Chapter Mary

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=125 BGCOLOR="#BFBF00" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="05b467d1dwoxjb.png"> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="275207d0.jpg" border=0 width="800" height="125" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=189 style="border-right: 1px solid #CCCCCC;" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="WovenWord Press"><B>home</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id89.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="new from the press/Mother Blessings/Jour"><B>new from the press</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="catalog"><B>catalog</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>how to order</B></A><B> </B><A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>books</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="who we are"><B>who we are</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id33.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="links"><B>links</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="contact"><B>contact </B></A></div> <div> <B>    </B></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=355 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFF99" TEXT="#080000"> <div>               </div> <div>                      </div> <div>      <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Verdana" ><I><B>c h a p t e r   s a m p l e</B></I></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <B>Angela Merici's </B></div> <div> <B>         Journey of the Heart</B></div> <div> <B>                               by Mary Cabrini-Durkin</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Introduction</B></div> <div> <B>                      </B></div> <div> <B>Exploring the Rule</B></div> <div> <B>Honoring the Madre’s Voice</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The Rule of the Company of Saint Ursula treats matters of equal importance to people who are five centuries apart. Angela Merici’s vast spiritual family drinks from the same fountain, but in very different eras and cultures. How can we explore her words with respect for her and for all her hearers? Challenges arise. </B></div> <div> <B>Angela urged us to think of her as present, even in the twenty-first century. She spoke in the present tense when she pledged to be with the Company after her death: </B><B>Also, tell them that</B><B> </B><B>now I am more alive than I was when they saw me in the flesh, and that now I see them and know them better. And can and want to help them more. And that I am continually among them...</B><B> (Fifth Counsel:35-38).</B><B> </B><B>Honoring her promise, this book assumes that she still speaks to us. It generally uses the present tense about her teachings. Yet some situations referred to in the Rule are so clearly historic, not current, that the past tense is more appropriate.</B></div> <div> <B>The Trivulsian text has made audible again the voice of the Madre, spoken directly to people she loves. One way to honor the relational quality of the Rule is to engage with its author, not stand at a distance. Therefore, this book speaks often in the first person, as we listen to Angela’s words through the ears of her followers. </B></div> <div> <B>Treasuring Angela’s personal, oral style, we savor words quoted directly from her Rule, Counsels and Testament (Legacies), indicated by italic type. (Italics are also used, as is typical, for foreign words and for certain titles.) Part 1, “Angela’s Story,” incorporates her own words as much as possible. It is essential to appreciating the Rule.</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Context</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Angela’s story and an understanding of the Church, society, and women’s life in sixteenth-century Italy are necessary starting points for comprehending her full message. However, the reader can omit the historical “Context” sections and still appreciate the way of life outlined in the “Rule” sections. The reader who finds the “Context” distracting is urged to skip it.</B></div> <div> <B>Recognizing the significance of context, Youngstown Ursuline Mary McCormick, OSU, has applied principles of biblical exegesis to Angela’s writings. Drawing upon Sandra Schneiders’ </B><B>The Revelatory Text</B><B>, Mary McCormick identifies the “world behind the text,” sixteenth-century Renaissance Italy; the “world of the text,” that is, “the text as it stands now”; and “the world in front of the text", which is “the ideal meaning which the reader is invited to enter".  This book will follow her example, seeking to enter into “dialogue with the text” with a “transformative interpretatio".</B></div> <div> <B>The reader is also invited to follow what Sandra Schneiders calls a “trajectory".   How did a particular detail relate to Angela’s historical moment? If it stood ahead of contemporary practice, then we ask ourselves to follow the trajectory and to hear those words as invitation and challenge. Where might the trajectory take us today, ahead of the practices around us? “Reflection” points following each chapter will lead in this direction. </B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>The Language of Beauty</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A poetic and creative genius like Angela’s is closely akin to art, which opens the spirit. Beauty speaks more deeply than words. Works of art incorporated into these pages can open us to the wordless spirit between the lines. </B></div> <div> <B>Angela may have known Saint Ursula as much by paintings as by words. Although she did not explain why she chose the patron of her Company, much can be deduced. Part 6, “Saint Ursula", looks at how visual and literary arts may shed light on her choice and its meaning for Ursulines. </B></div> <div> <B>The conclusion of this book contemplates the splendid altarpiece </B><B>The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, with Sts. Lawrence, Ursula and Angela Merici</B><B> by Angela’s contemporary, Girolamo Romanino. Painted to commemorate the Company’s founding, it synthesizes the Company’s spirit as surely as does the Rule itself.</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Spiraling Toward the Heart</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>With artistic unity, the Rule takes a member from entrance to death and heavenly glory. Chapter groupings treat integration into the Company, spiritual practices, the evangelical counsels and community. </B></div> <div> <B>Angela Merici began her Rule with a Prologue in the form of a letter, treated here in Part 2, “A Letter from the Madre.” She wanted to speak directly to her daughters, from her heart. In the Prologue she set out the whole meaning of Ursuline life, from the point of God’s invitation, through years of joy and suffering and of mundane activities, to a glorious conclusion in heaven. Each chapter develops a particular aspect of this life, in stages along the way. </B></div> <div> <B>Chapters I to III help to bring new members into the Company, showing practical ways for integrating their commitment into daily life. Each of these first three chapters also supports one of the core Gospel values that are developed later. For example, Chapter I stresses the new member’s freedom as being essential in her choice to become an Ursuline. That freedom is the basis of her capacity for </B><B>obedience</B><B>. Chapter II, on clothing, supports the spirit of joyful </B><B>poverty. A</B><B>nd Chapter III is about interactions with others that demonstrate the single-heartedness of her celibate calling. </B></div> <div> <B>In Chapters IV to VII, Angela recommended spiritual practices to nourish the women in their vocation. Each of these practices also nourishes a particular element of the Gospel core.  Fasting helps us to be emptied of all gods but God, and to feast on the good things God gives. That is </B><B>true poverty of spirit</B><B>. Prayer and the Mass deepen the relationship with Christ at the heart of an Ursuline’s heart, what Angela called </B><B>sacred</B><B> </B><B>virginity</B><B>. Confession helps us clarify our own truth, the better to hear and obey the Holy Spirit. That is Angela’s </B><B>holy</B><B> </B><B>obedience</B><B>. A spiral shapes this arrangement of chapters. They wind in toward the Gospel center in Chapters VIII to X, which treat obedience, virginity and poverty respectively and are dealt with in Part 3 of this book, “At the Heart of the Rule". </B></div> <div> <B>Angela called the last chapter “About Governance". Another name might have been “community". It is really about how this spiritual family translates into action the relationships that support each Ursuline in living her call. It describes the ever-practical Madre’s creative organizational structure to make it all work. In the process, Angela had created a countercultural network to empower the oppressed. Like the Prologue, this chapter ends after death, in heaven. It is the subject of Part 4, “A Spiritual Family".</B></div> <div> <B>Part 5, “The Trellis", treats the chapters on integration and spiritual practices (Chs. I-VII) separately. It is to be hoped that the areas of overlap will take the reader deeper rather than being repetitious, but some repetitions necessarily occur. </B></div> <div> <B>The Rule as a whole and each chapter within it have this single purpose: to support the members of the Company in living their vocation. </B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Guidebook for a Journey</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Angela liked to call Ursuline life and this Rule </B><B>via</B><B>, a “path” or “road". The Prologue is a snapshot of the route. The whole Rule is a guidebook for the journey. Both the Prologue and the body of the Rule begin with answering God’s call, and both end in heaven.</B></div> <div> <B>Far from being dry or legislative, the Rule’s vocabulary is vivid and picturesque. We can almost see Angela’s images and feel her emotions as she responds to the beauty of nature or the ugliness of evil. This image-filled style is not surprising if we remember that the Rule is really a guidebook. Of course Angela describes the scenery along the way! Sometimes it seems like an actual landscape beside the </B><B>thorny and rocky roads</B><B> which </B><B>we will find flower-strewn for us, paved with finest gold</B><B> (Prologue:27). Her lively tone encourages us forward. </B></div> <div> <B>Often her words echo personal experience. When the army of Charles V was approaching Brescia in 1529, she may well have felt that </B><B>armed against us are water, air, and earth with all of hell</B><B> (Prologue:20). Years of working in vineyards had taught Angela the energy that we need to </B><B>lop off vices and errors</B><B> (Chapter IV:2), just as she would lop a diseased branch from a healthy vine. </B><B>[L]ords</B><B> in the spectacular parades winding though the streets at carnival time gave her a picture of how the devil swaggers around, </B><B>lord[ing] it over the world </B><B>(Chapter IV:10).</B></div> <div> <B>As these lines show, Angela was a poet, not a theorist. She proceeded by images and experiences, not by concepts. She gazed upon the earth and its people and took them into her heart. She reached their innermost reality by an intuition blended with common sense and fueled by love. Her poetic language allows us to visualize the world as she saw it. </B></div> <div> <B>How beautiful our world is, in Angela’s imagery! In the shouting crowd celebrating a victory, she heard the people we love, cheering us on, </B><B>where from all those in Heaven and on earth great glory and triumph will arise </B><B>(Prologue:31). She evoked the lovely sight of a procession, </B><B>going two by two in charity and each one with a candle in her hand</B><B> (Chapter XI:32). The traveler who had stood on the Adriatic shore, had sailed the Mediterranean to the Holy Land and back, sensed the vastness of God, whose name she </B><B>blessed beyond the ocean’s grains of sand, beyond the drops of the waters, beyond the multitude of stars</B><B> (Chapter V:26).</B></div> <div> <B>Ursuline life is a journey of the heart. No wonder that its guidebook glows!</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>________________________________________________________________________</B></div> <div> <B>  </B></div> <div> <A HREF="id85.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Author Mary"><B>about the author</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id87.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter Mary"><B>sample book chapter</B></A></div> <div> <B>                  </B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>                                         </B></FONT><B> </B><A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>How to Order this Book </B></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Angela Merici's Journey of the Heart: </B></div> <div> <I><B>The Rule, the Way</B></I></div> <div> <B>Mary-Cabrini Durkin  </B></div> <div> <B>no pgs. listed   no price listed   hardcover  not available  ISBN: 096581372X</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>