Selfless: The Story of Sr. Theophane's Missionary Life in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea by Reida ImmolataThis was a surprise review book that showed up on my doorstep via UPS last night. The cover and photos inside remind me of Story of a Soul (St. Therese of Lisieux's autobiography). This is not an autobiography but is written so far in the same sweet, gentle style of the early-middle 1900s.
I'm still on Sr. Theophane's (Inez's) youth but that little tomboy's earnestness and devotion is getting to me. It probably helps that this is reminding me somewhat of Cheaper by the Dozen in the New York state setting and time period.
I look at this woman's life spent giving to others for love of Christ (the overview makes that clear although I am not far into her actual life). Then I look at the people spending so much time and energy blabbing about changing things to their own tastes (ordaining women priests and suchlike) ... things which they do not have the power to change, for one thing, so they are doing nothing but raising acrimonious feelings on both sides.
It makes me think that if we stopped talking and began doing, giving, serving the less fortunate all around us, how much better the world would be. And our own souls. And, hopefully, the souls of those around us.
It may be that the life of this little anonymous missionary is a true message for our times much along the lines of that of the more famous Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Just a train of thought that this book began in me as I was washing dishes, musing over the book ...
Attracted by the book's cover and theme. I tried to do something like this in my Peace Corps service.
ReplyDeleteEmphasis on word "tried."
Will politely disagree with you Julie if I may.
Julie you wrote:
"Then I look at the people spending so much time and energy blabbing about changing things to their own tastes (ordaining women priests and suchlike)"
To "blab" is to serve. Writing, speaking and words are service. No less so than caring for the dying by washing their wounds and feeding them and changing their diapers.
I use that last example because I was a nurse's aid for many years and i also volunteered for the sisters of charity (in Kathmandu, not Calcutta.)
So I've done both, and blabbing is service as much as bedside care.
Hey -- St Paul! A champion blabber.
Thank you for drawing this book to my attention.
Hey Danusha ... don't get me wrong ... I blab for God right here. The sort of blabbing I'm talking about is qualified in my comments above. It is what Elisabeth Leseur would call negative:
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"There is a way of living and thinking that I would name negative, another that I would name active. The first consists in seeing always what is defective in people and institutions, not so much to remedy them as to dominate them, in always looking back, and in looking for whatever separates and disunites. The second consists in joyfully looking life and its responsibilities in the face, looking for the good in everyone in order to develop and cultivate it, in never desparing of the future, the fruit of our will, and in understanding human faults and miseries, expressing that strong compassion which results in action and no long allows us to live a useless life."
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Jesus doesn't say he will judge how well we spoke or if we spoke at all, I am minded to mention. He says the last judgment will be of whether we gave a thirsty person a drink, fed a hungry one, clothed a naked one. Silently or with words, the actions are what he spells out in great detail.
So that was what I was thinking ... :-)
I know you blab for God!
DeleteAnd very well, too! :-)
As it turns out, I hope I don't blab for God! :-)
DeleteMy husband pointed out that the very word "blab" is in itself contextual as not being talking that is worth listening to. The definition which he looked up for me: "idle or excessive talk"
So St. Paul combined his considerable action (all those missionary journeys, being stoned, etc.) with valuable talk not blabbing. And hopefully neither you nor I do blabbing either. :-)
Where in "Upstate New York" does the book say Sr. Theophane Inez is from?
ReplyDeleteRochester.
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