Mary van Balen

Bud, wearing his veteran's hat, spoke to the staff on Memorial Day, as he always does. He reminded us of the sacrifices made by men and women in uniform. I listened with a heart still grieving the loss of my father. The first Memorial Day since his death. The first time in a long while that my siblings and I didn't visit him and thank him for his service.

As a child, I hung his photo on the bedroom wall, Dad looking dashing in uniform, a rare photo of him with a mustache and pipe. I loved the one of him wearing a Scottish kilt taken while stationed in England. I loved them all. I loved my Dad.

He returned from the war a bit quieter than he had been. So I was told. He was a gentle spirit, responding to a need, but not a solider at heart. He was proudest of Operation Chowhound, or Manna, as our Cousins in the Netherlands called it. Near the end of the war, American and British airmen flew over the country devastated by the German army. Bridges had been bombed, fields flooded, canals mined. The Dutch people were starving.

I have heard the story from my father, from family in the Netherlands, and from a couple there who still live by the field where they watched bombers fly low, dropping not bombs, but boxes and tins of food: Operation Manna. Read More 

Despite having to drive across town, I decided to attend St. Thomas the Apostle for Pentecost Sunday. It had been home to me for almost two years while I was living with my father. Over sixty years before, St. Thomas had been my parents' parish. I was baptized there. For the past year I have been going to various churches, trying to attend closer to my little flat. I have found some good places, but today, I wanted to "go home" for the feast.

Like any real "home," the folks there take you in, no matter how long you have been away. One of my favorite ushers hugged me back with a smile when I could not resist giving him a warm greeting despite arriving a bit late. When I walked up the aisle to find a seat, a woman offered me a place in her pew.

"Mary, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, yes. And you are..." I was embarrassed by the lack of recall. She didn't mind. Once I heard her name, I knew it well: her family and my family go way back. I settled in and looked around, happy to see so many familiar faces.

I came hoping for an infusion of spirit. A week ago I confessed to my spiritual director that I was low on energy. I wanted to move ahead, discern direction, etc. etc, but I just didn't have much spiritual oomph. Read More 

On this feast of the Ascension, I offer the reflections of two Catholic's on the subject, one a theologian and the other a specialist in the fields of spirituality and systematic theology. The first is Karl Rahner, a German Jesuit whose contributions including those at Vatican II have made him one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. In the book The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations, he writes of the gift of the Spirit which is the gift of the Ascension. Though through his leaving Jesus seems to be removed from us, he is really closer to us than he could have been in the flesh: He dwells within us in the Spirit.

"We notice nothing of this, and that is why the ascension seems to be a separation. But it is a separation only for our paltry consciousness. We must will to believe in such a nearness--in the Holy Spirit.

The ascension is the universal event of salvation history that must recur in each individual, in our personal salvation history through grace. When we become poor, then we become rich. When the lights of the world grow dark, then we are bathed in light...When we think we feel only a waste and emptiness of the heart, when all the joy of celebrating appears to be only official fuss, because the real truth around us cannot yet be admitted, then we are in truth better prepared for the real feast of the Ascension than we might suppose."

Hmm...How does that work, in my life? In yours? Read More 

But now ask the beasts to teach you,/ the birds of the air to tell you;/Or speak to the earth to instruct you,/ and the fish of the sea to inform you./Which of these does not know/that the hand of God has done this? Job 12. 7-9 from Morning Prayer



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The homily at Mass yesterday included a reference to the pelican and the stained glass window depicting a pelican feeding her young. I first encountered this image in an old university building housing the school of theology. Intrigued by the old ceramic tile with the image of a pelican and her young, I made a rubbing of it in my journal and later asked about it.

According to legend predating Christianity, when food was scarce and starvation threatened, the mother pelican would peck at her breast and feed her chicks on her blood, saving them though perhaps dying herself. Christians used the symbol to represent Jesus Christ, who sacrificed his life for all of us.

Often the case with legends, its origin is unknown, though it may have come from the pelican's habit of pressing its bill to its breast to more completely empty its food pouch. No matter. The image is powerful and an appropriate one to use on Mother's Day, focusing as it does on the feminine face of God. This day provided me with much to ponder from divine motherhood, the joy of my daughters, and national and international issues that face women and girls around the globe.

Blessed with three daughters who each helped me celebrate the day in their unique ways, I am often reminded that God is our Mother as well as our Father.

After a wonderful, long conversation with my middle daughter, I woke on Mother's Day to find an e-card from her in my inbox, an unusual event. She had honored me with a donation in my name to the Girl Effect, an organization that addresses issues that prevent young girls from developing in a healthy way into young women who can contribute their gifts to the world. I encourage you to look at the website and view their short video.  Read More 

(Originally published in the Catholic Times, May 13, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)

“How do you manage Liturgy of the Hours?” I asked a friend who is an oblate of a Benedictine abbey.

“I don’t get to it everyday. I do it when I can. Often, I just read through the Psalter.”

That conversation came to mind when I was discouraged by my inability to fit more of the Hours into my daily life. So, I pulled a Psalter from shelves in my study. A gift from a Trappist friend, the old book had been rebound in the monastery with a plain burnt sienna fabric and blue end papers. Father Maurice’s name is written across the top with pencil in his beautiful calligraphic scrip along with a small cross and the year: 1965.

The Grail translation, new at the time, like the translation of psalms found in the Jerusalem Bible, is made from the Hebrew. As I held the book and read from the yellowed pages, I imagined Fr. Maurice sitting in the chapel at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, chanting these ancient hymns day after day, year after year. I thought, too of my friends at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, and the time I spent with them praying the psalms throughout the day.

Sometimes, reading the more violent ones, I have wondered why they remain in liturgical collections. I have heard others voice that concern and remember a story shared by a monk at St. John’s. At one time, they were considering the collection of psalms used in their prayer. Someone suggested removing the more violent ones. Why pray war songs, songs that include dashing children against the rocks or slaughtering one’s enemies?

A monk of great stature in the community objected. Violence is part of Old Testament history. Indeed they are part of our history. “Remove those,” he said, “ and the Psalter just collapses.”

Our world today is not so different from the ancient Hebrew one. Using drones to kill our enemies makes their deaths and those civilians who lose their lives, euphemistically called “collateral damage,” invisible but no less gruesome. Read More 

I wish I had a photo of the campfire, of someone holding up jumbo marshmallows flaming on the end of a stick looking like a torch, or another women eating the gooey treats like a drumstick. Or a photo of a woman sitting by the pond casting and catching fish into the night. Or of the supermoon edging the dark rain clouds with silver and then emerging glorious and bright.

On Saturday I attended the first quarterly potluck at the new Bittersweet Discoveries B&B, a new venture by a friend who, after years of thinking and praying about what to do with her lovely property, decided to jump in and see what happens.

I drove down after a long day at work but was in plenty of time to enjoy food and conversation. I reconnected with an old friend and made some new ones. On each table my friend had papers and pencils. The papers told a bit about her hopes for the B&B and a list of possible retreat or workshop topics that would be of interest to those attending. The offerings ranged from drawing, journaling, centering prayer, nature studies to how to catch and fillet fish. (I think I know who would teach that one after watching her enjoy angling for much of the evening. )

Whatever choices are made and gatherings offered, the central goal of Bittersweet Discoveries is to offer a safe place of nurture and healing for woman, wounded by relationships, family, or just difficult encounters with life. A good idea. A needed ministry. Read More 

When I first heard of the Vatican’s recent “crackdown” on the Leadership Council of Women Religious I was angry but not particularly surprised. Brought to us by the same men who brought us the sexual abuse scandal and who still are unable to accept their culpability in it or deal with it responsibly, this document takes the women religious to task for daring to publicly disagree with some Catholic Church teachings and encouraging dialogue. The sisters spend too much time working with the marginalized and being involved in work for social justice. They spend too little time speaking out against abortion, same sex marriage, and other issues of human sexuality.

As if that were not enough, according to the Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, some of the sisters have the audacity to suggest that their dissent from some RCC teaching is prophetic. Impossible, the document says. True prophecy “…is a grace which accompanies the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and ministries within the Church, regulated and verified by the Church’s faith and teaching office.”

Might that have been a surprise to prophets of old? To Jesus himself? It seems to me that many utterances of biblical prophets were not in accord with the thought of existing religious officials. Read More