Ursuline – Blog

Veronica

Veronica,

Vero Icon,

anonymous woman,

as so many women are, 

named for the unexpected,

unanticipated response

to your gratuitous,

brave,

compassionate

gesture

– reaching out  

regardless of dangerous judgements, 

a spontaneity rising from the depths of her being.  

Ah, the feel of a soft cloth,

Mopping the sweat,

The blood,

The spittle,

Even momentarily.

In our suffering world today

can I feel

the urge,

the knowing niggle,

the call,

the basic humanity

to relieve

the suffering the Christ today

in Gaza,

in Ukraine,

in Haiti

in Mount Street

at my own back door?

Where is

my Courage?

my compassion?

What ‘momentary relief

can I offer the Christ today?

(Image from St Margaret Mary Catholic Church, FL)

Anne Harte Barry OSU

Patrick, the Migrant

A Presence of Inclusivity and Integration in our Land

The Boy

With my heart’s eye

I see a lad lonely on a hillside

Learning that he is not alone

Like a leaping flame the lesson

Burns through generations

To lap my life. Patrick I thank you.

    Josephine O’ Connell

The little poem led me on a journey with the young boy. Patrick, son of an upper class Roman official – a boy who studied Greek philosophy and Roman law.  Sadly, his education and privilege were suddenly swept away – his life changed forever, when he was kidnapped, forced on board ship and made work as a slave in a foreign land  – all too familiar in our times. Yes, he became a migrant, an exploited and trafficked person, denied his freedom at the hands of local wealthy chieftains and druids in our land. We can all relate to the teenager in his loneliness and struggle to survive six years of hardship, deprivation, rejection and hostility…

But that is the path that led him to God.

Weary and helpless, he eventually managed to escape by ship. Listen to him:

“Years later…I was in Britain with my relatives…in a vision, I heard the voices of the Irish” they cried, “we ask you boy, come and walk with us once again”…“I was pierced to the heart and woke up”

Disturbed and upset, he responded to the call, continued his education, studied for the priesthood and found himself back in Ireland.

He met with many problems, both secular and ecclesiastical, but his humanity and holiness overcame them all because he knew who he was and Whose he was.

Patrick, gift us all with your deep faith, wisdom, humanity and the ability to create relationships of trust and integration like you did. 

St. Patrick

I hear a voice calling me

To deeper waters and deeper lands

I hear a voice gently say

Come follow me I am the way

To deeper waters and deeper lands.

Go raibh spiorad  and dochas Phadraig

In ar gcroithe go deo is choice.

B. O’ S

Taking Flight!

It’s Wednesday January 3rd, 2024, and coming up to 8.30 p.m.  I’m telly-bound down-stairs, having prayed enough for now in my bedroom.

Across the top of my bannister hangs the slinky top a pal has given me earlier, as part of her post-Christmas gift-recycling.  Its final resting place is as yet undecided by me. After alI, I may want to exchange it myself on LETS.  I probably already have enough tops as I am.

I step onto the first step of fourteen. And, as often happens, I stumble. Unfazed I grab the bannister, which has often before righted me just fine in such circumstances. But grabbing it this time, I grab too the draped sleeve of the slinky top, and, forthwith,  lose all purchase on normality. A half-second is enough to assure me that This Time, I am actually taking flight. Sure enough it’s bump upon bump upon wallop upon bang. And then, where the final two steps of the stairs do their ninety-degree turn, all eleven-odd stone of me crashes into the wall, and I know immediately that my back has registered this encounter for the long-term. Momentum bounces me inelegantly onto the mat at the foot of the stairs, and I land, bottom up, and cheek-to-cheek with the floor.

My conscious mind takes a side-step now to the left. I see myself standing at the open door of an imposing, tall-ceilinged room – Edwardian in style – with a long mahogany dining table in the middle, surrounded by solid straight-backed chairs. Three or four deep-seated armchairs are in various corners, a grand piano in the far left, and a solemn china-cabinet backs onto the wall to the right. The room exudes an air of stillness, of being unlived in. It is waiting for someone to add life and colour, but on its own terms. 

This awareness lasts less than ten seconds, and then evaporates. I know straight away that I want it back. I try to keep focussed – seeking beginner’s mind. But in vain! My every-day, this-moment mind now addresses me, “Máire, the following reality also deserves your attention. You have just fallen down the stairs, from top to bottom. You are now dumped on the floor, tóin le gaoth (i.e. behind to the wind.) You have walloped your back sufficiently to angle your spine. You are gasping and panting. You are now a new you, and you need to rise.“

I am in no hurry actually – but I know that the voice speaks true. I have been turned head over heels. I need to get back onto my feet, via bum and shoulder and elbow, via turning and pushing and pulling, via breathing and gasping and panting. And that is what I do! I end up in a sitting position on a sturdy chair. And, having panted some more, I reach into my bra to retrieve my phone. I know that, with it, I cannot be alone. 

But, more important still, I know also what the spacious, ancient, unlived-in room has taught me:  I am now an old woman. I will have to learn to live in an old-woman’s space. I will have to find new ways of being Máire, ways that will find a home among strong, sedate unfamiliar furnishings, in a place bereft of lightness, and colour, and possibilities. I am being invited to imagine myself a player of different music, where there is neither audience nor applause, and me needing to learn to be dweller in a new, unfamiliar home.

Here, gasping more gently, in the quiet of a January night, I say, “Yes.” It is the only positive choice to be made.

And, now, as I type up the memory, it is late February. I have learned, by x-ray and by pain, that I fractured bone T12 of my spine that day of the Fall.  As I edge ever-closer to my seventy-fifth birthday, I am trying to open myself each day to what my “Yes” might involve. It’s a daily, unsought, unpredictable adventure in its own right, and a slow-motion lesson in growing old gracefully. It involves naming and claiming my now moment, and being at peace there. It involves living single-storeyed, slow-rooted and steady, as I pray into new and challenging spaces down-stairs, where the telly no longer lures me as before, and my main company is my still-becoming self.      

Máire O’Donohoe OSU

The Transfiguration Mark 9:2-8

Imagine what it would be like if Jesus also took us with Peter, James and John and led us up a high mountain to be alone with him. We would probably be puffing and panting by the time we had reached the top. The mountain might remind us that God’s secret designs and promises where heard on mountain tops and we sense that this climb had a purpose. Then we are startled by what is happening to Jesus. We shade our eyes as his clothing becomes dazzlingly white, whiter than any cleaning agent could make them. We squint our eyes to try and take in what is happening to him. Then we see that we have company Elijah and Moses – mountain top people.  Prophets to whom God had revealed God-self of old.  We hear them talking to Jesus and we crane our necks to catch something of what is being said. We hear snippets of the conversation, enough to make out that Jesus was setting his face towards Jerusalem and they are talking about his exodus. Jesus’s face was aglow as if he had discovered something of his Father’s design for him “the awareness that God would bring messianic salvation …in the divine way of love and sacrifice.” (Flowers in the Desert p.90) He realised that the journey ahead to Jerusalem would end in self- giving love through the sacrifice of his life. The discovery did not bring dismay but filled him with light – a light that shone meaning on his journey towards Jerusalem. That inward insight through prayer filtered through his whole being right through his clothing.

Then Peter’s booming voice could be heard speaking directly to Jesus: “Rabbi,” he said, “it is wonderful for us to be here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah”. Did Peter made some connection to the Jewish feast of Shelters when Jews dwelt in  make- shift dwellings in their gardens to remind them of their exodus journey when he suggested making three tents? Or was he just trying to hold on to the experience as long as possible? The confusion that followed on his face gave a sense of bafflement and un-characteristically of Peter “He did not know what to say”. Then all three of the apostles felt very frightened. And if witnessing what happened to Jesus was not sufficient revelation “a cloud covered them in shadow; and there came a voice from the cloud ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him’.

 Imagine what it would be like for us to join them under that cloud and to hear the Father’s declaration as to who Jesus was, His Son His Beloved. We hear echoes of his baptism but here with the added command “Listen to him.” We might ask what are we to listen to?  We are to listen to Jesus, the wisdom teacher, who for the rest of Mark’s Gospel teaches the way of self -giving love through sacrifice. The experience ends as suddenly as it began. “…when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore but only Jesus.” We watch Jesus looking back from Tabor to Galilee, the place of crowds and miracles of healing. In the rest of Mark’s Gospel there are only two healing miracles since the role of the teacher comes to the fore.

Reflective Questions on the Transfiguration:

What are the Galilean periods of your life?

What gives meaning to the mystery of suffering in your life?

Does reflecting on the mystery of the transfiguration throw any light on the experience of self giving love through sacrifice?

Moya OSU

The Blessings of a Birthday

Before you were conceived in the womb, I knew you.

        Psalm 137

In the beginning, God imagined you. You would be unique in the chain of life, with a great heart and with a special touch. You would have the possibility to scale the heights and to paint new colours. You would do it in your own time and at your own pace.

Many of my friends have embraced or are about to embrace a significant new decade! I’m drawn to rejoice with them and for them!

Yes, no doubt about it, birthdays need to be celebrated. Why? Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you”. It is not about saying: “Thank you for what you do or achieve”.  No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being with us: “thank you for the gift that you are.”

Aren’t birthdays an invitation to all of us to celebrate the present?

They are certainly not about bemoaning the past or anxiously speculating about the future, but about celebrating the goodness of life – and that despite the many challenges of our later years!

So, in that spirit, I believe we really need to celebrate birthdays every day. How? By showing kindness, gentleness, appreciation, gratitude, warmth, compassion…

For Your Birthday

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day

the blueprint of your life

would begin to glow on earth,

illuminating all the faces and voices

that would arrive to invite

your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother

who loved you before you were;

and trusted to call you here

with no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you

into becoming who you were meant to be,

Blessed be those who have crossed your life

with dark gifts of hurt and loss

that have helped to school your mind

in the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,

Blessed be those who looked for you

and found you, their kind hands

urgent to open a blue window

in the grey wall formed around you.

John O ‘Donohue

Sonas agus beannachtai na blians nua to all who celebrate a significant new decade or new year at this time!

B. ‘O S.