. At times they were discouraged by their work – Catherine writes of times they would meet together at Child’s in New York (“where you could get three coffee refills”) – and how they would sit together holding hands and crying into their coffee cups (“I mean honest, big tears…. We had had it!”). But they prodded one another along the narrow path – and both are now honored by the Church with the title “Servant of God” as their causes for canonization are underway. Both women had their share of bumps along the road, and there will certainly be bumps along the road to canonization, too. And for them, of course, the title “saint” means nothing. They ran the good race and fought the good fight; they served until the end and poured themselves out as libations for the little ones, the ones in need, the ones who are Christ in this world. But for us, to call them “saint” would be a privilege. It would allow us to speak the recognition, each time we say their names, that they did the single thing we are all supposed to do – the thing we want to do but don’t have the courage: they followed the two great commandments until it hurt.
This is how Catherine described their last meeting in 1978:
“Well, this was quite a red letter day as far as I was concerned. It was the fact that I met Dorothy Day. She had her 81st birthday. She looks so thin, so thin. Life is sort of ebbing out of her. Only her eyes are still sparkly. For me this was a red letter day. To me there was really nobody there, only Dorothy. I looked at her, and I sort of took her in with my whole heart, my mind, my eyes, my body, my everything. And I said to myself, ‘Catherine, you are meeting a saint. Don’t you ever forget it, the saint of New York.”
The relationship between Catherine and Dorothy is a testament to friendship. In this life, we either make the way smoother for each other, or we place obstacles in each other’s paths. The mutual love between these women, grounded in the love of God, made the road ahead of both of them a bit less dark and dangerous. It gave them both more courage to love.
As Fr. Wild wrote: “[It] will be a glorious and historically significant sight when Catherine’s and Dorothy’s huge beautiful portraits shine together in the brilliant Roman sunlight on the façade of St. Peter’s.”
Click here to read Fr. Bob’s article about Catherine Doherty and Dorothy Day.