Her story reads like a modern-day soap opera: well-to-do Philly girl marries a high-society Philly boy. They begin raising a family; he feels called to become an Episcopal minister. She follows him into the church, whereupon he rather quickly determines he wants to become a Catholic priest instead. There’s just one problem, though: the couple is married; Rome didn’t allow for such a situation in the mid-1800s.
However, there was one creative solution if both were agreeable: he could become a Catholic priest if his wife agreed to separate and live apart – she raising the children and he doing his priestly duties.
Mrs. Cornelia Connelly prayed and wrestled with this option: she loved her husband Pierce, and really didn’t want this to be. However, she knew the calling was etched deeply on his heart and, sacrificing for him, she let him go to Rome to prepare for ordination. In time, Mr. Connelly became a priest while Cornelia, raising her children, decided to become a Catholic school teacher, even founding a religious community to educate children in England and the United States.
Cornelia herself became a religious sister, mother superior of the community she founded. She loved what she was doing, and although she missed her husband immensely, she trusted this was God’s will for their family.
Certainly, a unique story – one that might be lost to history had it not been for this follow-up plot-twist: once Cornelia became a nun, her separated husband-priest became enraged, left the Catholic Church and demanded she and the children return to him. Mother Cornelia said “No.”
What followed in the years to come were intense legal battles played out in the courts and the press, with victory and custody of the children being awarded to Mr. Connelly. (This was the 1800s, after all … and besides, “how could a nun raise her own children?’ asked the anti-Catholic media.) Almost immediately, he turned the children against their mom, and she died while still alienated from them.
Cornelia would often say: “My faith and my religious community were founded upon a broken heart.”
Of Pierce she said nothing else. Never an unkind word. Not once did she blame him, accuse him, or throw-back at him that this was all his fault. She remained faithful to her God and her new-found vocation; she taught generations how to love and live their Catholic faith. In a word, she lived the message of Jesus in today’s Gospel: the disciple became like the teacher.
That isn’t just the call for Cornelia Connelly. It is demanded of all of us. Become like the Master Teacher. In this very Gospel, He shows us how:
First, check your own beam.
We all have things in our lives that keep us blind: blind to grace and mercy; blind to our own sins and shortcomings. We’d rather ignore and cover-up, justify our actions and rashly judge others than take the challenge of entering our own brokenness and allowing Christ into those spaces of hurt, hate and sin.
It really is easier to judge others in hate than it is to allow Christ’s Cross of mercy to transform our own hearts first.
Herein lies the difference between Cornelia and her ex-husband. Mrs. Connelly would often write in her letters and journal entries that she knew she had fallen short of living in the light of Truth. She admitted her sinfulness to the Lord and turned to Him for healing mercy and forgiveness. She frequented the Sacrament of Reconciliation and found the healing she needed there. Pierce Connelly, on the other hand, refused that same gift. He – the former priest – said it was pointless and useless. He was always right, at least in his own estimation; Cornelia was simply trying to make things right with God and within her soul.
Thus, when Jesus advises us to remove the beam from our own eye first, he is challenging us – always in love, of course – “Let me take from you all that does not belong.” He wants us to surrender to him the ways in which we don’t live-up to the gift we’ve been created to be.
With Lent beginning in a few short days, it is now the time to ask ourselves: what beam (or beams) need to be plucked out through the gift of Reconciliation and Mercy? Am I jealous? Do I respond from a place of rage? Am I drowning in selfishness? Are my beams ones of self-righteousness and the need to be constantly recognized? Does pornography, adultery or abuse of alcohol make me use others as objects worthy of being discarded?
What beams can only be removed through God’s grace? What beams need to be placed at the foot of the Cross?
Once you know – and ask the Holy Spirit for help – bring them to the Lord. He’s the one who removes them, and we are only asked to do our best to respond. We still may stumble, but keep bringing the beams to him. In time, they will be worn down. In time, the beams will no longer blind us.
In fact, here’s the beauty of God’s healing mercy in action: the very things we turned over to Him through reconciliation and in humble trust, He will use to make us like Him: to walk with others who wrestle and struggle with brokenness and sin, the very things we ourselves once struggled with. Nothing is wasted with our God.
How many times have we seen those healed by God become healers for others? I think of the former addicts who now counsel those struggling with drugs; the Mary Magdalens of the world who found redemption in Christ’s love and then went forth cleansed to help others find healing from being used and using others. Those who have been healed in love become the healers God uses in the lives of others. They no longer judge; they pray for those still mired in sin. They no longer hate or mock; they walk with. They become the compassion of Christ for those who need Him most. Why? Because they know what it feels like to be lost and alone: the prodigal son and lost sheep who were found and made whole again.
There is no doubt that Cornelia spent the rest of her days praying for her ex-husband, not hating him. She offered her suffering for him, her children and her students. Because she allowed the Lord to remove her own beams, she became one who guided others to the God she knew Who would do the same in their lives.
To this day, the religious community and schools she founded bear beautiful fruit. Her loving heart produced much good for the world, even long after she returned to her Savior. In fact, she’s now officially on the road to canonization … all because she allowed her beam to be healed by Christ and used by Him for healing others. Shouldn’t we do the same?