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OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

- God's Gracious Gift A Blog by Eamonn Monson SAC

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Saying It Is Half The Victory

on March 23, 2019

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TWO MEN IN A SHELTER: The Story of a Brief Unexpected Friendship

on March 16, 2019

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SOUJOURNER & STRANGER: I Found Myself Again

on March 08, 2019

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THE MAN WHO ROBS YOU: Crucifix Taken and Retrieved

on February 24, 2019

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RAFORD: A Place of Grace

on February 21, 2019

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THE HOLY BATH: A Rite of Passage

on February 20, 2019

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A RIVER IN THE DRY SEASON: Remembering Shirley, Twenty Years On

on February 12, 2019

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Come Take My Hands

on February 11, 2019

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The Solitary Life of a Single Woman

on February 01, 2019

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The Space Between: Night of the Blood Wolf Moon

on January 21, 2019

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DAD

on December 29, 2018

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TWO MEN IN A SHELTER: The Story of a Brief Unexpected Friendship

“But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God’s image. God was the parent, but he was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge…and God’s image shook now, up and down on the mule’s back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and ...he pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God’s image.” (Graham Greene, ‘The Power and The Glory') It's midnight and Liam is asleep, wrapped in a duvet, his head resting on Ivan’s shoulder. A Buddhist and a Christian. That piece of information was shared when they exchanged names more than three hours ago. The concern that brought them together has now become inconvenient as the cold bites and the rain has long since penetrated to the skin. Ivan feels odd in these situations and wonders was it a mistake to have gotten involved in the first place. He is a private, solitary man who likes to walk alone and seldom ever…

Saying It Is Half The Victory

The first day of springtime breaks with heavy clouds as I set out along the A27 from Hastings to Crawley for a meeting of priests. I used to dislike this road intensely but I’ve become accustomed to it now and take it as it comes, take the traffic as it is, though this morning it’s not bad at all.
On the radio they’re talking about “The Terrible Sonnets” of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19th century English Jesuit priest and poet whom I became quite fond of when still at school. The Terrible Sonnets were written in Ireland, a place where he felt exiled and suffered from depression, a condition I have struggled with for many years, maybe even since I was a child. “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” he wrote. I know this feeling well.
But I smile at the thought of exile, living away from one’s homeland which for Hopkins was like oppressive captivity whereas for me I feel free. This is what I think in the silence after the radio has been turned off.
Along the way I glance at the hedger…

The Solitary Life of a Single Woman

Mary, a neighbour at home died recently. She was about a year younger than me and lived three doors away, lived there most of our sixty-something lives. There are two brothers and a sister, married with their own families but Mary remained single and lived at home alone for many years since her parents died.
A solitary life, even an isolated one. No one in the avenue ever seemed to get close to her, there was no sign of friends coming to see her. We were not close, though we would always have a chat at her gate when I’d be home. The talk was mostly about her health because she had been fighting cancer for quite a few years and I would promise to pray for her. Her response to this promise of mine one day was, “you’re a liar, you’re a liar!” Maybe I wasn’t praying enough. Maybe she was telling the truth.
But I did think of her and pray when in my mind I would go around the sixteen terraced houses in the avenue and I would feel what I thought must be her loneliness, though maybe she wa…

SOUJOURNER & STRANGER: I Found Myself Again

Moses named his firstborn Gershom because, he said "I am a stranger in a foreign land." Another translation uses the word sojourner, which I prefer. It's what happens to us in Lent - we go deeper as sojourner into the foreign regions of our soul, that part of us that we do not normally inhabit because it is essentially solitary and silent. Sometimes it's more painful than we can bear. And there too we encounter fears that tell us lies to keep us as far away as possible from our true selves and from God. But as Jesus was led by and filled with the Holy Spirit, so are we. Our foreign experiences, our deserts are filled with the same Holy Spirit.
A song that has echoed in me since I was a child - "this world is not my home, I'm just a passin through" - expresses the reality that I have always to some extent experienced myself as a stranger sojourner, a reluctant inhabitant of this earth with a sense of unbelonging.
That is not to say that I am unhappy. …

BOOKENDS: My Induction As Parish Priest of Hastings - Eamonn Monson sac

I’m wearing vestments that were made for my predecessor Fr. Seamus who was a much, much bigger man than me by a long shot, so there’s no way I can fill them as he did. There is no way that I can fill the space occupied by him when he was Parish Priest. But all the same the vestments fit me in a different kind of way. Something of Seamus remains here but things are not the same. His death brought an unexpected change and I have become part of that change. When I was his novice master I never dreamed that he would die before me, never thought that I would succeed him.
On the front and back of my chausible is the Pallottine seal with the motto "Caritas Christi Urget Nos" (The Love of Christ Urges us on). This seal is testament to our communal calling, the mission given to each of us personally and together as community.
The emotion of his passing is still strong! He is very much missed and was greatly loved here in Hastings. He touched people’s lives for the better. People tell …

THE MAN WHO ROBS YOU: Crucifix Taken and Retrieved

“Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your property back from the man who robs you.”

In the scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal. No one died or was injured. When we came to celebrate Mass on Tuesday morning our lovely crucifix was missing and nowhere to be found. Presumed stolen! My concern was that this was becoming a pattern because the previous week it was our most precious chalice (other chalices have been taken in the past) which was discovered later for sale in a shop. The embarrassed owner gave it back for nothing. When something is stolen from us we feel it like an invasion and when something sacred or holy is stolen it hurts more.

We made a decision to keep the church open throughout the day as much as possible so that people passing by could drop in to light a candle, say a prayer, sit in silence or even sing out loud! It happened one evening that I came on a young couple doing just that – singing. People comment on the peace that is to be found in the bu…

RAFORD: A Place of Grace

I’m remembering Raford, the house on the hill in the country that was my mother’s birthplace, and I’m thinking of the clear cold water from the rain barrel at the gable end, cold water scooped up in a white enamel basin put standing on the kitchen table. White soap in a saucer and a blue towel to wipe away from my face the shock of the cold water of the morning. Granny cut slices of brown bread made by her own hands, the wholemeal wholeness of her heart in it and lavished with salty country butter churned by the same hands and mine. Everything and everybody was washed in rainwater and we went to the well down the lane to draw that which would quench our thirst and wet the tea. We brought tea in a billy can across the fields to Grandad in the bog and helped him load the cart with turf, sitting on top of it for the journey home, staring down into the black water of the bog holes, terrified that the cart would turn over when its wheels went to the very edge. It never did and we never fell …

NOTHING IS EVERYTHING (In The Hands of God)

I miss you my Love this desolate night. My face turned to the cold wall, sickening silence. Hours and days of it. The only hint of You is that question You have asked these forty years and more - "Can you drink the cup that I must drink?" (Matthew 20:22). The answer is always yes, though I often kick against the way in which the cup is given.
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Recently it dawned on me that, unusually, I had come through the winter without getting depressed and I was moving towards Lent full of purpose and confidence. I knew what I had to give up and take on, fully aware that the practises of Lent should lead me closer to God, make a better person of me.
Lent had hardly begun when I was hit by a nasty cold that soon turned into a viral infection but I still went ahead with plans to spend a few days in Worth Abbey, feeling the need of a monastic experience - the first since my arrival in England eight months ago.
It was wonderful to walk into the silence of the place. The great circular church…

In Expectancy of surprise

I had gone through a very difficult meeting and, feeling bruised and sorry, I sat in the back garden in Belgrano letting the sun warm me. Tommy, who was about three years old, stood watching from a distance and when he felt it was safe, he approached and started chatting. I have no Spanish and he no English, so it was a childlike conversation that drew me out of myself.

He opened his little book to show me a picture of the Annunciation and I wished its joy would happen for me then. But it did not and I was not up to it.

Later in the evening I was praying the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary when the Angelus bell rang and it struck me that I was experiencing a collision of sorrow with joy - that the joy of Annunciation was trying to break into my sorrow. And I chose to accept this strange mingling. It has happened many times since that, while praying the sorrowful mysteries, the Angelus will ring. The Angel of the Lord is always declaring the Good News and we are asked to receive it.

Whe…

CHRISTMAS 2018: All I Want

The Bishop stands up and I get nervous because I feel he's going to make me jump from an aeroplane. It's a feeling, a sensation that runs through me, not a physical possibility. He has himself actually done it - jumped from an aeroplane. There's a challenge afoot and I'm afraid I won't be able for it - his plan for the renewal and future of the diocese. Having been through countless meetings like this and being the age I am I'm doubtful about what might be proposed. The language of it. I have no doubt about the Bishop’s own commitment, the energy that he’s putting into this whole process, never flagging in zeal.
What sets me at ease is the line of Scripture he uses, "the Word who is life, this is our subject" - one of my favourite lines of the bible, my favourite reality. Bishop Richard says that we go wildly wrong if we do not keep our eyes fixed on the Lord. This I agree with and I feel absolutely safe with Jesus.
The discussion that follows the p…

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