FROM THE WOMB BEFORE THE DAWN
“From the womb before the dawn I begot you…” (Psalm 110)
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| Maura Monson, Andrew Molloy, Eamonn Monson, Rosaleen Monson & Noreen Carr |
Hundreds of screeching, swirling seagulls are black against the emerging light and strangely luminous against the dark clouds.
I’ve been up since shortly after 3am, waking as I often do now in the fourth watch of the night – that period between 3 and 6am that’s spoken of in the Bible.
It was during this watch that Jacob wrestled with God and during this watch that Jesus walked on water. I was born during this watch at 3.30am and for many years I could not sleep until after that time, my nights being a constant battle, a time of conflict and injury. Now I tend to sleep early and wake up during the fourth watch and it is a quiet, peaceful, blessed experience. Perhaps I am being brought to new birth.
We’re told that it’s spiritually a very sacred and powerful time, a time for prayer. I do some praying, some coffee, some writing, occasionally some walking.
This time 70 years ago I was still in my mother’s womb, two days away from being born on a bitter, cold January. I wonder what I was feeling then. What did she feel?
This Sunday morning I took off out at 6.30 into a bitter, brisk breeze. Walking briskly too! In search of the alignment of the planets that was promised last night. But I’m too late.
However, as I reach the end of High Street I catch sight of a crescent moon low in the sky. The Waterboys song starts playing in my head. Down to the fishing boats I go and on from there as far as the Pier.
There are few of us out at this hour. An angler opening his shed, a mechanical digger already in action, refuse collectors at work along the seafront. A couple of dog walkers and others out alone. Like me. We say good morning.
A lovely thing happened last night after Mass – there was a surprise Birthday party for me in the hall. What a warm, happy, and most loving gathering with drinks and cake and “happy Birthday” sung, lovely words from some of the children, the delight of blowing out the candles together. Lots of hugs and gifts. And while we didn't dance, the children ran about the place in great delight.
Today there are many, many cards from the children in Sacred Heart school. One said, “I hope you have a happy Birthday with the Holy Spirit and that God gives you a treat!” Fabulous!
I’m so blessed and so very grateful and, though I seem to swallow my emotions these times, I feel them keenly when I go back in home.
Then at both Masses this morning Duncan leads the congregation in singing “happy Birthday,” and I tell the people that I am the luckiest priest in the world, even though the Christian life has nothing to do with luck, but you know what I mean. I mean what I say, and I also say that I get more tired now mentally, physically, and emotionally. Perhaps because I take things too seriously – especially conflict and when people don’t treat each other as respectfully as Christians.
And of course my head is wrecked by administration, the plethora of meetings, documents, and emails, anxiety over the church renovations and many other things. I tell God I need to be free of these things and it would be a great birthday treat if He were to so free me! But, as the Master Himself said in much more trying circumstances, “not my will but yours be done.”
At home alone in Mervue one morning earlier this month I began pondering the 70 years that have been given to me and to help in this exercise I took down from the wardrobe the box of my old diaries. Sitting by the fire I reached out to pick up at random one of those diaries and it happened to be from twenty years ago. The year I turned fifty, was twenty-five years ordained and was elected Provincial of the Irish Province of the Pallottines. It’s a year I don’t care to think about. But there it was, and I thought God must want me to look at it.
So, opening it at random my eye came to rest on the day that Martin Drennan was installed as Bishop of Galway. I was there in our beloved Cathedral where I had been confirmed as a boy. My diary records some of what Bishop Drennan said in his homily. Unusual words in such a context.
He invited us to move from our restless and distracted ways of living to a reflective stillness in which we allow our monsters to show themselves and instead of fighting them to learn how to tame them.
Very fitting for me because that was the year when my monsters displayed themselves very clearly to the extent of nearly destroying me. I am embarrassed, even shamed by that period but this embarrassment hides the fact that the monsters were also largely tamed in that year. At least the taming began in earnest and marked a turning point. The fourth watch began moving from battleground to an oasis of greater peace.
It was my intention to keep courageously remembering, recalling that which I do not like about myself, my failures and then the next day in prayer I stumbled on these lines from Isaiah 65:13-25, “…past troubles will be forgotten and hidden…the past will not be remembered and will come no more to men’s minds.” With that I put the diaries back in the box and put the whole lot back in the wardrobe.
There is a Biblical way of remembering that is sacred and graceful and is focused on the blessings given by the Lord. It is a remembering that is captured beautifully in the Magnificat of Mary. “Rejoice, for who am I that God has shown me favour” as we sing in the Lourdes Magnificat.
And for anyone struggling with their own monsters, my experience has taught me never to give up, even if it takes years. The hymn we sang at Mass this Sunday tells us that "God will make a way where there is none."
The line from Psalm 110 above is one we have been praying every Sunday evening for more than fifty years. They resonate, give meaning to who I am and who I have become. They are the Word of the Lord, a prophecy about Jesus and I have heard them spoken personally to me in Jesus – in Him who is the centre of my entire existence, He who is my Lord, my Life, and my Love. The one whose Name is dearest to my heart.
From the womb before the dawn I begot you
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you (Jeremiah 1)
You are a priest forever.
And I regularly wonder at this calling. Who am I that I should be graced in this way?
I honour the womb of my mother, the marriage of my parents that placed me there, the family into which I was born – my sisters and my brother - who have been the bedrock and reference point of my life to this day, right down to the present generation who have been born to us in recent years. They keep me grounded. And young at heart.
The second bedrock of my life has been the Pallottine Community which I joined in 1972. The desire to be a priest has been in me as far back as I can remember but my discovery of the Pallottines only happened a few months before joining up and it was a surprise of extraordinary joy to have found my home among them. My entire adult life has been shaped by this Community, and I am as much Pallottine as I am Monson.
God has also given me very good friends along the way who have loved me and have been loyal to me even when I made loyalty difficult, people who have allowed me to be what I am, to become who I needed to become.
Death of course has played a significant part in shaping who I am. The awful reality of loss and grief and coming to terms with them. Surviving. Living when living seemed so undesirable. There are the natural deaths of Dad and Mam and those of our wider family who had reached the sum of their years. And there were uncles and aunts who died too young. Cousins. The shocking deaths of close friends of my generation, most notably John. And there was Maura. Maura, whose going is the sum of all sorrow. How blessed we have been to have been touched by her and all those who have gone ahead of us on the journey to eternity. The blessedness of gratitude is the only way forward.
My life has been like a mountain that I have been given to climb. Beginning in our little one-roomed flat in Newcastle House, to Ceannt Avenue in Mervue where my emotional roots still run deep; Scoil Iosagain and the Sisters of Mercy; St. Patrick’s, the Bish and the Patrician Brothers; the school band that brought us all over the country; the Legion of Mary that gave us an instinct for Catholic social action; the Pioneers; the Pallottines in Thurles and Ordination; Charismatic Renewal; Rome; Tanzania where the Medical Missionaries of Mary blessed my life; Thurles again and years of giving retreats; Pallotti House and the students in Dundrum; Youth 2000; Thurles again; the Provincial years and all the people and places I was given to visit; Divine Mercy; the Ceili Community; Shankill where I truly learned to become a priest; Radio Maria; Clare Island Lighthouse; and now Hastings which feels like the summit of my existence.
And all along the way there have been special times of Pilgrimage and adventure – Knock, the Cistercian Monastery in Roscrea, Lough Derg, Croagh Patrick, Mount Longonot, Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, the Camino to Santiago and the Sahara Desert. The latter two are of the greatest significance in themselves – and more, the people with whom I shared those experiences.
Music of course has been a great love of my life, often expressing what I cannot put into words myself, emotions that I cannot define. “I Am I Said” by Neil Diamond does that in a unique way, it is the song that brings tears to my eyes, tears of recognition.
“Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king and then became one? Well, except for the name and a few other changes, if you talk about me, my story’s the same one…”
Beautiful words ❤️
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