Every breath we draw is a gift of His Love’. (Thomas Merton)

‘The whole world is charged with the Glory of God’. (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Photographers praised. Inventors idolised. Explorers esteemed. Artists admired. GOD the Author of all, overlooked, unheeded. We fall in love with God’s gifts, we ignore the Giver, we forget that nothing is ours, everything we have we have received, to the next minute, the next breath we draw. 

Were God to cease loving you or me for one instant, we would cease to be. All is Gift, beauty that is there for us to be delighted by and then to delight in the one who created it all.

‘If, charmed by their beauty, they have taken things for gods, let them know how much the Lord of these excels them, since the very author of beauty has created them’. ‘Wisdom: 13

‘About time we got some sunshine’, someone said aloud. ‘We deserve nothing’, replied the gentle elderly lady, smiling...........

                  ‘His works are great, past all reckoning, marvels beyond all counting’. (Job 5:9)

Diarmuid’s Birthday.🎁

My third son, Diarmuid, kind caring young man, insight beyond his years, made his grand entrance into our lives twenty nine years ago today, explosion of joy.

At that time too his father’s alcohol problem was beginning to become just that - a problem. Sleepless nights, fearful days. Eventually, we moved to another county where we were free and safe. We lived in a tiny house, close to each other at all times and little by little our nerves relaxed, our fears subsided. We settled into our new normal, life gradually changing from black and white to bright colour.

Diarmuid, a verbal architect had many mountains to climb and to see him now fills my heart with gratitude to God for Blessings in abundance.

Today, we have another new normal, lockdown. No Birthday bash, we talk and laugh on the phone, we do not feel deprived, our deep love for each other makes separation bearable. We will all be together soon, le cunamh De, there is no such thing as false hope. As Gandalf said - ‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us’.

Thank you, Dearest Jesus. Step by step, you never leave our side.

Happy Birthday, dear Diarmuid. Thankyou for choosing me to be your Mom. God could confer on me no higher honour.

‘On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined’. (Lord Byron)

The Best is yet to come.☀️

Maurice is gone home to God, kindly compassionate gentleman who loved animals. Killian and I stopped to chat with Maurice a few days ago and he was not in good shape.  His beautiful face creased in pain, pallid complexion. ‘God Bless you both’ - his parting words to us, words etched on our hearts forever, in letters of gold.

Oftentimes I would say to Maurice  - ‘We will not realise how wonderful it is to be alive Maurice, until we are here no more’. He always replied - ‘I wonder Bridget, maybe you’re right’. 

‘Every breath we draw is a gift of His Love, every moment of existence is a Grace’. (Thomas Merton)

Am I right Maurice? Are all our earthly sufferings nothing at all, when compared with what God has in store for us? Your beautiful gentle smile echoes a resounding ‘Yes’  in my heart.

When we get to Heaven, when we see what Jesus has prepared for us, we will be speechless with tears of Joy and contentment for all Eternity. We believe this in our deepest spirits, it is no fugitive dream, no forlorn hope. What comfort and encouragement as we traverse the terrain of this tumultuous world.

‘Eye has not seen nor has ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him’.                                (1 Corinthians 2:9)

‘No wonder the Scripture and the Liturgy are full of injunctions to us to lift up our hearts, ‘Sursum corda’. We lift them up to The Lord. He is there, awaiting us, and by His Holy Spirit, He is here accompanying us too. Let us hasten, then, to Mount Zion with singing’. (Thomas Howard)

Jesus is always Enough.💎

In this concerning Corona time, I have no idea what is waiting at the turn of the road but I know for sure, WHO is waiting. As sure as He walked this earth way back then, Jesus is walking every step of the way with us now, He is our companion in our exile.

Jesus is gently telling each and every one of us this day - ‘Have no fear, I am with you. I saw all of this as I suffered and died on the Cross, I know the outcome, I have your back’. 

Let us go forward in faith, putting our hand into the Hand of God. 

It is all I need to know on this sunny peaceful morning. It is enough.

‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’. (Hebrews 11:1)

The Master polisher.💎

My heart is full as I contemplate the goodness of God. Replete with my brokenness, He chose me to be His Hands and Feet in St. Anne’s Nursing Home every day, as we prayed Holy Rosary, sang and danced in that precious Sacred Space. Supreme privilege of being allowed pray Chaplet of Divine Mercy at the bedside of the dying. A beautiful lady gave me the title - ‘Final polisher’.

The Lord recycles garbage, I gave Him my pittance, He did the rest. In these Corona days I cannot be in the Nursing Home but I do not lose Hope.  God is ‘The Master Polisher’. Our dignity and value does not come from what we do, it comes from who we are, sons and daughters of God. 

I wait on the Lord in peace and joy. He will tell me His plans when the time is right.

‘We must act only for God and put our works into His Hands’.  (St. John Vianney)

When all fruit fails, welcome haws.

“God”, said the Cure D’Ars, “has shown me this great mercy, that He has given me nothing on which I could rely, neither talent, nor wisdom, nor knowledge, nor strength, nor virtue. When tempted to despair I have only one resource: to throw myself at the foot of the Tabernacle like a little dog at the feet of his master”.  

Let us shift our gaze.👓

‘Where you are is where God comes to meet you face to face. Where you are is where you’ll find His blessing and His Grace’. (Patience Strong)

That we are alive in this time of pandemic is no mistake, God has entrusted this day and time to us. We are here to accomplish the work He has given us to do, right here, right now. Looking back and bemoaning what once was is life draining, remaining in the fetid water of regret is most certainly not growth enhancing. Adverse circumstances make us strong and courageous, let us relax our fingers, let go of what is not working anymore, ever forward - never back. 

Let us shift our gaze, we do not need to understand, it is never good to force the gates of mystery.

Let us accept the challenge, enjoy the adventure. Before we know it, we will be eased into a new brighter meadow, the one we left behind dark and dank by comparison, we will be very happy to have moved on. God will be able to move freely and swiftly in our lives. Gratitude and acceptance are the great life-changers.

Speak Lord, your servant is listening, You are in control, Your kindness and caring for me and mine in our many dark hours leave not the faintest doubt in my heart and mind. When one door closes, You always have a new one open for us but oftentimes, in our anguish, we spend so much time looking at the closed door we do not see the new open one. Open the eyes of our hearts, Dear Lord, help us to trust in Your Mercy and Love, You who are Love.

‘For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I will help you”.

( Isaiah 41:13)

‘There’s a special piece of work that you were meant to do. That is why you’re where you are, God set that task for you. Not along some other road but where your ways now lie - is the niche that you and you alone can occupy’. ( Patience Strong)

Immaculate Heart of Mary, cause of our joy.☀️

These days, any time I feel like giving up, something wonderful occurs to shake me out of my despondency, our God is a God of surprises and wonder. My friend Don is passing from this world,  I wish I could be with him but Corona says no. Dee can be with him, she has been his companion through it all. 

Don loved to join us for Holy Rosary. He loves our Blessed Mother and would sit in our Holy Rosary space, content and serene lost in time. Dee’s faith died away bit by bit over the years, when she realised it was gone, she saw no need to revive it

Today, Dee is praying at Don’s bedside, it is the new normal. Dee is happy to be there for Don, God is happy to be there for Dee. Mother Mary doesn’t ask God for much, She asks God for everything.
In Don’s final hours, his two favourite ladies are by his side, what more could he wish for.

‘Immaculate Heart of Mary, cause of our joy, be with us on our way.
 For all your ways are beautiful and all your ways are peace. Amen

Kindness like snow, Beautifies everything. ❄️

Many of our visitors/refugees from far off lands have contracted Corona. When they arrived in our town, they had not been tested for Corona and now they must contend with this dilemma on top of countless more.

Reaction to their arrival in our town was mixed. There are folk who do not like change and would like our little town to stay as it is forever. Some others just plain selfish, speaking words like - ‘We should look after our own first’. Shut our hearts tight, we will hold what we have, nothing more. Open our hearts wide, we will reap a wonderful harvest. I am happy to report though that many welcome them them with open arms and are doing all in their power to be of assistance.

We have no idea how our visitors must be feeling, many of them unable to speak English and so they are picking up on all the nuances of how we in Cahersiveen are receiving them or rejecting them. 

Our visitors are individual persons with his/her own face, looking on them as refugees is missing the whole point. Seeing them through the lens of Love and Compassion will not just benefit them, it will hugely benefit us also. They are people to be loved - not problems to be solved. They come bearing gifts and talents, if we open our hearts, our little town will be greatly enhanced and might not be a ‘little’ town, any more.

They do not ask to be here. If they could, they would be in their own countries, in their own homes. Because they chose Life, they must go where they are sent, silently, accepting whatever comes their way. Their choices are not just limited - they do not have any. Sadly we do not live in an equal world where everyone’s dignity is respected and everyone has equal opportunities.

Not so with us, not so. We are free to make whatever choices we wish. In this instant we can be cold and uncaring or we can be kind, it is completely up to us. Let us choose wisely, what I give to others will have eternal value, what I keep for me, dies when I die.

‘Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world, but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on all who live in this way and persevere in it to the end’. (St. Francis of Assisi)

God owns all. We are His stewards.😌

‘Someone has remarked that Saint Pope John Paul 11 taught us more from the wheelchair than from his fourteen encyclical letters’. (Cardinal Arinze)

Corona is claiming the lives of our precious elders, my favourite people in the whole wide world. God is taking them home, He knows best. When our country labels ‘abortion’ as health care, when the life of a tiny baby is endangered by our selfishness, when human life became ours to do with as we wish, God can no longer stand by and watch.

When, in the name of progress, in the future, our elderly would be deemed a drain on our resources, when it would be a ‘Health care’ initiative to remove them permanently, when euthanasia would be the only sensible option, God can no longer stand by and watch. God is taking them home, God knows best.

God owns all, we are His stewards. We didn’t care to remember, we are being reminded now.

‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

‘This culture applies the “death penalty through abortion and “hidden euthanasia “ of the elderly through  neglect and maltreatment, when in fact the elderly are the seat of wisdom of the people’. (Pope Frances)

Easter ☀️

                                                               The Lord is risen, Hallelujah.

 
I am remembering another Easter Sunday way back in the sunny long ago. All eight of us siblings walking to the beach, short distance from our humble loving home. A lady emerges from her house presenting us with a box. Inside, eight dainty Easter eggs. 

The joy that lady placed in our hearts that Easter Sunday will forever remain in my deepest heart. I can still see the wrapping clear as crystal in my mind’s eye. Delightfully shiny, brimming with promise.

Today, Easter Sunday 2020, is brimming with promise too, all darkness is gone. Jesus is risen. Our morning is turned into joy, our tears to dancing.

‘The peace of Easter is the peace that comes from knowing that the thing people had feared most, the end of life, annihilation, death, really holds no fear at all’. (Servant of God Walter Ciszek)

The Pieta.

‘Let us admire, congratulate, rejoice, love, praise, adore;

because through the death of our Redeemer,
we are called from darkness to light, from death to life, from exile to home, 

from grief to Everlasting Joy’. (Saint Augustine)

Good Friday.

“Who is the one that is not filled with hope of obtaining confidence and courage when he gazes trustfully on the position of our Lord’s crucified Body? His Head is bent to give us the kiss of peace, His Arms extended to receive us, His Hands pierced to pour His Blessings upon us, His Heart opened to love us.
His Feet nailed to the Cross, to soften our hearts and remain with us”.
(St. Bernard of Clairvaux)

Holy Thursday.

‘The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught,
 that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.
 Morning by morning He wakens, He wakens my ear,
 to hear as those who are taught.
 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious,
 I turned not backward.
 I gave my back to the smiters.
 and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard:
 I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

 For the Lord God helps me;
 therefore I have not been confounded;
 therefore I have set my face like a flint,
 and I know that I shall not be put to shame’.

(Isaiah 50: 4 - 7)

Day is dawning.☀️

Here in Ireland, two pub-free days every year, Christmas Day and Good Friday. That all changed a few years ago when our secular modern country declared: ‘No more. We will drink alcohol on Good Friday. Let’s party, why not?  Times have changed!  We are not behind the times anymore’.

One little village proudly proclaimed they were not going to follow the crowd, their pubs would remain closed Good Friday. However, they were super quick to painstakingly point out that they were not doing it on religious grounds. Not at all!! (God forbid that anyone would get the crazy notion they were HOLY). Good Friday was their day of rest and they liked it like that.

This year we have no choice, Corona has shut down all pubs and everything else besides. God is reclaiming His world and He is able to fulfil His plans despite human failings. 

Thank you Father God for giving Your only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who died the most horrific death on a Cross for our sins. Thank you Jesus for taking our burden and shame upon yourself and paying our debt in full. Thankyou Mother Mary, Your Motherly Heart is always interceding for your wayward children. 

Day is dawning, perhaps we are beginning to get it.... 

‘Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the strength of character, to do what is good, true, noble and right’. (Matthew Kelly)

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can’. (John Wesley)

Holy Week Wednesday🙏🏻🎆

My dawn chorus choir and I together for our last Wednesday morning, Lent is drawing to a close. What a journey of peace and happiness only prayer can bring. The Passion and Death of my Lord and Saviour is so much more meaningful to me now.

Thank you dawn chorus, your symphony thrilled me every morning. You gave freely from your hearts, expecting nothing in return. Agape Love.❤️

‘What can I give back to God for all that He has done for me’. (Psalm 116:12)

God wants His world back. 🙏🏻

‘If we remember that God is real, the beams that shine from that sun illumines everything. If we do not, then there is just no substitute’. (Dr. Peter Kreeft)

‘Can you imagine what the earth would be like if all men loved Me and did My will? How sweet life would be!? Will they ever understand what they lose in hating Me and each other’. (Jesus to Gabrielle/He and I)

To know about Christ is not the same as knowing Christ. When Jesus is Lord of our lives, sanctity reinstated in our world and adoration of The One True God restored, I believe with all my heart that Corona will take her leave of us. Bleak future awaits us if we do not turn to our Lord and Master and repent. When each and every one of us turn to God there will be peace among us.

Lead the way, O Lord our Light. We have abused the freedom given to us by You, we forgot to remember that we are Divine creations much more than we are producers and consumers. Children of The Most High God: ‘We are called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of this earthly existence because it consists in sharing the very life of God’. (St. Pope John Paul)

Speaking the above with an elderly gentleman today, he replied with the gravity his sage words deserved; ‘We are at war in this time of our lives and there’s no talk about God. In fact if He was on the road, we would drive over Him’. Wow! in a handful of words🌠

We have forgotten God! When we remember God and His Love, we are happy. When we forget, we are unhappy. Walking with Jesus, our lives will be richer and fuller without the many distractions that have blinded us up to now, to restore the Sacred is to restore society. 

When we engage with the Lord in prayer, He will calm the Corona storm raging in our world, just as the waves of the sea calmed down when Jesus rebuked the wind. 

The ways of The Lord are beyond the calculations of man. Know God - Know Peace. No God - No Peace.

‘And He arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, “Peace, be still”. The wind ceased and there was great calm’. (Mark 4:39)

                                         Dearest Mother Mary, please pray to Jesus for us. Amen

 ‘The thing to remember is not to read so much or talk so much about God, but to talk to God’.

(Dorothy Day/‘The reckless way of Love’)

Peace is it’s own reward. (Mahatma Gandhi)☀️

Holy Week, unlike other years, this year there are no distractions, I can accompany Jesus like never before. Many memories emererging in this Corona calm, space and time to ruminate. 

Way back then, we moved into our little rented house, Diarmuid, Killian and I and after much turmoil, we felt safe, we could sleep at night, in bad need of rest and renewal. After some time neighbours began to wonder aloud - Would I get a job? Would I buy a house?. I got a job, I bought our little cottage. 

Pretty soon we were out of ‘relax’ mode and never again could we reclaim that God-given hiatus of rest and renewal. God meant for us to enjoy this time but we listened to others and ignored Him.

This time though I will listen to God alone. Corona is not giving me this time of peace, Corona cannot take it away. God is the giver of all good things, this too He will turn to good. 

I participate in Holy Mass on my iPad, I pray for the Holy Souls, I love my Bible, I pray Holy Rosary, I write.

I smile and laugh the way Jesus taught me how when I was at my lowest. I pass on Jesus beautiful words of encouragement to those who can’t hear Him at this time. I accompany Jesus best by doing what I am asked to do, right here right now.

‘Lord, help me to make the time today, to serve you in those who are most in need of encouragement and assistance’. (St. Vincent de Paul)

My Rosary beads.📿

My Rosary beads keep me company on my first intentional walk since our new guidelines came into force - two kilometres. Sister Ina comes to mind God rest her gentle soul. She would walk along this road every day praying her Holy Rosary on her beads.

Solitude balm to my spirit lifting me out of my own tiny world of fear and trembling.

‘Loneliness is the Poverty of self. Solitude is the Richness of self’. (May Sarton)

New life all around, daffodils dancing in the breeze, birds building their nests. I stop and chat with an elderly lady in her garden. As I take my leave of her, the time is 3.16 P.M.

‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have Eternal Life’. (John : 3-16). 

Always there is Hope.