Yesterday, off and on, amidst the on-going higher level of suffering, I considered with great gratitude and love, the brief life of Sr. Josefa Menendez. She died nearly 100 years ago in a convent in France where she had been sent from a brief stay at a convent in Spain, her native country.
Not knowing French, she was otherwise cordoned off, regardless, for she was a mystic and victim soul, as well. Jesus visited her regularly in her cell, set off from others by a superior who feared the disruption Josefa's mysticism and victim soul sufferings would create with the other sisters in the convent.
While some might find it quite difficult to fathom how a Catholic religious, let alone a superior of a convent, be so cruel and have perhaps her own envy of Josefa's spiritual gifts and the especial love of Jesus for her, such ignorant and negative, fearful attitudes toward mystics and victim souls persist today, as they have for centuries.
We human beings can be quite nasty and cruel, even those who profess to be in the consecrated life of the Church, even if claiming some legal status or position, or even some ordained in holy orders. Mercy, Lord, have mercy on us pathetic creatures when status and legalism, when ignorance of God's law of love and the viciousness of pride and envy bite our very souls themselves, to a point we can no longer see our own hypocrisies.
When it came time for me to be confirmed a Catholic, I had quite the inner debate as to whom to ask to be my confirmation patron saint. I greatly love and admire Teresa of Avila, for she appeared to me in a vision in broad daylight, in a classroom of adults in our doctoral clinical psychology program of studies. I had done a rare thing--volunteered for a demonstration by the professor of a technique for use with patients, when instead, this old house appeared, and I was beckoned forth, to enter inside.
Within, I was drawn to a room in the back right of the dwelling, where sat on a wood stool at a slant-top, old writing table, a woman clothed in dark, simple garment--to me like a robe-like covering, with what I later would be able to label as a religious habit, with veil or covering over her head and across forehead, but her face bespectacled, rimless. She was an old woman, and she was writing on parchment, a quill ink pen in hand which she'd dip into a container of ink.
She indicated to me she wished to speak. I relayed this to the professor sitting beside me in front of the roomful of adults in full and astonished silence as I had been describing what I was experiencing in real time, and the professor asking questions and suggesting questions to ask this unexpected person whom I could see clearly, but no others could see or, soon enough, hear her speaking.
So at first, when the woman began to speak, I would repeat as the professor suggested I do so--share what this woman who I could identify as seemingly from the Middle Ages, was saying to me. But at some point early on, the woman's voice was able to use my throat and voice box, as far more efficient way of communicating her messages which soon enough were clearly great wisdoms and insights.
Her messages were tremendous helps to me personally, and at first seemed directed to what the others did not know had occurred with me the day prior. I had been told by a second-opinion spine specialist at Scripps Medical Center, LaJolla, CA, that my then-recent spine surgery and the emergency spine surgery after I'd died in recovery, had caused what the specialists said, would be a life of pain of which I'd have to learn to live a life I never dreamed I'd have to live.
But the old woman's insights eclipsed my personal needs and began to encompass wisdoms of spiritual dimensions beyond normal considerations. She spoke of suffering in terms sublime and supernatural, and of suffering in conjunction with love, and into Christ's love and light, and of unconditional love, also, as means of union with Christ and of superseding physical pain.
She also, then, at the same time, seem to know the thoughts of others in the room. She knew one woman in particular was antagonistic to what the woman was sharing, using my voice to do so. (That in itself was a profoundly strange and unique experience for me: practical, functional, yet surreal!) Regardless, the woman spoke out and said there is one who wishes to ask me questions, and directed this to the student in the room who had firm new age ideologies, and who was not liking one bit this woman's definite religious and Christian, holy wisdom and insights.
I will say the old woman who sat at her desk, visibly before me, and at the same time speaking through me in her stilted voice, an unfamiliar-to-me accent, but speaking in English, most definitely held her own with the new age woman. I guess we'd say the old woman "shut her down" by wisdom and logic, if not also with a firmness of authority that astounded me--and I think others in the room, as well. The professor was certainly speechless with this profound authority of messages elevated and as coming from beyond this world, this life.
No one else, after the new age woman's attempt to disagree with what the old woman had shared, and without a chance of coming close to succeeding against supernal truths, had more to ask. The woman I could see and who was using my voice, finished, dissipated from view and corporeal presence. The professor called for a class break; the adults erupted in exclamations and amazement.
So while I had no idea who was the woman in the vision and who spoke profoundly in specific ways to help me (and as it turned out, anyone) deal with suffering, understand suffering as God's perfect purpose and part of His plan, and how suffering teaches, and suffering is as God's love, and to embrace and suffer in His love--I will never forget her.
About that time I came to encounter some Catholic writings; one such was that of Teresa of Avila's autobiography. Still, I did not connect her as one and the same woman who appeared and spoke in what remains a first and only public, verbal encounter witnessed by a group. I would not recognize her until I was given a holy card with a replica time-period, painting of the saint on the card.
Thus when I was deciding upon which of two persons who I wanted to give thanks and ask their patronage in my Catholic confirmation (private instruction, private confirmation), it was between Teresa of Avila and Sr. Josefa Menendez, the mystic and suffering victim soul and relatively little known woman, one of three daughters of a widowed mother who did not want her daughter to leave for the convent, until finally she relented--neither mother or daughter knowing the nuns would send her immediately to one of their convents in Poitier, France, far from her family, never to see them again.
But I had not yet made the Teresa of Avila direct connection from the prayer card image; it had not been given me yet; and I asked Teresa of Avila whose writings I so admired and felt integral connection, to help me decide. I realized Teresa as Doctor of the Church and canonized saint, a foundress and reformer of the discalced Carmelites, was a powerfully endowed soul, indeed!
Yet I thought of Teresa's strength of humility, and of her writings so practical and spiritually endowed, both--and figured she'd be pleased if I would take the patronage of this persecuted, misunderstood, victim soul and mystic who died young, just as in many ways my life was truncated when relatively young, my earthly crucifixion from normal life having come at age 33. I figured Teresa to be pleased I'd befriend the little-known sister whose writings I'd just recently been given to read by the priest who the Lord had directed me to contact in another odd set of circumstances which included a locution telling me "and this is the priest to whom you are to go!"
Sister Josefa Menendez it is! When I finally saw a photo of her face, she looked like a dear and lovely young woman who had so willingly helped me and my three young children, following the spine surgeries and after my parents returned to their home in another state, after taking care of us for three months following the surgeries in 1987.
How amazing is our Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth and of all life, our Teacher, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Love!
While I've shared more about my encountering so personally, Teresa of Avila, I've not shared much of Sr. Josefa Menendez other than she is my confirmation saint, and her death day ad commemoration day, thus, in my heart and mind and soul, is December 29. I'm not sure where is her process of canonization other than perhaps in the early phase of Servant of God, if that. It does not matter, not to her, I'm sure, in her tremendous humility and her place in heaven for eternity.
But what does matter to me is that I have not re-read her diary (The Way of Divine Love) in a long time, and I do not think of her nearly as would be delightful to her and to Christ, and helpful to my mind, heart, and spirit. And of my spirit--admittedly it is struggling currently in ways difficult to describe--and truly not defensible for someone who is a consecrated Catholic hermit for two decades and a bit more from the first recognition of God's calling me to this vocation.
Even my excuses of the added abdominal suffering to the spine and tooth pain, and of the specific, strangely sensing of my unknowings in passing over into another phase--these excuses are simply as worn out as is my temporal body! Not going to cut it in the abundance of spiritual life of faith, hope, and love in God--these excuses!
And yes, it is allowable for one to have a technically non-canonized "saint" to be a confirmation saint, for any who are into legalisms, of which law and order do have their places in our temporal lives as well as the life and structure of the temporal Catholic world, to a certain degree if not ever overshadowing God's supreme Law of Love.
My life increasingly has evolved and been enhanced so much further and beyond the fussings or claims of ones who clasp at authority in some temporal or assumed legalism, fashioned or formed. There is a blessing in gift of enough suffering to propel one through and onto other, into supernatural realities that pare the mind, heart and soul to a nib of what one has been (yes, a true has-been) or thought to have been--and still remain quite imperfect yet not imprisoned in ego, or delusion of position or grandeur.
May God be praised in His gift to us of His suffering, and when we are asked to share in His sufferings of many-facets. May we persevere in suffering, learning from Him and of His love. Love to suffer, and suffer to love. Some learn well in suffering; some such as myself, struggle but yet learn: Thanks be to God.
Pain and suffering after a certain extent of its pummeling good, is quite effective in humbling to even the humility of exhaustion. There seems nothing remaining but God alone. And this is only the beginning of what is positive potential of God's All, all the more to our increased and ever more increasing nothingness.
When others do not understand this, and when those without knowledge or coursework or hypocritically claim authenticity, or as if promulgating: who is this or not that, legal or not legal, authorized or not, it is only that their paths of learning in soul school differ or are in other-pace and trajectory, or that they have not yet come to grasp some part of all the lessons of mind, heart, and spirit our souls are here on earth to learn. We are all in soul school here, learning in varying earth-timeliness and modalities.
And not to worry, if souls do not learn what it is we are to learn on earth--particularly learn to love and the various virtues such as graciousness, kindness, and humility. Our souls will and must, simply yet incontestably, continue to learn what is not learned here. When we pass over from temporal life to fully spiritual life, we continue our unique yet also universal soul-learning in what some have termed as "purgatory"--as a phase in eternal life of which we are purged of that which hindered us here and we did not learn to overcome or to embrace of what is necessary for great purity and light, to unite with God fully, as One.
I consider Sr. Josefa in her little cell, sewing clothing for children the convent sisters were helping, and while sewing in the solitary confinement, she suffered as Jesus' beloved victim soul, and she was far from alone despite the misguided intentions of her Mother Superior. Her seeming isolation, yes, caused intrigue and gossip among the other sisters, but Sr. Josefa prepared by the guidance of Jesus and Mary, in her various passings, until her physical passing over once and for all from this earth, no longer relegated to a physical body or a physical cell in a distant corner of a convent in France.
She's rather ideal for this consecrated Catholic hermit, with the added sufferings physical and whatever otherwise, and in this phase of added unknowings of passings over. God bless Josefa Menendez! God thank her for her life and humble example of hidden nothingness and bearing suffering and misguidedly, misunderstood persecutions of all types! God bless Josefa's human imperfections of which she was the first to note, as well!
And God bless His Real Presence in us here and beyond here, in the there that is eternal light and bliss!
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