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OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

Eamonn Monson SAC

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Showing posts from June, 2018

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Islands Listen To Me

on June 27, 2018

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From Distracted Living to Faith

on June 21, 2018

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FATHERHOOD: A Man And His Child

on June 17, 2018

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Jesus Is The Kindly Light

The oddest thing! Walking home in the dark my eye caught sight of a piece of paper trapped at the base of a seafront bench. It was flapping in the wind and it looked somehow familiar. I bent to pick it up. A Pallottine Mass League certificate that was issued at the Pallottine College, Thurles in 1996 when I was a member of the community there. I recognized the script and know who typed it but have no knowledge of the person enrolled. So, I googled his name when I got home. Flight Lieutenant Gregory Mark Noble died at the age of 28 in an RAF air accident which happened in Norfolk in January 1996. Why should this distinctively Pallottine document find its way into the path of the only Pallottine in this town? I find myself praying for him, for his family, for the secretary who typed the cert, her family, for the rector of the college and the community. But mostly I pray for Greg himself and his memory. Such a sad loss of a young life.
Before the paper caught my eye, I had been pondering …

SOMETHING PRECIOUS: Love's Unquestioning Duty

I peer through the curtains of the morning to gaze upon the unwelcome day, then choosing to welcome it in the name of Christ, befriending the unknown that awaits my love. One by unexpected one they arrive by grace.
“You have been trusted to look after something precious; guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” (2 Timothy 1:14)

A friend has been looking after her ailing father for the past few years and I have seen how exhausted and frayed she becomes, wondering at times where can she find the strength to keep going. But she finds it, she does all that needs to be done. It is her a God-given duty, the duty of her love for him and there is no question of not doing it. It is love’s unquestioning duty and it doesn’t always feel like love.
It’s what Jesus talks about in the Gospel, “when you have done all that you have been told to do, say, “we are merely servants, we have done no more than our duty.” (Luke 17:10) It is our duty to be servants of each other’s need, a lovin…

FIRST OF MAY: When I Was Small

When I was small we all looked forward to the first of May – long before the Bee Gees wrote their beautiful song - when the leaves were fresh on the trees and the sun seemed to shine most of the time, though sometimes it rained heavily as we made our daily pilgrimage to the Grotto in Castlegar, about two miles from home. We were right on the edge of Galway city and it was over the wall and through the fields that we made our way, taking time to play among the rock and bushes, dreaming up great fantasies and dramas from snake valley to mansions and boats carved out of stone. It was a time when faith was woven fairly seamlessly into ordinary life as we were keenly aware of the Divine in our midst and we turned to the Mother of Christ for help in everything we had to undertake. For us children as we grew into secondary school, we needed her help with exams. We went to her in droves every day after school, though I didn’t fare too well in exams even after the most fervent of praying but it…

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. …

INSOMNIA: They Who Fly Home To God

"Insomnia can become a form of contemplation. You just lie there, inert, helpless, alone, in the dark, and let yourself be crushed by the inscrutable tyranny of time. The plank bed becomes an altar and you lie there without trying to understand any longer in what sense you can be called a sacrifice." (Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas)

Insomnia! A brand of coffee and a state of being! Being awake when you should be asleep. It's been part of my whole life since childhood, though it's less of an affliction now. Most religious people seem to resort to formal prayer like the rosary to help them through the dark hours. Not me! I just groan - "oh God!"

One such night many years ago my distress was so great that I sat up, took hold of my Bible and asked God to speak to me. What opened before me was Ezekiel Chapter 13, and I was particularly struck by verse 10: "...they have misled my people by saying Peace! when there is no peace."
My inclination is toward…

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…

DAD

FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

This time 28 years ago – December 29th - on the eve of the Holy Family Maura and I were in hospital visiting Dad who had taken ill on St. Stephen's Day and was being checked out. As we were leaving him, she and I looked at each other and said "he's dying." There was something in his eyes that made us both think this. So, we went to the nurse in charge and said we thought our father was dying. She said, "not at all. He's fine." And we went off home.
When I told Mam what Maura and I were thinking she said, "well if you think he's dying then go back and anoint him." This we did and when the praying was done two interesting things happened. First Mam took hold of his hand but he took it away as if to say this is not the time for holding but the time for letting go. Then he pulled the bed clothes up under his chin looking content and complete and told us to go off and get a drink for ourselves. We did!
And at home we …

The Call of St. Matthew (Caravaggio)

When Jesus enters the room
My hands are still on the money
Fingers fiddling

My mind distracted by it
My soul oppressed by its demands
My heart tangled in its deception

Then glancing sideward
I see the Hand outstretched
Finger pointing like a new creation’s
Dawning light

And when He speaks
It is clear that I cannot
Serve both God and money
It is He that I must follow

However harrowed be my life

I grow younger as I near Him
A beauty ever ancient
Emerges ever new

Sitting with Him at table
We sinners are drawn in
To an intimacy Most Divine

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…

A Future And A Hope

It's an incredibly beautiful day at sea. The ship sails steady on the white edged choppy waves and peace reigns now, with loneliness left behind in Dublin port. Mostly left behind. Out here I am suspended between two realities, ready to return yet slightly apprehensive. There is a tug between home and Hastings, both of which I love; a pull between Ireland and England, this world and heaven.
In a meditation at the retreat in Thurles, the director asked us to be blind Bartimaeus begging, to imagine ourselves being him. It’s a meditation I have guided on retreats going back many years, so it was necessary for me not to be stuck in an established way of seeing this gospel.
I wasn't blind but paralyzed, unable to walk, sitting on one of those four wheeled mobility scooters for the disabled. Disabled is a word still used in the UK. I am disabled in the meditation but my scooter takes me to Jesus at speed, the cloak flying off my back. When Jesus asks me, "what do you want me to d…

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