Robert_Wild_-_Catherine_Doherty_Servant_of_God

Second World War, the racial integration movement in
the United States, the Second Vatican Council and its
aftermath. She did not simply read about these events: she
was part of them. It is because she came through all them
with her faith flaming and her love stronger than ever that
she can serve as a safe guide for others in the life of faith.
She serves for mine.
The testing of her faith was not limited to one convent
or monastery, to one small geographical area, or to one
homogeneous group of people. As a wife and mother,
writer and lecturer, as one whose experience and gifts
could form a whole community of men and women, she
was a kind of total person, involved with life on many levels.
Although the members of Madonna House do not, of
course, have her experiences of all of these events, she has
bequeathed to us her faith responses to them. Part of our
heritage is the wisdom God taught her through a long and
difficult human life. The depth of her spiritual legacy
stems both from her personal gifts and the extraordinary
range of experiences which finely honed and forged them.
C.S. Lewis said that life is iconoclastic, shattering all
our theoretical ideas about it. The extraordinary range of
her experiences not only shattered any pre-conceived
notions she might have had about life. They also led her
to a deep wisdom that came not from books but from this
shattering. Her own actual, living presence could also be
quite iconoclastic for others! The intensity of her union
with God could shatter the mediocrity and pretensions of
those who encountered her. Although many people only
met or heard her speak on one occasion, still, their lives
were often changed by that single powerful and charismatic
encounter.
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