CISTERCIAN WOODS - December 11, 2002

December 11, 2002

Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened

And I will give you rest.

Tony is suffering from manic depression. He comes to Lauds and Mass here in the morning and today we had breakfast together. He claims to have seen Jesus, Our Lady, St. Theresa and St. Bridget many times. Our Lady, he says, doesn’t like women wearing trousers - they are not her girls. Having asked me for a blessing, he promised to add me to his list of priests he prays for - I’m number 28 or 29 - saying that my life will now take a turn.  I’ll pray especially to St. Peregrine that you won’t die of cancer. You won’t die of cancer, he promised.

Got a card from John Fitzpatrick this morning telling me that Remy Mattanga died on Saturday December 7 in hospital in Arusha and was buried in Galapo on Monday. The news saddened me but I’m also glad he is released and hope he died peacefully.  The first retreat I ever gave was to Remy and Fortunatus in Galapo in 1984. May he rest in peace.

***

We spent an hour and a half at lunch today talking about past students of St. Patrick’s College, some of whom are now dead - Joe Walsh, Tony Spellman, John Egan and Paddy Shivenan. Michael told us of his own experience with cancer over the past year, a very traumatic time. He seems to be doing well now and hopefully will continue that way.

***

This morning when reflecting on the retreat I have to give to the MMM’s I thought of how God is already moving towards us, seeking us out, even as we are searching and waiting for Him. The thought was confirmed when I went to do my meditation from Travelling Light.

In our journey towards wholeness or inner freedom,

It is often reassuring to realise that

God is also busy seeking us

…the beckoning God of surprises…

Is far more eager to be intimate with us

than we are with God

(Travelling Light, p.60)

Daniel O’Leary goes on to say that it is God himself who moves us to begin the journey and to illustrate what our seeking is like he quotes St. John of the Cross, using the passage, extracts of which are on Maura’s memorial card:

One dark night,

Fired by love’s urgent longings…

I went out unseen,

My house being now all stilled…

With no other light to guide

Than the one that burned in my heart

I abandoned and forgot myself,

Laying my face on my beloved;

All things ceased; I went out from myself,

Leaving my cares

Forgotten among the lilies.

It is the light of the Divine presence, the power of God’s love within us which moves us to go in search of God - we are urged on by Love - and there is nothing we can do to make progress except to let this urging of Love have it’s way. The only power we possess is to block God’s Love, to prevent it working in us. We have the power to resist, and don’t we exercise that power very well!

The task of today’s meditation is to discover the face of God in the very thoughts and feelings that cloud your heart. But we do not just deal with abstract thoughts and feelings:

picture the person who is currently giving you the most hassle and grief

…draw an imaginary circle of light around that person’s head.

…let your negative (and maybe justified) feelings fall away.

Reflect on the…benefits that this person has brought your way.

When you bless this person

You release them from the grip of your anger

(Travelling Light, p.64)

A final association with Maura is the quoting of the writer Tagore who I think she liked:

Yours is the light that breaks from the

Dark, and the good that sprouts from the deft heart

Of strife.

Yours is the gift that still is gain when

Everything is a loss, and the life that flows through

The caverns of death.

Yours is the heaven that lies in the common

Dust, and You are there for me; You are there

For all.

(Tagore, quoted in Travelling Light, p.63)

***

It is usually in disguise

That God comes to meet us;

And the disguised God often lives

At the strangest addresses.

(Travelling Light, p.63)

Our enemy is really our precious teacher;

That is why Jesus asks us to love our enemy

(Travelling Light, p.62)

***

Michael has gone and we’re joined by Brendan and Julian. Brendan is an elderly farmer from Fethard who got animated when we started talking about nature, telling us the story of his cocker spaniel, Blackie, who was with him for 13 years but died of a brain tumour two weeks ago. He misses the dog so much. According to him we’re in for bad weather, maybe even snow, because of the way the moon is sitting in the sky.

Julian is very incensed by the hatred the Protestants in the North have for Catholics and wonders why Our Lord, who led Israel out of Egypt, cannot or does not do something about it. I suggested that we might have to follow the example of Jesus, the Lamb that was led to the slaughter, and find some power hidden in that. He thought, with Jesus risen, that that would not apply now.

John Joe from Kerry arrived after supper.