It has been less than one week, but God has blessed us with many miracles of friendship already! Monika has introduced us to many of her friends in Wien, including another former missionary, Maria-Elizabeth, and WeWe, a childhood friend of hers who is of Chinese heritage and is a fashion designer trying to make it in Vienna. These two friends are very, very different and yet meeting both last night really taught me a great deal about friendship and holiness.
Maria-Elizabeth is from a small village called Hollabrunn, just 45 minutes outside Wien. She spent 16 months at the Heart's Home in Peru and now is back, living in Vienna, working in a school for handicapped children (a different one that Monika's). Last night Monika, Alina and I met ME for mass, adoration, and benediction at Peterskirche (a beautiful church near Stephansplatz in the city center). After that, Monika and I joined ME for some coffee melange and apfelstrudel at one of the oldest coffeehouses in the city (it is just on a side street off of Stephansplatz, but I don't remember the name). Spending hours enjoying the company of friends over cup after cup of coffee and an assortment of sweet pastries is one of the oldest aspects of traditional Viennese life. The Viennese take great pride in their historic coffeehouses! ME was suffering from a terrible cold and didn't feel well as all, but still she made the sacrifice to meet us for mass and go to coffee because she found it so important to meet me and welcome me to Vienna. She spent time telling me about her mission in Peru and we talked all about Vienna and what I had experienced thus far. We were united by our similar experience with Heart's Home, our faith, and our love for Vienna. She was teaching me so much about what it meant to give to another out of you poverty--here she was giving time and friendship to me out of the poverty of her sickness. It meant so much to me that she would make such a sacrifice for me! My first Lesson in Friendship for the night.Oh, and an important side note...ME is also studying vocal performace at one of the top schools in Vienna! She has a strikingly beautiful operatic voice and she is very passionate about singing! (So it was more of a sacrifice for her to come out for coffee because she had a performance that weekend and needed to get better and preserve her voice) And singing is only one of her many talents!--she also plays piano, guitar, and violin! {December 20th addition: On Sunday, Monika and Alina attended a concert in which ME sang. I couldnt attend because on Saturday night, the second night of our retreat at Maria Langegg (a cloister in the foothills of the alps 2 hours outside of Vienna), I came down with a severe stomach flue. I will spare you the horrific details, but I was so sick that I couldn't even receive communion when brough to me in my room at the cloister on Sunday afternoon, nor could I eat or do anything but sleep for another day and a half while I kept a constant 102 degree fever, chills, and aches. There is nothing like being sick to make you yearn for your family, so it was truly a test to be so far from home! It was rather disappointing to miss ME's concert, but I sent Alina along with my Ipod on which she recorded some videos of the beautiful performance! As soon as I figure out how to get the videos and photos from my Ipod onto my computer without a wifi connection, I will be sure to post them! **Please if anyone can tell me how to do this, it would be greatly appreciated!!**}
After we finished having coffee with ME and parted ways so she could go home and rest, Monika and I went to the Christkindlmarkt at Simmeringplatz for a little punsch and to experience the most beautiful and breathtaking way in which Austrians celebrate not only Christmas, but the entire Advent season with such meaning and passion. At the market we planned to meet up with WeWe, Monika's very dear friend. We spent three hours with WeWe talking and drinking and getting to know one another. True to Austrian form, WeWe was very closed and distant especially in the beginning, but since she knows Monika so well I think she became comfortable with me more quickly than usual and we had a wonderful time talking about our families, the differences between Austrian and American culture, how difficult Deutsch is to learn, and a myriad of other things. She also spent alot of time telling me about her fashion design, the label she used to have, her new ventures in runnning a boutique in Vienna, the adventurous stories from the life of an artist in Vienna that usually entail being up early into the morning, and sleeping late into the afternoon. There was a strong contrast between the life and personality of WeWe and that of Maria-Elizabeth who we had spent time with earlier. But both new friendships, and especially the stark contrast between them, really opened my heart to new lessons in friendship. On our way home from the Christkindlmarkt, Monika was talking about WeWe and how wonderful of a friend she is and has been for so long. I asked if she was Catholic and Monika stopped and turned to me and said, <You know, Mary, WeWe isn't Catholic. She is an atheist, but everytime I am around her, she teaches me how to be Catholic. More often, she is more Catholic than me, because of how she loves, how she stretches to open herself to others, how she gives herself.>
Today, the meditation on the Gospel reading from Word Among Us brought a wonderful light to these two experiences of friendship last night. The meditation said that for the Pharisees, John the Baptist had too rigorous of a spiritual life in the desert, so they didn't follow him as his disciples. But they then complained that Jesus' life was too liberal becuase he ate and drank with the sinners and did not pray and study enough in the temple or associate with the right people. Nothing could satisfy the rigorous, perfectionstic spiritual demands of the Pharisees. To be good, spiritually, you had to fit into a little box. But Christ said that it is not just about how you live your life down to every practical detail--how often you go to Church, which prayers you pray and when, how many times you have to go to confession, how often you do corporal works of mercy, etc. For Mother Theresa, outwardly her life consisted in helping the utterly devastated and poor in Calcutta, and starting and order that brought this way of life to the reaches of the world. For St. Thomas More and others, their outward lives consisted in fighting for the teachings of the Church, in participating in politics, etc, for the true good of the people. For St. Elizabeth of Hungary, her outward life consisted of being a queen who distributed her wealth to the poor. For St. Therese of Lisieux, her outward life was locked up behind the walls of a cloister. For St. Thomas Aquinas, his outward life was spent pouring over books in the Universities. The little details of how you pray and how often you pray and such matter, but only in the context of your relationship with God and whether this relationship is the central force guiding everything you do in life. I may be living in another country and doing mission work, but this doesn't mean I am living a holier life or a better life than a mother living in a suburb of America. On the outside it is different than normal, but what matters is what my life looks like on the inside. Christ ate with the tax collectors and befriended Mary Magdelene out of whom He drove 7 demons because He was driven by the love that unified Him with the person of the Father and the Holy Spirit--the love of a Creator for his creatures and desire to be in a relationship with all of them, not just those who outwardly show devotion. We must pray, but our prayers must not be empty and just for show. With Maria-Elizabeth, a fellow Catholic and former missionary, I got to share mass and adoration, and then coffee...all of which were lessons of how to give of yourself, to give your presence to another in need even when it is a great sacrifice for you. With WeWe, an atheist and artist, I got to share gluhwein and the christkindlmarkt and wonderful conversation through which we began to build a friendship...she taught me to be open and welcoming to others even if it means you have to work harder to communicate (because I cannot speak german and she cannot speak alot of english) and you have had a long day at work already. Both friendships are different, both friendships taught me differently. 'I must ask myself every day, every moment whether my love of God guides my life? Only when I am a slave to this love am I truly free. This is a hard thing to wrap one's mind around, especially in a time when freedom is confused with license. In the Catholic Church, you live your life as a slave to Christ's teachings and His desires, to the will of the Father, because therein lies true life and true happiness. Catholicism is not about being a slave to rules in and of themselves. Christ instituted the rules and guidelines we follow as Christians and He instituted the authority of the Catholic Church to guide His people (through His heavenly inspiration to its leaders), not because He wanted to make a list of rules to exert force and control over His people, but because He wanted to show His people how to center their lives on love, and thus through His love, gain eternal happiness beyond all imagining. When your life is instructed by the love of Christ, and naturally thus the genuine love of others and yourself, you live completely free from slavery to the confines of this world. Your soul is free to soar. So naturally, following the instructions Christ left to His Apostles, and the instructions He continues to give to His Church, are important aspects of a life lived completely out of love of Him--humbly accepting to conform yourself to the demands of love, even if sometimes they go against what you would prefer or what you would find pleasure in doing. And yet, merely following these guidelines, being the one to say the most rosaries, or to be up the earliest to pray, or to spend the most time in prayer everyday is not the measuring stick for holiness. With Maria-Elizabeth I got to share the mass and a common background in mission work and with WeWe I shared funny stories and good drinks, and with both I was taught what it means to be Catholic and to give of yourself.
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