Jesus Caritas

Little Sister Magdeleine is one contemporary mystic the postmodern world and a traditional Roman Catholic Church ought to know more about. Her spirit and life were paradoxes emerging from the coinddentia oppositorum of union with God; inner guidance that she received led her along pathsthat defy facile categorizations. That a physically fragile woman crisscrossed the globe attests to the intense, single-hearted pursuit of her vision and an overwhelming passionate desire to be totally identified with her God. Such ardor could only bear fruit in a life outpoured for others. It took whatever form was demanded by the life condition of little people outside the margins and structures of society and religion, unswerving in the face of criticisms and unburdened by considerations of social or religious propriety or thoughts of her acceptability or reputation.

She tirelessly lived out intuitions of where Jesus would be found: among desert nomads, gypsies, circus travelers, aboriginals, indigenous tribes' people, factory workers, hippies and other fringe groups of the contemporary world. She also felt called to be present in no-man's lands of geographical and political borders such as the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain of the Cold War era.

What she did so tirelessly can only be understood in the light of the mystical experience of
Jesus, God in the flesh. The origin of her intuitions was Jesus of Nazareth whose solidarity with fellow humans was concretely manifested from infancy to cruxifixion. This had been so fully grasped by Charles de Foucauld, Little Sister Magdeleine's spiritual predecessor and guide, and she would expand this vision and concretize it according to her own specific call and gifts of heart and mind in the context of a bigger and more complex world.

Little Sister Magdeleine was a truly extraordinary woman. Clearly a mystic as revealed in letters published posthumously, her reticence about personal intimations from God kept them from the public, including her own sisters. This deep experience of God transformed and guided her, impelling her in an outward movement of love in search of people with whom she could share
God's love in total and literal solidarity.

Angelika Daiker's biography, now translated into English, looks at Little Sister Magdeleine's life through the lens of her constant moving "beyond borders." However, Little Sister Magdeleine's inner and outer journey is multifaceted. There are other leitmotifs that can be mined for further reflection and study, themes that have an internal cohesion and that emerge throughout the course of her own spiritual journey. Some of the major themes are:

•     Active mysticism and continuous discernment

•     Incarnational spirituality of place and universality

•     Solidarity with the poorest and most marginalized

•     Kenosis in mission and inculturation

•     Prophecy moving ecclesial structures

•     Authentic and radical renewal of religious life

•     Pilgrimage and permanent liminality

•     Intercultural and interreligious dialogue

•     Peacemaking in zones of conflict

These expressions of one woman's life with God presaged— perhaps, helped prepare the Catholic consciousness for the opening out of the Church to the modern world of Vatican II.

Although there were those souls who had ventured beyond established borders in the same spirit in the past, Little Sister Magdeleine shows us how someone in our own time lit the way and created new paths in her pursuit of God and love of others. Indeed, the depth and richness of her spirituality traverses the gamut of Christian spirituality—the gospels, the desert tradition, organized religious life, engagement with the industrialized and globalized world, solidarity with the oppressed and excluded—and brings into focus the radiance of the face of God in our midst.

Her life inspires us, not to imitate her, but to walk the untrodden paths in front of us in our own Church and society, not to lose heart when difficulties come along the way, and to move with an inner freedom that comes from aligning oneself with the Spirit of God.

Amelia Vasquez, RSCJ