13 July 2017 - Thursday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne - Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5

    I thought about the psalm response we had yesterday, in its plea: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”  Today, as we hear the continuation of the story of Joseph in Egypt from the book of Genesis, we hear not only about mercy, but also about forgiveness, healing, and trust.  We all know the story of Joseph, of his punishment at the hands of his family, of being sold into slavery in Egypt.  But, Joseph moves beyond that, to a position of power and privilege in the Egyptian hierarchy.  He could use his rank to obtain revenge and punishment, but instead he uses his position wisely, even as he recognizes the brothers who sold him into slavery. 

      The story of Joseph has a happy ending; we all like happy endings, don’t we?  But in the reality of our lives, not all endings are happy.  I mentioned yesterday how I had heard about Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s story of becoming the mother superior and foundress of an order of nuns who ministered to cancer patients.  Today, I want to speak about a group of nuns whose story also came through me through a novel written in 1931 entitled The Last One to the Scaffold written by a German convert to Catholicism, Gertrud von Le Fort.    After the French revolutions, many monasteries and convents were ordered shut, as the new government turned against the Catholic Church.  In 1790, the government ordered the Carmelite monastery in the town of Compiegne, France to close.  Yet, in 1794, 16 nuns who lived in that monastery were arrested on charges of living in a religious community, which was against the law in post-revolutionary France.  The nuns were sentenced to death in Paris, where they put to death by the guillotine while they sang the Salve Regina.  They refused to bow down to a government that condemned their Christian way of life.  Later, in 1957, French composer Francois Poulenc wrote an opera based on their story entitled Dialogues of the Carmelites.  It is the only major opera that has all female voices.  Poulenc, a lapse Catholic at the time, said that composing the opera, both the music and its lyrics, brought him back to the Catholic faith, as he was so inspired by the story of these Carmelite nuns.  Lord, help us to live out your mercy in our lives.  Help us to be faithful servant to your Word in a world that is often against us.