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The clearest memory I have of arriving at Madonna House nearly a year ago, is of stepping off the bus in front of the picnic table that serves to mark the bus stop and the driver calling me back to retrieve the glove I had dropped.
The rest of the day was a blur—caused by a mixture of sleep-deprivation, a day and a half of trekking from British Columbia to Ontario, and some “shell-shock” from the past year.
I had never heard of Catherine Doherty, and I didn’t particularly want to begin a four- week stay at Madonna House. But I knew I couldn’t go back home.
I was the oldest of seven in a Catholic family. We knew who God was and that there were rules, which if followed, led you to be a “good person” and allegedly get you into heaven. But I was Catholic in name mostly, lukewarm and more worried about surviving the world than anything else.
I had never heard about a personal relationship with Christ, loving him, and living life for love of him, and I probably would have shrugged off anyone attempting to convince me of it.
Growing up was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Many aspects of my childhood turned me into an angry, bitter person. This was not always visible, but often that anger was simmering just under the surface, waiting for a chance to rear its head and destroy anything it could.
Looking back, I am able to point out specific moments in my life where I was working to turn myself into the type of “21st Century Modern Independent Woman” the world tells us we must become.
Hard angry women, taking what we want when we want it, looking out only for ourselves, fighting fire with fire, and destroying anyone we think might take the least bit of advantage of us. Cruel women, turning from God.
I believed that this was how I was meant to be, that if I only tried hard enough, I could stamp out the “weak” little voices in my heart telling me to be kind or encouraging me to be vulnerable.
Broken and hurt, I sought comfort in these worldly values and in the wrong company. My flesh was winning and my spirit was dying.
Then came a turning point. A friend of mine was betrayed by someone we trusted, and I responded with cruel fury. The anger simmering in my heart exploded and even if I could control it, I didn’t want to.
But at the same time, under my anger was misery and a few years-worth of heartbreak. This toxic mixture became too much for me to handle alone. Despite my previous protestations, when my mother suggested for the third time that I make a visit to Madonna House, I blurted out an exhausted “yes.”
Oh, if I had only known what I was saying yes to, I would not have been so reluctant.
So I arrived in Combermere in chains I didn’t even know I wore—angry, hurt, and bitter.
I meant to stay for four weeks, but I stayed for two months.
I spent my 20th birthday in St. Germaine’s, the women guests’ dorm, with women I barely knew, feeling more loved and more at peace than I had in a long time.
These girls I had known for only a week and a half decorated the dorm, made a card, and came up with a DIY (do-it-yourself) Madonna House style “cake” consisting of MH homemade bread and Nutella with a little candle. I’ve never had a better birthday.
Every day at Madonna House was filled with work and prayer and laughter with new friends. In every “duty of the moment” I found peace of heart.
There is a chapel in the main house and daily adoration. Some of the work departments signed up for an hour, and at least two people from each group took a half hour. It never mattered which group I was in, I somehow either volunteered or got “voluntold” to go. Every day.
I don’t remember the thought process that led there, but somehow I came to the realization that the Madonna House staff actually loved God in a way I was unfamiliar with.
I remember the moment I sat in adoration and looked at God and said, “Lord, I do not love You.”
My Dad had always insisted on honesty, and behind the wall of lies I had created to protect myself, there was a heart that valued honesty, especially in difficult times with uncomfortable truths.
“Lord, I do not love you,” I said, “but I want to. I don’t know how so I have to leave it up to you. I don’t love you, Lord, but I want to”. This was probably the most genuine, real thing I had said in years.
Nothing happened. I felt ignored. I felt like Christ and his mother were watching me begging to learn how to love him every moment I went to adoration. But they just looked at me and said nothing. Silence over and over and over again. I was frustrated, but somehow I had the perseverance to continue pestering them.
I found out later, from Trina, a Madonna House staff member, that it is rare for MH staff to attend daily adoration and even more rare for guests to attend more than a couple times a week. Clearly the Lord was putting me in a time-out.
Madonna House was where I learned how to cry. I cried a lot at Mass, and it was wonderful. I also learned, for the first time in my life, how it must feel to be a child, free of responsibility—only having to think of chores and loving those around me.
Madonna House staff taught me authenticity. Not one of them is like the other; each one is unique and beautifully eccentric in his or her own way. How could they not be? No one can be close to Our Lord who created us and not be as ourselves as possible.
During one of the many spiritual direction sessions I had while I was there, my spiritual director taught me something I still carry in my heart.
When I mentioned I was trying to pray for someone who had hurt me, he told me not to. As I listened in surprise, he told me to instead imagine myself at the foot of the cross and to envision myself offering this person to Christ, and saying to him: “I can’t do this, Lord; it’s too big for me. You take him.”
Three times I offered this internal struggle to the crucified Lord, and each time my heart was noticeably lighter. To me, this was a miracle. No one and no circumstance had ever made me angrier, or more full of hatred than that person, and now that anger and hatred were just gone.
I cannot even begin to list the number of things Christ changed in my heart. It is miraculous to say the least. Madonna House is aptly nicknamed, “The Hospital of Wounded Hearts”.
Throughout my time there I continued to feel no love for Christ. I cared, I loved my surroundings, and the people I loved as my spiritual family, but my begging in adoration had apparently fallen on deaf ears.
I remember the day I left, hoping that one day I could come back. It was hard to say goodbye to my brothers and sisters, but the Lord had told me to go. What else could I do but obey?
I sat in the airport; exhausted after sleeping on the floor throughout the night. I looked around at the other travelers. I looked at the time on my phone and realized that everyone at Madonna House would now be in Mass. I wanted to be with them.
I noticed an ache in my heart. I wanted desperately to be in church, and I was craving the Eucharist. I was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of emotions. A tangled mix of love and longing was burning in my heart.
Suddenly, I realized that God had saved his answer to my prayer for when I would need it most, for when I was back in the secular world, surrounded by things that would only try to pull me from my Faith and beliefs. Finally, suddenly, I was head over heels in love with the Living God, my Beloved, my True Love.
Ten months later I am still trying and failing and trying again and occasionally succeeding, to live with Christ as the center of everything.
I won’t claim to be a new person. That would discredit the struggles I have survived and the miracles Christ worked in my life as he continues to pursue my heart. But I am a little more myself, a little more authentic, a little more polished, less rough around the edges.
To put it simply, I am just another Mary Magdalene raised to her feet and by the grace of God, forgiven.
