Pádraig, Take Us Back…

Pádraig, take us back…

to the windswept cliffs of recklessness. To the wet cold Wind that strips the soul bare. To the edge of the Sea. 

Pádraig, take us back…

to barren fields of rock, beneath pregnant skies, away from noise and haste. Through the mists of our indifference and triviality, from the warmth of our security…. to the wet cold hollows of the heart where still the Wind blows. Where the Wind scrapes clean mind and heart.

Pádraig, take us back… to where you found yourself, wandering fields of green, under witch-black skies, tending sheep, whistling the pipe, wrapped in prayer, vulnerable. Through howling nights, through the jigs and reels of Faerie, of Mystery, of Deep Uncertainty. 

For we are lost in our certainty. 

We are cold in our comfortability. 

We are trembling in our security. 

Holy Boy, return us to our native pete; to the soil that sweats blood, that holy sod, that rich black earth from which we, scraped, shaped, and filled with the Wind of God, were made… all of us. And will return, all of us. 

Pádraig, take us back… 

we fragile pots of clay, to the Hands that shaped the stars, and brushed the heather soft, and gave the gulls their cry, and poured water on the earth, and Who alone can fill us.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Ice Cats and Expensive People

I was in a conversation the other day that came straight out of the movies; one of those really bad movies though. A friend shared a meeting he’d had with someone who was preparing to marry a fellow Ivy Leaguer. His bride-to-be had asked her parents for a huge sum of money to supply for the wedding, to the tune of over $60,000! When asked why so much moolah, a complaint over not being able to have her cat at the wedding surfaced. So in the absence of the precious feline, she was having a $6000 ice sculptured cat commissioned.

Yup. Six grand for an iced kitty….

An ice cat that will melt majestically onto the floor during the Chicken Dance (if they even do the Chicken Dance at such opulent weddings). So, what’d ya think about that? What would you say to a groom who’s about to marry such an expensive bride?

I would say “run.”

Here’s a rather long but solid refelction about “expensive people” from the wife, mother, and mystic, Caryll Houselander:

“The expensive people are those who, because they are not simple, make complicated demands — people to whom we cannot respond spontaneously and simply, without anxiety. They need not be abnormal to exact these complicated responses; it is enough that they should be untruthful, or touchy, or hypersensitive, or that they have an exaggerated idea of their own importance, or that they have a pose — one which may have become second nature, but is not what they really are.

With all such people we are bound to experience a little hitch in our response. If we are not sure that what they say is true, we are embarrassed. In time, our relationship with them becomes unreal. If we have to consider every word or act in their company in case it hurts their feelings or offends their dignity, or to act up to them in order to support their pose, we become strained by their society. They are costing us dearly in psychological energy. The individual who is simple, who accepts himself as he is, makes only a minimum demand on others in their relations with him. His simplicity not only endows his own personality with unique beauty; it is also an act of real love. This is an example of the truth that whatever sanctifies our own soul at the same time benefits everyone who comes into our life. To accept oneself as one is; to accept life as it is: these are the two basic elements of childhood’s simplicity and humility. But it is one thing to say this and another to do it. What is involved? First of all, it involves the abandoning of all unreality in ourselves. But even granted that we have the courage to face ourselves and to root out every trace of pretense, how shall we then tolerate the emptiness, the insignificance, that we built up our elaborate pretense to cover?

The answer is simple. If we are afraid to know ourselves for what we are, it is because we have not the least idea of what trial is. It is because we have not the least idea of the miracle of life-giving love that we are. “

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Less is More and More is Less

Jesus needs neither books nor Doctors of Divinity in order to instruct souls; He, the Doctor of Doctors, He teaches without noise of words.
– St. Therese of Lisieux

It’s been said that the less you talk, the more people will listen to you. The simpler your life becomes, the richer your life will be. The one who humbles himself will be exalted, and the one who loses his life will save it. These are the paradoxes that are woven throughout Christianity like golden threads. Paradoxes, mind you, not contradictions. In matters of science, no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. In matters of logic, the principle of non-contradiction says a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time. But in matters of faith, well…. that’s another matter altogether.

Here nature meets the supernatural. In matters of faith, God can become Man, Big can become Little, a Virgin can become a Mother, and a little French girl who died at the young age of 24 and never traveled to the missions can become the Patroness of the Missions. This “simple” girl became a Doctor of the Church, whose writings bring us great peace, even as she spoke above of the noise of too many words.

The bottom line is, her less became more because she gave it to Jesus. Something magical happens in his hands when we turn over our five loaves and two fish. When we hand over our talents, our little treasures, our weaknesses, even our sins. Especially our sins. He takes and makes less MORE. He breaks and remakes everything! He purifies and multiplies and he is the only one who can truly turn our stones into bread (whereas the Devil can only turn our bread into stones). God is the magnifier of our souls. So let us turn our gaze to this simple young woman today; Therese, our big-hearted little sister. Let’s read carefully the prescription this Doctor of the Church has given us, and ask her for that antidote to the poison of selfish power in the world today – her Little Way, that has made her such a Big Saint.

Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love – difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs – everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness. Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events – to the heart that loves, all is well.

Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you – for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart… The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us – that is all He asks.
– St. Therese of Lisieux

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org