This time I am going to introduce a book which according to my parish priest is “a book every woman should read”. This book is called “My Sisters the Saints”, an award-winning spiritual memoir of Colleen Carroll Campbell, an author, print and broadcast journalist and President George Bush’s speechwriter. She has also served as executive producer and anchor to a religious program with EWTN, the world’s largest media network. This book is a spiritual quest of Colleen for 15 years to “understand the meaning of her feminine identity in light of her Christian faith and a culture shaped by modern feminism”. In her life journey, she came across six women saints with whom she had weaved her personal life. These great saints had given her insight, helped her in her spiritual growth and enlightened her when she was puzzled by life’s challenges and sufferings.
Her life journey started off when she was in her midcollege year. Colleen was a brilliant scholarship student, had near-perfect GPA, but she was also a party girl and she described herself being a “good girl on Sunday morning and a wild one on Saturday night”. One Saturday evening after Mass, she felt the hollowness inside her and she realized that was because her life was without God. She then made a resolution to follow her parents’ spiritual discipline and tried to attend daily Mass, read the scriptures and spiritual books. She picked up a book that her father gave her on the great saint – St. Teresa of Avila. Like St. Teresa of Avila, she saw herself running a superficial spiritual life and was living in two worlds – yearning for God and yet, would not let go of worldly pleasures which, as a result, she could neither savor the joy in God nor the pleasures in the world. Yet, St. Teresa’s conversion had a significant effect on Colleen who found hope that it’s never too late to take up the first step to return to God, to start building up a deep relationship with Him.
When Colleen returned home to see her father, she was distressed to learn that her father had Alzheimer’s disease. It was such an agony to watch her father, who once was strong and competent, and had now deteriorated into a child-like state needing intensive care from her mother. That made Colleen turn to another saint, St. Therese of Lisieux — her father’s favourite saint. The saint’s father, who after a series of paralytic strokes, had become disoriented and over the span of six years, endured hallucinations, memory loss and was eventually confined in a mental institution. St. Therese was overwhelmed with sorrow and while in the convent, was unable to visit or take care of her father. Colleen found a strong bonding with the saint as they both felt the anguish of witnessing their beloved father’s health deteriorating in a humiliating manner but surrendered to God’s will. Colleen’s father, even in his dementia remained faithful to God. This cultivated an image of spiritual childhood, a living model of Therese’s little way. She felt that God was using the saint and her father’s apparent weakness to show her the childlike faith He wanted her to learn. Colleen also learned from St. Therese to be gentle and to pay more attention to the underprivileged people in society; the demented and disabled, our frail elderly and even the unborn.
After graduating from college, Colleen took up a very challenging job as the speechwriter for President George Bush. While feeling exhilarated in a prestigious career in Washington, she was struggling with her yearning to marry her boyfriend who was then a medical student back in St. Louis. Her dilemma had put her into a state of unrest as she also wanted to get back to her parents in St. Louis. At the same time, she was allured to the glamour in the White House, a job that people admired. Each morning, before she started her work, she made a habit of saying the Divine Mercy asking for God’s answer. She was 29 at that time and knew that she could not wait too long to start a family. Her coworkers made her feel humiliated by leaving a prestigious career to raise a family. One summer, Colleen was listening to a song while driving and the singer was professing that for all of life’s ups and downs and unknowns, she would rather rest in God’s hands than rely on her own hands. That was the answer, the invitation from God. God was not asking her to obey Him, but to simply trust Him. Going home was the desire that God put into her but it would take more trust, the blind trust that Colleen had learned from St. Faustina – “He will not allow those who have placed all their trust in Him to be put to shame”. That reminded her of St. Faustina’s “dark night of the soul”. For the first three years in the convent, the nun felt intensive desolation, yet, she clung to her faith during that bleak time until Jesus appeared to her and directed her to say a new prayer – the Divine Mercy chaplet.
Colleen had always wanted a baby and it was devastating when she and her husband, John learned that they were unlikely to have children. The couple decided to follow the church’s teaching and avoid any fertility treatments including IVF, a process by which an egg is fertilized by sperm outside the body. While researching some work for her speech, she came across another Carmelite nun, a philosopher, Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The saint pointed out the distinctive nature or calling between men and women and that the latter has a natural calling to be a spouse and mother which is exactly what Colleen was yearning. Yet, the saint also introduced her the concept of spiritual motherhood: even if a woman couldn’t have a baby – whether as a result of infertility, a consecrated state of virginity, or just not getting married – it doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a motherly heart which she can give through counsel and prayers for others. Colleen pondered deeply on Edith’s insight and realized that she should not focus on her inability to get pregnant but to use her maternal gift to “nurture growth in others, defend the vulnerable, and make the world a more loving and humane place,” to echo what Edith described as the highest call of every mother: to nurture the spark of divine life in another’s soul.
The health of Colleen’s father had gone downhill each day. The family was constantly between the emergency room and nursing home. It was extremely heartbreaking to see how her father, or other seniors being maltreated due to their vulnerability. Despite all these, her father remained faithful, believed that God would not abandon us in our suffering, but used suffering to draw us closer to Him. Did Jesus not once tell his disciples that “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me”? This “redemptive suffering” led Colleen to learn more about Mother Teresa’s experience of the “darkness of the soul” that lasted for decades and yet, she remained faithful. She counseled her sisters to find strength in prayer and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, so they could recognize Jesus in the suffering souls which they encountered each day. It was Mother Teresa’s steadfast prayerful life and confidence in the reality of redemptive suffering that allowed her to confront her own interior darkness, believing that her pain could glorify God. A few days before Colleen’s father passed away, Colleen had a chance to stay with her father for a couple hours and when she gave him a parting kiss, his eyes were brimmed with tears but he managed to utter the word “joy” to her.
Colleen had been praying and yearning to have a baby for so many years and now she wanted to give it a last trial with a new doctor. On the way back from the doctor’s office, she heard a familiar prayer from her CD – “Memorare.” It was a prayer she learned when she was a small girl and to her this was the most powerful prayer asking for Mother Mary’s intercession. Even though she had said this prayer many times, she figured why not one more time. After the prayer, she was in tears. When she arrived home, she received a call from the doctor’s office telling her that she was pregnant. She could not believe the news and her heart was full of gratitude. To her surprise, she actually had twins. Yet, things did not turn out too well as one of the babies was suspected to have Down syndrome. As sad as they are, Colleen and John decided to keep the baby if that was a gift from God. At the same time, she had internal bleeding. It was so bad that the doctor ordered her bed rest. Colleen could not do anything but pray. One could only imagine how distressed the couple was. Colleen then turned to Mother Mary for intercession but she found it challenging to imitate Mother Mary’s contemplative approach to life – prayerfully pondering life’s joys and sorrows in her heart. When Jesus died, it must be like the end of the world to Mother Mary, but she prayed and trusted God would bring good out of this apparent disaster. We can see her willingness to surrender to God’s will. During her pregnancy, Mother Mary had become Colleen’s companion, the prayerful and patient mother to whom Colleen entrusted her little ones. At about the 8th month of Colleen’s pregnancy, her bleeding stopped. This was a miracle to the medical team. Colleen delivered her twin babies at about 36 weeks.
When I was reading up to this point, my eyes were in tears and I echoed Colleen in thanking God for His mercy. My heart went out with the author. I felt her confusion about life as a college girl, her dilemma between a prestigious career and a married life, the disappointment of not able to conceive, the humiliation and barrenness that only a woman could have felt, the temptation of adopting IVF which is against the Church’s teaching, the joy of knowing she was pregnant, only to be threatened by an unhealthy baby or even miscarriage, and at delivery, she almost lost her baby son. The six women saints that Colleen encountered in all these years had taught her the true meaning of liberation and had nurtured her in her spiritual growth. I was in awe at how Colleen was so true and frank about her inner feelings, how faithful she remained during her most difficult times and how she was influenced by the virtues of the saints.
I strongly recommend my female friends to read this book as I am sure they will be inspired by the author’s touching story. You can find this book in the CCMEA library.