Contemplatives all

THE ability of nuns, as
nurses. to put up with long hours of hard work, boredom and/or acute hardship of various kinds has long been the wonder of patients the world over.
I remember a gruff militaryminded uncle of mine, many years ago, reproving a nursing sister for saying her prayers instead of "doing her work." As far as I can remember she replied that Prayer was both her energy-giver and her reward, or words to that effect.
But what of the patience of the patients'? This can often cause far more commotion, sometimes with fatal consequences. In November, 1894, for example, a male patient in Rome's Santo Spirito Hospital went berserk. He suffered from persecution mania and the object of his outburst on this particular occasion was the person who -happened to be looking after him with much love and affection.
This was a young nun called Agostina Pietrantoni, born thirty years before in the village of Pozzaglia near Sabina. At the age of 22 she had entered the Sisters of Charity of St. Joan Antida. On the day in question she was going about her duties in the hospital when the "persecuted" patient suddenly stabbed her to death with a dagger.
She was certainly an exemplar of the dictum that the good die young, for her life had been one of heroic virtue. On Sunday, November 12, she will be beatified in Rome.
That she should thus become famous is due to a long and involved history, beginning with the struggle of Jeanne Antide Thouret to found an order. It proved to be a gruelling fight against the unsympathetic forces of authority. But finally, in 1800, the struggle was crowned with triumph. It may be said that this par
ticular order of nursing sisters. however admirable, is only one of many, and that many people suffer the martyrdom of daily drudgery on a scale that is comparable to the heroic virtue of the "saints." And it would be true.
But it also remains true that people like Agostina Pietratoni possessed something which many people today admire and envy far more even than glamour or riches.
And this possession of hers was similar in kind to that invisible fuel that enables other riursing sisters to go on and on (where others would flinch or go on strike) and appear even to be enjoying themselves at the same time. It is a possession which the victims of today's daily drudgery envy and are puzzled by; and this may be one of the reasons for a very startling piece of information given to last week's meeting of the Mass Media Commission by David Miles Board.
David has, of course, been for some time the Chief Information Officer at the Catholic Information Office. As such he is also director of the News and Information (as opposed to Radio and Television) department of the newly re-constructed Mass Media Commission.
He told this Commission last week of a certain fear that was naturally felt when the Information Office was first set up; and this was that the majority of enquiries received (taking advantage of the office's 24hour answering system) would concern sensational and/or possibly scandalous matters concerning the Church.
Instead, apparently, the largest single category of enquiries has concerned the religious life; and the subject most frequently asked about within this category has been the c,,nteniplative life. This, it appe•,.s• is what numerous people -by no means Pt Catholics or eves
Christians are most anxious to know about.
It is hardly surprising that beleaguered humans should want to escape from an empty life; but it is also well known that the contemplative life is very hard work indeed. It took St. Teresa of Avila twenty years to face the period of meditation in chapel with anything less than horror. She would have preferred, she stated, to face soldiers' bayonets. When the "breakthrough" came, the victory was stupendous and shattering.
The "little nuns" who scrub and scratch behind altars and in the corners of parlours, and move silently between hospital beds, are all "contemplatives" of a sort. They are not cloistered away in perpetual adoration, but they partake, in a varying degree of that same fuel which is generated through prays and contemplation and, quite literally, works wonders. in terms of everyday activity.
What is the secret of this "contemplation" — which is greater even than mere "meditation?" No one knows: but each man lives in his own "interior Castle" and must have tried, occasionally, to puletrate into the inner rooms near to where God dwells. Perhaps those have come closest are those who have long since ceased to talk to their Lord. but have learned to listen, and have begun to hear.
I wish my good friend David Miles Board and his colleagues all success in trying to unfold this mystery to the enquiring world!
And I fancy that when some of St. Joan Antida's Sisters of Charity — from the order's convent in Liverpool, Burwash and Ealing will also be pondering a bit on this mystery as they journey to Rome next week to see Agostina Pietrantoni (Servant of God) "raised to the altars" of the Church triumphant.