In researching a play I am writing on vocations, I have recently re-read the spiritual classic “A Right to Be Merry” by Mother Mary Francis (1921 – 2006), a Poor Clare born in St. Louis and cloistered in Roswell, New Mexico. Back in the 1950’s, she wrote a number of very good plays, some poetry and music, and this excellent book. My company, The Theater of the Word Incorporated, produced one of Mother Mary Francis’ stage plays a few years back, and a few years prior to that I had the privilege of entering into a written correspondence with her. She was a wonderful lady, and as the quotations below attest, a very fine writer.
Some highlights of the book, which is all about the joys of life as a contemplative nun (available from Ignatius Press www.ignatius.com ) …
ST. FRANCIS AND SANITY
Francis had not so much gone mad as become suddenly so completely sane that the city was terrified by his sanity.
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THE STAGGERING VIRTUE OF TRUST
Francis had that supreme trust which can let God do all the planning and then be ready to carry out His plans without any tortured weighing and planning of its own. The world likes to call this kind of trust “imprudence”, but only because it is too staggering a virtue to be taken seriously for what it is.
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HUMOR AND THE DIVINE
The term “sense of humor” has lost much of its fundamental significance in these tortured times of ours, even to the extent that it is often vaguely thought to be something associated with telling jokes and laughing at them. In point of fact, it is a thing rooted in the Divine, for a real sense of humor is what balances the mysteries of joy and sorrow. Without it, we can never hold a true perspective on ourselves or on others. The saints were the true humorists. The better poets were humorists. The ability to see through things and to know what is important and what is not, what is to be endured and why we endure it, what is to be tolerated out of compassion and what is to be extirpated out of duty, is dependent upon one’s sense of humor. Without the one, we cannot possess the other.
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THE PRACTICALITY OF A SAINT
The little Assisian “dreamer” did not sigh over the mystic beauty of our Lord’s admonitions in the holy Gospel. He simply followed them.
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POVERTY AND PRAYER
An uncluttered exterior life has a very telling effect upon our interior. And an uncluttered interior is the sine qua non of contemplative prayer.
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THE MYSTERY OF VOCATION
A vocation is so mysterious a gift, a thing so locked in the inner court of the soul, where alone God speaks His wishes, that no one can properly describe or explain it. What can be said is that a true vocation is a call so compelling that a soul must loosen its hold on the dearest and even the holiest of its loves to rise up and follow the summons.
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MARY AND MARTHA
Activity not rooted in prayer is mere bombast and flurry.
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EDUCATION AND THE NUN
Education worthy of the name is built on integration and correlation of knowledge. … True education always fosters humility, although mere accumulation of facts fosters pride. … A girl who has learned to cultivate the soil of her own intelligence is already conditioned for an interior life. Her education is thus supremely useful to her in the cloister.
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For the repose of the soul of Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. we pray!
Kevin O’Brien
President & Artistic Director
Theater of the Word Incorporated
PO Box 29510
St. Louis, MO 63126
314-842-5300 / 1-888-840-WORD
www.thewordinc.org
Lovely. Thanks, Kevin. There is an invisible line where intelligence becomes wisdom. Clearly, she crossed it.
Her comments on education:
Yea, verily. Education is derived from the verb “educe”, which means “to draw forth”. The inescapable implication is that that which is drawn forth was already there. The educator’s role is not to *install* something; that may be the job of a trainer, but not an educator. Our schools today are compulsory indoctrination and training centers. There is no education going on.
But best of all is her take on humor.