Reaching out to those who suffer
I was once the proud owner of a moped, my economical transport to work at a Dublin hospital. One glorious day, I set off for work as usual. Then the heavens opened and a deluge of rain poured down on bone-dry tarmac, a treacherous combination. As I entered a major roundabout, the bike skidded, and I was thrown off. As I lay prostrate on the ground and unable to move, a car approached. Two doctors got out, examined me and called an ambulance. It was embarrassing to arrive in A&E in my workplace and to have to relate what had happened. However, I was treated with the utmost courtesy and care and witnessed the same compassion being extended to all around me. Fortunately, I had not sustained any major injury and was discharged later that day, grateful to be alive.
Some years later, I arrived at the scene of an accident in London. A young pizza deliveryman had been knocked off his motorbike. He spoke no English and was clearly distressed. I attempted to comfort him as we awaited the ambulance. When the paramedics recommended hospital admission, he rose and stumbled away, leaving his bike by the roadside. I suspected that he may have been an undocumented worker and was afraid of either losing his job or being deported. My heart ached for him.
We meet many who are bruised and broken by harsh experiences. Some suffer great physical pain, others a dark cloud of sadness, the grief of loss robbing life of joy. Economic hardship and political turmoil ravage world peace. We place our hands into the glorified hands of Jesus, so that, fortified by his grace, we are more able to reach out a hand of friendship to all who suffer.
Sr Siobhan O’Keeffe, The Sacred Heart Messenger, January 2023
God is Always Present
During the COVID-19 lockdown, I remember visiting an elderly woman who lived alone, and she was linked to the Mass on her granddaughter’s laptop. She had two candles lit on each side of the screen and a few flowers in a vase to honour the Lord’s presence in my home and heart,’ as she said to me. I was profoundly moved by her tangible faith.
This incident reminded me that the Lord’s presence is at the heart of all our words, worship and witness. His presence is behind the veil of our anxieties, struggles and suspicions. The Lord is simply and profoundly there, for us and with us, as he promised to be, until the end of time. Nothing of value happens in the Church that does not start from seeing the Lord in our midst, suffering and transforming all our human dilemmas.
The Lord says to us,
‘If you don’t know why this matters,
Look for someone who does,
the child, the poor, the forgotten.
Learn from them.
You will learn from me.
You will find a life’s mission.
You will find rest for your soul.
Sit and eat.’
John Cullen, The Sacred Heart Messenger, September 2023
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How We Pray
Our relationship with God involves our whole life, but it finds a particular expression in prayer. As changes take place in how we experience ourselves, there will be adjustments in how we relate to God too. An experience of God’s love can lead to a changed relationship with God and, in turn, a change in our prayer and our sense of self.
If our image of ourselves changes, then our image of God will change, too, as will our prayer; and we will relate differently to others as well. All these elements are interconnected and influence each other. Noticing what is happening in us facilitates movement in response to the action of the Lord. Prayer that is ‘real’ and linked with life will help open the doors to change, or will help us to notice what gets in its way. It will take the main focus off ourselves and how we have to be, or how we should be in prayer and in life. Time is necessary if we are to break the notion that some day ‘I will get it right’. We continue to acknowledge our need of God, so that we can let God lead.
Saying prayers is not the same as praying. Over time, God’s desires can become more central in our prayer, with a diminishing focus on the self. Bringing the real issues of life to prayer involves an opening to change in all the relationships considered here –with self, God and others. By noting change in how we experience God, or in our sense of self as made in God’s image, or in prayer itself, we are invited to make the link between them. This opens up the wider dimension of these relationships and the richness contained in them. The link between prayer and life becomes more obvious.
Michael Drennan SJ, See God Act: The Ministry of Spiritual Direction
Nature as a Holy Place
Gardens offer endless scope for budding mystics! They are safe places, places of life, abounding in beauty. Where there is a garden, there will be water and living things with their varied beauty. Charles Darwin, although remembered as the great proponent of evolution, saw himself primarily as a beholder of the natural world. He spent much of his life contemplating the simplest things, and he ends his great work, The Origin of Species, by noting: ‘It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank …’. This humble bank he studied is clothed with many plants, with birds singing, insects flitting about and worms crawling through the damp earth. It leads him to reflect that ‘these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other and dependent on each other … have all been produced by laws acting around us.’
So, find your entangled bank, contemplate it, muse on its long history and reflect on what it is trying to say to you. Let this be your holy place where you fall in love with the natural world and with its maker. Let the tapestry of life come alive under your gaze. Perhaps you may exclaim, like Darwin, ‘It has been for me a glorious day, like giving to a blind man eyes.’
Brian Grogan SJ, Finding God in a Leaf: The Mysticism of Laudato Si’
The Lord Comes to Those Who Prayerfully Seek Him
It is striking that widows tend to have a very positive profile in the gospels. In one of the parables that Jesus spoke, a widow keeps coming to a corrupt judge for the justice she is entitled to, until she finally gets him to take her seriously. Jesus told this parable as an encouragement to us to keep praying always and not lose heart. On another occasion, as Jesus was in the Temple in Jerusalem, he saw a widow put two copper coins, all she had to live on, into the Temple treasury. Jesus draws his disciples’ attention to her as a model of complete self-giving to God. In one of the gospels, we find a widow named Anna who never left the Temple, serving God night and day with fasting and prayer.
Widows were vulnerable in the time of Jesus. If they didn’t have children, they were especially vulnerable. It may have been their very vulnerable status which led them to entrust themselves to God. If they had no one to rely on, they could depend on God. Being somewhat alone in the world, there was a space in their lives which was filled with God.
Anna was in constant prayerful communion with God. It was only fitting that she should happen to come by just when Mary and Joseph brought their child into the Temple and Simeon was announcing who this child would become. Later on, the adult Jesus would say, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find’. Anna was someone who sought the Lord in prayer, and one day she found the one whom she sought. Having found him, she shared him with others. She spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem. We have much to learn from this widow. She reminds us that the Lord comes to those who prayerfully seek him, and she encourages us to share with others the Lord who has come to us.
Martin Hogan, The Word of God is Living and Active
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The Vocation of Ministry
When you look at the priest in your parish, think about who you see rather than what you see. The who is the man that at some stage in his life felt that God wanted him to become a priest. The who is one that knows uncertainty, doubt and disappointment, but one who still finds faith rewarding and ministry his chosen way of life. The who is one that appreciates a kind word and absolutely needs the support of your prayers. If we see the priest as what, he becomes a function, a dispenser of services and something just to be contacted when a service is required. When Jesus sent out the twelve, he knew that the people needed them just as much as they needed the people. That truth remains unchanged.
Think now of the priests you know, the religious you know, and remember their interactions with you in life. Moments of sadness and grief, moments of uncertainty or fear, sickness or tension –moments too of celebration and joy, where was he or she? Chances are, very close to you and yours. Maybe when you hear criticism of priests or religious, when sincere, accept and understand it and empathise, but maybe when you feel it is not justified you could say, ‘That hasn’t been my experience’ –in this, at least, you are acknowledging the path chosen in response to God’s call because Jesus noticed people and felt they needed ministers in their midst. Maybe have a word after Mass; a smile, handshake and, ‘Thanks for that, we’re glad you are here among us. By the way, I said a prayer for you this weekend.’
Vincent Sherlock, Let Advent be Advent
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God is our deepest desire
The popular image of a mystic is of someone who spends a lot of time alone in solitary prayer, cut off from the distracting world. The mysticism of nature, however, is a gift for everyone in the audience! You may not be a person who spends much time alone with God but as you contemplate nature are you growing in wonder, in awareness that every bit of creation is singing a song to you, and is inviting you to catch on to its melody? Do feelings of awe arise in you as you spend little moments now and then marvelling at what nature keeps coming up with? When you worry about the messiness of life can you envelop it in gratitude for the steadiness of nature’s laws of growth? Can you hope that perhaps God hasn’t abandoned this chaotic world of ours to its own destructive devices but is creatively at work to bring it to its intended beauty?
The Pope says:
To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope. This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since for the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice. (Laudato Si, 85)
To be a mystic, then, you don’t have to be a person whose knees are wearing out –though God draws some hearts to that silent intimacy. All you have to do is look long and lovingly at creation, and let it speak to your heart.
Brian Grogan SJ, Finding God in a Leaf: The Mysticism of Laudato Si’
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Managing Freedom
Dachau was closer to the city of Munich than I realised. For some reason I thought I’d be lost in the countryside –out of sight and out of mind. On the tour I discovered that it was built in the early 1930s. It was built not to incarcerate any particular ethnic group, but anyone who disagreed publicly with Hitler’s policies. This changed with time.
The tour was both sombre and intriguing. There was a lot to remember, but one part of the tour I’ll never forget. At the end of the tour the guide described the days when the German soldiers left the camp, leaving the prisoners in their billets. Once the prisoners became aware that the soldiers were gone they wanted to leave the camp, but the Allied officers in charge of the prisoners insisted that they stayed where they were. Days later the Allied troops found their way into the camp and liberated those prisoners. The troops were shocked at what they found.
The Allied camp commanders were right. If the prisoners made their way on to open roads they might have died or might also have been attacked by the advancing troops, who would not have known from a distance who the approaching people were.
I stood in silence for a while as the tour was ending. A still small voice made its way into my soul and said ‘it is often more difficult to manage freedom than captivity’. This still small voice and the image of that prison camp has come back to me on many occasions when I faced changes, with their accompanying fresh challenges and opportunities.
Alan Hilliard, Dipping into Life: 40 Reflections for a Fragile Earth
Living in Ordinary Time
In any year there are thirty-three or thirty-four Sundays in Ordinary Time, depending on the date of Easter. The term ‘ordinary’ in English means something that is not special or distinctive. Yet Ordinary Time makes up most of the liturgical year, and in our Church calendar is far from unimportant and uninteresting. The time is called ‘ordinary’ because it is numbered. The Latin word ‘ordinalis’ refers to numbers in a series. The weeks of Ordinary Time represent the ordered life of the Church, when we are not feasting or fasting. Ordinary Time follows the Christmas season and ends when Lent begins. A second portion begins after Pentecost and leads us into Advent.
The story of the life, mission, message and ministry of Jesus unfolds for us during Ordinary Time: miracles, parables, the calling of the Twelve, the Sermon on the Mount, the gift of the Bread of Life, all connect us to the Gospel way that we are invited to follow.
Like all the liturgical seasons, Ordinary Time is meant to be lived! We are not passive receptors of the liturgy or the Christian life. We are called to be full, active participants in the varied life of Jesus, bringing the ordinariness of our lives to our liturgy.
Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary or run-of-the-mill time. It is the time that God does extraordinary things in the lives of ordinary people. It is becoming aware that the everyday moments of our ordinary lives are charged with God’s presence.
We all try to follow that Gospel way in the ordinariness of the here and now, in the muddle, the mess, the mystery and the mundane. This is where God is.
John Cullen, The Sacred Heart Messenger, June 2023
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Hidden Hurt and Helpful Healing
All of us are wounded, damaged, broken and troubled; everyone needs healing. The healing required isn’t always physical. Sometimes it can be emotional scarring, hurt feelings, grief, and the healing of relationships and memories. It’s fascinating how fragile, weak and vulnerable we are.
Many people experience low self-esteem, feelings of inferiority, no self-worth and no confidence. They feel they are no good. The way to healing of this kind is through words of praise, encouragement and affirmation.
Wherever you go today, plant words of encouragement and just watch what happens. The greatest healing therapy of all is friendship. There is more healing done among friends over a cup of tea than in many counselling rooms. We need to take care of one another.
The secret is to learn to live with and cope with the pain and realise it is okay not to be okay. It is not what happens to us but how we deal with what happens. When life hands you a lemon turn it into lemonade. A little bit of encouragement, a kind word and a listening ear can heal.
Terence Harrington OFMCap, The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2023
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