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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God is our deepest desire
For the Church, Mary is a model of faith, charity and discipleship. In the Magnificat, there is a fourth quality that underpins each of the others. Mary is seen as a model of desire: she helps us to recognise what it is that we want.
The Magnificat begins: ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’ (Luke 1:46–47). We note that Mary does not say that she is happy. Happiness might be a contentment that we find for a time in life, whereas joy has a restless quality, a longing. There is an expectation of what we seek, an aching, wonderful anticipation. It’s a bit like the experience of children on Christmas Eve, waiting to see what Father Christmas will bring. I can recall this experience of anticipation much more sharply than any present I ever opened.
I imagine Mary was telling Elizabeth of a Christmas Eve experience much more intense and fuller than that of children waiting for presents. That’s because she longs for what she bears in her womb: God. She welcomes her mission to bring the Saviour to birth. Now she desires always what her Son and God our Father desire in her life, and through her for the life of God’s people.
Every time we reach a milestone or get our hands on something we’ve been after for some time, the afterglow of satisfaction doesn’t last long. Something else always comes along to entice us. The reason this happens is that we don’t just want beautiful things, we want beauty itself; we don’t want this or that good thing, we want goodness itself. In short, we want God. God is our deepest desire.
Eamonn Walls SJ, The Sacred Heart Messenger, May 2023
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Burdens
Most people carry burdens of one kind or another, very often imposed by others. Jesus is clear that our relationship with God is not intended to be another burden on a burdened people. Among the burdens Jesus carried was that imposed by those who were hostile to all he stood for. He was at his most burdened as he hung from the cross. He carried that burden so that he could help us to carry our own burdens. Through his life, death and resurrection, he released into the world the power of God’s love, the power of the Holy Spirit, a lifegiving, enabling power. Saint Paul was burdened as he wrote to the church in Philippi from his prison cell. Yet he could say, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13). The Lord strengthens us to carry our burdens so that we can help to carry those of others. As Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfil the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2). The law of Christ, which is the law of love, the fruit of the Spirit, is not about imposing burdens but about lifting them.
Martin Hogan, The Word is Near You, on Your Lips and in Your Heart
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Our Spiritual Home
Somebody was asked once, ‘Why do you bother staying in the Church?’ The answer is, ‘I’ve no other spiritual home.’ We’ll hear the word and return, often during Lent. We stray away from God in small journeys or big ones. We might not feel like returning, but when we do, we know we’re home.
Church is home because it is where Jesus lives – not in the building only but in the people. Jesus lives with each of us, as ‘he makes his home with us’. He also lives among us in community, ‘wherever two or three are gathered in my name’.
We need to make the building and the spirit of our gatherings a homecoming. In our Church home we can hear each week of different needs and celebrations of the parish. We remember especially the sick, the dying and the ones gone before us.
Everyone helps build a home. The priest cannot do it alone. Can we ensure that every parish has a welcoming group, a group that keeps in touch with locals and plans future events?
Donal Neary SJ, The Sacred Heart Messenger, February 2023
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Listening to the Gospel
Most weekends, I say Mass in one of our local prisons. Usually, about 10 to 15 percent of prisoners come to Mass, which is much more than you would expect. They divide roughly into three groups: the first are the ‘cradle Catholics’, the people who are meant to be there and the only ones who ever give any trouble; the second are members of various reformed traditions who didn’t make it out of bed in time for the Anglican service; the third are people who look like they may never have been inside a church in their lives. Maybe the third group come out of curiosity, just to have something to do. They have no idea where they are or how to behave, but they are also the ones who listen the hardest.
I used to wonder why until one of them, Kolo, a Ghanaian, said to me,
‘Father, coming into prison is a pretty clear sign in anyone’s life that Plan A isn’t really working. And if you have a Plan B that might work, they may or may not believe you, they may or may not agree with you, but they’ll always give you a fair hearing.’ That’s the moment when I thought to myself, ‘Yes, that’s why I got up this morning. I knew there was a reason.’ There is something very humbling in knowing that the people you are preaching to may well be hearing the Gospel for the very first time.
The men’s task, no different from our own, is to be the presence of Christ within the place they live and work. I do not think there is any Church that could not learn something from the Catholic Christian communities of the ‘inside’.
Paul O’Reilly SJ, Hope in All Things
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What is the Kingdom of God?
What is the Kingdom of God? This is not an easy question to answer. Once it was described in terms of somebody witnessing a downpour in a busy city on a crowded shopping day. The rain caught people off guard, and as people huddled together for shelter, it was noticed that young lads walked towards a boy in a wheelchair and helped his mother get him out of the rain. Another man held his jacket over his wife’s head as the icy rain soaked through his shirt and inched its way down his back. A girl stood from her sheltered and cherished doorway to offer the space to an elderly woman. A young mother wrapped her coat around her little children to shield and protect them.
It is so simple, but for the one observing, every act speaks of God’s Kingdom as being fully alive; it’s about putting the other first. The Kingdom of God is not a geographical location nor is it a walled garden. It’s not somewhere to be reached but a reality to be lived. It is not about a future address but living life in the now, living it fully and alive, living it freely and cheerfully, living it for others and with others so that God’s glory can reveal itself again and again, even in a winter’s cloudburst.
Vincent Sherlock, Let Advent be Advent
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Our Relationship with God
The first Easter shattered all the disciples’ expectations. Easter continues to shatter our expectations. The risen Lord continues to take us by surprise. He stands among us even when all hope seems lost; he touches us with his presence when we least expect it. When we are most aware of our failure to follow him, he speaks his word of peace to us, because even when we are faithless, he remains faithful. Easter announces that the story of our relationship with the Lord never ends, because his relationship with us never ends. He continues to stand among us, assuring us of his presence, offering us his gift of peace and sending us out as his messengers of hope.
Martin Hogan, The Word is Near You, on Your Lips and in Your Heart
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Coming together in Christ
There are two bowls of water in the story of the Passion. One is Pilate’s, used to scrub himself of all responsibility. The other is the one with which Jesus bathes others, soaking them in lavish love.
The two bowls are always before us in life. Jesus shows us that when you take the side of the dispossessed, your spirit deepens and grows. When our self-obsession is reduced, your life expands and your horizon enlarges. To pick up the towel is not to become a doormat. We are called, not to serve people’s wants, but their needs. We serve others in the name of Christ. We share what we have, but, more importantly, who we are, especially with people who are rejected and alienated. They are the life presence that transforms us by showing us the heart of God, the prophets, preachers and provocative witnesses of the Gospel. They challenge us with questions that disturb and disquiet us, as they lead us into looking at the Passion and Easter with new eyes and hearts.
Easter invites us to remember the Lord when we gather as a community for the Eucharist. He entrusts his future in the world to us in the Church.
John Cullen, The Sacred Heart Messenger, April 2022
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Going out to ‘the wilderness’
Lent is a time to respond to that hunger which lies at the core of our being, the hunger for a deeper connection with the Creator, the hunger to experience freshness in our lives, the hunger for what we truly long for. What better place to work all of this out than ‘the wilderness’? From time to time, we are landed in the wilderness. Sometimes it is an unpleasant experience and at other times we crave it, in response to a deep desire to step back from the day-to-day and make space in our lives for reflection, is Spirit-led and we are not alone.
Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellett, The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark
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‘Taking Up’ for Lent
‘What are you giving up for Lent?’ ‘Sweets!’ Childish? Of course. As a child, though, to go forty days without sweets was a serious commitment. St Patrick’s Day was the only light in a seemingly endless journey of sweet deprivation.
There is so much more to Lent. The child in us may give up sweets, but the faithful part of us is called to a place of reflection and repentance, where we take stock and accept what we find, a storeroom from which is brought out the old and the new, where we might find memories of more faith- filled and innocent days, when going to church and blessing our face came naturally.
As well as ‘giving up’ for Lent is there a place for ‘taking up’ too? Taking up a more positive outlook, taking up again the call to Sunday Mass? Is there room on the Lenten journey for a bit of social justice, outreach, charity, volunteerism? Space to make a difference in the lives of others? Maybe, if we can forgive a little, love a lot, share more, pray sincerely, be involved, we will find that instead of giving up sweets, a spiritual sweetness, a true sense of wellness, will envelop us.
Vincent Sherlock, The Sacred Heart Messenger, February 2023
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