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12th Sunday Ordinary Time Year B

The Carmelite nun, St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873 – 1897), lived a life that was externally unremarkable, but she knew more inner storms than most.

She wrote

“I was alone in a desert waste, or rather, my soul was like a fragile skiff tossing without a pilot in a stormy sea. I knew that Jesus was there, asleep in my little boat, but the night was too black for me to see him.

“All was darkness.

“Not even a flash of lightning pierced the clouds. There’s nothing reassuring about lightning, but, at least if the storm had burst, I should have been able to glimpse Jesus. But it was night, the dark night of the soul.”

(Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux).

People passing her monastery would probably have said, “What a peaceful life they have there!”

But as St Thérèse said, Jesus was there, though apparently asleep.

He slept a lot in her company, she noticed!

But she made excuses for him: other people rarely let him sleep, and so he would come to her for a break.

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11th Sunday Ordinary Time Year B

The parable of the mustard seed was a reply to the question: could the kingdom really grow from such humble beginnings?

It seems that what life intends to be great it first makes small.

Many great things and undertakings begin in small and often hidden ways.

For example, a building begins with one brick on another, a book begins with one word on a page, a song or symphony with the first note, a journey with a single step, a forest fire from a single spark, a giant oak from an acorn, a huge river from a tiny spring, a lifelong friendship from a chance encounter.

Things that have a certain integrity and truth always seem to start from humble beginnings.

Seeds need the darkness, isolation, and cover of the earth in order to germinate.

Therefore, for something to begin small, hidden, anonymous, is in fact an advantage.

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2nd Sunday Lent Year B

Today’s First Reading has one of the most dramatic scenes in the entire Bible.

Yahweh God instructs Abraham to slaughter his son, Isaac as an offering.

Whether the event actually happened I have no idea, and actually find the question irrelevant.

What I do find worth reflecting on is the mythos or sacred story behind what is written.

As Etty Hellisum said in beginning her diary, ‘Here goes then’. Early in 1971 I left my family home and entered the seminary to begin my studies and formation necessary to become an ordained priest in the Catholic Church.

Only in recent years have I reflected on the impact that must have had on my parents.

At the age of 17 I was more like Bilbo Baggins, from Lord of The Rings, taking my hat from the stand, closing the garden gate, and saying, ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said. ‘Now I’m off!’ Bilbo chose his favourite stick from the stand; then he whistled.

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4th Sunday Ordinary Time Year B

I need admit that I do not usually pay a lot of attention to the Psalm which is offered as part of our Liturgy of the Word each Sunday; however, a line from this Sunday’s Psalm (Ps 95) caught my attention.

The line reads, “harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah, in the desert.”

From the recesses of my memory bank there awakened a saying attributed to St. Irenaeus.

Irenaeus was born during the first half of the 2nd century, somewhere between the years 120 and 140.

The prayer reads as follows:

It is not you that shapes God; it is God that shapes you.

If then you are the work of God await the hand of the artist who does all things in due season.

Offer him your heart, soft and tractable, and keep the form in which the artist has fashioned you.

Let your clay be moist, lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of his fingers.