SHEILA CASSIDY

SHEILA CASSIDY

Does the British doctor Sheila Cassidy have a message for the political correct, leftist, white liberation theology Catholic-in-name-only politician the CINOP?

The British doctor, Sheila Cassidy (who in 1978 entered the Benedictine Order) was imprisoned and tortured in Chile in 1975 for having given medical treatment to a revolutionary.

Shortly after being tortured she was transferred to another cell, where she found a tattered Bible. She opened it, and the first thing she saw was a picture of a man prostrate under lightning, thunder and hail. Immediately she identified herself with this man, saw herself in him.

Then she looked further and saw in the upper part of the picture a mighty hand, the hand of God, and the text from the eighth chapter of the “Letter to the Romans,” a text that comes straight from the center of Resurrection-faith: “NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST” (8:39)

And whereas at first it was the bottom half of the picture which she experienced, here being invaded by all that was terrible, crushing her like a helpless worm, she gradually came to experience more and more the other part of the picture, the powerful hand and the “Nothing can separate us.”

At first she still prayed, “Lord, let me out of here”, but this interior shaking of the prison bars turned more and more into that truly free composure which prays, with Jesus Christ: “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

Furthermore she discovered that, as a result, she was filled with a great freedom and kindness toward those who hated her; now she could love them, for she saw their hatred as their distress and imprisonment.

Subsequently she was put together with Marxist women; she held services for them, and they too discover this liberation from hatred and the great freedom which sprang from it. She says: “We knew that this freedom we had behind strong walls was not imagination; it was a quite tangible reality.”

After eight weeks she was released. What stayed with her, however, was that now she continually found Christ in every day life, in people and in things. She came to understand Chesterton {the apostle of Common Sense, ghk} when he described men and women who, signed with Christ’s Cross, cheerfully walk through darkness.

Finding this hidden life means releasing the sources of this world’s energy, linking the world to the power that can save it, giving it the resources for which it seeks in vain within itself. It means digging for and uncovering the wellspring of joy which can save and transform things and people and which has the power to undo and make good past suffering. SEEK THE THINGS THAT ARE ABOVE!

This is not merely clutching at a straw but a setting-out on the great Easter journey into the region of genuine reality.

{All of the above from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth. Meditation – Jan. 16th}

George H. Kubeck, in pursuit of the truth - www.cinopsbegone.com – Tuesday, January 19, 2010