Editorial: IDENTIFYING WITH CHRIST!

Identifying With Christ

“L ove one another.  Bear one another’s burdens”.

With these words of scripture, the Holy Spirit tells us “to identify with the other”; ” “to become part of another’s life”. To identify with another – to bear one another’s burdens – is a reciprocal need and fulfillment of human persons. Yet because becoming part of another’s life entails risk, we so often try to reject the need and scoff at its alleged fulfillment. Because it touches the human psyche so deeply, we so often let another suffer rather than identify with. Because we fear reaching out only to be rejected, we turn into ourselves and ultimately consume ourselves through self-pity, fear and isolation.

To the degree that we withdraw from identifying with the other we are at the same time dehumanizing ourselves. Human persons are essentially inter-related, inter-dependent. The horrendous fragmentation of society which characterizes our age – tearing apart nations, church, religious communities, neighborhoods, family life itself – is the end result of promoting “personal rights,” “individual freedom,” – independent of the community – as if it were progress in the history of humankind.

Consecration Forms a family of True Disciples of Christ

It could be said that Saint Louis de Montfort’s purpose was to rebuild society into its essential family spirit. His teachings on the renewal of our baptismal vows, on consecration to the eternal and incarnate Wisdom through Mary, have as their aim to form a family of true disciples of Jesus Christ. Yet all of this remains theory until we see it lived. Together with Montfort himself, the best example of seeing his spirituality come alive in human form is the new Blessed, Mother Marie Louise of Jesus, his first disciple. To identify with another could well be a summary of her life. Of the numerous examples which could be given, there is one which has profound relevance for today’s broken, individualistic society.

At the age of seventeen, Marie Louise Trichet met the itinerant preacher, the Father from the village of Montfort. At that time, he was acting as chaplain at the immense poor house (euphemistically called the General Hospital) of the city of Poitiers where the sick, the hungry, the outcasts – and a good sprinkling of common criminals – were huddled together. In the midst of chaos, Father de Montfort was attempting to build a human society, a Christian family. So when the young Marie Louise confided to her director that she wanted to enter religious life, he boldly told her: “Come and live at the hospital.” In no way imaginable was the poor house a convent. Montfort’s invitation was absurd and the local bishop told Marie Louise so, as did her mother.

The Strength Found Within Spirituality

But essential to Saint Louis de Montfort’s idea of Christian life and more especially of religious life is to identify with the other, to become part of the other’s life. A strong spirituality must undergird such a vocation, true. And the consecration spirituality which he framed can only flower into an authentic identifying  with the other.

Marie Louise followed the path of Wisdom and became foolish in the eyes of her family and of the townspeople. Not being able to find a position as one of the administrators, she entered the General Hospital as an inmate. She became poor so that by becoming part of their life, there would be a reciprocal identifying with. Marie Louise would be fed by the poor with their precious chalice of Christ’s suffering. She, in turn, would feed them with the love of the Lord.

This house of licentiousness, as it has been called, became her novitiate. Her novice master would only set out the direction and then return ten years later. But the direction was clear: through Mary, identify with Christ, Wisdom crucified, so that you may better identify with the poor, the outcasts, the prisoners, the sinners. The General Hospital became her convent, the outcasts her community. In a certain sense, they were her superiors for she became their servant. The extent of her spirit of identifying with is evidenced in her remark when, in the midst of an intense winter, there were not enough sweaters and blankets to go around: “If only I could be the cloth to clothe them”.

Be Christ-Wisdom in the World

Strengthened with the spirituality of Montfort, identifying with became a predominant characteristic of her entire life. Its so forcefully evidenced in the manner she related to her Sisters, to the church, to the sick and the poor, even to those who intentionally sought to destroy her. She became part of their lives.

She wanted her sisters to be Christ-Wisdom in the world. It was not primarily a call to an apostolate; it was fundamentally a call to identify with the eternal and incarnate Wisdom so that in turn they – living icons of Wisdom amidst the folly of the world – could identi9 with others. As eternal Wisdom mutually identifies with us in the Incarnation, as the eternal and incarnate Wisdom fulfills his destiny through the folly of the victorious cross, so Mother Marie Louise wanted her Sisters to reproduce this “state,” this “mystery” of Christ within the church.

The announcement of Marie Louise’s beatification is spreading her story throughout the church. And her story is; identify with. Identify with Jesus-Wisdom the son of Mary, then you will be enabled to so identify with those in need that you will be enriched by them and they by you.

The life of Blessed Marie Louise is a gospel lesson this world must hear. Fragmentation, tearing each other apart, the breakdown of family life; we daily witness the horrible results. It is time, says Blessed Marie Louise’s life,  to identify with others. Time to bear one another’s burdens and thus to heal the brokenhearted. It is time to forgive our enemies, to accept the unaccepted, to reunite as the one family of God Alone. She insists – with the gospel – that this is not a utopian dream. Its possible to the extent that we identify with Jesus, the victoriously crucified Wisdom of the Father.