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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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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