Robert_Wild_-_Catherine_Doherty_Servant_of_God

ularized West, we would have an experiential understanding
of the origin of the inner drive she experienced to
“restore all things in Christ.”
Besides chapters on Herbs, Education, Sports, and
almost every area of life, Catherine has several chapters on
the religious aspects of her upbringing. As an example, she
relates the splendor of the Easter liturgy she experienced as
a young child:
In a loud, penetrating voice, the priest proclaimed, ‘Christ
is risen! Christ is risen!’ The whole congregation answered,
‘Truly He is risen!’ Then the priest kissed the deacon, who
then passed the kiss of peace down the clerical line.
At this point a Westerner would have been sorely puzzled,
for everyone in the church turned around and kissed his
neighbor, exchanging over and over again the joyous salutation
of the priest: ‘Christ is risen! Truly he is risen!’
At that moment all the church bells started ringing freely,
with a song of great gladness, as if repeating, ‘Yes, Christ is
risen!’ Beautiful and unforgettable was the sound of the ‘forty
times forty’ bells of Moscow. (64)
She remembers carrying the Easter fire home through
the darkness. She recalls the long pilgrimages to the holy
monasteries. In another of her books, Not Without
Parables, she re-tells—adding her own imaginative flavor!—the
miraculous stories she heard while sitting at the
feet of the holy pilgrims who were given hospitality in her
home.
Her mother was “quite ecumenical.” She always put
“Lutheran” on her passport, but her son Andre told me
that when they lived in Brussels after the War they would
attend a variety of churches. She probably did not have
too many strict dogmatic opinions! Her faith was lived,
expressed mostly in her extraordinary love for the poor, in
teaching Catherine about the dignity of all work and of all
men and women.
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