from the criteria by which the world
measures success. Furthermore, those
who are poor in spirit have an acute
sense of their own limitations.
Surely, one friend of God who lived
this Beatitude in a quiet yet radical way
is our very own Fr. Solanus Casey.
Bernard Casey was born on November
25, 1870, one of sixteen children. He was
baptized at St. Joseph Mission Church in
Prescott, Wisconsin, and given the name
Bernard Francis Casey. We pick up his life
story as he is preparing for first vows in the
Capuchin religious community.
Academic courses at that time were
taught in German and Latin. Since he had
problems with both languages, he did not
do well in his theological studies. We wit-
ness early on his s pirit of emptiness and
availability when his superiors requested
that he sign a letter of intent. It stated, “I
therefore will lay no claim whatsoever if [my
superiors] should think me not worthy or
unable for the priesthood and I always will
humbly submit to their appointments.”
Bernard Casey was ordained to the
priesthood but he was not allowed to hear
confessions or preach. Whereby many
candidates for the priesthood would be
disappointed or resentful with this restric-
tion, Father Solanus’s response was Deo
Gratias—a phrase found repeatedly in his
notebooks. It reflected a willingness to ac-
cept what seemed desired by God, but also
an actual gratitude in embracing it. This
attitude of what he called “providential
abandonment” found expression in his
door ministry as porter in Manhattan, De-
troit, and Brooklyn. When meeting with
people suffering from various illnesses, he
always encouraged them to “Thank God
ahead of time” for the manner in which
God chose to answer their prayers.
Over time it became clear that God
gifted him with the charism of healing. He
was busy all day answering the door, coun-
seling people, praying with them about
their problems and, through God’s grace,
healing them. His superiors ordered him
to keep a notebook of all the people who
came to him with illnesses and the healing
they received. By the time of his death, he
had filled seven notebooks.
He was also gifted with the charism of
prophecy. He predicted the future, telling
a woman whose son suffered from polio
not to worry, for God would heal him.
Then again, he told an elderly woman that
it was her time—God wanted her home.
Father Solanus took no credit for the
amazing miracles that took place through
his blessing. He saw himself as a channel of
Christ’s love and an instrument of God’s
peace. He would often say, “God conde-
scends to use our powers, if we don’t spoil
his plans by ours.”
Are you called to witness such purity of
heart?
ETTY HILLESUM
Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
I may be putting a little
different spin on this
beatitude, but I think
it refers to those who
have an unusually ca-
pacity to empathize
with those in deep pain
through loss, illness, death, oppression.
Most of us who are familiar with Etty
Hillesum met her through her published
diary, The Interrupted Life. Here we meet
a young Jewish woman from the Nether-
lands whose family—father, mother, and
two brothers—would lose their lives along
with Etty at Auschwitz. Etty described her-
self and her family as cultural Jews. Reli-
gion was not central to their lives.
When we first meet Etty, she is twenty-
seven years old, exploring her relation-
ships with men as well as searching for an
authentic spiritual life. She did not belong
to any organized religion. Her spiritual life
was nourished by a variety of sources: the
poet Rilke, St. Augustine, Dostoyevsky,
Tolstoy, the Bible.
In his final General Audience, Ash
Wednesday 2013, Pope Benedict men-
tions Etty: “This frail and dissatisfied
young woman, transfigured by faith, be-
came a woman full of love and inner peace
who was able to declare: ‘I live in constant
intimacy with God.’”
Through the pages of her diaries she not
only describes this deepening relationship
with God, but she also chronicles the hor-
ror that she, her family, friends, and fel-
low Jews experienced at the hands of the
Nazis. She states, “The threat grows ever
greater and terror increases from day to
day. I draw prayer round me like a dark
protective wall, withdraw within it, and
then step outside again, calmer and stron-
ger and more collected again.”
When the round-up of Jews began for
internment in Westerbork camp, the place
from which a transport train left weekly for
Auschwitz, Etty volunteered to work there.
She wanted to be with her people, experi-
encing their anguish, in order to give them
a word of comfort, a smile, a warm gesture.
“How great are the needs of your crea-
tures on earth, oh God,” she wrote. “I
thank You for letting so many people
come to me with their inner needs. They
sit there, talking quietly, and quite unsus-
pectedly and suddenly their need erupts in
all its nakedness. There they are, bundles
of human misery, desperate and unable to
face life. And that’s when my task begins.”
The last words Etty entered in her diary
sum up the meaning of her life and the
reason why I chose her as a living expres-
sion of this Beatitude: “We should be will-
ing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
Are you being called to “act as a balm
for all wounds” in ways such as visiting
someone in the hospital or hospice, car-
ing for an aging parent, comforting a sick
child or someone mentally or emotionally
handicapped?
THERESE LISIEUX
Blessed Are the Meek
What does it mean to
be “meek”? Webster’s
dictionary defines meek-
ness as gentleness, endur-
ing injury with patience
and without resentment.
Yet, who wants to be
meek? It is not a quality our society applauds.
Why was this disposition of value to Jesus? Is
there a power in meekness?
Therese of Lisieux shows us there is.
She described her path as the Little
Way of absolute trust and self-surrender.
Through her autobiography, Theresa
describes her maturation under grace, as
she grew from a spoiled, pampered child
into a young woman whose ardent love
of God and insights into the spiritual life
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