Circuitous route.🥳

Holy Mass has returned to our churches, I am overjoyed to be allowed receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist once again. Although there are restrictions and the freedom we once knew is no more, sublime privilege of receiving Jesus far outweighs any inconvenience. 

This morning, as I walk to church, I am reminded of a time in my childhood in the sunny long ago. Our stored memories can spring to life and blossom at the most unexpected moments.

Every summer, a visiting priest would offer Holy Mass in his holiday home each day for one week, us children would be invited along with our parents. Huge excitement donning my best dress, normally reserved for Sundays and special occasions, sense of newness, something unusual taking place. The joy of being able to defer, for the moment at least, the arduous task of saving the hay. Every tiny detail stands out like it was only yesterday.

Many similarities between that time and now. Pre-COVID I always had somewhere to go after Holy Mass every morning and so I dressed bearing that in mind. Nowadays, I attend Holy Mass and return home directly afterwards. COVID has locked down everything. Like back then, I dress with Holy Mass in mind only. Feeling of newness, beautiful sacred pared-back simplicity.

As I walk to Church, I feel like that young girl felt as she tripped to Holy Mass in the sunny long ago.  So much has changed but much remains the same too. Back then, that young girl was forever filled with hope. She loved God, she loved nature, she loved beauty.

I can say that even after many twists and turns on her life journey thus far, this older girl can profess without a scintilla of a doubt that she loves God, she loves nature, she loves beauty and she is full of hope too. 

Deep down, the essence of who we are essentially does not change. We build on it, broaden it, but ‘who we are’ remains. To be child-like - not childish. To have travelled many miles, many highways, and yet know deep down, that we always are where we always were. Deep down, we never left.

‘And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’.   (T.S. Eliot)

Recently, passing by the holiday home where Holy Mass was celebrated way back then, I was struck by it’s size, in my mind’s eye it was much bigger, much grander. Thankyou God for my childhood days of unadorned simplicity, I would not swap them for a gold clock.

‘A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle’. (Mark Twain)

‘You never change’, I told Eileen this morning. Her grey hair in a bun, her eyes sparkling, her kindly smile. ‘No change in you either’, Eileen replied: ‘You are the same old girl who walked through the fields to school all those years ago’. I rest my case😃