New(est) Sponsor Letter!

Newest sponsor letter is up under "My Mission" 

and the last part/paragraph is rather important, so I'm reposting it here for those of you who would never go read it :)

To conclude, I want to entrust myself, the community, all the changes and growth more deeply in your prayers. I entrust to your prayers all the people I have met here, whose stories I have shared with you or have yet to share with you. And finally, the big news—as you know I received my residence permit to stay here until November, which is quite frankly too long. But through a long process of discernment and advice, I have asked and been allowed to stay in Vienna and continue my mission with Heart’s Home until MAY (a 3-month extension). But now I have to beg you all for your “yes” in order to confirm and uphold the “yes” I desire to give the Lord. I beg you for your prayers and your support, after a little over a year of knowing the strength they give me and all the wonders and beauty they make possible. And I am also in need of more financial support—all together $1,300—and I humbly ask each one of you, full of gratitude for all the help you have already given me, to discern helping in a tiny or big way—helping me bring OUR mission to completion. I am sure that none of the past 14 months have been possible without the daily knowledge that I am not here alone and living only for myself, but I am united with all your hearts. Of course, I will continue to bring you with me to every visit and offer you, your families, and your intentions to God at every mass. I thank you in advance for all the support you can continue to give!

If you are interested in helping in any way and sponsoring me and us in our mission here...please go to the "Sponsor Me" page of this blog, or write me an email at mmcgraw001@gmail.com. All donations from the US are tax-deductable as a donation to charity. 

I thank you with all the gratitude I can give! 

and the second...

To love as the Eucharist loves

 “D’un Point-Cœur à l’autre” #22
March 1998

During our last stay in Bangkok, we met a young Thai boy who often comes to visit Heart’s Home. His name is Pii Pop and he is about 25 years old. He’s a catechumen and will be baptized at Easter. He kindly makes his car available to the Heart’s Home missionaries when they need to help somebody in the neighborhood. One evening Pii Pop drove us back to the rectory where we were staying. His English is quite broken, so we could only speak a little. I asked him: “How are you preparing for baptism?” I was expecting him to speak about his catechism classes or the way his progress was followed. Rather, his answer reached the heart of the mystery. He answered: “I try to learn what love means. It’s such a long path!” This struck me.

“It’s a long path!” When we tell a young person who wants to know about Heart’s Home that the mission simply consists of loving, he usually feels like it will be easy. Our explanation reassures him. We could have asked of him much more difficult things, such as knowledge in medicine, in agriculture, or education. But the only requirement is love. During the training period, the missionary is often torn between two feelings. Either he feels like he will master the mission or he is terrified that he will fail, especially after hearing testimonies of former missionaries: “I will never manage, I won’t be patient enough, I won’t be able to give so much of myself”. At this point, he is overwhelmed. This becomes a very special time of grace: the mission seems to be impossible - and indeed it is! But he has understood that even if the mission is impossible for him, nothing is impossible for God!

The Eucharist has a central place in the Heart’s Home mission. To stress its importance, we place the tabernacle in a beautiful, central place in our home. The presence of the Blessed Sacrament is a requirement, without it the community’s life will always remain a bit confused. Every day the missionaries receive communion. If they don’t spend one hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, the day seems empty and meaningless. They don’t see it as a duty, but as a necessity, a need of their heart. This reminds of a story i was told by Father Daniel-Ange, a friend of mine. The children were asked to tell why they go to communion. Frederick, 8 years old answered: “I go because I have to go.” Catechists were shocked. The other children did not get it. I remain alone with the child and I try to explain to him what it is all about. “No, it is not my parents, nor the catechists, nor the priest. But (he was about to cry) it is Him (putting his hands on his heart) that asks for it. Then he added, a little bit more relaxed: “You know, he is inviting me, insisting.” Sometimes, when they complain about being so busy and tired with trying to face all the needs of their friends, I tease them, asking: “Why not reduce the prayer time, if there is so much to do in the neighborhood... What do you think about that?” Disconcerted, they look at each other and answer: “Father, who will teach us how to love, if not the Eucharist? Where will we get our strength back?” Some who started their training period confused about the purpose of adoration, now answer bluntly: “If you ask us to pray less we will never make it!” And if we talk about taking the Blessed Sacrament away from one of our houses, if the area is not safe enough, I can tell you that their answer is no less sharp! They would rather watch over it night and day with weapons rather than have it taken away from them!

To love as the Eucharist loves

To learn how to love was the purpose Pii Pop gave to his time as a catechumen. I am sure that the more time goes by, the more it will be difficult for him. If you are interested in “carving” you will be able to improve your knowledge and your skills with some training, but it seems that as far as love is concerned, the more you try to put the Lord’s commandments into practice the more it seems impossible. More than ever, you wonder what love means and more specifically what is Christian love.

In my mind, I cannot stop pondering these questions; the answers give meaning to my life. As a Christian and a priest my only mission is to love and to help people to love God. When I read the Gospels, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Death of Jesus teach me a lot: “There is no greater love than this, to give one’s life for one’s friends...” “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies...”. But concerning love, nothing helps me more than the contemplation of the Eucharist. To love is to be hidden, to be given up and to be consumed. The Blessed Sacrament is the clearest expression of Christ’s teaching about love. We can read the Beatitudes, the Gospel of John’s Farewells Speech or the saints’ lives but nothing explains better what love is than the little host alone on the altar or in our hand... It does not challenge anybody, it begs and it respects our liberty. It does not shout; its language is the silence of privacy. It only offers itself and it is at anybody’s disposal.

I know a priest who used to give this penance: “Go and spend a little time in front of the Blessed Sacrament!” Maybe there is no better penance. Sin can be defined as a lack of love. We all know that our virtuous efforts are not enough to keep us from offense. To be released from our sins, we must let ourselves be touched by love, struck by Him, overcome by Him. The Eucharist must imprint itself upon us, its image must be upon us.

Indeed, the Eucharist is the path of the Church, the path of our communities, the path of each one of us. The Holy Spirit is working on identifying this Bread, which is the Church, with the Blessed Sacrament. He wants our flesh to become like the Eucharist. This is what we ask during Mass at the Epiclesis.

A quiet and humble love

Love wanted to live substantially among us without either noise or row. Its only word is its presence. Its only message is its presence. And its presence is so hidden, so discrete, and so humble that it is almost absent. The epitome of its presence looks like an absence! The epitome of love looks like passivity! The Word of the Father has the face of silence! How deep is the mystery of Faith!

All of this is disconcerting, but we want to follow. And since love looks so much like silence and humility, we know that our foundation should not be set up with bustle but with discretion and simplicity. The infant Jesus arrived in our world by night, in a small and unknown barn, unexpected by people. So we too must slip into where God sends us without any fuss. We should avoid advertisement, we need to fear noisy announcement. It does not look like the presence of the One we want to exemplify. He will not be present in any other method of evangelization other than Incarnation.

However, this silence is a struggle. It is so easy to doubt that God could express Himself in the darkness of Bethlehem and in the monotony of Nazareth. Faith must always drive us back to the contemplation of Mary’s Child in order to understand that the best way to announce the Gospel is love rather than brilliant feats or rousing strategies. Faith should bring us back to contemplating the Blessed Sacrament present in so many churches all around the world. Through contemplation we may learn that our beauty does not depend on our efforts, but on the quality of our adoration and the intensity of our compassion.

Love offers itself

When Christ gives his disciples the bread saying: “This is my body, take it and eat it!” When He gives them the wine saying: “This is my blood, take it and drink it!”; it is the accomplishment of the mystery of the Cross. At Golgotha, Christ is a genuine offering. The Son puts everything in the Father’s hands and everything is given for humanity’s sake. He keeps nothing for Himself. According to St.Paul, Christ became emptiness, and His destiny is fulfilled by His death.

The life of a Christian is an offered life. In Christ, nothing belongs to him; everything is given to the Father. This is reality, a baptismal reality. However, it requires one’s whole life to incarnate this gift. All that is ours must become a gift. Each minute can be offered. In a way, our life is a long Mass in which silence and words, offertory and transubstantiation follow one another―a Mass that everyone celebrates as a victim and as a priest.

In the Heart’s Home commitment, this Eucharistic aspect of our lives is apparent. In front of misery, in front of our neighbors’ poverty, each volunteer is suddenly aware of his own wealth, from the innermost treasures to the most outer ones, and he deeply feels like he has to give. “I have to free myself from this or from that”... and eventually, “I have to offer my life”. Grace reveals to the missionary that now, giving it is the only way for him to become richer, the only way for him to possess this pearl that will quench his tremendous thirst, the only path to unify his life. Nothing can distract him anymore. His entire self will lean towards unity because everything is offered.

But this offering will extend well beyond the dimensions of the missionary. Before he had never had so much to put on the Paten: lives, endless suffering, screams and large smiles. He walks down the streets as a priest walks in the rows to collect the bread offering. He knows that everything must be offered to create the New World... nothing can remain here below: neither an ounce of mud, nor a beginning of sin, nor a piece of poverty. Everything has to return to heaven. As if they were divine ragmen, our missionaries seek in the slums and in their friends’s hearts what they will offer each day. Their mission is a priestly one. It is a princely mission. That is why they would never trade it for any other mission.

A love that gives itself as food to be eaten

In Capernaum, Jesus’ audience had been scared, and understandably so. Didn’t he say that he was “the bread” given to his own people as food? No other master before had given himself to be eaten by his disciples. During the Last Supper, He says to the apostles: “This is My body, take it and eat it.” The evangelists do not say it but they must have been amazed. And he was not only saying He was bread, He was giving Himself to be eaten. He was there, in the apostles’ hands.

Soon after, the lives of His disciples would become bread for others. But at that moment, it was too early to realize that; they were too astonished at seeing Him give Himself. However, before long one would be crucified upside down, another beheaded, yet others would exhaust themselves serving people, would teach people until exhaustion, would catch leprosy treating the sick... all of them would become bread in which the Holy Spirit would continue to pronounce the same word He had spoken through the One: “Take it and eat it!”.

The saints are offered as bread for this world. Their perfection is measured by their exhaustion: the less they are, the more they are. This is also the way to measure the missionary’s gifts. This path is tiring, and yet, do we not tire ourselves out doing unworthy things? We can complain about the difficulty of this path, but it remains our source of joy, a source of new fullness because it is the only path that leads to our destiny. Indeed, the gift of self is the fulfillment of all vocations: the mothers have to be food for their children, the teacher for his disciples, the missionary for the people in the neighborhood, the doctor for his patients. Discerning our vocation is not about knowing if one has to give oneself, but rather it is about knowing whom we are called by God to feed.

To love as the Eucharist loves is to love as God loves; it is to let yourself be food for others, in giving your heart, your strength, your time, and the ones you love. It is giving your life so that others may live, and giving all this love with joy and thanksgiving.

I don't want chocolate...

... I NEED a little piece of Bread. 

As a little valentines gift I want to share with you two texts that have become especially important to me within the past year. They were both written by Fr. Thierry de Roucy, the founder of Heart's Home. 

Although they speak so powerfully for themselves, I would like to share a little insight into why they have become important to me, and why today I don't want chocolate or flowers or a piece of paper with a little handwritten note. 

I don't want little symbols of love, but rather the unleavened bread that is Love Himself.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Vienna? But what is Heart's Home doing in Vienna? 

--even if they don't say it so bluntly, most of them, consumed with physical images of poverty bloated bellies and bones covered with thin skin and ragged clothes, are thinking it. 

I was too. And then I arrived here...

and discovered that I was exactly the reason Heart's Home was called to Vienna.

I--with a poverty bloated belly and ragged clothes covering my frail bones. It doesn't look like it on the outside, but I myself am one of the poor, everyday experiencing more and more my poverty...

which is also the heart of my presence here. Not to stand on the edge, on the outside, and minister or organize or problem-solve, but to be invited inside, to embrace, to follow, and to, in spite of excruciating pain, be united.

I didn't know how big my hunger was. 

I didn't know what it was to beg. 

I didn't know what it was to desire. 

Until, looking into the eyes of my friend, my community sister or brother, or a complete stranger...

I came to know my hunger...for peace, joy, understanding, mercy, love. 

I had to beg, every instant once more, for the love of the one standing before me. 

I had to accept not being understood or accepted. 

What is it that unites? 

It is an insecurity--not the insecurity of not having a job, of not having enough to eat, or not having the possibility to go to school. 

It is the insecurity that could easily lead to madness. It is the insecurity of our deepest humanity. It is the insecurity that continually screams out, "Please, love me". The insecurity of having to await a response, that may or may not be given. 

And in this insecurity, I, along with those with whom I have found myself united in this very human poverty, have the opportunity to truly experience for the first time the dignity of the human person--the reality of our humanity--life as being upheld by one hope alone, the hope and promise of an eternal response--"Yes, I love you"

the hope found in the never-ceasing and ever-consoling presence of Love Itself

a love that satiates insatiable hunger

a love that requires dependence and gives eternal Presence

a love that requires insecurity in order to give peace

the echoing cry for love 

finds its reply within a Presence 

that doesn't satiate on demand, but expands in order to fill even more, and to expand and fill again. 

The Eucharist. 

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The Bread and the Poor

 “D’un Point-Cœur à l’autre” #20
September 1997

When Jesus had just washed their feet, the Apostles, still moved, believe that, for this evening at least, it is the end of the amazing gestures of their Master. They feel relieved. What else could He still invent? ... As any other adult, Peter and his companions prefer what is foreseen to what is unforeseen, what is reasonable to what is foolish. Now it is time to eat what has been prepared for the paschal feast. Let us eat!

However, God doesn’t grow weary of amazing the Apostles. Just when they believe that they have reached an unclimbable top, then they realize that God is using each completion to undertake a new beginning. This is the lesson of the washing of the feet: although this gesture has in itself all its own cohesion and riches, as the sacrament of mercy, we can also notice that it’s only a springboard towards a bigger gift.

So it is the same when considering the commitment in Heart’s Home―as in any Christian’s commitment―we believe that it’s a definitive answer to a call of the Lord and that it can easily give satisfaction to Him, and it’s the starting point of an amazing adventure guided by the always-more of grace. Heart’s Home is not an end, neither a disgression, it’s a beginning, it’s the emergence of a love story without precedent.

An unexpected hunger

We gladly imagine that most of the apostles, when Christ chose them, were men whose wishes were easily fulfilled. They were working, sometimes very hard. They were eating. They were taking care of their families. Some of them were fervently participating to the prayers in the Synagogue, others had hardly any religion. They were simple men who were satisfied by life, with its happiness and sadness.

And God gave birth to a fear in them: Through the voice of John the Baptist, at the occasion of an event... Or maybe through a question. Indeed, it is always like this. The first word that the Lord speaks to man is a word which embarrasses him, which awakens his appetite, which makes him go out of his torpor. It is the end of a life where questions are kept silent as soon as they appear. The labor starts, which aims at the expansion of the heart. One has to go deeper, to listen to, to follow. Nothing will satisfy the human being more than a step forward, than the acceptance of a hunger which grows in so far as it is satiated.

When Jesus appears, this appetite, already opened in the heart of those He calls, will not leave off growing. Their worry grows, which some days takes the face of anguish:

“The peace of the Lord consists in the fact that any security is removed (from the Apostles). [...] They are given up to the incommensurable where any guarantee is suppressed. [...] We always would like to possess a peace similar to the one of the world, a peace which protects against aggressions, which allows us to rest behind its walls. But the Lord’s peace is the opposite of this world’s peace: it deprives us of all security.”

“The Lord didn’t come to reduce God to the human measure, but to expand man to God’s measure” Adrienne von Speyr, John: The Farewell Discourses, Hardcover, Ignatius Pr.

However, any turning back has become impossible, any backwards walk. The previous life of the apostles would seem tasteless and coming back to it would leave them disappointed. From now on their hearts are crying for a substantial presence which will never abandon them. Their intelligence claims a speech which will give sense to reality, to event. They need to listen, they need to open themselves, they need to let themselves be looked at. And without their new Rabbi, life seems all of a sudden impossible. He is the only One who can fulfill the immense wishes they just came to discover in themselves. We can understand, in this light, the cry of Peter in the synagogue of Capernaum while it was becoming empty, “Where would we go?” We understand also how the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem could disgust the disciples.

“It’s three years that we have been with Him; what will we do without Him? What will we become?”

Thus, if the way with Jesus is like a long rise of desire, the outlook of the Cross, for Peter and his companions, can only generate despair. It would be a dramatic end, not only of an adventure, but also of a promise; it would be starvation more terrible than that of the body... without thinking about the Eucharist, all that would be the case. But this new hunger, this strange hunger of heart revealed by Christ to the Apostles, was not without answer. The Lord does not call in order to disappoint. He pushes to increase and to fill, and to increase again.

The interior way made by the Missionaries is well similar to the one made by the apostles and at last to that of all disciples of the Lord. To commit oneself to Heart’s Home means to decide to follow God. And to follow God means that we discover day after day our own poverty. He who is hungry and thirsty, it is me... He who is in jail, it is me... He who is naked, it is me... “Give me something to drink!...” We do not feed well our neighbor except if we have ourselves known hunger. We cannot well console the one who is suffering, except if we have ourselves accepted tenderness from another.

In this context, the Eucharist gains each day more and more value. The way taken by the Missionaries is not first of all a way of duty, it’s a way to discover themselves. This is the discovery―not desolate at all―that we cannot do anything without God and that God gives everything from Himself to the one who, everyday, sits at His table. In spite of premonitions, in spite of recommendations, such a dependence is a surprise. We were still thinking that we had enough reserve, with all the affection received from our childhood, with our certificates, with our multiple experiences. But the Eucharist suddenly appears like the essential food, like the Presence without which everything is only absence, like the Light without which other things are only darkness... Because from now on, it is as if our life would have been displaced. Now it takes place at the level of the heart, and the heart does not accept any other food than love.

To awake the hunger of others

Many men are hiding their hunger. Many are playing with their hunger. In the same way, some others betray it, those whom we discover one day, dead by suicide or anorexia. In the countries where there’s an abundance of money, hunger―every kind of hunger―has become a shame, as if gold had this consequence of annihilating it. However, this is to misunderstand what hunger is. It’s not at all a dishonor. It’s a dynamism. It’s an opening to what can be given to itself. It’s a spring stretched towards communion.

So, it is a good thing to be hungry. Jesus knows it well and He is the one who, on the way to Galilee, was walking proclaiming, “Happy are those who are hungry and thirsty...”. Nowadays the Lord’s disciples are too often seen as organizers, religious executives, judges, masters; they are rather those who believe in man’s hunger because God made them first experience their own hunger, as for the prodigal Son―their hunger for return, their hunger for mercy, their hunger for the Father. They are those who have experienced this hunger, this emptiness, this need in such a deep way and sometimes through a burning pain that they are even able, like the strannik of old Russia, to leave everything and to go and proclaim, “You are hungry, my friends... Do you know how big, how huge your hunger is? Let them follow me those whose hearts are crying famine! Beyond any hope, they will be fulfilled: but let their hunger still grow up!”

If in our western countries, to recognize that we are hungry looks like a leper’s acknowledgment, it’s not the same in most of the countries where the Heart’s Homes are settled. There, hunger is exposed. Hunger is crying too much to be hidden. It’s enough rather to orientate it. It’s more necessary to help it to get over another step. Then it stops lowering the one who suffers from it, and it raises him and helps him to recover his human dignity, as Son of God.

In Heart’s Home, our encounters all wish to lead to the Eucharist. If the Missionaries are the banquet―we will see it―they are especially those who lead to a meal more definitive, where the poor―those of the pathways and the squares―are invited. It is the meal of a love which is given without limits to all those who are excluded on earth. It is the meal which generates peace in the hearts of all those who are sometimes worried until madness.

Everything passes by. Our parents. Our relatives. We are pilgrims. As Missionaries, we are also aware that we are only passing. And even if our friendship lasts beyond the objective signs we give of it, one day we have to leave... This day, our presence disappears―even if it could have awakened hope―this day our smile disappears―even if it stays visible in some photos―this day our speeches stay silent, even if one or the other of them are still carved in the memory of those who have heard them.

There is an emptiness which would be infinitely painful, even murderous, if the Eucharist itself would not stay, as the Bread given to the poor, as the Presence offered to those who do not have friends, as the speech told to those who live in a troubled silence. Just as the mission of the parents consists essentially in transmitting to their children the friendship which has supported and attended their existence, the Missionaries are called to bring all the persons they meet in the presence of an enduring Love which will nourish their life. The Missionaries possess a treasure. Surprisingly humble. Terribly discreet. It is the treasure they come to offer to their friends: a bread which gives eternal life, an intimate presence as none other, faithful until the end, a love without limits.

Sponsor Letter #3...whoops

so the sponsor letter i wrote back in.....oh ja.....november

has now just been published to "my mission". 

Not that everything I talk about in my sponsor letter isn't something you've already seen on here (sometimes direct quotes just being translated from blogposts onto sponsor letters)

But in case you like to double-dip in both the blog and the letter, don't feel deprived. You weren't the only ones who missed out...i forgot to email it, ask my mom to mail it, as well as post it here. 

found out just in time for me to finish sponsor letter #5 which is about ready to send out as well..so you'll get two for one this month.

MAY: scary as hell, beautiful as ever.

"Why ME doing THIS?"

Sr. Regine laughed her cute little French laugh over the Skype connection. Even the many miles that separated us didn't keep her from laughing at the absurdity of my question--one that I had asked myself, and her, and God many times. And thats maybe why she laughed (although the language and character barrier that inevitably separates this adorable and inspiring French nun from me, a lost 22-year-old volunteer from America, will never allow me to know for sure).

but-ja-thats maybe why she laughed-and then with all thoughtfulness and sincerity she assured me from the depths of her deeply faith-filled heart--God called you. Its HIM. not me, or Fr. Thierry, or Heart's Home, or even your own desires. It is HIM. He called you to be MARYLOUISE in VIENNA--base your life there on this certitude!

It was as if I had never heard her say it before because I am always so quick to forget as soon as I get tired, anxious, irritated, or simply bored and unmotivated.

Sr. Regine and I were discussing my stay in Vienna, my mission and life here.
After a long while of questioning and contemplating, several discussions with Sr. Regine, Fr. Jacques, and others around and connected to me whose wisdom I trust and experience with Heart's Home well-grounded, plus a two week vacation with my parents and a novena to St. Therese (my heavenly companion through it all)

..........I had requested to extend my stay in Vienna and work with Heart's Home until the first or second week in May.

It wasn't easy--to make this decision. I mean, clarity hasn't really been my strong point over the last 7 months-especially in prayer. Going through the motions has become an unfortunate crutch, and as much as I am ashamed and reluctant to admit it, I could feel my heart drying up a bit. Ok, well not a bit, a lot, and it scared me, I think. I badly needed a refreshing drink from the source of Living Water but even the prayer life was a daily battle.

What had happened? Nothing. Just normal life. Just God teaching me unfathomable lessons. Teaching me my weaknesses, my littleness, my need to be further emptied in order to be fully surrendered and available to Him. Letting me learn the hard way (the only way that ever works with me stubbornness) how to better "suffer with" those to whom I so long to bring the presence of Christ through a simple friendship, my own humble presence.

In fact, as hard as it is, and even harder can be, isn't it beautiful when you get to experience for yourself that essential human longing in deeper way. you feel more human. more desperate. more thirsty. more ready.

But what for? to leave in three months, or to stay for five? Where was the source of living water to be found? Where was he calling me to seek Him?

The solitude. emptiness. and silence of the desert was answering me.

For the past year, I didn't know where God would lead. I didn't know where He was leading. So I just kept on going. living. planning, enjoying. praying. cooking. meeting. watching. trusting.

It became clear in a totally foggy-winding-road-through-the-forest kind of way

Like the clarity that comes to your heart when your head is still very far behind.

It hasn't been enough.

I haven't made it to the cross.

God in his Mercy has taken my by the hand and led me to stand beside and under so many crosses in the past year--those of mothers and wives, left and unloved in both one room apartments and penthouses, those of children living in fear, those of the elderly, abandoned, those of the sick in excruciating physical pain or the pain of feeling like a nuisance, those blistered by the cold of the air or a stranger's cold scorn, those of parents fearing for the safety and lives of their children, or their souls.

I have been allowed to be with many.

but not yet had I reached mine--the one on which Christ hung for me--waiting to tell me what I am dying to hear, and cannot even fathom. Waiting for me to take my permanent place beneath Him and accompany Him until the end.

So in living everyday, yearning to hear, acknowledge, and console the cries of Vienna, I have not yet heard the cry, His cry, for which He called me to Vienna with Heart's Home, with Alina, Mathilde, Fr. Jacques, and Fr. Clemens, to apartment renovations, visits to friend's homes or artist's ateliers, dinner guests, benefit concerts, retreats, prayer nights, the foot of the tabernacle, in order to hear. His cry to me and me alone--His cry that called me into being and gave me a meaning, a vocation to embrace and fulfill.

So I need to keep my heart open to the reality that He presents--and until May I seek to embrace it even more, live it more faithfully and passionately until I make it to His pierced feet, soaking the wood of the cross to which I cling in order to hear the choked cry of what He's been dying to tell me.

my own symphony

It's hard to believe that one year ago I lived my first Christmas away from my family and friends, but as a part of a whole new spiritual family. 

New Year's as well. It's hard to believe what has taken place in these past 12 months--both in my world and in me. 

But, although a little delayed for actual Christmastime, I got to celebrate this milestone in my life with the joy of receiving my parents and brother on the 27th of December for a 2 week visit. We spent four days together in Vienna--allowing me to share my life, friendships, home, community, chaos, beauty, city, love--here in my everyday, but far from tedious, surroundings. 

The "vorfreude" or the anticipation and excitement hit about a week before their arrival. It was almost more than I could bear....sleeping was seldom and I just replayed over and over in my mind the greeting we could get to have in the Airport. Monika offered to drive me to the airport and pick my family, and their sure to be immense amount of luggage, up at the airport.  She was so excited to share this moment with me....to see the reaction of an American at the airport...something she had only seen in movies before. Let just say, I didn't let her down...it all happened so fast...suddenly they were there and I screamed and ran into the place where you aren't supposed to run (Monika bet me that I would do that, but I assured her I would be composed and follow the rules) We hugged, introduced, talked, hugged some more, and smiled the whole way back to Heart's Home, with George riding with Monika in her car with most of the luggage, and my mom and dad and I taking a taxi---yes....too much luggage to fit into one car. We got to the Heart's Home and made more introductions, sat and talked about the trip, home, the plan for the day, how tired they were, etc. To keep them from falling asleep we decided to go for a walk. While Mathilde stayed home and cooked, and Fr. Clemens and Fr. Jacques got some work done, I took my little family on a walk through my neighborhood--Augarten, Karmelitermarkt, Karmeliterkirche. Just walking and talking about life. 

It was a very surreal feelings--the clashing of my two worlds. It is as if we haven't been apart. It is as if my heart hasn't been longing...it just feels right. The ones I love are here. But underlying it all is a certain, inexplicable and never before felt comfort, a belonging. This isn't just a stop-over. This is my life. and finally its receiving some of the physical synthesis it deserves, even though all the while unity has been preserved through prayer. 

We spent the whole day with the community (sadly, except Alina...she was babysitting for a friend of ours that day). They were so attentive and it was really special for me.  Mathilde made a beautiful lunch to which Hana and Matthias were invited, two other really important people in my life here from the beginning.  They got to meet my parents for the first time and so George again. Hana is really so dear and both Hana and Matthias are such loving, thoughtful and selfless people. I hold them so dear and how welcoming and supportive and true friends they have been and continue to be in this experience. Matthias drove us back to the hotel so that my parents and brother could have time to re-coup, shower, and clean up. Returning to the house, Fr. Jacques gave a presentation on his favorite artist--Hundertwasser and then walked with us to the KunstHaus--or the Hundertwasser Haus--praying the rosary on our walk along the Donau canal (Danube) on the way there. 

After the museum we hurried back to the house where Monika had prepared an Austrian feast to welcome my family!  My poor family was so tired and the dinner was so good but they had to leave even before dessert. Monika and I brought them back to the hotel and on the way home, speaking to Monika--

I felt so strongly such a profound happiness. not because my family had arrived, because they had experienced so much already, etc. It was a happiness of gratitude, a profound gratitude that cannot be described in words, for the openness of my family, as well as this new family of mine. To see my parents and their love next to and mingled with the love of my community and for the first time to really be able to stop and realize the love which my comunity has for me which they showed so vividly in the way they interacted with and served my family.  Usually i'm too busy scampering around so anxious,  wanting to make sure everything is perfect, everyone is happy, etc. But this time, there was something different. There was a joy. There was such a peace, such a new look of love that I have learned in being here--simply to be present, to serve without anxiety but with the calm of loving someone just how they are and in whatever they want and need. No pressure. no expectations. To let go and love. and in letting go I got to sit back, with them, and experience the joy of sharing this life and love of my community and allowing my two families to discover one another, open to one another, and in me open a peace of unity. 

The next two days we spent time as a family with the community, celebrating the mass together ( in English, me...forgetting all the responses and songs), having prayer time, eating together, and visiting friends that had either invited us over or who I especially wanted to introduce my family to. 

The first day, mom and dad arrived at 7:30 for mass, followed by adoration. George was sick with a stomach flu and stayed in bad all day--I was really sad he had to miss this time to discover my life here...but so it is. For lunch we were invited to Nazli and Saima's! 

Afterwards we went to check on George at the hotel, and then made our way to the Atelier of a friend of ours, Clemens Fuchs. He had invited my parents over to see his studio and to have tea with him and his father. Both Clemens and Michael are talented painters, who with their grandfather Ernst Fuchs, form a family line of talented and famous Austrian classical painters. Michael was born in Paris but grew up in America with his Russian/Jewish mother and obtained citizenship in America--so both Michael and Clemens are American citizens, and speak fluent English with wonderful American accents. We had some great conversation about art, politics, religion, philosophy, traveling, while drinking tea and soaking in the artistic surroundings--walls covered with Clemens' paintings. 

Michael then drove us back to the hotel where we checked on George one more time and had a drink before heading to the Heart's Home for dinner. Tomoko and Keiko were coming over for dinner to meet my parents, and we also had two other French guests visiting--Thibaul and Michele. 

After dinner, we had the delight of Tomoko playing for us!!!

The next day, George flew out at 7 for Antibes, France....off to visit Raphy, his best friend, for the New Year's Holiday--it was a huge let down for me to not be able to really share my life and the people who are so important to me in Vienna with him, but I knew that he was going where he wanted and needed to be. So that made me happy. 

In the morning we celebrated mass for Mom and Dad's 29th wedding anniversary!! Afterwards, we spent some time in adoration, spent the afternoon in a cafe eating gulash and drinking coffee, and shopping! We were invited to my Austrian mom's house for dinner--a night I had been looking forward to for a long time! Finally my family was going to meet Agnes and have dinner in my home away from home. It turned out to be such a beautiful evening...my heart simply bursting. It was simple, beautiful, comfortable, homey. After a delicious dinner with the whole Bredl family, Agnes  (my Austrian mom) and Martin, my parents and I, and sometimes one of Agnes and Martin's children (who are all around my age) spent time just hanging out and talking in the living room. Just comfortable. My heart at peace! 

The next day we had a culture day--we went to mass, to visit a museum, ate a little something , ran some errands, and then in the evening Hana met us for dinner at "Zum Schwarzen Kameel" (im convinced it is one of the best places to eat in Vienna) followed by Beethoven's 9th Symphony in The Wiener Konzerthaus. The funniest/worst part of the night--we had so much fun at dinner we were running late to the concert. We thought---o surely, there won't be a problem. either they'll just let us in and we'll find our seats, or they will let us in at the next pause between movements so that we don't disturb anyone. THAT WAS NOT THE CASE. We were 15 minutes late to one of the greatest symphonys that was written WITHOUT PAUSES. Turns out that even though our seats were empty and in a wonderful position in the gorgeous concert hall, we were forced to STAND in the back of the balcony the ENTIRE symphony. We definitely learned our lesson....and Mom's New Year's Resolution was decided: Stop being late to things. 

It wasn't the most enjoyable way to experience such beautiful music...and I'm not going to hide it...it was rather infuriating....so afterwards we headed back to the Möet Champagne bar in our hotel for a couple glasses of Champagne to take the edge off and finish the night off in a good mood :) 

On the 31st we spent the morning in mass, followed by a trip to Schönbrunn Palace and the Christmas Market that had been turned into a New Year's Market and was the only Market still standing after the holidays--but still an element of the Austrian holidays I wanted Mom and Dad to take part of! 

We drank Glühwein, 

At pretzels

and just walked around...

That night we celebrated New Year's with Heart's Home. A friend of the community's, Monika Schwarzer, invited us to her apartment where she has a special event space architecturally styled in ancient romanesque style and purely lit by candles and the glow of the wood-burning fireplace. My community hosted a New Year's Cultural and Theological Retreat weekend for those who wanted to visit Vienna from another country or who were from Vienna and wanted to experience Vienna during New Year's in a new way. I didn't take part because I was with my family, so I can't describe really what it was like, but I can explain that it is a fantastic weekend--Fr. Jacques gives lectures and there is time for prayer, mass, and adoration everyday, but then you are also visiting museums--with private tours from Viennese artists who are friends of ours, going to the opera--with a talk beforehand about the Opera you will see and telling you things that help you not only visit the opera but go deeper into the particular piece you are seeing, eating together, talking, sharing lives, etc. 

On New Years, Monika invited my community and the 13 people who came to this weekend retreat, as well as me and my family and some other friends from Vienna to her house to celebrate the eve of 2012! Surrounded by the cozy ambiance of candlelight, we enjoyed delicious food (cooked by Monika Schwarzer, Monika Haas, and Alina), and even a concert from Tomoko and a friend she brought and introduced us to, Frau Hattori, who played with Tomoko on her Stradivarius! That was followed by watching fireworks in the street, toasting to champagne, dancing the waltz, and simply enjoying the first moments of the New Year's together! 

My mom starting having severe back pain the night before and all during the day, so she opted not to come. We had a glass of champagne before dad and I went to join the community at Monika's, and sadly we had to leave mom behind at the hotel. 

as I stood holding my father's hand on the Viennese street watching the bundles of fireworks rise and explode amidst the rising buildings of the city, I couldn't help my stand in awe and gratitude for the beauty--not of the fireworks, the evening, or being with my family. It wasn't a specific object of event, but an awe and gratitude in front of BEING in all it's beauty. 

the Being of God

the Being of each and every person here i have the privilege to know, to call "friend"

the Being of every person with whom I share their lives

the Being of my sisters and brothers in community--in all our goods and bads 

the Being of my family-both physically and spiritually bound to me in this moment

the Being of all of you who support me so selflessly and bind yourselves so generously to the work we share, God's work through this Heart's Home, through daily friendships, through our openness to the gift of presence. 

the Being as gift--LIFE--every day, every minute, now and into the New Year that we are given. the beauty of BEING in all its joys, pains, laughter, sacrifices. 

It has been quite a year--something that I won't be able to fully wrap my mind around until I am far away both in time and space. It has been a year of a lot of learning, changing, growing, loving, forgiving, begging, praying, searching, receiving, holding, trudging, caring, hoping, believing, SAILING. and all of this leading me deeper and deeper into my own humanity, so that I am may better serve, respond to, and most of all, STAND IN AWE of the humanity of you and him and her and me. 

this is not only the summation of our trip together...but what I think in the end will be this year and a half.

My parents, beyond being wonderful in and of themselves, were wonderful in that they brought me books! (nerd at heart) 

Our American Roadtrip through Southern Germany was occupied mostly with window watching and reading one of the most fabulous biographies I have ever read and which I must recommend: The Soul of a Lion: Biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand by Alice von Hildebrand. 

Reading this particular part as we gained miles on our rental VW "Transporter" (yeah...there weren't a lot of choices for stick-shift-impaired Americans), I had to put the book down and gasp, look out the window, and thank the Lord for such a poetic piece of prose--one that spoke right to the moment in my life in which I needed something else to replace the pain of absence I would count on feeling in a few short days when I would wave my family goodbye on their return flight across the seas. 

{For a great experience is not limited to its actual enjoyment; there is something called 'Vorfreude', anticipated joy, and afterward, there is a resounding joy in the soul, and the gratitude one feels at having experienced it. It is like three musical movements of the same symphony, which enrich and complete each other.}  

He is a God of small things...

some little bursts of life from our December...

as you saw many posts previously...we were busy baking Christmas cookies...something you absolutely have to learn if you live in Austria. Our's looked nothing like these...which we received from friends--obviously veterans from years of Christmas cookie baking!! Beautiful and delicious! 

R's Christmas play!! 

She had one of the leading parts! 

Fr. Clemens catching some shuteye on the way back from our weekly visit to the nursing home. 

The Christmas market at Rathausplatz (the courthouse) 

I was out on a coffee date with Monika (she takes me out for an hour or two every other week for a little pause) and Hana called and wanted to meet up for a spiced wine at one of the biggest Christmasmarkets in Vienna. 

We got to spend a couple hours together before she traveled back to Munich for Christmas 

Burgtheater, Vienna

Three years ago we were in the exact same place, at the exact same Christmas market, taking almost the exact same photo...except three years ago, my brother  was also there...We missed you, George!