“Mother Mariana de Jesus was truly a heroine in the practice of atrocious penance. She wore a hairshirt that covered her whole body, and she placed small iron tacks even on her tongue and in her ears, leaving free only her face and hands, which all could see….Not satisfied with this self-inflicted rigor, she had herself scourged by the hands of another. For this, she chose a strong, robust woman…” (from The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana by Fr Manuel Pereira (1790), trans. By Marian Horvat)
Mother Mariana, now being considered for sainthood (which I believe she will obtain) is not the only sainted person to go out of their way to torture themselves. In fact, it is rare to find a Christian saint who did not. St Francis wore thin clothing and slept outside in the rain, eating next to nothing; St Anthony lived in a one-room mudbrick hut with only one opening for a daily deliverance of one loaf of bread and water for 20 years; St Catherine of Sienna lived for months on only the host of Christ, and so on and on. The reasons they gave for their chosen sufferings were to save the world from itself, just as Christ sacrificed himself, and to redeem themselves, who, each felt, was the very worst of mankind. This from people who would literally give you their last crust of bread and die so that you might be saved.
But really, tacks under the tongue? Mother Mariana was to become abbess of a convent in Quito, Ecuador in the late 1500’s. At the time, her self-punishments were initially criticized as excessive, but once people saw her in ecstatic trances, they understood perfectly why she tortured herself. In those days, after all, ordinary people would walk through the town center on certain holy days flogging themselves. But to us, there seems to be something mentally unstable about these practices. If we add to this how the saints – particularly the female saints - describe their ecstasies through the divine spouse-hood to Jesus, we arrive at the foot of Dr. Freud and his discourses on sexual frustration. In other words, to those of us today, many if not most of these saints would be classified as psycho-sexually sick. (This self-torture is not restricted to the distant past. For instance, it is now known that Pope – now Saint - John Paul II, who was among us until less than twenty years ago, wore certain cutting cords under his garments to illicit discomfort and pain). In this enlightened age, how can we think otherwise? And wouldn’t that, then, cancel out any special graces that these saints were supposed to carry?
It gets worse. According to the afore-mentioned book on Mother Mariana, she also was tormented for months at a time by the devil, who destroyed her physical health while trying to destroy her faith. This, too, is nearly universal for the saints, getting at the root of what St John of the Cross famously described as the “dark night of the soul.” Padre Pio, a famous miracle worker from the early to mid-20th century, was said to emerge from his cell in the morning bloody and bruised after bouts with the devil, as well as with other evil spirits. Is this “fighting with the devil” not some sort of mental illness as well? Perhaps an expression of bi-polar syndrome, or even schizophrenia?
Perhaps. The Catholic Church has tests to determine who is really undergoing spiritual testing and who is sick, much of this based on works coming from these people. Other religions – I have read most about the Hindus and Buddhists – have these tests as well. Do miracles surround these people, and are these for the good? Does spiritual enlightenment flow from them regularly? For if it does, it could not be from the devil. As Christ said, a house divided against itself cannot stand; Satan would thus not continue to grant good deeds and words.
Still, reading about some of these torments will often lead the modern mind to become suspicious – my mind, for instance. As said, the saints believe themselves at times to be re-living the passion of Christ, and thus sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the world. How this occurs is a mystery of faith that no one on earth completely understands, but it is the primary tenet of Christianity. It is this lack of understanding that grants us doubts. Sure, the Son of God might be able to redeem the sins of the world through his suffering, but Uncle Giuseppe? Mother Smallchurch? To do so, we must imagine, one would have to be extraordinarily close to God.
Thus the necessity of miracles to prove the sanity and veracity of a saint. Mental patients do not heal people with stage 4 cancer, or accurately tell the future time and again. But those are only outward signs. Inward purity is necessary to stand that close to God, and the way forward for many religions is to suffer acutely. The Sun Dance ceremony of the Plains Indians calls for the participant to hang himself from a scaffolding by thongs pulled through his chest muscles; Hindu holy people might spend the now-iconic lifetime in a Himalayan cave living off of one handful of rice a day; and Christians such as Padre Pio and Mother Mariana, might have to suffer the torments of Satan to burn the soul clean of the impurities of Man.
Yes, it does all make sense from a religious point of view, although, again, the modern reader will probably not be comfortable with these sufferings. The results of such suffering by these saints, however, can be astounding. For instance, as related by 16th century testimony and as collated by Father Sousa in the 18th, Mother Mariana was told directly by Christ himself that much of her suffering was to be done for the 20th century. The 20th century, she was told, would see the worst crises in the Church in its many-century history, including unspeakable corruption in the Church itself and a massive loss of faith by the laity. This has indeed happened, and could not have been foreseen through reason alone 400 years ago. She was told that this was to be the devil’s century, and Mother Mariana was asked (and the challenge accepted) to suffer for a fruitful end to this abominable time that most of you reading this have just lived through.
We cannot say, from the religious perspective, that this vision was wrong. The apparition of the Virgin at Fatima doubled down on this for the 20th century. But has her suffering, along with many others of the saints, and along with many other apparitions of the Holy Mother, worked? That is the hard part. From the modern perspective, which often includes my own, much of what the saints suffer from seems more from mental illness, but wouldn’t such a determination be exactly what people in a lost age would think? One, that is, such as our own? If the prophecies are correct, where might we find the fruits of the saints in the last century? Were they then planted, but are yet to come? Have they not been enough, all in vain for such a lost age? Or have their visions been mere expressions of mental illness, regardless of the many miracles?
It is claimed by the Catholic Church that all of us who go to heaven must first be cleansed of our sins through the fiery agonies of Purgatory. But what of suffering here on Earth? Might not the human direction of history demand a universal suffering from all of human kind? What might that look like? Might our suffering, our trials for purgation, simply be to live in the brave new world that big technology and big government have planned for us? From neural inserts of nano-technology to universal surveillance, might not the horrible penances of the saints from the past be preferable?
Take your pick: the new world order or a new Noah’s Flood. Both are punishments that we well understand – just as the Saints understood and understand their self-punishments. Actions have consequences. Self-deprecation might lead to charity and compassion, but self-love breeds selfishness, and selfishness breeds every type of evil in human organizations. This is the law of humanity, if not of God. It is just a question of who among us will pay the price, and how. For this, I pray that the suffering of the saints, and of Christ himself, are indeed efficacious. If not, neither faith nor the lack of it will save us from punishments worse than tacks under the tongue.
“Mother Mariana de Jesus was truly a heroine in the practice of atrocious penance. She wore a hairshirt that covered her whole body, and she placed small iron tacks even on her tongue and in her ears, leaving free only her face and hands, which all could see….Not satisfied with this self-inflicted rigor, she had herself scourged by the hands of another. For this, she chose a strong, robust woman…” (from The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana by Fr Manuel Pereira (1790), trans. By Marian Horvat)
Mother Mariana, now being considered for sainthood (which I believe she will obtain) is not the only sainted person to go out of their way to torture themselves. In fact, it is rare to find a Christian saint who did not. St Francis wore thin clothing and slept outside in the rain, eating next to nothing; St Anthony lived in a one-room mudbrick hut with only one opening for a daily deliverance of one loaf of bread and water for 20 years; St Catherine of Sienna lived for months on only the host of Christ, and so on and on. The reasons they gave for their chosen sufferings were to save the world from itself, just as Christ sacrificed himself, and to redeem themselves, who, each felt, was the very worst of mankind. This from people who would literally give you their last crust of bread and die so that you might be saved.
But really, tacks under the tongue? Mother Mariana was to become abbess of a convent in Quito, Ecuador in the late 1500’s. At the time, her self-punishments were initially criticized as excessive, but once people saw her in ecstatic trances, they understood perfectly why she tortured herself. In those days, after all, ordinary people would walk through the town center on certain holy days flogging themselves. But to us, there seems to be something mentally unstable about these practices. If we add to this how the saints – particularly the female saints - describe their ecstasies through the divine spouse-hood to Jesus, we arrive at the foot of Dr. Freud and his discourses on sexual frustration. In other words, to those of us today, many if not most of these saints would be classified as psycho-sexually sick. (This self-torture is not restricted to the distant past. For instance, it is now known that Pope – now Saint - John Paul II, who was among us until less than twenty years ago, wore certain cutting cords under his garments to illicit discomfort and pain). In this enlightened age, how can we think otherwise? And wouldn’t that, then, cancel out any special graces that these saints were supposed to carry?
It gets worse. According to the afore-mentioned book on Mother Mariana, she also was tormented for months at a time by the devil, who destroyed her physical health while trying to destroy her faith. This, too, is nearly universal for the saints, getting at the root of what St John of the Cross famously described as the “dark night of the soul.” Padre Pio, a famous miracle worker from the early to mid-20th century, was said to emerge from his cell in the morning bloody and bruised after bouts with the devil, as well as with other evil spirits. Is this “fighting with the devil” not some sort of mental illness as well? Perhaps an expression of bi-polar syndrome, or even schizophrenia?
Perhaps. The Catholic Church has tests to determine who is really undergoing spiritual testing and who is sick, much of this based on works coming from these people. Other religions – I have read most about the Hindus and Buddhists – have these tests as well. Do miracles surround these people, and are these for the good? Does spiritual enlightenment flow from them regularly? For if it does, it could not be from the devil. As Christ said, a house divided against itself cannot stand; Satan would thus not continue to grant good deeds and words.
Still, reading about some of these torments will often lead the modern mind to become suspicious – my mind, for instance. As said, the saints believe themselves at times to be re-living the passion of Christ, and thus sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the world. How this occurs is a mystery of faith that no one on earth completely understands, but it is the primary tenet of Christianity. It is this lack of understanding that grants us doubts. Sure, the Son of God might be able to redeem the sins of the world through his suffering, but Uncle Giuseppe? Mother Smallchurch? To do so, we must imagine, one would have to be extraordinarily close to God.
Thus the necessity of miracles to prove the sanity and veracity of a saint. Mental patients do not heal people with stage 4 cancer, or accurately tell the future time and again. But those are only outward signs. Inward purity is necessary to stand that close to God, and the way forward for many religions is to suffer acutely. The Sun Dance ceremony of the Plains Indians calls for the participant to hang himself from a scaffolding by thongs pulled through his chest muscles; Hindu holy people might spend the now-iconic lifetime in a Himalayan cave living off of one handful of rice a day; and Christians such as Padre Pio and Mother Mariana, might have to suffer the torments of Satan to burn the soul clean of the impurities of Man.
Yes, it does all make sense from a religious point of view, although, again, the modern reader will probably not be comfortable with these sufferings. The results of such suffering by these saints, however, can be astounding. For instance, as related by 16th century testimony and as collated by Father Sousa in the 18th, Mother Mariana was told directly by Christ himself that much of her suffering was to be done for the 20th century. The 20th century, she was told, would see the worst crises in the Church in its many-century history, including unspeakable corruption in the Church itself and a massive loss of faith by the laity. This has indeed happened, and could not have been foreseen through reason alone 400 years ago. She was told that this was to be the devil’s century, and Mother Mariana was asked (and the challenge accepted) to suffer for a fruitful end to this abominable time that most of you reading this have just lived through.
We cannot say, from the religious perspective, that this vision was wrong. The apparition of the Virgin at Fatima doubled down on this for the 20th century. But has her suffering, along with many others of the saints, and along with many other apparitions of the Holy Mother, worked? That is the hard part. From the modern perspective, which often includes my own, much of what the saints suffer from seems more from mental illness, but wouldn’t such a determination be exactly what people in a lost age would think? One, that is, such as our own? If the prophecies are correct, where might we find the fruits of the saints in the last century? Were they then planted, but are yet to come? Have they not been enough, all in vain for such a lost age? Or have their visions been mere expressions of mental illness, regardless of the many miracles?
It is claimed by the Catholic Church that all of us who go to heaven must first be cleansed of our sins through the fiery agonies of Purgatory. But what of suffering here on Earth? Might not the human direction of history demand a universal suffering from all of human kind? What might that look like? Might our suffering, our trials for purgation, simply be to live in the brave new world that big technology and big government have planned for us? From neural inserts of nano-technology to universal surveillance, might not the horrible penances of the saints from the past be preferable?
Take your pick: the new world order or a new Noah’s Flood. Both are punishments that we well understand – just as the Saints understood and understand their self-punishments. Actions have consequences. Self-deprecation might lead to charity and compassion, but self-love breeds selfishness, and selfishness breeds every type of evil in human organizations. This is the law of humanity, if not of God. It is just a question of who among us will pay the price, and how. For this, I pray that the suffering of the saints, and of Christ himself, are indeed efficacious. If not, neither faith nor the lack of it will save us from punishments worse than tacks under the tongue.
RSS Feed