Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
All about Clare of Assisi (1194-1253)
Clare was one of the first women to follow the example of Francis. Ultimately, she founded the Order of the Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition. She wrote the Poor Ladies Rule of Life – the first monastic rule known to have been written by a woman. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed in her honor as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares.
The story goes: When Clare was 18, Francis of Assisi came to preach in the church of San Giorgio at Assisi. Inspired by his words, Clare asked Francis to help her in dedicating her life to God, and he vowed to do so. The following year (1211), Clare’s parents chose a wealthy young man for Clare to marry, but she pointedly refused, fleeing soon after for the Porziuncola Chapel, where Francis received her. She took vows dedicating her life to God, and that moment, on March 20, 1212, marked the beginning of the Second Order of St. Francis.
Clare wrote:
We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others.
If we can go with her, we can do some great work in the world!
The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:
‘When one rules over people in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’
“If my house were not right with God,
surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant,
arranged and secured in every part;
surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation
and grant me my every desire. – 2 Samuel 23:3-5
All about Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn emerges in the recent history of the church in Russia as a colossus of courage. He was born only months after the secular fundamentalists swept to power in the Bolshevik Revolution. He was brainwashed by a state education system which taught him that religion was the enemy of the people. Like most of his school friends, he became an atheist and joined the Communist Party.
When he served in the Soviet army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War he witnessed cold blooded murder and the raping of women and children as the Red Army took its “revenge” on the Germans. Disillusioned, he committed the indiscretion of criticizing the Soviet leader Josef Stalin and was imprisoned for eight years as a political dissident.
While in prison, he resolved to expose the horrors of the Soviet system. Shortly after his release, during a period of compulsory exile in Kazakhstan, he was diagnosed with a malignant cancer in its advanced stages and was not expected to live. In the face of what appeared to be impending death, he converted to Christianity and was astonished by what he considered to be a miraculous recovery.
In the 1960s Solzhenitsyn published three novels exposing the secularist tyranny of the Soviet Union and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. Following the publication in 1973 of his seminal work, The Gulag Archipelago, an exposé of the treatment of political dissidents in the Soviet prison system, he was arrested and expelled from the Soviet Union, thereafter living the life of an exile in Switzerland and the United States. He finally returned to Russia in 1994, after the collapse of the Soviet system.
In 1978, Solzhenitsyn caused great controversy when he criticized the secularism and hedonism of the West in his famous commencement address at Harvard University. Condemning the nations of the so-called free West for being morally bankrupt, he urged that it was time “to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”
He warned the emphasis on rights instead of responsibilities was leading to “the abyss of human decadence” and to the committing of “moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror.” He claimed the root of the modern malaise is the philosophy of “rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy,” which declared the “autonomy of man from any higher authority above him.” Such a view “could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.”
Little could Solzhenitsyn have known when he languished as one of the many millions in the Soviet prison system that he would outlive the Soviet system and, furthermore, that his own courage would play an important part in that system’s collapse.
Quotes:
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every [person].
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
The clouds of radical relativism often obscure the light of living Truth. “It can be difficult to discern any silver lining to help us illumine the future with hope. In such gloomy times the example of the martyrs can be encouraging. Those who laid down their lives for Christ and His Church in worse times than ours are beacons of light, dispelling the darkness with their baptism of blood” (Joseph Pearce).
The clouds and the shadows they cast are transient. Evil is nihilistic, which is another way of saying that it is ultimately nothing. It is only a temporary blocking of the light. “Above all shadows rides the Sun,” as the ever-humble Samwise Gamgee reminds his friend in The Lord of the Rings. Even in these dark days, as Solzhenitsyn reminds us, every cloud has a silver lining.
Who is God? Where is your hope? What lie is attempting to shape you? What violence is channeling you? How can you fight? How can we? Answering the questions in our day plants the church.
A snapshot of Flannery O’Connor beside her self-portrait at her Georgia home, 1953.
Bible connection
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. – Romans 5:1-11
All about Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)
Mary Flannery O’Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Many think of her as one of America’s greatest fiction writers. Others add that she was one of the strongest apologists for Christian faith in the 20th century (especially the Roman Catholic branch of the faith). Her small but impressive body of fiction presents the soul’s struggle with what she called the “stinking mad shadow of Jesus.”
O’Connor was the only daughter of a marriage between two of Georgia’s oldest Catholic families. She was born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up under live oaks and Spanish moss, across the square from the cathedral where she was immersed in ritual, sacraments, and daily mass, all sheltered by the Sisters of Mercy. It was a coherent cosmos of faith. Even when her family moved from Savannah to a Milledgeville, Georgia, dairy farm so isolated that it was reached only “by bus or buzzard,” Flannery’s life centered around God.
After graduating from a nearby women’s college, Flannery went to the renowned Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Although she claimed that she didn’t know a short story from an ad in the newspaper, she quickly became a sensation. Though Flannery hardly looked the part, the fiction editor of Esquire put her at the red-hot center of his Literary Establishment chart of 1963.
As Flannery’s cultural star was on the rise, she was stricken by lupus, an incurable, debilitating disease that sapped her energy and forced her return to the “very muddy and manurey” farm back in Georgia. Confined there, dependent on her mother’s care, she wrote only as her diminishing strength permitted—for two hours every morning.
Before her death at 39, Flannery predicted that nobody would write her biography, since lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy. Yet her outsized spiritual dramas enacted on a Southern stage—told through short stories, novels, and many letters—ensure her place among the greatest American writers.
The body of O’Connor’s work resists conventional description. Although many of her narratives begin in a familiar world—on a family vacation or in a doctor’s waiting room, for example—they are not, finally, realistic. Furthermore, although O’Connor’s work was written during a time of great social change in the South, those changes—and the relationships among blacks and whites—were not at the center of her fiction. O’Connor made frequent use of violence and shock tactics. She argued that she wrote for an audience who, for all its Sunday piety, did not share her belief in the fall of humanity and its need for redemption. “To the hard of hearing,” she explained, “[Christian writers] shout, and for the… almost-blind [they] draw large and startling figures.” That thought has become a popular explanation of O’Connor’s intent as a writer.
One cannot get through a Flannery O’Connor story without encountering the strangeness of God. As she said, the greatest dramas involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Her short story “Revelation” startles with its final vision of a field of living fire. The vast hordes of souls rumbling toward heaven, the battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs, are a strange, beautiful sight. And then the words, “In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”
Flannery lamented that our secular society understands the religious mind less and less, that people who believe vigorously in Christ are wholly odd to most readers. It becomes more and more difficult in America to make belief believable, yet this is what she wanted to do. Flannery insisted that she was not a mystic and did not lead a holy life, yet she unapologetically displayed her faith: a life of continually turning away from egocentricity and toward God.
O’Connor’s letters are full of sin and grace, fall and redemption, and the ultimate reality, God revealed in the Incarnation. She calls for the abandonment of the self: “I measure God by everything I’m not.” She embraces suffering, insisting that before grace can heal “it cuts with the sword Christ said he came to bring.” While many casual believers think that faith is a big electric blanket, she says, of course it is a cross. Her Christian faith is a demanding one.
The word mystery is one of her favorites. She never tosses it around in the way of fuzzy spirituality. Flannery’s mystery is a rich and complex thing; it’s the ground of her spiritual life, and it explains everything. People often strip the cosmos of religious meaning these days. O’Connor aims to return us to mystery, where the unseen ordering of the world speaks of God the Creator. “This is the central Christian mystery,” Flannery says. “Life has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.”
In her journal we can find this prayer: “Help me get down under things and find where you are.” This may be the meaning of mystery for Flannery. She once said that fiction is the concrete expression of mystery—mystery that is lived. For O’Connor, mystery is about getting down under things to find where God is, illuminating the divine foundation of all that is, seen and unseen. Elsewhere in the journals there is the yearning, young Flannery, the wavering believer who wrote, “I don’t want to be doomed to mediocrity in my feeling for Christ. I want to feel. I want to love. Take me, dear Lord, and set me in the direction I am to go.”
An early 1964 surgery for a fibroid tumor reactivated O’Connor’s lupus, which had been in remission, and her health worsened during the following months. On August 3, 1964, after several days in a coma, she died in the Baldwin County Hospital. She is buried beside her father in Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville. At the time of her death, the Atlanta Journal observed that O’Connor’s “deep spirituality qualified her to speak with a forcefulness not often matched in American literature.”
Even stricken with lupus, Flannery O’Connor kept digging down under her normality to get in touch with the mystery occluded by an oppressive secular world. We present these great examples of faith to help us stop and ponder and imitate. So is that the suggestion? Stop and dig down.
Icon of St. Vasily the Blessed (Bas relief, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow)
Bible connection
For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you!For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings.We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless.We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment. — 1 Corinthians 4:7-13 NIV
St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, viewed from Red Square
All about Basil, Fool for Christ (1468-1552/1557)
Basil is known as Vasily the Blessed, or Vasily, Fool for Christ, or Vasily, Wonderworker of Moscow, or Blessed Vasily of Moscow, Fool for Christ. He is one of the best known Russian Orthodox saints of the type known as a yurodivy or “holy fool.” He is so well known that one of the most iconic buildings in Moscow, near the Kremlin, was renamed in his honor.
Basil was born into a family of serfs in December 1468 in a village which is now a neighborhood in Moscow. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker and soon showed his unique calling. For instance, when a merchant ordered special boots but could not wait for them to be finished, he told the shoemaker he would get them when he returned the following year. Basil wept and said, “I wish you would cancel the order, since you will never wear them.” When his perplexed master questioned him, he explained that the man would not wear the boots because he as he would soon die. After several days the prediction proved true.
Basil adopted the eccentric lifestyle of other holy men who were known as fools for Christ. The role of “holy fool” is especially honored in the Russian Orthodox Church. Dostoevsky includes characters who are “holy fools,” Lizaveta and Sonya (the heroine), in Crime and Punishment. Tolstoy tells about Grisha, the holy fool who came onto his parents’ estate in his memoir. Francis of Assisi is a notable Roman Catholic example of a person who thought being a fool for Christ was his calling. While there is great variety among them, holy fools in every case are ascetic Christians living well outside the borders of ordinary social behavior, including conventional religious behavior. In many countries they might be locked away in asylums or simply ignored until the elements silence them, after which they would be thrown into unmarked graves.
Basil was known for walking through the streets of Moscow barefoot (in the cleaned up version of the story) or naked in the burning summer heat and the harsh winter cold. His actions were often strange. For instance, the story goes, one time he overturned a kalachi (sweetbread) stand, and another time he spilled a jug of kvas (near beer). The angry merchants beat him, but he endured the beatings with joy and he thanked God for them. Then, it was discovered that the kalachi were poorly cooked, and the kvas was badly prepared. Soon, his reputation grew, and people saw him as a holy fool, not just a fool, as a man of God, and a denouncer of wrong.
Basil preached mercy. He helped those who were ashamed to beg, but who were the most in need. He harshly condemned those who did not give alms for love but thought they could use the action to buy God’s blessings on their business. Basil passed by a house in people were drinking and wild and he wept and hugged the corner of the building. When Basil was asked why he answered: “Angels stand in sorrow at the house and are distressed by the sins of the people, but I entreat them with tears to pray to the Lord for the conversion of sinners.”
It is said that Basil could foresee the future. In 1547, he predicted the great fire of Moscow. It is said he extinguished a fire at Novgorod by prayer. Once he reproached Tsar Ivan the Terrible, because during worship he was preoccupied with thoughts of building a palace on the Vorobiev hills. Another time, Basil gave Tsar Ivan some meat during Lent, telling him it did not matter whether or not he fasted from eating meat, because of the murders he had committed.
Basil was so revered by Muscovites that, when he died, his thin body was buried, not in a pauper’s grave on the city’s edge, but next to the newly erected Cathedral of the Protection of the Mother of God. Tsar Ivan himself acted as pallbearer and carried his coffin to the cemetery. From that time people began calling the church St. Basil’s, because to go there meant one would pause to pray at Basil’s grave. Not many years passed before Basil was formally canonized. A chapel built over his grave became an integral part of the great building, adding one more onion dome to the eight already there.
Would you like to see the architectrure of the iconic church?
What do we do with this?
Paul sounds a bit irate when his detractors mock his foolishness for Christ. Jesus seems innocent, as if being a fool were normal and being normal were foolish. Basil seems like he can’t help himself because he is just not normal. What is unique about you that the world needs to see? What will it cost you to show it and what difference does it make if it costs you?
Conrad Grebel imagined by Oliver Wendell Schenk in 1972.
Bible connection
When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles.But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported,“We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.”On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.
Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.”At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.
The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest.“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! — Acts 5:22-29
All about Conrad Grebel (1498–1526)
Conrad Grebel acted on his convictions with his twentysomething buddies (and quite a few older relatives) and catalyzed the Swiss Brethren, an offshoot of the Radical Reformation, later tagged the Anabaptists.
Grebel was born in Grüningen to Jakob and Dorothea Grebel. The family moved to Zurich when he was around fifteen years old.
Grebel spent six years in three universities but never earned a degree. In Paris he lived a wild life. When his father cut off his funds, he returned to Zurich.
In 1521, he met with a group led by Ulrich Zwingli, leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. The two studied Greek, Hebrew and the Latin Bible together.
His life changed in 1522 when he married a woman below his social class his family found inappropriate. He later experienced a Christian conversion and underwent a dramatic lifestyle change, becoming an ardent supporter of Zwingli and his church reforms.
The next year differences between Grebel and Zwingli arose. Both men wanted the Catholic Mass to be abolished but when Zurich city councilmen did not favor it, Zwingli relented. Grebel believed the councilmen had no authority over the church and also didn’t think the church had authority over the state.
What he really believed in was the authority of the Bible. The principle that galvanized the new movement was adult baptism. The Bible did not mention infant baptism. But the church and state both used it — the fromer to control members and the latter to identify citizens. Grebel and his group believed only adults should be baptized on the basis of their profession of faith. On January 17, 1525, Zwingli called for a public debate on the issue. Felix Manz and George Blaurock joined Grebel on the side of believers’ baptism.
City council members and Zwingli disagreed and ordered Grebel’s group to disband and all unbaptized infants to be baptized. Grebel’s daughter was an infant, but he refused her baptism.
In the Home of Felix Manz’s Mother
Soon Grebel met with the exiled radicals and baptized Blaurock. Then Blaurock baptized Grebel, Manz and others present. Grebel traveled to St. Gall and preached the gospel of repentance and baptism, and more than 500 people responded to his call. This was the beginning of a significant radical outbreak that was soon suppressed.
In October 1525, Grebel was arrested. In prison he wrote a defense of adult baptism; what we know of it is from quotes in a Zwingli pamphlet from 1527. He escaped in March 1526 to continue preaching. A few months later he died of the plague at the age of 28.
His closest friends were martyrs — Manz was drowned in 1527, and Blaurock was burned at the stake in 1529.
Although his ministry was less than four years and his time as an Anabaptist only a year-and-a-half, Grebel’s contributions made him known as “The Father of Anabaptists.”
Quotes
Seek earnestly to preach only God’s word unflinchingly, to establish and defend only divine practices, to esteem as good and right only what can be found in definite clear Scripture, and to reject, hate, and curse all the schemes, words, practices, and opinions of all men, even your own. –– Letter to Thomas Munzter
Moreover, the gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword, nor [should] they [protect] themselves, which as we have heard through our brother is what you believe and maintain. True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual. They use neither worldly sword nor war, since killing has ceased with them entirely, unless indeed we are still under the old law, and even there (as far as we can know) war was only a plague after they had once conquered the Promised Land. No more of this. — Also Letter to Thomas Muntzer
More
“The Face of Conrad Grebel” from the university that bears his name in Waterloo, Ontario [link]
If you are a twentysomething, or newly married with young children, take heart! People have done important things in your exact situation. You might also celebrate the college students who have disrupted the U.S. response to the Gaza incursion by Israel.
The powers-that-be quickly put the kabosh on radical reform. They Catholic Church doesn’t allow any reform and will begin hunting down people who don’t toe the line, soon. But the more liberal Swiss canton leaders and rulers of the smaller states in Germany also have no taste for giving away they power to the people to make their own decisions, or even to read the Bible for themselves. This is the kind of discouragement your radical readers have expereinced first hand. What are you willing to suffer for Jesus and the truth of the Gospel?
You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules.The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. — 2 Timothy 2:1-7
All about Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556)
Ignatius Loyola was born in 1491 as Iñigo Lopez de Loyola, to a noble and wealthy Basque family, one of 13 children. As a young man Ignatius was inflamed by the ideals of courtly love and knighthood and dreamed of doing great deeds. He was sent to the Spanish court to become a page. He embraced court life with enthusiasm, learning weapons, gambling, and courtly love—he was “a man given to the vanities of the world,” he later wrote in his autobiography, “whose chief delight consisted in martial exercises, with a great and vain desire to win renown.”
In 1521, In a battle with the French for the town of Pamplona, Spain, he was hit by a cannon ball the size of a fist. The five-foot-two-inch Iñigo was helped back to Loyola by French soldiers (who admired his courage). He underwent surgeries to reset his right knee and remove a protruding bone. For seven weeks he lay in bed recuperating.
During this time, he began reading spiritual books and accounts of the exploits of Dominic and Francis. In one book by a Cistercian monk, the spiritual life was conceived as one of holy chivalry; the idea fascinated him. During his convalescence he received spiritual visions, so that by the time he recuperated, he had resolved to live a life of austerity to do penance for his sins.
In February 1522, Iñigo left his family and went to Montserrat, a pilgrimage site in northeastern Spain. He spent three days confessing his life sins, then hung his sword and dagger near the statue of the Virgin Mary to symbolize his break with his old life. He donned sack cloth and walked to Manresa, a town 30 miles from Barcelona, to pass the decisive months of his career (from March 1522 to mid-February 1523). He lived as a beggar, ate and drank sparingly, scourged himself, and for a time neither trimmed his tangled hair nor cut his nails. He attended Mass daily and spent seven hours a day in prayer, often in a cave outside Manresa.
While sitting one day by the Cardoner River, “the eyes of his understanding began to open,” he later wrote, referring to himself in the third person, “and, without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith.” At Manresa, he sketched the fundamentals of his little book Spiritual Exercises.
Over the years, Ignatius became expert in the art of spiritual direction. He collected his insights, prayers, and suggestions in his guide for new disciples called theSpiritual Exercises. His 200-page text is one of the most influential books on the spiritual life ever written. With a small group of friends, he founded the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits. Ignatius conceived the Jesuits as “contemplatives in action.” This also describes the many Christians who have been touched by Ignatian spirituality.
“Act as if everything depended on you; trust as if everything depended on God.”
“Go forth and set the world on fire.”
The quotes above are among the most famous from Ignatius and they sum up the practicality and ambition that he lived out after his commitment to follow Jesus.
Those of us who are Protestants probably haven’t been given much information about Ignatius because he was a strong opponent of the Reformation in the 1500’s and vigorously supported (some would argue blindly) the hierarchy of the Catholic Church at the time. None of us gets everything right and this lasting division of the Church has proven itself to be deeply problematic for centuries. Much is lost if we refuse to listen to one another.
Ignatius became a powerful leader in the Church of his day. His writings have become a wonderful guide to many who seek Jesus. He was a devoted follower who took his early experiences as a soldier prior to his conversion and applied all the good lessons he learned to the work of discipleship.
More
Here is a video biography
Here is a nice spirituality site with extensive biography resources: [link]
Ignatian spirituality is one of the most influential and pervasive outlooks of our age. Here are ten markers of Ignatian spirituality. Consider them. Try them.
1. It begins with a wounded soldier daydreaming on his sickbed. Ignatian spirituality is rooted in the experiences of Ignatius, whose conversion to a fervent Christian faith began while he was recovering from war wounds. Ignatius gained many insights into the spiritual life in the course of a decades long spiritual journey during which he became expert at helping others deepen their relationship with God. Its basis in personal experience makes Ignatian spirituality an intensely practical spirituality, well suited to laymen and laywomen living active lives in the world.
2. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
This line from a poem by the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins captures a central theme of Ignatian spirituality: its insistence that God is at work everywhere—in work, relationships, culture, the arts, the intellectual life, creation itself. As Ignatius put it, all the things in the world are presented to us “so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.” Ignatian spirituality places great emphasis on discerning God’s presence in the everyday activities of ordinary life. It sees God as an active God, always at work, inviting us to an ever-deeper walk.
3. It’s about call and response—like the music of a gospel choir.
An Ignatian spiritual life focuses on God at work now. It fosters an active attentiveness to God joined with a prompt responsiveness to God. God calls; we respond. This call-response rhythm of the inner life makes discernment and decision making especially important. Ignatius’s rules for discernment and his astute approach to decision making are well-regarded for their psychological and spiritual wisdom.
4. “The heart has its reasons of which the mind knows nothing.”
Ignatius Loyola’s conversion occurred as he became able to interpret the spiritual meaning of his emotional life. The spirituality he developed places great emphasis on the affective life: the use of imagination in prayer, discernment and interpretation of feelings, cultivation of great desires, and generous service. Ignatian spiritual renewal focuses more on the heart than the intellect. It holds that our choices and decisions are often beyond the merely rational or reasonable. Its goal is an eager, generous, wholehearted offer of oneself to God and to his work.
5. Free at last.
Ignatian spirituality emphasizes interior freedom. To choose rightly, we should strive to be free of personal preferences, superfluous attachments, and preformed opinions. Ignatius counseled radical detachment: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.” Our one goal is the freedom to make a wholehearted choice to follow God.
6. “Sum up at night what thou hast done by day.”
The Ignatian mind-set is strongly inclined to reflection and self-scrutiny. The distinctive Ignatian prayer is the Daily Examen, a review of the day’s activities with an eye toward detecting and responding to the presence of God. Three challenging, reflective questions lie at the heart of the Spiritual Exercises, the book Ignatius wrote, to help others deepen their spiritual lives: “What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ?”
7. A practical spirituality.
Ignatian spirituality is adaptable. It is an outlook, not a program; a set of attitudes and insights, not rules or a scheme. Ignatius’s first advice to spiritual directors was to adapt the Spiritual Exercises to the needs of the person entering the retreat. At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is a profound humanism. It respects people’s lived experience and honors the vast diversity of God’s work in the world. The Latin phrase cura personalis is often heard in Ignatian circles. It means “care of the person”—attention to people’s individual needs and respect for their unique circumstances and concerns.
8. Don’t do it alone.
Ignatian spirituality places great value on collaboration and teamwork. Ignatian spirituality sees the link between God and man as a relationship—a bond of friendship that develops over time as a human relationship does. Collaboration is built into the very structure of the Spiritual Exercises; they are almost always guided by a spiritual director who helps the retreatant interpret the spiritual content of the retreat experience. Similarly, mission and service in the Ignatian mode is seen not as an individualistic enterprise, but as work done in collaboration with Christ and others.
9. “Contemplatives in action.” Those formed by Ignatian spirituality are often called “contemplatives in action.” They are reflective people with a rich inner life who are deeply engaged in God’s work in the world. They unite themselves with God by joining God’s active labor to save and heal the world. It’s an active spiritual attitude—a way for everyone to seek and find God in their workplaces, homes, families, and communities.
10. “Men and women for others.”
The early Jesuits often described their work as simply “helping souls.” The great Jesuit leader Pedro Arrupe updated this idea in the twentieth century by calling those formed in Ignatian spirituality “men and women for others.” Both phrases express a deep commitment to social justice and a radical giving of oneself to others. The heart of this service is the radical generosity that Ignatius asked for in his most famous prayer:
Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. — 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
All about William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
In the late 1700s, when William Wilberforce was a teenager, English traders raided the African coast on the Gulf of Guinea, captured between 35,000 and 50,000 Africans a year, shipped them across the Atlantic, and sold them into slavery. It was a profitable business upon which many powerful people were dependent. One publicist for the West Indies trade wrote, “The impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent this traffic being dropped. The necessity, the absolute necessity, then, of carrying it on, must, since there is no other, be its excuse.”
By the late 1700s, the economics of slavery were so entrenched that only a handful of people thought anything could be done about it. That handful included William Wilberforce.
This conviction surprised those who knew Wilberforce as a young man. He grew up surrounded by wealth and was educated at Cambridge. But he wasn’t a serious student. He later reflected, “As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.” A neighbor at Cambridge added, “When he [Wilberforce] returned late in the evening to his rooms, he would summon me to join him…He was so winning and amusing that I often sat up half the night with him, much to the detriment of my attendance at lectures the next day.”
Yet Wilberforce had political ambitions and, with his connections, managed to win election to Parliament in 1780, where he formed a lasting friendship with William Pitt, the future prime minister. But he later admitted, “The first years in Parliament I did nothing—nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.”
But he began to reflect deeply on his life, which led to a period of intense sorrow. “I am sure that no human creature could suffer more than I did for some months,” he later wrote. His unnatural gloom lifted on Easter 1786, “amidst the general chorus with which all nature seems on such a morning to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving.” He had experienced a spiritual rebirth.
He then abstained from alcohol and practiced rigorous self-examination as befit, he believed, a “serious” Christian. He abhorred the socializing that went along with politicking. He worried about “the temptations at the table,” the endless dinner parties, which he thought were full of vain and useless conversation: “[They] disqualify me for every useful purpose in life, waste my time, impair my health, fill my mind with thoughts of resistance before and self-condemnation afterwards.”
He began to see his life’s purpose: “My walk is a public one,” he wrote in his diary. “My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”
In particular, two causes caught his attention. First, under the influence of Thomas Clarkson, he became absorbed with the issue of slavery. Later he wrote, “So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”
Wilberforce was initially optimistic, even naively so. He expressed “no doubt” about his chances of quick success. As early as 1789, he and Clarkson managed to have 12 resolutions against the slave trade introduced—only to be outmaneuvered on fine legal points. The pathway to abolition was blocked by vested interests, parliamentary filibustering, entrenched bigotry, international politics, slave unrest, personal sickness, and political fear. Other bills introduced by Wilberforce were defeated in 1791, 1792, 1793, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1804, and 1805.
When it became clear that Wilberforce was not going to let the issue die, pro-slavery forces targeted him. He was vilified; opponents spoke of “the damnable doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies.” The opposition became so fierce, one friend feared that one day he would read about Wilberforce’s being “carbonated [broiled] by Indian planters, barbecued by African merchants, and eaten by Guinea captains.”
Slavery was only one cause that excited Wilberforce’s passions. His second great calling was for the “reformation of manners,” that is, morals. In early 1787, he conceived of a society that would work, as a royal proclamation put it, “for the encouragement of piety and virtue; and for the preventing of vice, profaneness, and immorality.” It eventually become known as the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
In fact, Wilberforce—dubbed “the prime minister of a cabinet of philanthropists”—was at one time active in support of 69 philanthropic causes. He gave away one-quarter of his annual income to the poor. He fought on behalf of chimney sweeps, single mothers, Sunday schools, orphans, and juvenile delinquents. He helped found parachurch groups like the Society for Bettering the Cause of the Poor, the Church Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Antislavery Society.
He did all this in spite of the fact that poor health plagued him his entire life, sometimes keeping him bedridden for weeks. During one such time in his late twenties, he wrote, “[I] am still a close prisoner, wholly unequal even to such a little business as I am now engaged in: add to which my eyes are so bad that I can scarce see how to direct my pen.” Friends called him “all soul and no body.”
He survived this and other bouts of debilitating illness with the help of opium, a new drug at the time, the affects of which were still unknown. Wilberforce soon became addicted, though opium’s hallucinatory powers terrified him, and the depressions it caused virtually crippled him at times.
When healthy, however, he was a persistent and effective politician, partly due to his natural charm and partly to his eloquence. His antislavery efforts finally bore fruit in 1807: Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. He then worked to ensure the slave trade laws were enforced and, finally, that slavery in the British Empire was abolished. Wilberforce’s health prevented him from leading the last charge, though he heard three days before he died that the final passage of the emancipation bill was ensured in committee.
An addicted, sickly man uses his inherited wealth to change history. It is a good story in any culture, much more in the rapacious history of Europeans.
Revisit today’s Bible reading and consider your own “long view.” What are the things you hope to be working on when you die? Some may have been your life’s work. In an age when advertisers regularly teach us that the long view does not matter, putting our attention on heaven is truly radical.
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. – Matthew 5:11-12
All about J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
The Bach Archive researcher, Michael Maul, was looking through a shoebox that had only narrowly escaped a fire in the Anna Amalia Library a few months before. Inside lay more than 100 letters and poems dedicated to the 52nd birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach’s patron, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. Maul had hoped to find a greeting from the composer himself, who in 1713 was the court organist. What he found instead was a two-page hand-written aria for soprano and harpsichord, the first Bach vocal work discovered in 70 years.
The text is a 12-stanza poem by Johann Anton Mylius, beginning, “Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn” (Everything with God and nothing without him). The music, British conductor John Eliot Gardiner told The Guardian, is “a reflective, meditative, soothing piece, as Bach’s church music so often is.” The Bach Archive asked Gardiner to record and perform the piece and the aria’s first recording can be heard at NPR.org.
J.S. Bach is still influencing people with his faith expressed in his music.
When he was 48, Bach acquired a copy of Luther’s three-volume translation of the Bible. He poured over it as if it were a long-lost treasure. He underlined passages, corrected errors in the text and commentary, inserted missing words, and made notes in the margins. Near 1 Chronicles 25 (a listing of Davidic musicians) he wrote, “This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing music.” At 2 Chronicles 5:13 (which speaks of temple musicians praising God), he noted, “At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence.”
Bach was a Christian who lived with the Bible. Besides being the baroque era’s greatest organist and composer, and one of the most productive geniuses in the history of Western music, Bach was also a theologian who just happened to work with a keyboard.
He was born and schooled in Eisenach, Thuringia (at the same school Martin Luther had attended), part of a family that in seven generations produced 53 prominent musicians. Johann Sebastian received his first musical instruction from his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician. By age 10 Bach was orphaned, and he went to live and study with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf.
By age 15 Bach was ready to establish himself in the musical world, and he immediately showed immense talent in a variety of areas. He became a soprano (women weren’t permitted to sing in church) in the choir of Lüneburg’s Church of Saint Michael. Three years later, he was a violinist in the chamber orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst of Weimar. After a few months, he moved to Arnstadt to become a church organist.
In October 1705, Bach was invited to study for one month with the renowned Danish-born German organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude. Bach was so enamored with his teacher, he stretched the visit to two months. When he returned to his church, he was severely criticized for breach of contract and, in the ensuing weeks, for his new organ flourishes and harmonies that accompanied congregational singing. But he was already too highly respected to be dismissed.
In 1707 he married a second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, and went to Mülhausen to become organist in the Church of Saint Blasius. After various moves and prominent jobs, he finally settled down in Leipzig in 1723, where he remained for the rest of his life.
St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, restored after being bombed in WW2
Maria died in 1720, and the next year he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, an accomplished singer. She bore him 13 children, to add to the seven he’d had by Maria, and helped copy his music for performers.
Bach’s stay in Leipzig, as musical director and choirmaster of Saint Thomas’s church and school, wasn’t always happy. He squabbled continually with the town council, and neither the council nor the populace appreciated his musical genius. Some said he was a stuffy old man who clung stubbornly to obsolete forms of music. Consequently, they paid him a miserable salary, and when he died even contrived to defraud his widow of her meager inheritance.
Ironically, in this setting Bach wrote his most enduring music. For a time he wrote a cantata each week (today, a composer who writes a cantata a year is considered ambitious), 202 of which survive. Most conclude with a chorale based on a simple Lutheran hymn, and the music is at all times closely bound to biblical texts. Among these works are the Ascension Cantata and the Christmas Oratorio.
In Leipzig he also composed his epic Mass in B Minor, The Passion of St. John and The Passion of St. Matthew—all for use as worship services. The last piece has been called “the supreme cultural achievement of all Western civilization,” and even the radical skeptic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) admitted upon hearing it, “One who has completely forgotten Christianity truly hears it here as gospel.”
After Bach’s death, people seemed glad to wipe their ears of his music. He was remembered less as a composer than as an organist and harpsichordist. Some of his music was sold, and some was reportedly used to wrap garbage. For the next 80 years his music was neglected by the public, although a few musicians (Mozart and Beethoven, for example) admired it. Not until 1829, when German composer Felix Mendelssohn arranged a performance of The Passion of St. Matthew, did a larger audience appreciate Bach the composer.
In terms of pure music, Bach has become known as one who could combine the rhythm of French dances, the gracefulness of Italian song, and the intricacy of German counterpoint—all in one composition. In addition, Bach could write musical equivalents of verbal ideas, such as undulating a melody to represent the sea.
But music was never just music to Bach. Nearly three-fourths of his 1,000 compositions were written for use in worship. Between his musical genius, his devotion to Christ, and the effect of his music, he has come to be known in many circles as “the Fifth Evangelist.”
It should not surprise us that a Christian musical genius was left unpraised and even abused in the flower of his talent. Yet it is still shocking. Maybe it should encourage us to keep on serving whether we are appreciated or not. Whatever genius we offering is just that, an offering, not our part of a transaction for which we expect a profit. As Jesus keeps saying, “What does it profit us if we gain the whole world and lose our souls? What can we give in exchange for our souls?”
Revisit what you think it important. What has God given you to give and how are you making it a priority? Is some power trying to undermine your devotion?
This is the blessing that Moses, the man of God, gave the Israelites before his death.
All about Peter Waldo (1140-1218)
Nobody knows the day Peter Waldo died. But we do know that his faith was warmed when he listened to a sermon about Alexius of Rome. So it seems appropriate to celebrate him on St. Alexius Day.
Let’s start with a bit about what made Alexius a moving example of faith. Alexius was the only son of a wealthy Christian Roman of the senatorial class. He fled his arranged marriage to follow his call to holiness. Disguised as a beggar, he lived near Edessa in Syria, accepting alms even from his own household slaves, who had been sent to look for him but did not recognize him, until a miraculous icon singled him out as a “Man of God.” Fleeing the fame that resulted, he returned to Rome, so changed that his parents did not recognize him. But as good Christians they took him in and sheltered him for seventeen years, which he spent in a dark cubbyhole beneath the stairs, praying and teaching catechism to children. After his death, his family found writings on his body which told them who he was and how he had lived his life of penance from the day of his wedding, for the love of God.
While Peter Waldo was listening to this story, he was moved to also become a man of God. Like others in his day, he embraced the value of poverty, giving away his wealth and property in 1170. Specific details of his life are largely unknown. Extant sources relate that he was a wealthy clothier and merchant from Lyons and a man of some learning.
The church of 12th Century Europe was powerful and impressive. The emerging Gothic architecture shows the devotion of the people and the wealth of the bishops. The developing scholastic theology shows the intellectual dominance and refinement of thinking among academic theologians. The Crusades against Islam in Jerusalem and heretics at home show the coercive strength of the church in cooperation with the state.
The church’s success, however, alienated many people. To the dissatisfied, the church seemed greatly corrupted by its power. To them, the church seemed to have forgotten Christ’s call to otherworldliness, poverty, and humility. In various, often quite divergent movements, a reaction of Christian simplicity was raised against the wealth and power of the church.
The established church managed to contain some of this unrest, particularly through the asceticism of the monastic movements. But even these movements tended over time to be corrupted by wealth and immorality. Some of the unrest moved outside the church and orthodox teaching. For instance, the Cathari, also known as the Cathars or Albigensians, adopted a spiritualistic religion that rejected the material world so radically that it left no place for the incarnation. This movement attracted many followers, particularly in the south of France, and it was viciously persecuted by church and state.
A similar critique against the church was initiated by Peter Waldo (sometimes Peter Valdez). He was inspired by a series of events: 1) as noted, a sermon on the life of St. Alexius, 2) his rejection of transubstantiation when it was considered a capital crime to do so, 3) the sudden and unexpected death of a friend during an evening meal. From this point onward he began living a radical Christian life, giving his property over to his wife, while the remainder of his belongings he distributed to the poor.
His followers were sometimes called the Poor Men of Lyons. But his critique of the church adopted neither the radical love of poverty in itself, as St. Francis later adopted, nor the radical spiritualizing of the Cathars. Instead, they turned to the simple vision of Christianity that they found in the Bible. Waldo saw to the translation of the Bible into the language of the people. He and his followers went about preaching a simple understanding of the word.
Waldo preached and taught publicly, based on his ideas of simplicity and poverty, notably that “No man can serve two masters, God and Mammon” accompanied by strong condemnations of Papal excesses and Catholic dogmas, including purgatory and transubstantiation, picturing the Church of Rome as the harlot from the book of Revelation. His followers spread this word disguised as peddlers.
For a time, the movement spread widely into parts of Germany and Austria, as well as Northern Italy. Persecution by the church, however, was severe and eventually reduced the movement to a remnant in the valleys of Northern Italy. Efforts to eradicate them through the centuries failed. It was only in 1870 that the Waldensians received full civil rights in Italy. Pope Francis recently asked their forgiveness.
Waldo and his followers have sometimes been listed among the forerunners of the Franciscans and the Reformation. When the Reformation began in the sixteenth century, contact was established between the Waldensians and the Reformers. Ultimately the Waldensians accepted the spiritual connection between their movement and Protestantism. Unfortunately, this connection led to even greater persecution.
The Waldensians were witnesses to the presence of Christ’s word and Spirit in the church through the centuries. They expressed aspects of Apostolic faith that were threatened with extinction in the dominant church. They remind us that in every era, Christ fulfills His promise: “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
Nice video by the Discerning History people — You will be challenged to think about history from a biblical perspective, and put current events in a historical context.”
What do we do with this?
It is always exciting to see a relatively normal group of people come to faith, against all odds, and then give witness to the powers that deprived them of faith to begin with!
Does Peter Waldo embolden you? What have you heard, lately, that, if you took it to heart, would cause some revolution in you and your environment?
“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” — Romans 1:16
All about Argula von Grumbach (1492–1554/7)
Von Grumbach was born in 1492—the year Columbus sailed—to the lively, educated, and chivalrous von Stauff family, living in Ehrenfels Castle on the Laber River in Germany. Her first name recalls the noble Argeluse, a prominent character in the epic Parsifal about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. When she was 10, her father gave her a beautiful Koberger edition of the Bible in German.
Ruins of Ehrenfels Castle on the Rhine River
When she married nobleman Friedrich von Grumbach in 1510, she set up homes in little Bavarian villages and market towns: Lenting, Dietfurt, Burggrumbach, and Zeilitzheim. Her children were born there. Her time in small villages prepared von Grumbach for her later role in establishing Lutheranism in these rural areas.
Martin Luther put a note in her much-loved copy of his Little Book of Prayers.
In 1523, during the exciting early years of the Reformation, this Bavarian noblewoman, with four little children dependent on her, took a big risk when she challenged the influential theologians of Ingolstadt University to a public debate in German about their persecution of a young student. They arrested and interrogated an 18-year-old student, and threatened him with death if he would not renounce his evangelical views. Theologians didn’t lower themselves to debate with lay people, much less a women, not to mention in German rather than Latin.
Von Grumbach knew the young man and reacted with horror:
“My heart and all my limbs tremble. Nowhere in the Bible do I find that Christ, or his apostles, or his prophets, put people in prison, burnt or murdered them. How in God’s name can you and your university expect to prevail, when you deploy such foolish violence against the word of God?”
They tried to ignore her, but friends had her letter to the teachers published by the new social media of the time: the printing press. Sympathizers and publishers with a nose for news raced to reprint the compilation. It went “viral” — mere woman challenging a university!
The woodcuts on the front covers portray von Grumbach, Bible in hand, alone, confronting an intimidated, bewildered group of scholars. The heavy books of their traditional theology and canon law lie discarded on the ground.
Earlier that year in Zürich, a public debate took place between defenders of the old church and the evangelical reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531). It was conducted in German, and it had convinced the city fathers to promote the Reformation. Von Grumbach followed the news. No doubt this dramatic event encouraged her to make her own protest—though she said that she did so in fear and trembling:
I suppressed my inclinations [to criticize Catholic preaching against Luther]; heavy of heart, I did nothing. Because Paul says in 1 Timothy 2: “The women should keep silence, and should not speak in church.” But now that I cannot see any man who is up to it, who is either willing or able to speak, I am constrained . . . .
She had found it impossible, following Matthew 10, to keep silent:
I find there is a text in Matthew 10 which runs: “Whoever confesses me before another I too will confess before my heavenly Father.” And Luke 9: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, I too will be ashamed of when I come in my majesty,” etc. Words like these, coming from the very mouth of God, are always before my eyes. For they exclude neither woman nor man. And this is why I am compelled as a Christian to write to you.
Von Grumbach’s responses were both substantial and sensational. In words that ordinary people could understand, her pamphlet—which was soon followed by seven others she wrote—raised key issues about freedom of speech, the authority of Scripture, and the urgent need to reform the church. She pointed out that throughout Scripture and right down through the history of the church, the Holy Spirit had moved women like her to speak out, and she sensed that she stood in this prophetic tradition.
Church of the Redeemer, Beratzhausen
Argula von Grumbach’s forthrightness infuriated every leading institution of her time: the university, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Bavarian princes under whose rule she lived, and not least her own husband, “Fritz.” Critics pointed to his inability to “control his wife,” and Fritz lost his lucrative job in the service of the Bavarian dukes as punishment. Her letters only survived because authorities confiscated them as they gathered evidence for a legal challenge involving her son, Gottfried. She had tough times.
Von Grumbach never received the public debate she asked for, but instead struggled with financial difficulties for the remainder of her life, pawning a precious necklace again and again to raise funds. Her second husband, Burian von Schlick, a Bohemian nobleman, ardently supported the Reformation but also died prematurely, imprisoned by his relatives over a family dispute. In a raw and violent society, tragedy upon tragedy befell von Grumbach. Near the end of her life, she herself was grossly mistreated, held captive, and forced to flee her family home in Bavaria.
Quotes
God’s spirit is within you, read,
Is woman shut out, there, indeed?
While you oppress God’s word,
Consign souls to the devil’s game
I cannot and I will not cease
To speak at home and on the street.
What I have written to you is no woman’s chit-chat, but the word of God.
Ah, but what a joy it is when the spirit of God teaches us and gives us understanding, flitting from one text to the next, so that I came to see the true genuine light shining out.
More
An exhibition in Munster included a musical:
Walmart (!) will sell you a copy of her 1860 biography by Eduard Engelhardt.
If you are a woman, you might enjoy some overdue validation.
If you are a Bavarian, you might wonder at the violence and division religion caused in your territory. It still exists today. Millions of people have turned their backs on the church because of it.
Von Grumbach was so brave! Her convictions carried her into all sorts of good trouble. Jesus was buried in a lot of nonsense in her day. She worked hard to sweep it all away. We could use some sweeping in our era , couldn’t we?
As Flannery’s cultural star was on the rise, she was stricken by lupus, an incurable, debilitating disease that sapped her energy and forced her return to the “very muddy and manurey” farm back in Georgia. Confined there, dependent on her mother’s care, she wrote only as her diminishing strength permitted—for two hours every morning.
They tried to ignore her, but friends had her letter to the teachers published by the new social media of the time: the printing press. Sympathizers and publishers with a nose for news raced to reprint the compilation. It went “viral” — mere woman challenging a university!