Being ‘At Home’ with the Bible
When we are grieving or in doubt, we know we can turn to the Bible in trust. When we turn to the Bible, to particular verses, we are in fact making our own personal map of the rooms where we feel at home with God and ourselves. These rooms become home to us. We can visit them as we begin the day or take a quiet break in them in the evening. These verses become places where we take root and grow, like the fruitful tree in the first psalm, ‘whose leaves never fade’.
The Bible and the gospels remind us that we never go home alone! God’s word is an invitation to engage in conversation, whether verbal or silent. Often, this conversation will bring us into the varied company of the people in the Bible stories.
Being at home in God’s word allows us solitude when we need it. It also offers us the interesting company of people who can comfort us when we are disturbed and disturb us when we are too comfortable.
Alan Hilliard, The Sacred Heart Messenger
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Finding Happiness Through Spirituality
Human beings desire happiness. We sometimes look for it in the wrong places and end up feeling unhappier than when we began our quest for happiness in the first place. It’s sometimes this unreflective choice that spawns further personal and communal unhappiness. That recreational drug won’t do me any harm. It’s only a bit of fun. I’m okay, I’ll drive. Human experience confirms that we’re happiest when we’re exercising compassion and generosity in the variety of ordinary circumstances of life, through all those ‘little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love’ (William Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey’) that usually fill most of our day. Attentiveness to others fosters contentment and peace, which in turn strengthens us to welcome joys and bear the burdens of sorrow. Irresponsible stimuli sometimes pass for happiness. However, they are usually superficial and transitory, leaving a hollow afterglow. Happiness is the peace and contentment that helps us to stay the course responsibly. Superficial feelings of elation pass quickly. Developing a healthy spirituality will help us find lasting peace, because the path to peace comes from reflective living and learning from experience what it truly means to be an authentic person. If there is no pattern of at least some minimal reflection, we’re living shallow lives.
Jim Maher SJ, Reimagining Religion: A Jesuit Vision
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The Wonder of Our Universe
The ‘wise men’ are also known as magi, from the Greek word magos, which can be translated as astronomer, sorcerer or visionary. The term magi referred to a group of Persian or Babylonian priests who studied the stars and planets to discern the meaning behind cosmic events. In recent years, many theories have been posited to account for the phenomenon of the star the magi followed to Bethlehem, from Halley’s Comet (which was visible around 12 BC), to a new star, to an alignment between Jupiter and Saturn. Scientists are learning more about the universe all the time, about stars and planets and galaxies. If we were to hold up the smallest coin to a section of the night sky, the area it covers could contain the light from millions upon millions of stars, many of them no longer in existence. In 2003–4, the Hubble Telescope, which is in orbit around the Earth, took a picture of such a piece of sky. The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 10,000 galaxies, each one containing 100,000 million stars like our sun. The vastness of our universe can be just too much for us to take in.
We believe in a God who brought everything into being, from the moment of creation when our universe began. For the magi, the wondrous light in the sky led them to the light of the world, the hope of humankind. That is something to celebrate.
Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellett, The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark
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Being present for one another and for God
I am often struck by the way people greet each other before Mass begins. It is very obvious that people are glad to see one another, and if some are missing, others ask about them and wonder how they are. The way we greet people and welcome them can bring a blessing to them.
Upon arriving at Elizabeth’s home in the hill country of Judah, Mary, we are told, greeted Elizabeth and, because of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. It would be wonderful if we could all greet others in ways that brought the Holy Spirit to life in them. Not only was Mary’s greeting of Elizabeth a source of blessing for her, but Elizabeth’s subsequent greeting of Mary was a source of blessing for Mary.
In greeting Mary, Elizabeth declares her the most blessed of all women, because of the special child she was carrying in her womb, and also because she believed the word of promise that the Lord had spoken to her through the Angel Gabriel.
Here was a meeting between two women that brought each of them closer to the Lord. There is a pattern here for all of us. Our calling is to be present to others, to greet others, in a way that brings them closer to the Lord and creates a space for the Lord to come alive more fully within them.
Martin Hogan, The Word is Near You, on Your Lips and in Your Heart
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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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