Beguine Spirituality

"Anyone who has waded through Love's turbulent waters, now feeling hunger and now satiety is untouched by the seasons of withering or blooming.  For in the deepest and most dangerous waters, on the highest peaks, Love is always the same."  ~Hadewijch of Brabant

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax."~ Psalm 22:14

A drawing of a Beguine from Des dodes dantz, printed in Lübeck in 1489. (source)

At the most recent meeting of the de Chantal Society at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee we were treated to a topic on which I had never had any previous knowledge but found fascinating, Beguine Spirituality.  The speaker was Fr. Dennis Saran from Christ King Parish in Wauwatosa. After a period of silent adoration Fr. Dennis began by telling the women gathered that we are very much like an ancient community of women called The Beguines.  He told us that we occupy our time with caring for our families and friends, with serving the sick and the poor and we live very ordinary lives devoted to God.  The Beguines, he said, were ordinary lay women, as well.  They lived very normal lives and occupied their time with caring for the sick and the poor and yet they were deeply connected to God despite not being part of a religious community.

"The Beguine movement was a lay woman's movement that arose in the early 13th century.  The Beguines did not follow any established rule, but lived lives of apostolic poverty and chastity, doing works of charity among the poor and sick.

This style of life led to a spirituality that was both in and out of this world, using rich and captivating imagery.  They tried to capture the longing and love for the Other through their use of everyday experiences."

In the history of the Church there have been three types of spirituality.  The first is Monastic, the kind that Church fathers said could only exist in the desert with proper time for prayer and contemplation. You could only get to God if your prayer was constant.  The requirements promised union with God but only after years of constant devotion.  The common person couldn't approach this difficult lifelong commitment.

The second type of spirituality is Scholastic Theology.  This is the use of reason and philosophy to find your way to God.  St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica is an example of this.  We use reasons and proofs to experience God.  Until the 1950's this was the primary theological source for anyone who wasn't monastic.  The Baltimore Catechism was a product of this, as well as the theology of Fulton Sheen.  Scholastic Theology was popular in a masculine dominated Church as it was a problem-solving approach.  A personal relationship with God was not considered.

Vernacular or Common Spirituality is the third type of spirituality which accents personal relationship with God through our daily lives and sees nature as a sign of God's love for us.  The fact that we can learn compassion and good acts is feminine in its foundation and is championed by most female mystics.  It flourished in homes among spouses and in churches.  Here we seek union with God through private piety.

Vernacular Spirituality offered the possibility of achieving spiritual union with God to anyone in any walk of life.  This spirituality was supported by local clergy who saw a need for spirituality for the common people.  This male-dominated society where women were to be obedient was now Christ dominated.  A popular example of this was championed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century who added another dimension to our view and image of God.  Here God was seen not as a King or a Judge but now a Lover and a Bridegroom.  Sin was felt to be a betrayal.  We are the Lover and Jesus is the Bride.  You prepare yourself for the kiss of Christ.  This nuptial mysticism was foreign to the clergy of that time.

At the same time this idea of God as a Lover and a Bridegroom was expressed in the Beguine Movement.  Some people have thought of the Beguines as heretical.  It was the first European women's lay religious movement incorporating a life of prayer to draw closer to Christ.  Women could be married, widowed or single.  No vows were taken with the exception of an informal vow to remain celibate but this had no obligation attached to it.

The Beguines originated in Germany and France.  The women lived lives of charity and poverty and included both private prayer and corporate worship.  Several women had a personal, mystical union with Christ.  They did not write about God in an abstract sense; it was personal and much of the writing was romantic.  Many of these mystics are totally unknown to us.

"God leads his chosen people along strange paths." 
~Mechtild of Magdeburg

Mechtild of Magdeburg

One of these mystics whose words have been passed down through the centuries was Mechtild of Magdeburg who wrote the book "The Flowing Light of the Godhead" on courtly love with common sense.  Her book identifies daily tasks that can be used to serve God.  She talks about God walking with us in our daily lives.  It is often through suffering that love is defined and deepened.  Our greatest joy in heaven will be the love of God's will.  Here we will be one with God and will delight in his will.  Everything you do can be transferred into joy.  Suffering elevates you to God. We wear everyday work clothes when we're well but wear brides clothes when we are ill because our illness unites us to God.

Our longing for God is a hunger, thirst, ache, excitement.  We are all made for union with God.  Our nature is to be one with God.  Suffering and love are intimately tied together as seen in childbirth and parenting.    We are ever-longing in soul and ever-suffering in body.  Small sins harm perfection. What often impedes our spiritual life is that we pay no attention to our small sins.  But little daily efforts reveal the joys and love of God.  We aren't asked to become cloistered but to do small things with joy as echoed by St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta.  Even small acts of compassion cleanse our souls.

Each day we should say, "Jesus, my love, what do you want of me today?" and then say it the next day and the day after that.

For more details about Mechtild of Magdeburg with links to some of her beautiful poetry visit this website.

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Give Me a Word: Wisdom from Desert Monks

The de Chantal Society, "a group of women passionate about praying for vocations and for families in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, gathers three times per year at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary for eucharistic adoration and spiritual formation." Last spring, during Lent, Fr. Tom DeVries addressed the de Chantal Society with an inspiring talk on humility, sin and hope based upon wisdom learned from the desert monks.  Fr. Tom is a great speaker,  and at first I was so focused on listening to him that I didn't think to take notes on what he was saying, so the first section on humility is a little scant as I didn't completely catch all of what he said. Most interesting to me is the Mystery of Sin.  As one who usually beats herself up over sins and mistakes, I had never before considered the fact that our sins could be the beginning of our salvation.  Although these notes are from a Lenten talk and are not complete, the knowledge they contain can be useful to us at any time of year.

Give Me a Word:  Wisdom from Desert Monks
A Talk by Fr. Tom DeVries

The Necessity of Humility

Without God I am nothing, can do nothing.  Humility is being plunged into God.  Without temptations no person can be saved.  With temptations we realize how weak we are and we know without grace we cannot be saved.  We must lose at something, be brought to the edge of all of our resources and realize we can’t control, fix, explain or even understand some of the things that happen to us.  Do not be afraid of failure.  It’s required for us if God will exalt us.  We don’t exalt ourselves; God does.

Realize we are not self-sufficient.  Only God’s grace gets us through.  Then we come to the important place where we say “God, I surrender to your grace.”  I can agree in my head, but it’s hard in my life to get to those places.  God will keep drawing me to the end of my resources.

The Mystery of Sin

The Ambrosian Rite of the Church which was begun by St. Ambrose and is still celebrated today around Milan, Italy, has a prayer for the 16^th Sunday of Ordinary Time that helps us to understand the mystery of sin:  “Lord, you bent down over our wounds and healed us giving us a medicine.  In this way, even sin, by virtue of Your invincible love, served to elevate us to divine life.”  This is echoed in Romans-Paul says where sin increases grace abounds all the more.  There is a mystery to sin, a paradox.   It separates us from God but it’s precisely the route He uses to have us come back to Him.  If we’re honest it’s really our sin that keeps us coming back to God.  We may think we have failed or we are so wounded but it doesn’t stop God’s mercy.  God will use everything to bring us back to Him.

Everything I had deplored about my life was precisely how God kept pulling me back.  I realized what a grace it was that I even became grateful for my sin. 

It sounds heretical but we sing about it at Easter when we call the sin of Adam a Happy Fault.  Even when I was turning away from You, You were more powerful and were drawing me back to You.

We base salvation upon woundedness to level the playing field where everyone has access to God.

Julian of Norwich said:  “Our wounds are our very trophies.  They are the holes in the soul where light breaks through.”  Leonard Cohen, in the song Anthem says, “Forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack in everything.  That is how the light gets in.”

The Mystery of Sin follows on the heels of our understanding of humility but it takes it one more step.  God uses sin to draw close to us.  Julian of Norwich tells us that both the first fall and the recovery from the fall are the mercy of God.  In falling down we learn almost everything that matters spiritually.  All of the things that are achievements feed our ego too much.  There are things we keep so secret because they are just horrible, but if we own that one day we will even see our sin as our trophy.  It is falling upwards.

We often have a hate relationship with the faults, wounds and failures of our lives but take heart; God will use it and we’ll be able to thank God for the circuitous route and for all of our sins because God never left you and He used your failure as the route to Him.  People who don’t get close to God never admit their sin and their failure.

Make a chart of your own life-the ups, downs, failures, wounds, great times and bad times.  Realize in the woundedness and failure that you learn most about your spiritual life.  Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.

The Challenge of Hope

Julian of Norwich says “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” St. Paul tells us that “Hope does not disappoint because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”  St. Matthew says, “Behold!  I am with you always even until the end of the age.”

Christian hope is ultimate hope when we know what our destiny is meant to be and that’s why we can go through humility and sin because God is using it all to lead us beyond this world.

Transitory vanities won’t furnish us with our deepest longings.  We are eternal and hope is ultimate and it’s God.  St. Benedict tells us that the present, even if it’s arduous, can be accepted if it leads the way to a goal and the goal is God himself.

There is a difference between wishes and hope.  Wishes are temporal and hope is eternal.  Optimism is the expectation that things will get better but hope is a trust that will lead us to true freedom.  Hope is based upon God’s promise.

We shouldn’t lose the virtue of hope in our world today.  We look at the near future and we can get pretty depressed, but we should not ever, ever, ever be people who have a message of despair.

Hope is for the long road and we need to believe in God’s promise.  Presumption and despair are sins against hope.  We don’t want to wait; we don’t want to live through difficult times.  But as Julian of Norwich reminds us “The Lord did not say you shall not be tempest tossed but he did say you shall not be overcome.”

The Language of Love with Fr. Tim Kitzke

Fr. Tim Kitzke at Roses for Our Lady's May Crowning

On May 20th, his 26th anniversary to the priesthood, Fr. Tim Kitzke, the pastor of four parishes (including 7 churches), spiritual advisor for many groups within the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and newly appointed Vicar General of the City of Milwaukee, a role in which he hopes to bring peace and hope to the city which has been beleaguered by violence, came to speak to the de Chantal Society at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary.   The de Chantal Society is led by Susan McNeil of the Nazareth Project and Lisa Brielmaier of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, and their mission is to "spiritually form and inspire Catholic women who, like St. Jane de Chantal, are integral to families, vocations and the Catholic Church."  Following thirty minutes of silent Eucharistic adoration, Fr. Tim's talk was lively and inspiring and within it he gave us three challenges for the spiritual life.

The Language of Love by Fr. Tim Kitzke

Fr. Tim said that whenever he's preparing a homily or a talk, the Lord gives him little signs to help him in his preparation, and recently these signs came through a little girl, Magdalena, or Lena, for short, who accompanies her mother  when she meets Fr. Tim for spiritual direction.  

Peacemakers

Fr. Tim said that his office is not child-friendly, and in it he has a large portrait of Our Mother of Perpetual Help that is on the floor leaning against the wall.  When Madgalena was a toddler and was learning how to crawl she used that picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to hold onto as she was learning to stand.  Fr. Tim, feeling nervous about the picture, told himself, "Tim, it's just a thing, let it go."  And the next thing he saw was little Lena looking at the image on the painting, and then she took her pacifier out of her mouth and tried to put it into baby Jesus' mouth!  He said this was a great symbol!  We're supposed to be pacifiers if we're living the language of love.

When Jesus ascends to heaven it's not to leave us as orphans, but so that we can take our proper role.   If Jesus were still here living in the world and walking among us, we wouldn't want to be listening to Fr. Tim, he wouldn't have a job. We'd be sitting at the feet of Christ, hanging on to His every word. But because Jesus ascended, we have to become peacemakers.  It's our first challenge. 

If you say that you love Jesus Christ, then you have to find peace in your heart before that peace can go out to others.  We have so much to worry about-the world, the Church, our children-but Jesus wants us to pray first of all for real peace to begin in our own hearts.  We have to find peace so that we can be peace and then we can find ways to pacify the world.

Open Doors

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After Lena tired of sharing her pacifier with Jesus, she went to every door and tried to push it open.  That's our second challenge.  We're to open doors for others, and whatever door you open, open it wide.  We have a tendency, like the disciples, to stay behind locked and closed doors for fear.  But we need to engage, to open up our hearts to possibility.  Fear is paralyzing.  It closes our heart off.  There's an old Portuguese Proverb that says:  "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."

Our demons come and they wake us up in the middle of the night causing us to lose sleep.  You have to cast out fear and get rid of whatever is demonic in your life.   Name your demons.  Give them a name  For example, there's the demon of self-loathing. Ask him to please leave.  And then pray to St. Michael the Archangel for his help.  Think about our baptismal promises.  Do you reject Satan?  The demonic powers have personal power.  They know the chinks in our armor and they know what will set us off into tailspins of fear.  We have to open the doors of our house to grace and peace.

Think of Jesus facing the demon in the desert, and in death, and when he descended into hell.  Why did Jesus have to go to hell?  One thought is that he had to face the devil in his own territory as an example to the disciples.  Another thought is that he went to hell because he was looking for Adam and Eve.  He had to go to the lowest part of hell to find them because they started this mess.  And there he found Adam with apple juice caked on his chin and Eve with tears crusted over her bereft eyes.  He tells them, "You weren't created for this.  Come with Me now."

When you wake up in the middle of the night tormented by demons, go to the medicine cabinet, and after you get over the shock of seeing yourself in the mirror, tell yourself, "You weren't created for this."

Use the Keys

After Lena found that pushing on the doors wasn't going to open them, she dumped out her mother's purse, found the keys and took them to the doors and tried to use them to unlock the doors.  Like Lena, we have the keys, it's the Church.  The Lord said to Peter, you are the rock and upon you I will build my Church.  We are challenged to use the keys of the Church to open and release fear, doubt, and anxiety.

Read holy scripture, pray the rosary or other devotions, spend quiet time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, go to Mass twenty minutes early or stay twenty minutes after Mass to pray.  Spiritual reading and coming to the de Chantal Society are also keys that will help us to live a spiritual life.  These are the keys that will help us to face the devil in battle.

Facing Failure

When Lena found that the doors were still locked and that her mother's keys didn't open them, she threw them down and jumped into her mother's lap.  Like Lena, we're going to face failure in the spiritual life.  We're going to obsess and face difficulties.  But the spiritual life is not a matter of success.  It's a matter of fidelity.  Half of life is just showing up!  So sometimes we just have to jump into our Mother's lap-into the arms of the Church and our Mother Mary's arms.  Yes, sometimes you will fail, but learn the language of "I kept trying." Sometimes you have to just let go and trust.  Faith is often a walk in the dark.

Fr. Tim said that after 26 years of the priesthood he's discovered that the more you let go, the better it is.  Somehow God works things out.  That's why we call it the mystery of grace. God will write straight with the crooked lines of our lives.

Realize that there have been people who have gone before you that know the way.  The saints give us an example and encouragement.  Aren't we lucky as Roman Catholics to have the saints?  We have a body of witnesses to walk with us.  They have a ladder of love that will take us to heaven.  

What the World Needs Now

Fr. Tim shared a story about his mother and how, in her last years on earth, he and his three siblings would all go to take care of her in her home.  They would clean her house, do the laundry and cook for her.  Fr. Tim went every Monday but one week his sister filled in for him.  The next week he asked his mom who cleaned better and his mom told him that he did.  So he called his sister to brag and she said, "That's odd because mom told me that I clean better!"  So Fr. Tim went back to his mom and asked her why she told both of them that they clean the best and she replied, "Oh Timmy, I only tell you what you need to hear!"

We all need to hear that we are loved unconditionally and irreplaceably.  As  St. Augustine says, God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us and He wants to help you.  Bask in the love of God.

If we take this seriously we can learn a new language, the language of love.  Or, as Fr. Tim has been frequently saying in his homilies and talks, what this world needs now is love, sweet love.

The next de Chantal Society meets on November 18th and 19th, 2015 at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, 3257 S. Lake Drive in Milwaukee, with Bishop Richard Sklba.  The hour of adoration, benediction and spiritual formation is always followed by a wine and cheese or coffee and cake social.  It's a wonderful time for women to be uplifted and to visit with old friends, as well as to make new friends.  Visit their website here for more information.

The de Chantal Society/St. Catherine of Siena

The de Chantal Society of St. Francis de Sales Seminary, led by Lydia LoCoco and Bishop Donald Hying, is now into its third year of bringing women in the Archdiocese together for an evening or morning of quiet prayer and reflection followed by socialization, three times each year.  The description found on the seminary website is quite lovely and enticing:

"We invite you to take a short respite that promises, like a breath of fresh air, to offer you silence, prayer, meditation and spiritual formation - time for you.

We are the de Chantal Society. Sponsored by Saint Francis de Sales Seminary and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's Nazareth Project, our mission is to spiritually form and inspire Catholic women like St. Jane de Chantal, who are integral to our families, vocations and the Catholic Church.

We ask nothing of you (except prayer!). Our mission is to support you.  Please choose the gathering that works best for you."

Attending the de Chantal Society is one of my very favorite things to do.  Not only do I enjoy the quiet of silent prayer before our Eucharistic Lord, and the joy of fellowship with other Catholic women, but Bishop Hying never fails to inspire as he shares stories of the lives of women saints upon whom we can model our lives.  

At the most recent de Chantal Society gathering, Bishop Hying shared the story of St. Catherine of Siena of whom I knew very little, so I took careful notes and am happy to review them and share the gist of his reflection here.

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Quotes from St. Catherine of Siena:

"Love transforms one into what one loves."
"You are she who is not. I am He who is."
"If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire."
"I am the fire and you are the sparks."

St. Catherine of Siena (source)

As far as saints are concerned, according to Bishop Hying, St. Catherine of Siena is in the stratosphere.  She was a mystic, which means that she had a direct knowledge of God obtained through subjective experience. She knew God, not just through an intellectual belief, but through a real human experience.  For St. Catherine, God was so real that she could actually reach out and touch Him, and then boldly act upon that vision.

Like many saints, St. Catherine of Siena only lived on this earth for a short time, dying at the age of 33.  It was almost as if a fiery explosion propelled her into the world, and like a meteor she flew through the heavens and then sparked out.  To be holy like St. Catherine and other saints who die young, Bishop Hying says it seems as if we have to "get it right quickly and then check out, because the longer we stay around, the more we mess it up."

She was born during the time of black death, on March 25th, 1347, was one of 22 children, many of whom died during infancy and childhood, and had a very strong will.  She had her first vision of God when she  was only five or six years old.  She saw Christ seated in His glory.  By age seven she vowed to give her whole life to God.  It's as if God reaches down and chooses certain souls to show us who He is, and St. Catherine was one of them.  There are two types of saints-those that are born holy and those who are wild and have a conversion.  St. Catherine was clearly of the first type.

She didn't feel called to marriage or to religious life.  In fact, when her sister died in childbirth, her family expected her to marry.  She performed a massive fast to get her way and avoid marrying her sister's widower. Eventually she became a Dominican Tertiary which was a mendicant order, meaning she didn't live in a convent or monastery, but remained in the world.  Most of the others in her order were older and lived in community, but she chose to live in a little shack in her parent's back yard.  She learned to read and lived in silence and solitude.  She demanded nothing for herself, rarely slept, and performed many long fasts often only eating the Eucharist.

At age 21 she had a mystical and emotional marriage with Jesus.  She wore a ring on her finger that no one else could see.  She took care of the poor in hospitals and homes.  People would often gather around her and she gave communal spiritual direction.  She was called to delve into the world as if God had pushed her to live an extension of His life.  Like St. Catherine, we, too, are called to be in the world but not of the world, by living in deep union with Jesus.

She advocated for reform of the clergy.  During her lifetime there was a schism in the Church with three separate popes. She felt empowered to go to the real pope and convince him to return from France to Rome.  How many people can go to the pope, tell him what to do, receive a personal audience and then watch as he follows their advice? The fact that St. Catherine was able to achieve this shows that true power doesn't come from office, it comes from holiness.

She was taken by the transcendence and immanence of God-He's above us, but also has entered into our experience, close to us and within us.  This is the amazing truth that before the world was created, each one of us was already loved in the mind and heart of God.  We exist and that is the ultimate expression of His love for us.  The trinity dwells in us through sanctifying grace; the astounding conviction that through the sacraments, God comes to live in us.

St. Catherine had a deep love for the Trinity and believed that heaven is standing at the heart of the Trinity. She knew that there is an overwhelming force of God's love for us to the point where we are moved to tears, where our head knowledge of God suddenly explodes in the heart.  St. Catherine's lived experience of God changed everything.  She said, "God pressed Himself into my being and that's who I am."  She had ecstasies that took her out of herself and transported her into the heart of God.  It is only for a few rare souls that this is possible on this side of death.

As a priest, Bishop Hying says that there are times during the elevation when the host is so light and times when it is heavy.  There are moments when he is unmoved and then at other times he is deeply moved by the Real Presence.  There are times when God seems close and other times when He seems far away.  The moments of grace are the times when, in a profound and real way, we feel His overwhelming love for us.  St. Catherine felt His overwhelming love all the time.

What matters for us today is that we take the things she teaches us and live them out.  St. Catherine of Siena shows us that God's love for us is prodigal, infinite, unending, divine fire.  We are to see ourselves as an extension of Jesus in the world.  St. Catherine was so submerged in God that there was a fine line separating the two.  Her divine power came from the Lord using her, but God is the one who is; she is the one who is not.

To read Catherine's works is daunting and overwhelming, but she has something to say to all of us, and that is that throughout her life she took the next step and stayed true to herself because she knew who she was in God's eyes.  Holiness doesn't make us odd.  Like St. Catherine of Siena, holiness makes us beautiful.