My skinny folder 📂

‘Eternal Trinity, make me a mirror of a good and Holy life. Help me stay awake. Don’t ever let me turn again to that miserable life I once led in the darkness, through no fault of Your own. I didn’t know Your truth then, so I didn’t love it. But I do now’. (St. Catherine of Siena)

‘With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again’. (Catherine Doherty)

Tadhg called early this morning inviting me to his upcoming ‘significant’ birthday bash. As we deliberated on the fleeting years and ravages of time, I told him about my life-folders. Fat one filled with bad decisions and poor choices. Rather skinny one filled with goodly decisions. 

‘The goal’, I told him - ‘is to ignore the fat folder from here on in and whenever possible, boost the skinny one’. I am not so much striving for perfection but growth. Our efforts, our choices and our decisions are extremely important. 

‘There is no room, you see, for putting things right when this life is over’. (St. Augustine) 

‘Your birthday gift will be a Holy Mass’, I told him before we went our separate ways, quite a while later. Smiling broadly he replied; ‘Thankyou very much. You are doing the skinny folder’. My life-folder tale obviously resonating with him. 

Bridie and I prayed Holy Rosary in the afternoon. Beyond remarkable and beautifully baffling that she is not able to partake in chitchat but when her rosary decade comes around, she glides away, seamlessly, fingering her beads with precision. At the close of our prayer time, we sing  ‘Hail Queen of Heaven’  her favourite hymn up and down the long years. Listening to Bridie never gets old.

I could have remained in that peaceful oasis forever, hard to tear myself away from Bridie’s presence permeated with the Gladsome Light of God. Simple abundance.

What a wonderful way to boost my skinny folder.

‘Every moment is preparation for the next moment, and all together, preparation for Eternity. Every moment is a time for following Christ on the path marked out for each one of us, so that the reality of ‘Eternal life’ may be the fire which continually reshapes us and reforms us’. (Fr. David May/Restoration)

As I penned the above, a glorious memory danced into my heart. My son Diarmuid, a little boy at the time, exclaiming joyously: ‘I feel like my soul ate a big burger’. What a turn of phrase and from a young child too. Perfectly portrays my superb afternoon.