Embers of Yesterday's Fire

“The WORD is near to you, it is on your lips and in your hearts...” I suggested to the people at Mass that we close our eyes and go to that place in our hearts where the Word of God resides, to listen for the Word, perhaps hear again something from the readings. Brief and beautiful silence. And then young Max shared what he heard, the phrase “half dead.”

I would never have picked that out of the Gospel but it was spot on. It connected right into a memory that was stirring in myself, a memory that oddly spoke of the Word.

This is the time of year, with the excitement of school holidays in the air, when we would go to stay with Granny on her farm in Raford. The thrill of the steam train from Attymon to Dunsandle and the long, happy walk from there to her house on the hill.

Every moment in her presence was perfectly happy and I loved to observe everything she did, the feeling of her in everything.

The memory that stirs today is the early morning in her kitchen, watching her poking the embers of yesterday’s fire, bringing them back to life, the flame of a new fire with fresh turf, for a new day’s cooking. No matches or lighter needed. All that is required is buried in the ashes and a bit of patient skill to bring out what’s already there.

Everything was cooked on that great big open fire – the kettle boiled, bread baked, tea wet, breakfast made. And an atmosphere all of its own, inexpressibly homely, content, at ease.

The embers remind me of the Word of God that often lies dormant, barely alive in the hearth of our soul and it can remain like that for years and years.

Yet the truth of what God says remains, “the Word is very near to you, it is on your lips and in your heart…”

All it needs is for us to be persuaded to attend to it, and for the Word itself to be stoked into life.

You might find to your surprise that you begin to experience a warm sensation within that seems to be drawing you on, a kind of unnameable stirring that reminds you of God And I recognise it as the embers of the Word of God waiting to be brought into life

I hear lots of people speaking about this after years away from the faith of their childhood, having ignored the Word, maybe even having repressed it. Maybe even having resolved to be atheist

But the Word will not remain shut down forever, as the Prophet Jeremiah discovered. Because of the suffering it brought him, he resolved not to speak the Word, kept it locked inside himself.

But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:9)

A very simple instrument for stoking up the embers of the Word is itself the Word of God, the name of Jesus, the Word who is life, the Word that contains everything that God has to say.

Over the embers of our soul we can speak the name of Jesus with love, pray it with great reverence and it more than anything, He more than anyone has the power to ignite what is dormant until we ourselves become fire that cannot be contained.

A sign of the authenticity of the Word is that it takes us beyond ourselves to be Good Samaritans along the road of life. And the very act of reaching out to the abandoned one becomes itself an instrument for keeping the fire alive.