Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  What she saw there was a quiet determination that spread from his lips to his eyes. She grew suddenly uneasy, like a youngster who objects to the rather unpleasant process of mouthing. ‘I speak French,’ she broke out, ‘I speak French like a native; I can read and write French as well as Mademoiselle does.’ ‘And beyond that you know very little,’ he informed her; ‘it’s not enough, Stephen, believe me.’ There ensued a long silence, she tapping her leg with her whip, he speculating about her. Then he said, but quite gently: ‘I’ve considered this thing—I’ve considered this matter of your education. I want you to have the same education, the same advantages as I’d give to my son— that is as far as possible—’ he added, looking away from Stephen. ‘But I’m not your son, Father,’ she said very slowly, and even as she said it her heart felt heavy—heavy and sad as it had not done for years, not since she was quite a small child. And at this he looked back at her with love in his eyes, love and something that seemed like compassion; and their looks met and mingled and held for a moment, speechless yet somehow expressing their hearts. Her own eyes clouded and she stared at her boots, ashamed of the tears that she felt might flow over. He saw this and went on speaking more quickly, as though anxious to cover her confusion. ‘You’re all the son that I’ve got,’ he told her. ‘You’re brave and strong-limbed, but I want you to be wise—I want you to be wise for your own sake, Stephen, because at the best life requires great wisdom. I want you to learn to make friends of your books; some day you may need them, because—’ He hesitated, ‘because you mayn’t find life at all easy, we none of us do, and books are good friends. I don’t want you to give up your fencing and gymnastics or your riding, but I want you to show moderation. You’ve developed your body, now develop your mind; let your mind and your muscles help, not hinder each other—it can be done, Stephen, I’ve done it myself, and in many respects you’re like me. I’ve brought you up very differently from most girls, you must know that—look at Violet Antrim. I’ve indulged you, I suppose, but I don’t think I’ve spoilt you, because I believe in you absolutely. I believe in myself too, where you’re concerned; I believe in my own sound judgment. But you’ve now got to prove that my judgment’s been sound, we’ve both got to prove it to ourselves and to your mother—she’s been very patient with my unusual methods—I’m going to stand trial now, and she’ll be my judge. Help me, I’m going to need all your help; if you fail then I fail, we shall go down together.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It has been translated more frequently than any other Latin poem.2101 Walter Scott introduced it into the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and Goethe made Gretchen tremble in dismay on hearing it in the cathedral. The most tender hymn of the Middle Ages is the Stabat mater dolorosa. The first verse runs:— Stabat mater dolorosa juxta crucem lachrymosa dum pendebat filius; cujus animam gementem contristatam ac dolentem pertransivit gladius. At the cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last; Through her heart, His sorrow sharing, All His bitter anguish bearing, Now at length the sword had passed. 2102 This hymn occupies the leading place among the many mediaeval hymns devoted to Mary and, in spite of its mariolatry, it appeals to the deepest emotions of the human heart. Its passion has been transfused into the compositions of Palestrina, Astorga, Pergolesi, Haydn, Bellini, Rossini, and other musical composers. The poem depicts the agony of Mary at the sight of her dying Son. The first line is taken from John 19:25. The poet prays to Mary to be joined with her in her sorrow and to be defended by her on the day of judgment and taken into glory. The hymn passed into all the missals and was sung by the Flagellants in Italy at the close of the fourteenth century.2103 Jacopone da Todi, the author of these hymns, called also Jacobus de Benedictis (d. 1306), was converted from a wild career by the sudden death of his wife through the falling of a gallery in a theatre. He gave up the law, both degrees of which he had received from Bologna, and was admitted to the Franciscan order.2104 He abandoned himself to the extreme of ascetic austerity, appearing at one time in the public square walking on all fours and harnessed like a horse. He wrote a number of poems in the vulgar tongue, exposing the vices of his age and arraigning Boniface VIII. for avarice. He espoused the cause of the Colonna against that pope. Boniface had him thrown into prison and the story went that when the pope asked him, when he expected to get out, Jacopone replied, "when you get in." Not until Boniface’s death, in 1303, was the poet released. He spent his last years in the convent of Collazone. His comfort in his last hours was his own hymn, Giesu nostra fidanza — Jesus our trust and confidence. § 134. The Religious Drama. Literature: W. Hone: Anc. Mysteries, Lond., 1823.—W. Marriott: Col. Of Engl. Miracle Plays, Basel, 1838.—J. P. Collier: Hist. of Engl. Dram. Poetry, 2 vols. Lond. 1831; new ed., 1879.—Th. Wright: Engl. Mysteries, Lond., 1838. —F. J. Mone: Altdeutsche Schauspiele, Quedlinb., 1841; D. Schauspiel d. MtA., 2 vols., Karlsr., 1846.—*Karl Hase: D. geistliche Schauspiel, Leip. 1858, Engl. transl. by A. W. Jackson, Lond. 1880.—E. de Coussemaker: Drames liturg du moyen âge, Paris, 1861. —E. Wilken: Gesch. D. Geistl. Spiele In Deutschland, Götting., 2d ed., 1879.—A. W.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To give force to these institutions, the ban was introduced in 1530, and confided to a council of three pious, honest, and brave laymen for each of the four parishes of the city; two to be selected by the Council, and one by the congregation, who, in connection with the clergy, were to watch over the morals, and to discipline the offenders, if necessary, by excommunication.—In accordance with the theocratic idea of the relation of Church and State, dangerous heresies which denied any of the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed, and blasphemy of God and the sacrament, were made punishable with civil penalties such as confiscation of property, banishment, and even death. Those, it is said, "shall be punished according to the measure of their guilt in body, life, and property, who despise, spurn, or contemn the eternal, pure, elect queen, the blessed Virgin Mary, or other beloved saints of God who now live with Christ in eternal blessedness, so as to say that the mother of God is only a woman like other women, that she had more children than Christ, the Son of God, that she was not a virgin before or after his birth," etc. Such severe measures have long since passed away. The mixing of civil and ecclesiastical punishments caused a good deal of trouble. Oecolampadius opposed the supremacy of the State over the Church. He presided over the first synods. After the victory of the Reformation, Oecolampadius continued unto the end of his life to be indefatigable in preaching, teaching, and editing valuable commentaries (chiefly on the Prophets). He took a lively interest in French Protestant refugees, and brought the Waldenses, who sent a deputation to him, into closer affinity with the Reformed churches.179 He was a modest and humble man, of a delicate constitution and ascetic habits, and looked like a church father. He lived with his mother; but after her death, in 1528, he married, at the age of forty-five, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Cellarius (Keller), who afterwards married in succession two other Reformers (Capito and Bucer), and survived four husbands. This tempted Erasmus to make the frivolous joke (in a letter of March 21, 1528), that his friend had lately married a good-looking girl to crucify his flesh, and that the Lutheran Reformation was a comedy rather than a tragedy, since the tumult always ended in a wedding. He afterwards apologized to him, and disclaimed any motive of unkindness. Oecolam-padius had three children, whom he named Eusebius, Alitheia, and Irene (Godliness, Truth, Peace), to indicate what were the pillars of his theology and his household. His last days were made sad by the news of Zwingli’s death, and the conclusion of a peace unfavorable to the Reformed churches. The call from Zürich to become Zwingli’s successor he declined.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  understand somewhat of such great subjects." Meditation on the Future Life. (Book III. ch. 9, §§ 1, 3, 6.) 1. "With whatever kind of tribulation we may be afflicted, we should always keep the end in view; to habituate ourselves to a contempt of the present life, that we may thereby be excited to meditation on that which is to come. For the Lord, well knowing our strong natural inclination to a brutish love of the world, adopts a most excellent method to reclaim us and rouse us from one insensibility that we may not be too tenaciously attached to that foolish affection. There is not one of us who is not desirous of appearing through the whole course of his life, to aspire and strive after celestial immortality. For we are ashamed of excelling in no respect the brutal herds, whose condition would not be at all inferior to ours, unless there remained to us a hope of eternity after death. But if you examine the designs, pursuits, and actions of every individual, you will find nothing in them but what is terrestrial. Hence that stupidity, that the mental eyes, dazzled with the vain splendor of riches, powers, and honors, cannot see to any considerable distance. The heart also, occupied and oppressed with avarice, ambition, and other inordinate desires, cannot rise to any eminence. In a word, the whole soul, fascinated by carnal allurements, seeks its felicity on earth. "To oppose this evil, the Lord, by continual lessons of miseries, teaches his children the vanity of the present life. That they may not promise themselves profound and secure peace in it, therefore he permits them to be frequently disquieted and infested with wars or tumults, with robberies or other injuries. That they may not aspire with too much avidity after transient and uncertain riches, or depend on those which they possess, sometimes by exile, sometimes by the sterility of the land, sometimes by a conflagration, sometimes by other means, he reduces them to indigence, or at least confines them within the limits of mediocrity. That they may not be too complacently delighted with conjugal blessings, he either causes them to be distressed with the wickedness of their wives, or humbles them with a wicked offspring, or afflicts them with want or loss of children. But if in all these things he is more indulgent to them, yet that they may not be inflated with vainglory, or improper confidence, he shows them by diseases and dangers the unstable and transitory nature of all mortal blessings.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Bullinger undertook to advocate this compromise before Bern and Geneva. But the Genevese confirmed in general assembly the sentence of banishment, May 26. With gloomy prospects for the future, yet trusting in God, who orders all things well, the exiled ministers travelled on horseback in stormy weather to Basel. In crossing a torrent swollen by the rains they were nearly swept away. In Basel they were warmly received by sympathizing friends, especially by Grynaeus. Here they determined to wait for the call of Providence. Farel, after a few weeks, in July, received and accepted a call to Neuchâtel, his former seat of labor, on condition that he should have freedom to introduce his system of discipline. Calvin was induced, two months later, to leave Basel for Strassburg. It was during this crisis that Calvin’s friend and travelling companion, Louis du Tillet, who seems to have been of a mild and peaceable disposition, lost faith in the success of the Reformation. He left Geneva in August, 1537, for Strassburg and Paris, and returned to the Roman Church. He had relations in high standing who influenced him. His brother, Jean du Tillet, was the famous registrar of the Parliament of Paris; another brother became bishop of Sainte-Brieux, afterwards of Meaux.494 He explained to Calvin his conscientious scruples and reasons for the change. Calvin regarded them as insufficient, and warned him earnestly, but kindly and courteously. The separation was very painful to both, but was relieved by mutual regard. Du Tillet even offered to aid Calvin in his distressed condition after his expulsion, but Calvin gratefully declined, writing from Strassburg, Oct. 20, 1538: "You have made me an offer for which I cannot sufficiently thank you; neither am I so rude and unmannerly as not to feel the unmerited kindness so deeply, that even in declining to accept it, I can never adequately express the obligation that I owe to you." As to their difference of opinion, he appeals to the judgment of God to decide who are the true schismatics, and concludes the letter with the prayer: "May our Lord uphold and keep you in his holy protection, so directing you that you decline not from his way."495 CHAPTER XI.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Nor can you consider yourself to have lost him, whom you will recover in the blessed resurrection in the kingdom of God. For they had both so lived and so died, that I cannot doubt but they are now with the Lord. Let us, therefore, press forward toward this goal which they have reached. There can be no doubt but that Christ will bind together both them and us in the same inseparable society, in that incomparable participation of His own glory. Beware, therefore, that you do not lament your son as lost, whom you acknowledge to be preserved by the Lord, that he may remain yours forever, who, at the pleasure of His own will, lent him to you only for a season .... "Neither do I insist upon your laying aside all grief. Nor, in the school of Christ, do we learn any such philosophy as requires us to put off that common humanity with which God has endowed us, that, being men, we should be tamed into stones.604 These considerations reach only so far as this, that you do set bounds, and, as it were, temper even your most reasonable sadness, that, having shed those tears which were due to nature and to fatherly affection, you by no means give way to senseless wailing. Nor do I by any means interfere because I am distrustful of your prudence, firmness, or high-mindedness; but only lest I might here be wanting, and come short in my duty to you. "Moreover, I have requested Melanchthon and Bucer that they would also add their letters to mine, because I entertained the hope that it would not be unacceptable that they too should afford some evidence of their good-will toward you. "Adieu, most distinguished sir, and my much-respected in the Lord. May Christ the Lord keep you and your family, and direct you all with His own Spirit, until you may arrive where Louis and Claude have gone before."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "They parted," says Beza, "with heavy hearts and tearful eyes."1256 These were sublime scenes worthily described by an eyewitness, and represented by the art of a painter.1257 On the 19th of May, two days before the pentecostal communion, Calvin invited the ministers of Geneva to his house and caused himself to be carried from his bed-chamber into the adjoining dining-room. Here he said to the company: "This is the last time I shall meet you at table,"—words that made a sad impression on them. He then offered up a prayer, took a little food, and conversed as cheerfully as was possible under the circumstances. Before the repast was quite finished he had himself carried back to his bed-room, and on taking leave said, with a smiling countenance: "This wall will not hinder my being present with you in spirit, though absent in body." From that time he never rose from his bed, but he continued to dictate to his secretary. Farel, then in his eightieth year, came all the way from Neuchâtel to bid him farewell, although Calvin had written to him not to put himself to that trouble. He desired to die in his place. Ten days after Calvin’s death, he wrote to Fabri (June 6, 1564): "Oh, why was not I taken away in his place, while he might have been spared for many years of health to the service of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ! Thanks be to Him who gave me the exceeding grace to meet this man and to hold him against his will in Geneva, where he has labored and accomplished more than tongue can tell. In the name of God, I then pressed him and pressed him again to take upon himself a burden which appeared to him harder than death, so that he at times asked me for God’s sake to have pity on him and to allow him to serve God in a manner which suited his nature. But when he recognized the will of God, he sacrificed his own will and accomplished more than was expected from him, and surpassed not only others, but even himself. Oh, what a glorious course has he happily finished! Calvin spent his last days in almost continual prayer, and in ejaculating comforting sentences of Scripture, mostly from the Psalms. He suffered at times excruciating pains. He was often heard to exclaim: "I mourn as a dove" (Isa. 38:14); "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it" (Ps. 39:9); "Thou bruisest me, O Lord, but it is enough for me that it is thy hand." His voice was broken by asthma, but his eyes remained bright, and his mind clear and strong to the last. He admitted all who wished to see him, but requested that they should rather pray for him than speak to him. On the day of his death he spoke with less difficulty.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  JOB More than any other book in the Old Testament, the book of Job is recognized as a classic of world literature. The impatient saint, festering on his dunghill, has served as a symbol for the human condition for such diverse luminaries as Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, William Blake, and D. H. Lawrence. Modern poets, authors, and dramatists (Robert Frost, Archibald MacLeish, Elie Wiesel) continued to find inspiration in his story. The power of the book lies not so much in its poetic language, powerful though it is, as in the directness with which it addresses a basic human problem: the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. Job provides no easy answers, and indeed there has been endless debate as to just what answers the book does provide. But it plumbs the depths of the problem in a way that is without rival in the biblical corpus. The book consists of a narrative introduction or prologue followed by a series of poetic dialogues and a narrative conclusion or epilogue. The prologue sets the stage by telling how Job lost everything in a single day because of an arrangement between God and Satan. At first, Job’s piety is not shaken. Then three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, come to visit him. The greater part of the book is taken up with their exchanges with Job. These fall into three cycles. Job speaks first in chapter 3. Then each of the friends takes a turn (Eliphaz in chaps. 4 and 5; Bildad in chap. 8, Zophar in chap. 11). Job answers each in turn (chaps. 6–7, 9–10, 12–14). The cycle starts over in chapter 15, with Eliphaz, followed by Bildad in chapter 18 and Zophar in chapter 20. Again Job answers each in turn (16–17, 19, 21). The third cycle starts in chapter 22 with the speech of Eliphaz, followed by the response of Job in chapters 23–24. In this case, however, the speech of Bildad in chapter 25 is exceptionally short, and there is no speech of Zophar. Moreover, parts of the speech attributed to Job in chapters 26 and 27 match the arguments of the friends rather than those of Job. These incongruities have led to various proposals. A typical solution is to regard 26:5–14 as the conclusion of Bildad’s speech, and to supply the missing speech of Zophar from 27:8-23. Some verses

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  According to Deut 25:5-10, if a man died without a son, his brother should marry the widow and raise up an heir to the deceased (this is known as the levirate law). The brother could refuse but would then be put to shame before the elders of the town. The purpose of this law was to prevent the widow from marrying outside the family, thereby alienating the family property, but it also was a way of ensuring that the widow would be taken care of. There are only two stories in the Hebrew Bible that illustrate the working of the levirate. One is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis, where Judah refuses to honor the practice and Tamar takes matters into her own hands. The other is the story of Ruth. In the case of Ruth, we are not told which brother died first, or why the other did not take the widow to wife. For the purposes of the story, the two seem to have died at the same time. Naomi plaintively tells her daughters-in-law that she has no sons in her womb that they could hope to marry. Accordingly, she urges them to return to the houses of their parents until they should find new husbands. Orpah is persuaded to do this, but Ruth persists in going with Naomi: “Where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth thereby abandons the relative security of staying with her own people in an act of fidelity to her mother-in-law and to the family of her dead husband. The first chapter ends with the return of the two destitute women to Bethlehem (which literally means “house of bread”) and the lament of Naomi that although she went away full the Lord has brought her back empty. Her emptiness is all the more striking in the context of the barley harvest that was about to begin. The second chapter introduces another character who has a crucial role in the story. Elimelech has a rich kinsman named Boaz. Naomi had not mentioned the existence of this relative to Ruth in chapter 1. The levirate law, as formulated in Deuteronomy, applied only to brothers. Boaz would not have been under any legal obligation to help a distant kinswoman, nor do the women claim anything from him as a matter of right. Instead, Ruth proposes to support the women for a while by gathering ears of grain left by the reapers. (Biblical law requires the reapers to leave something for the poor and the alien: Lev 19:9-10; 23:22; Deut

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  They admitted that rumors abounded—one being that thirty-nine children were becoming a financial burden. But my mother said she had an alternate theory, which she based on a conversation she had had with Sister Catherine in Still River, long after the separation had taken place. “She told me that her wedding night was the worst day of her life. And so she asked Hank [her husband] to agree to a life of chastity between the two of them. I think she abhorred the whole notion of sex and procreation. She was a prude at heart.” I nodded and took this in. The fact that Sister Catherine’s two children were adopted suddenly made sense. It was heading toward midnight, and I changed the subject. “What did you think when you found out that we were being beaten all those years?” I was referring to a time not long after Sister Catherine died, when turmoil roiled the Center and, in a moment of near revolution, the children told their parents about the beatings with the Big Punisher that were meted out at the whim of an Angel for infractions often created out of whole cloth. My mother rushed to answer. “We were shocked. Sister Catherine had always told us how wonderful you children were, how good, how obedient and holy. We knew you could get into trouble, but there was never an inkling of physical abuse. I feel terrible to this day and will until I die. To have trusted my children to her and then to discover the treatments they received—for that I can never forgive myself.” “Well, it was all true,” I said, not in an attempt to upset them but to reinforce to them the reality of the life that was hidden from them. “But you can’t blame yourselves. Why shouldn’t you have believed her?” The room was silent. Everyone was asleep except for the three of us. It was now close to midnight. As my parents rose from the couch and I from my chair, I asked one more question. “Did you ever think life at the Center would turn out the way it did when you first joined?” “Never, darling, not in a million years” was my mother’s reply. She spoke without bitterness but with a sense of disbelief and regret. What had she done, unwittingly? How had she and my father, wanting only the best for their five children, managed to cause so much suffering? But lugubriousness was not a state of mind for either of my parents, and I was blessed to inherit from each of them the “life will be all right” gene. As Daddy would say on many an occasion, “Don’t waste time regretting the past. There’s nothing you can do about it. Look to the future and find happiness there.” He didn’t say it as an excuse for his own decisions and actions.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  It would be a whole week before we had this special time together again. Militaristic was the best way to describe our daily routine. At seven o’clock each morning, one of the four assistant Angels, each of whom reported to Sister Matilda, arrived on the third floor and rang a bell to wake us. They rotated a week at a time in the role of Angel for the eight of us Little Sisters who lived on the top floor. My mother was not one of them. The ringing of the bell signaled that I had ten minutes to rise, put on my clothes, wash my face, and brush my teeth, all the while observing the rule of silence. When the bell was rung again at precisely 7:10, it was time to make my bed, with perfect hospital corners and the spread tucked under the pillow so that there wasn’t a wrinkle to be seen. The third clang of the bell five minutes later told me to brush my hair, braid it, and tie ribbons on the ends of the braids. When Sister Mary Laurence was the assistant Angel, she marched through the four bedrooms checking on the eight of us Little Sisters as we rushed through our tasks. In her hand she carried a hairbrush, not as an aid for a Little Sister with snarls in her hair, but as a weapon to punish a straggler. I knew I could finish in time, but I worried about Mary Catherine, whom I couldn’t observe because her bedroom was around the corner. By 7:25 each morning, the eight of us were standing in line, facing the stairwell door. In silence we descended to the second floor, where the younger Little Sisters lived. Together, hands folded as if in prayer, and with the Little Brothers following, we filed across the yard to St. Gabriel’s House, walked up the stairs to the third floor, and took our assigned places on benches in the chapel, awaiting the start of First Breakfast at 7:30. The bedtime ritual was much the same. After preparing for bed, which included polishing our own shoes, spot-cleaning our jumpers, and washing out our white blouses in the deep sink, we headed downstairs to the chapel for night prayers, which were led by Sister Matilda. Our new regime was a tortuous adjustment. When my baby sister Veronica was born only five months before the separation, I had felt like a mother myself, carrying my sister Margaret Mary (just eighteen months old) on my hip around the apartment and helping my mother by changing her diaper and dressing her. Now, the only time I could spend with my baby sisters were those few minutes of recreation each night after dinner in the yard. And that pleasure, too, was stultified when Sister Matilda announced a new rule one Saturday morning after Chapter Meeting. “From now on, you may no longer hold the hands of the younger children.” I was stunned.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I shook my head and whispered back, “Nothing.” When she saw me crying the next day, she nudged me with her elbow, mouthing the words. “What’s happened? Please tell me.” I kept silent for a while, but finally replied, “I’m not allowed to tell you anything.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “Sister Catherine said I can’t tell anyone.” But Mary Catherine, now sixteen and no longer the frightened Little Sister she’d been for so many years, took matters into her own hands. The next day, she cornered me down at the barn and said, “I went to Sister Catherine and asked her why you’re always crying, and she told me that you’ll be leaving when you graduate. She said you don’t have a vocation.” She paused and then added, “I don’t want you to go.” She spoke as my younger sister, not as a postulant. She wanted me to be there for her as I had for so long. It broke my heart to realize I was abandoning her. “I don’t want to go, either,” I said, swallowing hard so as not to cry. “But I have to.” “Will you be able to come back and visit?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I didn’t know. That was a question I’d never dared ask Sister Catherine, too fearful of the answer. The notion of abandoning Mary Catherine, my little sister, was unbearable. I thought about the many ways she’d depended on me to help her. We’d shared so many secrets. I knew her fears, her joys, the things she couldn’t tell anyone else either because they wouldn’t listen or because they couldn’t understand. I’d eaten her meals for her when she couldn’t. She hated the color yellow, so I had secretly swapped her yellow curtains for my pink ones. I had taped a piece of black construction paper to her window to block out the light of moon, which scared her. I was the one who’d taught her to read music when she wanted to play the trombone. I did her French homework because Sister Maria Crucis, the French tutor, was so strict that Mary Catherine could learn nothing in class. The constant worry about her caused me to lose my appetite, and as my final days approached, I was barely eating at all. Although Mary Catherine had matured into a vocal and opinionated postulant, she was still frail. For several days each month, she was confined to bed, causing her to miss tutoring. On other mornings, she was allowed to sleep well past second breakfast. When I asked Sister Teresa what was wrong with her, she simply replied, “She needs her sleep.” But fifteen hours a day? I thought. I was afraid for her and felt immense guilt at leaving her. To whom will she turn when I’m gone? What will she do without me? ” [image file=Image00030.jpg] My father as Brother James Aloysius, around the time of my graduation from high school.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But with Sister Catherine’s demise and the subsequent internal feud, it struck me that she alone had been the glue that kept nearly one hundred highly intelligent human beings together as members of a religious order. Had it been out of their respect, their fear, or their love for her? I could only surmise, but, if their blind obedience to her had been grounded in deep spirituality, why would it fall apart so catastrophically when she was gone? I thought back to the rules Sister Catherine instituted that forced separation between men and women, boys and girls. I remembered how she had told us Little Sisters that we must never trust a man. Now as the place I had called home for so long seemed on the edge of disintegration, I wondered if it wasn’t she herself who had planted the seeds of its destruction. Within days of Sister Catherine’s burial, my brother David, who was seventeen and completing his junior year in high school, and my youngest sister, Veronica, who was about to finish middle school, informed Sister Teresa (Sister Catherine’s successor as overseer of the children) that they wished to leave and move to Cambridge with my mother and me. Over the course of the next twelve months, my father decided that if his children wanted to leave, it was his obligation to accompany them into the world. [image file=Image00033.jpg] My father with my Grandmother McKinley, on the day of my brother’s graduation from high school, just hours before he left the Center as Brother James Aloysius and became once again Jim Walsh–June 1969. I myself was becoming increasingly secure in my role as a worldly woman, provided, that is, no mention was made of my past. I had a nice Irish Catholic boyfriend, a couple of years older than I was, whose family lived on Long Island. He was in the Navy and said he was hoping to attend the police academy when he was discharged. Polite and soft spoken, he was courteous to my parents when he joined us for Sunday dinners, and he was blissfully romantic when I could be alone with him. He was my first true love out in the world. We talked of marriage, and he brought me to visit his family, but something inside me kept saying, “No—you need someone who is more intellectual. You will become bored with him.” I spoke only of going to college and of all the places in the world I wanted to visit. He’d laugh, not out of disrespect but more in disbelief, as though I was too much for him, not likely to be the kind of wife he needed. When we broke up, I was hurt but not damaged—he was almost too good for me, and I too adventurous for him.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was overcome with sadness, the same kind I had felt so many times before when good things came to an end. I don’t want this day to be over. I mused on the wonderfulness of it—a community meeting, new toys, no silence. If only it could be like this every day. 26 Our Lady’s Army 1959 S ister Catherine had an idea: Our Lady’s Army. “You will be soldiers in Our Lady’s Army,” she said, “ready to fight against all her enemies.” It was the first stage in Sister Catherine’s mission to mold thirty-nine children into a cadre of religious activists. She wrote the pledge that we memorized and said at the start of each army meeting, a Friday evening event in her office that was closed to the Angels. Standing at attention, with our right hands raised in three-finger salutes to honor the Three Persons in God, we recited: “As a soldier in the Army of Our Lady, I promise to defend her cause, which is the cause of Jesus, with my life. I promise to be ready to die for her at any moment. I promise to live for her a life so holy that I may win, in the battles against her enemies, many, many souls for her to give to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I salute her as my Queen and Commander-in-Chief. I give her the complete allegiance of my heart, and I promise her the complete obedience of my will. I promise to love Jesus and Mary above all things and to have no other love before them.” [image file=Image00023.jpg] Our Lady’s Army. For the next hour or two, Sister Catherine spoke to us about how we children had been especially chosen by God, as she put it, to save souls and if necessary to lay down our lives for the cause of the Center, the doctrine of “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” She warned us that the enemies of the Church were all around us, and the most dangerous were the Communists. “The Communists have now infiltrated our country, and they will soon take over,” she said on one occasion. “And when they come it will be necessary for us to flee to the desert in Arizona.” Her voice took on a transfixed, almost triumphant tone, as though fleeing was a heavenly journey, the fulfillment of the will of God for us at the Center. “We will set up our community in the desert and hide there until the Communists find us. Then we will be martyred for our faith.” She described martyrdom as a badge of honor that, as soldiers in Our Lady’s Army, we must embrace. For my part, I was repulsed by the notion of martyrdom and knew in my heart, never to be admitted in public, that I would never die for my faith. If we’re supposed to embrace martyrdom, then why do we have to flee into the desert? I wondered to myself.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As much as I loved our tea parties, it was the Sunday morning community meeting that I lived for, counting down the days as the week wore on. Then for two blissful hours, it was family time, unrestricted by rules or oversight by the Angels. “How is my little princess?” Brother James Aloysius would greet me and each of my three younger sisters. Taking my father’s hand one Sunday morning, I felt something was different. I looked at his fingers: His wedding ring was gone. “Where’s your ring?” I asked. He grew silent and paused as he did when he was thinking. Then pointing to his chest, he said softly, “It’s right here, safe and sound in my scapular.” Everyone at the Center, adults and children, wore a scapular, a Catholic tradition. A simple square of sackcloth that had been blessed by a priest, the scapular was worn next to the skin. Father had told us again and again that if you died with your scapular on, you would never go to hell. I saw that my mother’s ring was gone as well. “Is yours in your scapular, too?” I asked her. “I gave my diamond ring to the Little Infant of Prague,” she replied, referring to the statue of the Child Jesus that had been a gift to the Center in its heyday. What she didn’t tell me was that she had turned over her simple gold wedding band to Sister Catherine as requested. Apparently, my father had chosen not to obey. I found an excuse to go to the front room and stood in front of the statue of the Infant of Prague, looking up at the crown on His head. There were sparkles in the crown, but I couldn’t tell what they were. All I knew was that somewhere in that elegant crown was my mother’s ring. One person at the Center continued to wear a wedding band—Sister Catherine. From my earliest memories, I knew she had a husband, Hank, and two children, Nancy and Joey. Hank had never come to visit the Center, neither in Cambridge nor in Still River, but Nancy, who was a few years younger than my mother, had joined the community briefly while we were still in Cambridge, taking the name of Sister Nancy Marie. Before we moved to Still River, Sister Catherine, after spending the day at the Center, returned each evening to the house she and her husband owned in Waltham. After the married couples were coerced into taking vows of celibacy (shortly after the separation of children from their parents), some chose to live separately, with the single men and women, while a few, including my parents, continued to live together under the same roof. My father sought out Sister Catherine, telling her that he hoped that the families could be reunited when we moved to Still River, and she gave him assurances that it would happen. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “I’m here to find a job in the investment business, not drive some old lady to her shrink.” “It’s just while you’re looking for a new job, princess,” he cajoled. He paused and then went on: “I told her you would call her this evening.” More to please my dad than to earn the five dollars an hour that Mrs. Taylor grudgingly agreed to pay me, and convincing myself that this position would be for a few weeks at most, I tiptoed my way into scenes of a life of both privilege and horror. The position of chauffeur lasted for less than a week, by which time it had morphed into a mélange of roles including gal Friday, confidante, friend, lunch companion, and chauffeur. Mrs. Taylor (as I addressed her) needed help to bathe and dress in the morning because her breakfast consisted of a handful of pills (her “vitamins” as she called them) washed down with several large gulps of “water,” as she described clear liquid, which was quite obviously vodka. The routine was the same each day. After extricating Mrs. Taylor from her bathtub, terrified that I might break her rail-thin bones either by holding on to her too hard or by letting her slip and fall, I helped her through what generally ended up as a two-hour dressing ritual. Stumbling her spindly legs into a pair of white linen trousers was the first step in the process. Once seated at her makeup table, she embarked on a ceremony of sorts—namely, re-creating Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, debutante of the year 1938. Between sips of what she kept referring to as water, but I knew better, she drew with a deep black makeup pencil the shape of her eyebrows, which were nonexistent, as well as her once famed widow’s peak, which was now simply part of her nearly bald head that she adorned with a jet-black wig, another replica of days gone by. By the time she powdered her face and painted on her ruby-red lipstick, she looked more Kabuki than debutante, more a caricature than a re-creation of her once exotic beauty. Despite her intense reliance on pills and alcohol, Mrs. Taylor had a bright eye, a sharp tongue, and a wickedly good sense of humor. And deep inside there was also a kind, but badly broken, heart. Snippets of stories from her past that spilled out of her as we drove each day depicted a woman who craved love because it had been denied her. For a reason I couldn’t explain to myself, likely because I was well aware that this was a temporary employment situation for me, I found her fascinating rather than revolting. After visiting her psychiatrist, who seemed oblivious to her state of addiction, she and I would lunch at the Ritz Carlton, the same meal every day—beef tongue on rye bread with mustard for each of us, accompanied by a double martini (for her alone).

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was mentally depleted and needed to be alone to digest the enormity of what had befallen me. In the silence, Sister Catherine spoke. “We all love you, dear.” “Thank you, Sister Catherine,” I replied. As I turned to leave, my mother gave me a reassuring smile, one that seemed to say, “I’m with you, darling. Don’t worry.” I returned her smile with a fainthearted one of my own. I could muster nothing more. Closing the door behind me, I felt an unbearable sadness. This was worse than getting into trouble—this was forever. As I made my way slowly to the refectory, I felt forsaken, abandoned by the whole court of heaven. For years I had prayed to them to sustain me in times of trouble, and now they had deserted me. I was a failure. And worse, I now faced a time bomb, a countdown to my graduation, just seven months away. On that day in June, I would lose the only thing in the world that was dear to me—my home and my huge extended family. What had I done to deserve this punishment? What could I do to change Sister Catherine’s mind? That became my mission, and instinctively I prayed once again for help from heaven. S 2 A Moment of Grace 1935 ix-year-old Betsy Ann McKinley stood on the sidewalk outside the Willard Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next to her best friend, Peter Bailey, as they waited for their mothers to pick them up at the end of the school day. The sound of singing distracted them, and they turned to witness a procession coming in their direction through the park. Betsy stared at the sight of a white and gold canopy held aloft by four men who walked slowly, providing cover for a priest who wore an enormous, radiantly embroidered cape and held high a gold monstrance, as though inviting the entire world to view it. Behind the priest came the congregation, solemn and reverent, singing hymns in unison. Nuns, wearing long black habits and wimpled veils, escorted their charges—schoolchildren in blue-and-white uniforms. Following them were the parishioners, men wearing suits and hats, and women in modest dress with kerchief veils on their heads. As the procession drew nearer, an elderly lady next to Betsy got down on her knees, bowed her head, and made the sign of the cross. Betsy was mesmerized by the giant gold monstrance and the circular glass window in its center, displaying a white object. She nudged Peter and whispered, “What’s happening?” Peter turned to look at her. “It’s the feast of Corpus Christi. Aren’t you a Catholic?” “No,” said Betsy, “I’m Episcopalian. What’s the priest carrying?”

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I grabbed my woolen coat and headed for the door on my way back to St. Ann’s House to play with my new games and toys. As I turned to exit the front door of St. Therese’s House, I ran into Sister Catherine. She was in a cheerful mood as she leaned down and kissed me. “Happy feast day, my goddaughter,” she said quietly. “Did you have a lovely time at the community meeting?” “Oh, yes, Sister Catherine,” I replied, feeling in that moment that she really did love me. As I paused, reveling in the fact that she had singled me out for special treatment, she reached up to a shelf and took down her hat and pinned it to her hair, the telltale sign she was leaving the property. In an instant, I realized that Sister Catherine was going home to her family in Waltham for Christmas dinner. We left St. Therese’s House together, she to get into her car to drive home, and I to walk back to St. Ann’s House. As the afternoon turned to dusk, I watched the sun, a giant orange-red ball of fire, while it slowly drifted toward the horizon in the southwest sky. I was overcome with sadness, the same kind I had felt so many times before when good things came to an end. I don’t want this day to be over. I mused on the wonderfulness of it—a community meeting, new toys, no silence. If only it could be like this every day. S 26 Our Lady’s Army 1959 ister Catherine had an idea: Our Lady’s Army. “You will be soldiers in Our Lady’s Army,” she said, “ready to fight against all her enemies.” It was the first stage in Sister Catherine’s mission to mold thirty-nine children into a cadre of religious activists. She wrote the pledge that we memorized and said at the start of each army meeting, a Friday evening event in her office that was closed to the Angels. Standing at attention, with our right hands raised in three-finger salutes to honor the Three Persons in God, we recited: “As a soldier in the Army of Our Lady, I promise to defend her cause, which is the cause of Jesus, with my life. I promise to be ready to die for her at any moment. I promise to live for her a life so holy that I may win, in the battles against her enemies, many, many souls for her to give to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I salute her as my Queen and Commander-in-Chief. I give her the complete allegiance of my heart, and I promise her the complete obedience of my will. I promise to love Jesus and Mary above all things and to have no other love before them.” Our Lady’s Army.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I am not comfortable in my body. Nearly everything physical is difficult. When I move around, I feel every extra pound I am carrying. I have no stamina. When I walk for long periods of time, my thighs and calves ache. My feet ache. My lower back aches. More often than not, I am in some kind of physical pain. Every morning, I am so stiff I contemplate just spending the duration of the day in bed. I have a pinched nerve, and so if I stand for too long, my right leg goes numb and then I sort of lurch about until the feeling returns. When it’s hot, I sweat profusely, mostly from my head, and then I feel self-conscious and find myself constantly wiping the sweat from my face. Rivulets of sweat spring forth between my breasts and pool at the base of my spine. My shirt gets damp and sweat stains begin seeping through the fabric. I feel like people are staring at me sweating and judging me for having an unruly body that perspires so wantonly, that dares to reveal the costs of its exertion. There are things I want to do with my body but cannot. If I am with friends, I cannot keep up, so I am constantly thinking up excuses to explain why I am walking slower than they are, as if they don’t already know. Sometimes, they pretend not to know, and sometimes, it seems like they are genuinely that oblivious to how different bodies move and take up space as they look back at me and suggest we do impossible things like go to an amusement park or walk a mile up a hill to a stadium or go hiking to an overlook with a great view. My body is a cage. My body is a cage of my own making. I am still trying to figure my way out of it. I have been trying to figure a way out of it for more than twenty years. 8In writing about my body, maybe I should study this flesh, the abundance of it, as a crime scene. I should examine this corporeal effect to determine the cause. I don’t want to think of my body as a crime scene. I don’t want to think of my body as something gone horribly wrong, something that should be cordoned off and investigated. Is my body a crime scene when I already know I am the perpetrator, or at least one of the perpetrators? Or should I see myself as the victim of the crime that took place in my body?

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Kabbalists believed that the Torah was flawed, incomplete and presented relative rather than absolute truth. Some thought that two whole books were missing from our Torah or that our alphabet lacked one of its letters, so that language itself had been dislocated. Others developed a version of the myth of the Seven Ages of Man, each of which lasted seven thousand years and was ruled by one of the seven ‘lower’ sefiroth . The First Age had been governed by Rekhamim/Tifereth (Grace and Compassion). All creatures had lived together in harmony and their Torah never spoke of the serpent, the Tree of Knowledge or death because these realities did not exist. But we were living in the Second Age of Din , the Stern Judgement that reflects the darker side of God, so our Torah spoke of constant conflict between good and evil, was full of laws, judgements and prohibitions, and its stories were often violent and cruel. But in the Third Cycle, under Hesed (Mercy), the Torah would be good and holy once more. Kabbalah began as a tiny, esoteric movement, but it would become a mass movement in Judaism and its mythology would influence even those who had no mystical talent. As their history became more tragic, Jews found the dynamic God of the mystics more sympathetic than the remote God of the philosophers, and felt increasingly that the plain sense of scripture was unsatisfactory and could shed no light without the interpretation of an inherited tradition ( kaballah ). In Europe, however, Christians were coming to the opposite conclusion. The Franciscan scholar Nicholas of Lyre (1270–1340) combined the older methods of interpretation with the new insights of the scholastics. He defended the use of the three ‘spiritual senses’ of the Bible, but preferred the plain sense of historical exegesis. He had taught himself Hebrew, was familiar with the work of Rashi and proficient in Aristotelian philosophy. His Postillae, a literal exegesis of the whole of the Bible, became a standard textbook. Other developments revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation. Roger Bacon (1214–92), an English Franciscan, had no patience with scholastic theology and urged scholars to study the Bible in the original languages.