Faith & Spirituality in Review
A Local Habitation: Poems and Homilies, Peter Steele sj, edited by Sean Burke, Newman College, 2010, pb, rrp $39.95.
Readers of Peter Steele’s ‘Bread for the Journey’ column in Madonna will recognise how important places are to him. Peter’s homilies never float in an abstract and airy Theology Land. They always take his hearers and readers to particular places that are described in tangible detail. They place the readers between God’s place and their own place. This place between, of course, is also God’s place.
So it was a very happy inspiration of Sean Burke, the vice rector of Newman College, to place the collection of Peter Steele’s poems and homilies in the place that has been his home for many years, Newman College. The college serves the church in its mission to Melbourne University, which has been Peter’s intellectual home for all his priestly life. The book is handsomely produced, with photos of the college and of people who are at home in it.
By both the poetry and the homilies we are led to notice more intently the everyday world of our experience, and at the same time to recognise what lies at its depths.
At the heart of the poetry and the homilies is a steadfast and unillusioned view of the reality of the human world, whether that world be the modern university or the inner life. But they do not stay there. They express the hope that reality is more than it seems, and that the light is stronger than the dark. Two stanzas from a lovely poem, the Pale Companion puts it well:
A companion of sorts if you must, loveless Depression,
munching bread and the fingers too –
but not for the giving of rings, the blending of selves,
lute and oboe swayed into witness.
How you flourish at the sight of our pallid figures!
We fall by routine and you smile us down,
saying that rising is vastly over-esteemed.
For a moment I almost believed you.
Julian Tenison Woods: A Life, Mother Mary of the Cross, canonisation edition, St Paul Publications, 260 pp, pb, 2010.
A new series of wood sculptures honouring Fr Julian Tenison Woods was opened in May at the Father Woods Park, north of the township of Penola. It is one more event that ties in with honouring Mary MacKillop in this most significant year. And what better way to learn more of Fr Woods than through reading the biography that was written by Mary herself.
The final sections of Mary’s original manuscript were typed to her dictation following a stroke she suffered in 1902. Copies of the typescript were kept in the Sisters archives and it was not until the 1980 that a new script was made and copies circulated among the congregation’s communities. It was published commercially in 1997 and now is reissued in a canonisation edition, with commentary and notes from Josephite historian and author Margaret Press.
The work is important, Margaret says, first because it is the only lengthy piece of Mary’s writing to come down to us, and because in it is preserved numerous primary sources of information about Mary herself and her work.
This year is a most appropriate time to read of the man who was Mary’s inspiration, and of her many insights into her own life and vocation.
Beds and Blessings in Italy: A guide to religious hospitality, St Paul’s, Strathfield, 2010, rrp S24.95.
My favorite recreational reading is maps. You always keep discovering old railway lines and canals, shortcuts and parks and reasons for towns being where they are. And the time spent looking at them gives your imagination a holiday even though your body remains anchored at its desk. Maps don’t read like a novel, but they make you think of exotic characters.
This guide to religious hospitality in Italy is as enticing a map. It offers 400 pages of religious houses you can stay at, details of who administers them, a brief description, a photo and mentions of religious groups you have never heard of, melodious names of towns and scenery to fill your imagination. Imagine making a retreat at the sanctuary of St Ignatius in Pessinetto, for example. Built on top of a 3000 foot mountain where St Ignatius appeared to a peasant woman. Never knew that!
Or spend a few days with the monks at Vallambrosa in the Appennines, and when in Rome stay in the house run by the Sisters of St Joseph of Chambery. The possibilities are endless, and the names alone inspire images of delight.
A book to that can nourish the imagination with plans for a decade of Clayton’s holidays.
An Audacious Aussie Dream, The Family Care Sisters’ Story, Penelope Edman, St Pauls, Strathfield, 2010, rrp $24.95.
Melbourne and Sydney are cities of different colours. Appropriately, the story of two locally founded women’s religious congregations in Melbourne and Sydney gives a vivid picture of the church before the Vatican Council and of the life of the poor they served. The Brown Nurses were founded by Eileen O’Connor in Sydney, and the Grey Sisters in Melbourne by Maude O’Connell. Both met needs that had not been fully recognised or addressed before. In this book, Penelope Edman tells the story of the Family Care Sisters (Grey Sisters).
Like Eileen O’Connor who founded the Brown Nurses, Maude O’Connell was a strong woman. Her relationships were often stormy, but her goodness and determination attracted sufficient support to carry through her mission to care for women and families during the mother’s illness. Her great supporter, Dr William Collins, offers a lively account of his first meeting with her that says much for both people. She told him bluntly that the Catholic Church should be at least as helpful as other churches in their service of women and children. The trouble was, she continued, that Catholic women were too fond of passing resolutions and votes of thanks and calling it social work. They would be much better Christians if they rolled up their sleeves and did more washing up in the homes of their less fortunate sisters.
Collins waited until she stopped for a long breath, and then countered, ‘Are you prepared, Miss O’Connell, to roll up your sleeves and help others in the homes?’
‘Yes, and I will get others to do it also.’
‘Her reply had the stamp of sincerity’, Collins remarked.
As with the Brown Sisters, the work in Daylesford began with a series of disasters, but continued with the formation of the religious congregation, service of poor families in the inner Melbourne suburbs, and training in child care.
The story of the congregation is an inspiring one, well told by Penelope Edman. It reminds us of the needs of an earlier society and the rich human generosity of an earlier church. It challenges its later readers.
