Go within or go without.☀️

Every Friday, Community busses would ferry folk from the country to our little town. Centra Supermarket buzzing, shopping bags neatly piled in the corner, owners sat chatting with coffee, tea and maybe even ice cream. That weekly catch-up so important for everyone, laughter resounding over the chatty crowd. 

Holy Mass on Friday mornings I delighted so much in singing their favourite hymns. Holy Mass, shopping and the craic - Sacred Space in the midst of life’s trials and tribulations.

Lockdown time here again, our town silent, everything put on hold. Such is life, this is how it must be for now but the silence is even more deafening when one recalls the frantic Friday morning activity that was.

As I walk the empty street, I am struck anew by our Church, summit and centre of our town. She has stood tall for over a century, seeing many changes in her time, yet herself, never changing. She has accommodated and endured us, she accepts us totally. 

Yes, she was visited but oftentimes more ‘fitted in’ from habit than ‘put first’ out of reverence.  Now, in these tumultuous times, she seems to be saying - ‘Come in, all is not lost. Time for prayer, patience and silence. Rest awhile’. 

Rearranging priorities can be arduous but always in the aftermath, great good emerges. I believe if we bow to the wisdom that emanates from our Holy Church, we will be a stronger more content people when laughter again fills our town on a Friday morning. 

Jesus, King of kings, Lord of Lords resides there in the Holy Tabernacle awaiting our visit, forgotten Lord who lives down the street. 

If we will not go go within, we will go without.

‘Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing, even though you think you are doing nothing’. (Julian of Norwich - 1342-1416)

‘Your Monastery is located in the heart of the city. How is it possible not to see in this the symbol of the need to bring the Spiritual dimension back to the centre and to give full meaning to the many activities of the human being’. (Pope Benedict Emeritus- Monastery of St. Francis of Rome)