Running In My Head

When I was a boy, we went to school by bus and, more often than not, I was late, running frantically down Parnell Avenue, desperate not to miss it, fear rising in my throat. I sometimes missed it and would have to walk the two miles and, being very late, I would be punished. Punished with more than words.

Nowadays there is no bus for me to catch but still I am running in my head, trying to catch up with responsibilities that have overtaken me, obligations that I cannot keep pace with, so that I am missing deadlines and, far to often, forgetting to do what should have been done. The fear that was in me as a child rises in me every day. As certain as the dawn. Emails, letters, questions to be answered, banks to be dealt with, phone messages not dealt with.

And the Church piles on us so many demands that I find overwhelming. Documents. Renovation. Reform. A year for this and a year for that. There’s no let-up and I realize that I can no longer sustain this. There are people who can do all these things far, far better than I can but I don’t know how to get the chaos of my head into more capable hands.

I naively crave the simplicity of the Gospel.

I know that many people find themselves in a comparable situation where the mind is racing, and it is difficult to keep up with the demands of life.

What God is saying to me is that it is necessary to go with Jesus on this first Sunday of Lent, to go with Him into some kind of desert, to give myself to a silence in which I can hear Him speak.

It’s interesting to read that Jesus did not simply go into the desert but that he was driven, pushed into the desert by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit drove Him. Not that Jesus was reluctant but still He was driven.

I suppose it’s not something that we would do by choice, so it becomes necessary to be driven like Jesus, pushed - expulsed as one translation puts it.

It’s interesting for me that the first Sunday of Lent, February 18^th, is the third anniversary of the death of the brother of my soul, Father John O’Brien and it is just four years since he and I went into the Sahara Desert on retreat. It was our last journey together, the last of many over the years.

The desert was busy much of the time and it was often noisy with the noise of twelve priests.

Unusually for me, the early morning became my primary time of silence and solitude. There was of course the solitude of my little tent in the night, but I found that place constricting, claustrophobic and upon waking I was eager to get out of it. I wonder now if the tent in some  way represents the confinement  of the womb, my emerging from it some kind of daily birth.

We were not allowed to have watches so we never knew the time and, when I awoke in the dark, I could never be sure if it was still the middle of the night or near to morning.

But I went out anyway and sat on the cold sand in the dark looking towards the horizon. Eventually light would begin to appear and the sun rose to reveal the desert in all its magnificent vastness. God and I were alone in that revelation.

What became clear is that the desert is a reality that I cannot control, dominate, or manipulate. It has its own life, its own way of being and it is the Garden of God, representing God Himself, reminding me, reminding us that God cannot be controlled, dominated, or manipulated. That’s the first thing that the silence tells me.

The other thing it tells is the truth that I – and we – do in fact try in subtle ways to control, dominate, and manipulate God for our own purposes. We want Him to be as we want Him to be, rather that as He is. We manipulate God to gain what we want and need in life. And we pretend to be what we are not in the process.

In the context of what is taking place in the Church locally and universally at the moment – with the Pastoral Plan and the Synodal Path - it seems to me that we as a Catholic Christian community are being driven by the Holy Spirit into a place where we might rather not go but we must go in loving obedience. And in a loving silence listen together as a community to what God is asking of us at this time, to listen without trying to impose our own preferred agenda on God or on the Church.

This loving obedience calls us also to listen to each other and, as St. Paul says, “give way to one another in obedience to Christ” – the whole life of Jesus Himself was one of loving obedience to the Father. Take this cup from me yet, not my will but Yours be done. This is at the very heart of the Eucharist which is the source of life for all God’s people.

So, the Synod meeting, Conversations in the Spirit, which we will be having in our parish are part of the same loving obedience of listening and speaking as the Holy Spirit leads. It is my hope that these will lead us to be a parish in which all of us play our relevant part, taking on roles of service for which we are each gifted.

It is also my hope that I can be more the priest that I am meant to be – at the altar in the Mass, proclaiming the Word of God, celebrating the other Sacraments, being more available to people in their need.

The late Abbot Father Stephen Ortiger OSB who had a very positive influence on my life said two things that have had made me think. The first is a question, “does your theology make you smile?” and my response is that theology in books seldom makes me smile but the living theology of the people of the parish makes me smile broadly and brightly.

The other was his response to a question of mine when I asked him if he missed life in the monastery, as he had given himself to parish work in the diocese. He replied, “I see my life as a beautiful meal. The monastery was the main course and now I am having my desert!” Well, I can say the same about my life here in Star of the Sea – this is the desert of my life!

I attended Stephen’s funeral in Worth Abbey the other day and it was beautiful with a gentle pace monastic pace that seemed to bring us to the Gate of Heaven, and I wondered how Stephen might describe this course of the meal of his life. The siesta, maybe!