Colleen Carroll Campbell - My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir

M ORE PRAISE FOR
MY SISTERS THE SAINTS

A beautiful and inspiring story of a womans deep faith and the saints who became her sisters along the path to her answered prayers.

Mary Higgins Clark

Colleen Carroll Campbells personal story teaches a universal lesson: Living free is different from being in control. This is a moving and beautiful book.

Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., archbishop of Chicago

With this intimate memoir, Colleen Carroll Campbell gives a moving witness to the cloud of witnesses celebrated in sacred scripture.

Dawn Eden, author of My Peace I Give You

In troubled times, Colleen Carroll Campbell found herself by reading the lives of the great women saints. And you might find your own self, reading Campbells My Sisters the Saints.

Joseph Bottum, author of The Christmas Plains

This is an inspiring and insightful account of one young womans journey told with refreshing honesty and great insight that will benefit many.

Ralph Martin, author of The Fulfillment of All Desire

Copyright 2012 by Colleen Carroll Campbell

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Doubleday Religion, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

IMAGE , the Image colophon, and DOUBLEDAY are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

ICS Publications: excerpts from Ethos of Womans Professions, Spirituality of the Christian Woman, Vocations of Man and Woman, Principles of Womens Education, and Womens Value in National Life from Essays on Woman: The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Revised Second Edition, Volume 2, edited by Lucy Gelber and Romaeus Leuven, translated by Freda Mary Oben, copyright 1987, 1996 Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites. Reprinted with the permission of ICS Publications, 2131 Lincoln Road NE, Washington, DC 20002-1199, www.icspublications.org

ICS Publications: excepts from Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thrse of Lisieux, Third Edition, translated by John Clarke, O.C.D., copyright 1996 Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites. Reprinted with the permission of ICS Publications, 2131 Lincoln Road NE, Washington, DC 20002-1199, www.icspublications.org

The Mother Teresa Center: excerpts from Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, edited and with commentary by Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
Copyright 2007 by The Mother Teresa Center. Reprinted with the permission of the Mother Teresa Center.

Sheed & Ward, Inc.: excerpts from The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Volume 1: General Introduction, Life, Spiritual Relations, translated and edited by Edgar Allison Peers. Reprinted with the permission of Sheed & Ward, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, https://rowman.com/Partners

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Colleen Carroll
My sisters the saints / Colleen Carroll Campbell. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Campbell, Colleen Carroll 2. CatholicsUnited
StatesBiography. 3. Christian women saints. 4. Women in the Catholic
Church. 5. Feminist theology. I. Title.
BX4705.C245887A3 2012
282.092dc23
[B]
2012006683

eISBN: 978-0-7704-3650-6

Cover design: Rebecca Lown
Cover photograph: Julie Mcinnes/Getty Images

v3.1_r3

To John,
with admiration for all you are,
gratitude for all you do,
and love with all my heart

Contents

A Note to the Reader

This is the story of a journey, a personal search for insight and peace that began with that age-old, seductively simple question: Is this all there is?

In my life that question took a contemporary and feminine twist when it first forced itself upon me one autumn morning midway through my college years. Reeling from a rough night, I found myself puzzled by the gulf between the boisterous party scene that had once captivated me and the menacing emptiness that consumed me in quieter moments. That puzzlement marked the start of a fifteen-year quest to understand the meaning of my feminine identity in light of my Christian faith and a culture shaped by modern feminism.

The spiritual journey that ensued led me to unexpected places, from the baths of Lourdes and ruins of Auschwitz to the Oval Office and the papal palace. Along the way, I wrestled with the quintessential dilemmas of my generation: confusion over the sexual chaos of the hookup culture, tension between my dueling desires for professional success and committed love, ambivalence about the demands of marriage and parenthood, and anguish over a beloved parents descent into illness and my own confrontation with a devastating diagnosis.

Dissatisfied by pat answers offered by both secular feminists and their antifeminist critics, I found grace and inspiration from an unexpected source: spiritual friendships with six women saints. In the lives and writings of Teresa of vila, Thrse of Lisieux, Faustina of Poland, Edith Stein of Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Mary of Nazareth, I discovered kindred spirits. These women spoke to my deepest longings, guided me through my most wrenching decisions, and transformed my understanding of love and liberation.

You might think it odd that I speak of intimate friendships with women I have never met, women who have been dead for decades, centuries, even millennia. Once upon a time, I would have agreed. But that was before my journey began, before the joys, sorrows, and reversals chronicled in these pages convinced me of the living and powerful reality that is the communion of saints.

I hope the story of my journey, and the stories of the six holy women who guided me on my way, will encourage you to discover for yourself the consoling truth too often forgotten in our individualistic age: that the pilgrim who seeks God never travels alone.

1
Party Girl

I still remember the sundress I was wearing that morning; it was black, scoop-necked, and short. Its thin fabric hung loosely on my frame, thanks to punishing daily workouts and a scrupulously fat-free diet, but I felt uncomfortably warm. Perched on the windowsill of our fourth-floor apartment, I dangled my legs in mid-air. I couldnt believe it was late October. Milwaukee was usually chillier by now, already beginning its slouch toward the interminable Wisconsin winter. As the sun baked my skin, still bronze from dutiful visits to the tanning salon, I squinted and squirmed. I didnt want to be here.

I had just come home from the night before and was suffering the start of a monster hangover. My head throbbed and my itchy skin begged for a shower. Tom Petty was wailing from the stereo speakers: