| Title | : | Sobornost: Experiencing Unity of Mind, Heart and Soul |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0921440251 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780921440253 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 164 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1977 |
soul- a unity that has passed through the Gospel as a gathering factor.
Sobornost enters our hearts through the grace of the Trinity. This unity
transcends our emotions, our ideas, our identities and opens immense
horizons.
Sobornost is a mystery to be understood more with the heart than with the
mind. Catherine shares her own experience of it in a way that rings true and
brings readers to the heart of the mystery. She writes in a simple,
conversational tone, from a heart full of immense love for God and
neighbour.
Around the theme of spiritual unity Catherine weaves various threads of
Christian spirituality: the primacy and meaning of Baptism, Eucharist,
service to others in love, and contemplation.
Attaining sobornost is vital in this technological age with its loneliness,
alienation, and fragmentation.
For all who thirst for unity between creature and creator and each other.
Every nation and every individual needs to work towards sobornost to heal
the fragmentation of life!
About the Author
Catherine de Hueck Doherty was born in Russia on August 15, 1896. Her
parents, Theodore and Emma Kolyschkine, who belonged to the minor nobility,
were devout members of the Orthodox Church and had their child baptized in
St. Petersburg on September 15.
Schooled abroad because of her father s job, she and her family returned to
St. Petersburg in 1910, where she was enrolled in the prestigious Princess
Obolensky Academy. In 1912, aged 15, she made what turned out to be a
disastrous marriage with her first cousin, Boris de Hueck.
At the outbreak of World War I, Catherine became a Red Cross nurse at the
front, experiencing the horrors of battle firsthand. On her return to St.
Petersburg, she and Boris barely escaped the turmoil of the Russian
Revolution with their lives, nearly starving to death as refugees in
Finland. Together they made their way to England, where Catherine was
received into the Catholic Church on November 27, 1919.
Emigrating to Canada with Boris, Catherine gave birth to their only child,
George, in Toronto in 1921. Soon she and Boris became more and more
painfully estranged from one another, as he pursued extramarital affairs. To
make ends meet, Catherine took various jobs and eventually became a
lecturer, travelling a circuit that took her across North America.
Prosperous now, but deeply dissatisfied with a life of material comfort,
her marriage in ruins, she began to feel the promptings of a deeper call
through a passage that leaped to her eyes every time she opened the
Scriptures: Arise, go... sell all you possess... take up your cross and
follow me. Consulting with various priests and the bishop of the diocese,
she began her lay apostolate among the poor in Toronto in the early 1930 s,
calling it Friendship House.
Because her approach was so different from what was being done at the time,
she encountered much persecution and resistance, and Friendship House was
forced to close in 1936. Catherine then went to Europe and spent a year
investigating Catholic Action. On her return, she was given the chance to
revive Friendship House in New York City among the poor in Harlem. After
that she was invited to open another Friendship House in Chicago.
In 1943, having received an annulment of her first marriage, she married
Eddie Doherty, one of America s foremost reporters, who had fallen in love
with her while writing a story about her apostolate.
Meanwhile, serious disagreements had arisen between the staff of Friendship
House and its foundress. When these could not be resolved, Catherine and
Eddie moved to Combermere, Ontario, Canada on May 17, 1947, naming their new
rural apostolate Madonna House. This was to be the seedbed of an apostolate
that now numbers more than 200 staff workers and over 125 associate priests,
deacons, and bishops, with 22 field-houses throughout the world.
Catherine Doherty died on December 14, 1985 in Combermere at the age of 89.
Since then, the cause for Catherine s beatification has been officially
opened.
Sobornost: Experiencing Unity of Mind, Heart and Soul Reviews
-
Another wonderful book by Catherine Doherty*!
I first encountered Doherty, founder of
Madonna House in 2009 when I read
Poustinia. At the time I was swept away by the world and ideas she described therein, almost as much as when a girl, the vast expanses of the Russian steppe or “степь" in the movie,
Dr. Zhivago left me mesmerized.
I so wanted to gobble down all of Doherty's writings then and there. However, the very essence of what she was communicating in Poustinia—desert, silence, solitude, ‘Less’, etc.—was the antithesis of that head-on approach. Now I’m glad I waited and have returned for my second ‘helping’—so to speak—of Doherty’s special blend of Catholicism-Orthodoxy with a Russian-Canadian flavor.
In Sobornost, she takes us on a mystical tour of the subject of Christian Unity, especially dear to her as a child of the world-at large. Her birth and early childhood in czarist Russia, followed by her escape from the Soviet regime and subsequent life in Canada allow her a broader view on most things, and lend credibility in particular to this theme, sadly lacking in almost all respects from Christian practice and teaching. She shows us how possible and beautiful it is to have unity within oneself, with God, one’s neighbor, and in community.
But lest any particular ‘side’ think they can hijack her—or this book—for whatever agenda they might want to espouse, think again! Hers isn’t a unity at all costs, a unity without values, responsibilities and obligations; in fact it’s just the opposite. Sobornost is centered in the Triune God and as such can only be found at the very Heart of the Cross.
Wonderful insights on true Christian Unity.
*There is a short biography about her at the book’s end, which if her deep spirituality speaks to you as it did to me, you will very much want to read. -
This is one of the books I read as I recovered from surgery last year. Reading it provided me with a little retreat and helped to refocus myself after what had been quite a long time of trial.
