Praying for a Nun
GUEST COLUMN
Dame Consolation stands beside my desk. Her arms are crossed under her white scapular, and she has an understanding smile.
Although Boethius’s Dame is a personification of philosophy and its solaces, she is also a feminine form with human features, one I had met many years before I ever read The Consolation of Philosophy, which contains many of the old verities of the Church Fathers, found also in Plato, especially his Phaedo, an early source of the precepts of service to others, sacrifice, the suffering and purification of the soul, the soul’s immortality, the dignity of the human person, and the pursuit of the Good — the bedrock of Christian eschatology.
They were also evident in the daily life of Sr. Martin de Porres, O.P. (formerly Corinne Recker, 1928-1979).
Sister Martin, who taught everything a second-grader needed to know, or at least everything in the second-grade curriculum, had been standing behind me for several minutes with her arms folded under her scapular. Sister was young and tall and pleasant.
I was gazing out of a large classroom window at the leafy street below, daydreaming of the Flats.
You May Also Enjoy
We are called to care for the sojourner and to be sympathetic and responsive to the needs of those fleeing poverty, political oppression, or religious persecution.
One goes to a New Order Mass to receive the Eucharist, since it is a valid rite, but one does not go for its beauty or splendor.
Is "theoconservativism" the revolutionary religious idea that is transforming the political and cultural landscape of our time?