Article

THE WOMAN I LOVE

by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

I think one of the major defects in world religions has been the absence of the feminine. The absence becomes more striking in a study of Christian sects where so little attention is paid to the Mother of Christ. It would be strange to visit a friend's home and yet never hear him speak of his mother. Why are pulpits which resound with the name of Christ, so silent about His Mother, who was chosen for such a dignity in the agelessness of eternity? Hymns abound in praise of her Son, but not a verse to her who brought timelessness into time. True, in the course of history, there have been exaggerations in devotion to Mary, but it was not the Church who made her important; it was Christ Himself. The Church has never adored Mary, because only God may be adored. But she, of all creatures, was closest to God. Without her as the key, it is difficult to discover the treasures in the vault of the Faith.

God Who made the sun also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. The moon would be a burned-out cinder floating in the immensity of space, if not for the sun. All its light is reflected from that glowing furnace. In like manner, Mary reflects her Divine Son, without Whom she is nothing. On dark nights we are grateful to the moon; when wee see it shining, we know there must be a sun. So, in this dark night of the world, when men turned their backs on Him Who is the Light of the World, we look to Mary to guide our feet while we await the sunrise.

"It is not good for man to be alone." That verse of Genesis applies just as much to a priest as to the laity. There must be a Woman in the life of a priest. That Woman came into my life at birth. When I was baptized as an infant, my mother laid me on the altar of the Blessed Mother in Saint Mary's Church, El Paso, Illinois, and consecrated me to her. As an infant may be unconscious of a birthmark, so I was unconscious of the dedication - but the mark was always there. Like a piece of iron to the magnet, I was drawn to her before I knew her, but never drawn to her without Christ. When I made my first Holy Communion at the age of twelve, I made the conscious dedication of myself to Mary. Though I cannot recall the exact words of my prayer, it was certainly similar to the motto which I chose for my coat of arms as bishop: Da per matrem me venire (Grant that I may come to Thee through Mary). My First Communion book with its mother-of-pearl cover contained the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which I began reciting every night as a boy and have continued to this hour.

The call to the priesthood was always in my mind; it was her intercession I sought, to make myself worthy and to be protected from great falls. While I was still in the first grade, a suggestion was made by a good nun that we put at the top of every page the initials J.M.J., standing for dedication to "Jesus, Mary and Joseph." In the course of my life I have written tens of thousands of pages. I do not believe I ever set my pen or pencil to paper without first having put that seal of dedication on my work. The practice continued even automatically when I was on television and used a blackboard. I did not so much advert to the fact; it was already a lifetime habit. Thousands of letters poured in asking for the explanation.

When I was ordained, I took a resolution to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist every Saturday to the Blessed Mother, renewing my feeble love of her and invoking her intercession. All this makes me very certain that when I go before the Judgment Seat of Christ, He will say to me in His Mercy: "I heard My Mother speak of you."

During my life I have made about thirty pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and about ten to her shrine at Fatima. One of the first pilgrimages to Lourdes was while I was a university student at Louvain. I had just enough money to go to Lourdes but not enough to live on once I arrived. I asked my brother Tom if he had any money, but he was a typical university student too - no money. I said to him: "Well, if I have faith enough to go to Lourdes to celebrate the fifth anniversary of my Ordination, it is up to the Blessed Mother to get me out."

I arrived in Lourdes "broke." I went to one of the good hotels -though by no means would any hotel in Lourdes ever be considered in the luxury class. I decided that if the Blessed Mother was going to pay my hotel bill, she could just as well pay a big one as a little one. I made a novena - nine days of prayer - but on the ninth morning nothing happened, the ninth evening nothing happened. Then it was serious. I had visions of gendarmes and working out my bill by washing dishes.

I decided to give the Blessed Mother another chance. I went to the grotto about ten o'clock at night. A portly American gentleman tapped me on the shoulder: "Are you an American priest?" "Yes." "Do you speak French?" "Yes." "Will you come to Paris with my wife and daughter tomorrow, and speak French for us?" He walked me back to the hotel; then he asked me perhaps the most interesting question I have ever heard in my life: "Have you paid your hotel bill yet?" I outfumbled him for the bill. The next day we went to Paris and for twenty years or more after that, when I would go to New York on weekends to instruct converts, I would enjoy the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Farrell, who had become the agents of the Blessed Mother to save me from my creditors.

When I finished my university studies, I made another pilgrimage to Lourdes. I was deeply concerned that perhaps I would not be permitted to return to Mary's Shrine again, for I knew not to what task the bishop would assign me. I asked the Blessed Mother to give me some sign that despite the odds of returning to Lourdes, she would do what seemed impossible. The sign I asked for was this: that after I offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and before I would reach the outer gate of the shrine, a little girl aged about twelve, dressed in white, would give me a white rose. About twenty feet from the gate I could see no one. I remember saying: "You had better hurry, there is not much time left." As I arrived at the gate a little girl aged twelve, dressed in white, gave me the white rose.

When I was assigned to a parish in Peoria, I told the pastor I would be going to Europe the following year to visit Lourdes. He justly retorted: "I have been a pastor for fifteen years and have not been to Europe once; as a curate, you expect to go at the end of one year?" "Yes, but I do not know how it is going to happen, except that it will happen." At the end of a year's service in the parish, the Bishop told me I was assigned as a teacher to the Catholic University and that I could go to Europe to begin immediate preparations for my course. So I visited the shrine of Our Lady again that summer.

If anyone thinks that prayers are never answered, let him offer a prayer to the Lord that some suffering be sent to save a soul. At the end of this particular pilgrimage to Lourdes, I had made reservations to take a night train back to Paris, the train leaving about 9 p.m. As lovers are reluctant to say goodbye, I sought to prolong my visit until the last minute. At about eight in the evening, I hurried to the grotto and asked the Blessed Mother to send me some kind of trial and suffering or a splinter from the Cross to help a soul. I hurried to the hotel and ran up three flights of stairs, two steps at a time, to my room. I noticed someone was running up the stairs after me. I turned around and saw a young Dutch girl of about twenty-one. "Are you following me?" "Yes," she said, "but I do not know why. I saw you in the procession this afternoon and decided that I should talk to you." When I asked if she was in Lourdes to make a pilgrimage, she said: "No, I am an atheist." "You are not an atheist," I insisted, "otherwise you would not be here. More likely you have lost your faith." I then told her: "I believe you are an answer to my prayer. I asked for some trial and suffering to save a soul; you are that soul."

I purposely missed my train and stayed in Lourdes three days until she made her confession and was restored to the life of the Church. Then my troubles began. It took me three more days to get back to Paris. Though I could speak the language, conductors told me my tickets were inadequate; they put me off the train at odd stops; and it was impossible to find a restaurant or an inn. After seventy-two hours and multiplied inconveniences, sleeplessness and inadequate food, I finally arrived in Paris. There is a price tag on every soul - some are cheap, others are expensive. As it is possible to transfuse blood from one member of society to another to cure an anemic condition, and it is possible to graft skin from one part of the body to another to restore pristine elegance, so it is also possible for any cell-member of Christ's Mystical Body to apply his splinter of the Cross to some other soul in need.

Spiritual aid to needy souls has not kept pace with the material aid we gather for needy bodies. No want of collections exists to help those in body need, but there is a lessened sense of reparation for the spiritually starving. "If one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it." If there are eye banks for the blind and blood banks for the anemic, why should there not be prayer banks for the fallen and self-denial banks for sinners? Many a spiritually wounded traveler is without the Good Samaritan to pour the oil of intercession and the wine of reparation into his weary soul.

Devotion to the Blessed Mother brought me to the discovery of a new dimension in the sacredness of suffering. I do not believe that I ever said to the Good Lord: "What did I do to deserve all these trials?" In my own heart I knew that I received fewer blows than I deserved. Furthermore, if Christ the Lord had summoned His Mother, who was free from sin, to share in the Cross, then the Christian must scratch from his vocabulary the word "deserve." When she brought her Divine Child to Simeon she was told He would be a "sign of contradiction" and a "sword would pierce her heart too." His Mother was the first to feel it - not in the sense of an unwilling victim, but rather one whose free act of resignation made her united to Him as much as a creature could be united with Him in the act of redemption. If I were the only person who had eyes in a world full of blind people, would I not try to be their staff? If I were the only one in a battlefield who was unwounded, would I not try to bind sores? Then shall virtue in the face of sin be dispensed from cooperation with Him Who even paid in advance for her gift of being immaculately conceived?

When I had open-heart surgery, only gradually did it dawn on me during my first four months in the hospital, that the Blessed Mother not only gives sweets, but she also gives bitter medicine. Too striking to be missed was that on three feast days of Our Lady I was brought to the door of death, and endured great suffering. The first was the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, July 16, when the doctors stayed with me all day and night trying to preserve the small flickering spark of life. Then came another operation on the Feast of her Assumption, August 15, and the implanting of a pacemaker. By this time I was beginning to feel a kind of holy dread of what might happen on September 8 when the Church celebrates her birthday. Sure enough, a kidney infection developed which, over a period of several weeks, made me feel some new tortures.

As I reflected on this concomitance of the Church festivals of Mary and my enforced solidarity with the Cross, I took it as a sign of the special predilection of Mary. If the Lord called her, who "deserved" no pain, to stand at the foot of the Cross, why should He not call me? If I had expressed a love for her as the Mother of the Priesthood, why should she not, in maternal love, make me more like her Son by forcing me to become a victim? If she did not despise this conformity with Him on Calvary, why should she, whom I recognize as Heavenly Mother, be less solicitous about seeing the image of her Son stamped more indelibly on my soul? If my own earthly mother laid me on her altar at birth, why should not my Heavenly Mother lay me at His Cross as I come to the end of life?

When I was in the second year of high school, the Brothers of Mary who were our teachers asked us to say three Hail Marys every day to St. Joseph for the grace of a happy death. I have continued that practice daily, but in the last twenty years have added a prayer to the Blessed Mother that I would die on a Saturday which is dedicated to her, or on one of her feast days. In recent conversation with Malcolm Muggeridge, the famous British journalist and former editor of Punch, he told me that it was wrong to pray for death on a certain day. He said: "I so long for death that I welcome it at any time. Whether we live long or short on this earth is merely a nuance." I do not know whether the Blessed Mother will grant me my wish, but it is really not important. I trust in her intercession to provide as direct a route as is possible to Christ, for "she knows the way."

Devotion to the Mother of Christ has been one of the principal safeguards of celibacy in my priesthood. Celibacy is surrounded on every side by hucksters of an erotic civilization where even automobiles are advertised as having "sex appeal." The celibate is bound to feel lonely in that atmosphere, but it is a different kind of loneliness that plagues the erotic. The former is tempted because, in the natural order, he is without a partner; the other is lonely even when he has his partner, for as St. Augustine reflected: "Our hearts were made for Thee, O Lord, and they cannot rest until they rest in Thee." The loneliness of one who seeks the Infinite is different from the loneliness of him who seeks the finite as the Infinite.

The role the Mother of Christ plays in this drama of the incompleteness of man is that she is the ideal Woman. As she was loved in the Eternal Mind before she was ever born in time, the celibate is bidden to love an ideal before he loves in fact. How often the young meet hundreds of friends until one day there comes the certitude: "Here is the one I have been looking for," or "She satisfies my ideal." Every person carries within his heart a blueprint of the one he loves; what appears to be "love at first sight" is often the fulfillment of a desire and the realization of a dream. Life becomes satisfying the moment the dream is seen walking and the person appears as the incarnation of the one that is loved. Whether that always is true of man, it is certainly true that God loves an ideal before He loves in fact.

An act of love is not only an affirmation, but a negation. When a husband affirms love of his wife, he negates his love of other women. Respect for womanhood increases with the love of the ideal. Furthermore, because there has been a dedication to this Beautiful Lady, she protects her lovers - even when they fall. Though sinless, she knows what sin is, namely, separation from God. She lost her Divine Son for three days and thus came to know vicariously the alienation and separation which tortures the heart of a sinner. Besides, she chose as her companion at the Cross Mary Magdalene, adding merit to her title as the "Mother of Sinners." Above all else, Christ the Son of God on the Cross commended to her all His disciples and faithful in the world as He said to John: "This is your Mother."

Though Mary is the ideal Woman in every truly Christian life, I cannot express how real she has been in my life. As a mother carrying a child often feels the kicks of the young, so Mary has felt my rebellion, but still sought to form Christ in my soul as she formed Him in her womb. Despite the unglutted beast that strains in the body of every priest, she held onto the leash to tame its madness. Even the beast has a heart and by mysterious and intangible touches of love, she kept that inner immured plot for God. She changed eros to agape, the water of my life into wine, and helped provide those tears to wipe Blood from wounds that caped on the Cross. In my mind's eye I have gazed on her beauty, a beauty which leaves all other beauty plain. My heart thrilled a thousand times at her gentle hand's caress, knowing full well that she was content with the little I had to give, for at the Cross she took the son of Zebedee as a son for the Son of God. After many years of courtship, the deep conviction pervades my soul: she really loves me - and if she can love me, Christ is with me.

For years in sermons and often in lectures I quoted a poem about this Ideal Lady who became so real to me. The poem is about a child's thoughts concerning her. Since we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven only by reversing age and becoming like a child, I fittingly close this article about "The Woman I Love" with child-talk.

Lovely Lady dressed in blue

Teach me how to pray

God was just your little Boy

Tell me what to say!

Did you lift Him up, sometimes

Gently on your knee?

Did you sing to Him the way

Mother does to me?

Did you hold His hand at night

Did you ever try

Telling Him stories of the world?

O, and did He cry?

Do you really think He cares

If I tell Him things -

Little things that happen? And

Do Angel's Wings make a noise?

Can He hear me if I speak low?

Does He understand me now?

Tell me, for you know!

Lovely Lady dressed in blue

Teach me how to pray!

God was just your little Boy

And, you know the way!1

Reprinted from Treasury in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton Sheen (Ignatius Press). Copyright © 1980 by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing Group, Inc.