New Year - 2020.

The passing of the year.

What did you do for me?  said I,
as I watched the dying year.
I would settle accounts with you, before you go from here.
You failed to bring all the things you promised at the start:
the fulfillment of my hopes, the wishes of my heart.

The Old Year opened his fading eyes
and said reproachfully,
I gave you opportunities and chances that you spurned,
many mercies undeserved and happiness unearned.

Had you only known, he said, I was a friend to you.
And as the Old Year breathed his last, I knew his words were true.....
I had been ungrateful, but it’s too late now".
I said, Forgive me, Lord and make me wiser in the year ahead.


💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡

Judge not.☀️

Pat is recuperating in the nursing home after surgery, frail, tired, lost and alone. I invite him to our Holy Rosary, Pat has the most incredible smile.

Next day, I invite him again. This time he asks if I would please tie up his shoe laces, Pat does not possess bedroom slippers. I buy him some, he is thrilled: ‘You’re a great girl’, he says, smiling.

Pat’s family wonder why I gifted Pat bedroom slippers, he has no shortage of money they tell me. But it is not about money, it is far richer and deeper than that. To receive a gift for no reason is new to Pat.

He lives a reclusive lifestyle and will never cooperate with family members, I am told but dig deeper and as always there’s another side to the story. There are reasons why Pat is slow to trust. 

Pat is not a problem to be solved, he is a person to be loved, just as all of us are, each and every one of us!

‘Not all wounds are visible. Walk gently in the lives of others’.  (Eleanor Roosevelt)

          ‘Always have charity for where there is no charity, God is not there’. (St. John of God)

The Stable Door.🙏🏻

                                                    

They came that night to Bethlehem.

The simple and the wise.

The Shepherds and the Magi saw

The Glory in the skies,

And sought the Holy Manger Bed.

That place of Mystery.

Where God Himself had broken in upon Humanity.

The greatest men who walk the earth,

can offer us today,

No Diviner Revelation..

This, then, is The Way.

Though to knowledge high and vast,

the human mind may soar.

Every man must come at last

unto the stable door.

Allelulia🙏🏻☀️

                           

    When peaceful silence lay over all, 

and night had run the half of her swift course, down from the Heavens, 

from the Royal Throne leapt your all powerful word.

                         (Wisdom 18:14-15)

Beautiful Kathleen.❤️

                  ‘Those whose hearts are pure are the temples of the Holy Spirit’. (St. Lucy)

Kathleen, deemed unfit for purpose, evicted from her own home while still quite young to be reared and cared for by staff in St.Finian’s Pschiatric Hospital. Many folk in Kathleen’s locality had no inkling Kathleen ever existed until she passed away. Kathleen was revealed at her own funeral, shocking to the core.

Kathleen and I met when I worked in the high support hostel where she resided in her later years. At that time she was almost eighty years of age. It took quite a while for her to trust me, moody and angry, high wall around her, always alone. God only knows how she must have suffered up and down the long years. 

Glacially, Kathleen did begin to warm to me and I was over the moon. ‘Is it you who’s here today’, she would say smiling, obviously pleased that I was working on that particular day. 

Fiercely independent, Kathleen did her work with pride, setting  tables and cleaning up after everyone else. Sadly, for Staff members, I saw little warmth from any of them towards Kathleen, even less gratitude. Kathleen, however didn’t notice or care. She expected nothing and so was never disappointed.

One day, another client asked if it was Good Friday today and I replied  -  ‘Yes, Jesus died on the Cross for all of us’. Kathleen looking out the window uttered sharply - ‘I don’t believe a word of it’.  Jesus smiling sadly, whispered knowingly  - ‘No wonder’. Jesus knew only too well what Kathleen had suffered at the hands of unkind uncaring folk.

Fr.Leo Clifford rip. told a story about a District Nurse who worked very hard and the doctor told her: ‘I’m going to ask for a raise for you - God knows you deserve it’. The nurse replied, ‘If God knows, that’s all that matters because I’m doing it all for Him’. God had His eyes on dear Kathleen too.

I had the sublime privilege of praying ‘The Chaplet of Divine Mercy’ at Kathleen’s bedside the day she breathed her last. At that time, I did not possess the deep realisation of the Sacredness, Beauty & Gravity of death. I had no idea that there was no roof in Kathleen’s room that day, and Heaven had no floor. All of us together in one Sacred Sacrosanct Space. 

Nowadays I realise it deeply, each time I am privileged to pray with folk as they take leave of this world. Thank you from my deepest heart, Kathleen, I gleaned many gems from our beautiful friendship. Because of you, I know who God is.

‘The worst disease is not leprosy, but the loneliness of not being wanted, being left out, being forgotten.’. (St. Mother Teresa)

‘How many times do kings and queens allow themselves to be tricked into letting their pride reach the skies and their egos touch the clouds, when in the end they’re as forgotten as a pile of cow manure!’             (St. Clare of Assisi)

Dublin can be heaven.....🌠

                           ‘Make visible what without you might never be seen’. (Robert Bresson)

Heuston Station buzzing, euphoric revellers making the most of the Christmas madness. Pretty girls on a large stage wearing loud ‘Merry Christmas’ T- shirts. Music blaring, prizes to be won, tons of fun to be had by all.

Tucked in a corner Bobby stood stately as he played Leonard Cohen’s ‘Allelulia’ on a piano. Beautiful, no audience, he didn’t seem to need one. I offered him a Miraculous Medal, he accepted with a smile. ‘Do you ever pray’, I asked. ‘When I need to’  he replied. We shook hands and parted.

Outside Heuston Station a man walked erratically in my direction. My first thought to avoid him, seemed like the most shrewd thing to do, instead, I asked if he would like a Miraculous Medal. ‘I would love one’, he replied, kissing the medal reverently, his cheerful smile veiling more than a hint of sadness. ‘You have lovely teeth’, he said, as he danced or stumbled away from me. I was reminded of something I read recently - ‘Smile, sunshine is good for your teeth’. I was glad we met.

Grafton Street in festive mood, high spirits, glamour extraordinaire, flashy and insipid. She was crouched down on the cold cement, scantily clad, a paper cup in her frail freezing hand. She looked so young. As I placed money in her cup and handed her a miraculous medal, her pretty face lit up with the most heavenly smile. ‘Jesus loves you’, I told her. ‘He will help you, just ask Him’. Much later, I glanced in her direction not expecting her to recognise me in the madding crowd. To my immense delight she waved knowingly. I was overjoyed and now she will remain forevermore in my heart and prayer. In a most unlikely setting, we made a beautiful connection and now we are both richer. That’s life!

The gratitude and happiness of folk when I offer them a Miraculous Medal or Rosary beads touches my deepest heart every time, oftentimes they are moved to tears. Almost always, the money I gift takes second place. No doubt about it, there is indeed a deep hunger in all of us for God, a yearning for something beyond. A gaping hole that only God can fill.

Back home again with my gentle folk in the quiet of the Nursing Home, two very different environments yet fundamentally the same. We, all of us, have a deep need to be loved, to be seen. A kindhearted word and gesture, a helping hand in time of trouble are the only diamonds really worth getting  and giving. 

Observing glamorous folk almost tripping over a man in a sleeping bag on the pavement moved me to tears. They didn’t look down, if they did, they saw nothing. Man’s inhumanity to man. Folk dropping  money in a homeless person’s cup without even a sideward glance really upset me too. A simple hello, or even a nod would suffice, it costs so little to be nice. 

Next time I will be super organised for my stroll around Dublin, meeting and greeting my faceless, nameless sisters and brothers lost in plain sight on inhospitable pavements. We will exchange our tales of weakness, woes and wonder. We will drink coffee and devour Danish pastries. Saint Mother Teresa tells us that we find Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. She should know, truth has a ring to it!

‘If you want God to hear your prayers, hear the voice of the poor. If you wish God to anticipate your wants, provide those of the needy without waiting for them to ask you’. (St. Thomas of Villanova)

                    ‘God and the poor await us, side by side’. (Mother Mary Alphonse: Servant of God)