Dear Friends,
Top of the morning to you! We pray you are safe and well.
Today's Meditation gives us glimpses of St. Patrick's Spirituality and Celtic Spirituality. Two of our heroes in this regard are John O'Donohue and John Philip Newell. I have been chewing on John O'Donohue saying "Beauty is another name of God" and John Philip Newell's chant "Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God."
In my own spiritual journey right now, influenced by John Philip Newell, I am moved to use as mantras in my breathing meditation: "You, O God, are the air we breathe" in whom we live and move and have our being and "Rest in My Love" in which God delights in refreshing me. Celtic Spirituality is close to Mother Earth and I feel honored and humbled and ecstatic to be part of God's energy moving out and informing all of us. Richard Rohr comments that we as Christians have long celebrated the Incarnation of Jesus. He points out that long before Jesus, God became embodied in Mother Earth and the stars and the animals and the plants. Again, I feel honored and humbled and ecstatic to be part of that process of embodying God's energy--a process that continues even after our human death. God is the energy that is the heart and soul of the Universe.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.
In this time of Lenten Pilgrimage may you find peace, healing, hope, and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron & Jean
Meditation 306: John O'Donohue: A Blessing
Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.
May you enjoy the criticaland creative companionship of the question "Who am I?" and may it brighten your longing.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and shelter your feeling.
May your mind inabit your life with the same sureness with which yhour body belongs to the world.
May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.
May your sould be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.
May you succomb to the danger of growth.
May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.
May you belong to love with wildness of Dance.
May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of God.
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The Spirituality of St. Patrick’s Day
Lorna Byrne, Contributor
Author, #1 International bestsellers,”Love From Heaven and ‘A Message of Hope from the Angels’
Every one of us who has even a drop of Irish blood has a special spirituality engrained within us — a flame that burns deep down within our souls, connecting us to the deep spirituality of our roots. This is what we celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day.
I have seen angels since the day I was born. I see a guardian angel with everyone regardless of their race or religion. I see them physically as you would see someone standing in front of you and I see and talk with angels every day. For me it’s natural but I appreciate that for some of you it may be hard to believe that I see angels. I am asked frequently why I can see angels and others can’t. I have to be honest and admit I have no idea. When I ask the angels, “Why me?” “Why not?” is the only reply I have been given. I am just an ordinary person, and because of learning difficulties am less educated than most. I don’t think, however, it’s an accident that this gift has been given to someone of Irish blood.
St. Patrick is much more important than most people realize; important not just for the Irish but for the world. He came as a slave to a country that was deeply spiritual but had a spirituality of searching. The Celtic spirituality St. Patrick found was rooted in stones, nature and a rich symbolism. A lot of the old Celtic symbols were attempts to unravel the secret of life, a secret that seemed to elude them until St. Patrick came to Ireland in the fifth century.
St. Patrick brought the wisdom that there was only one God and that they each had a soul that would live forever. St. Patrick’s Christianity stirred up the Celtic spirituality within the Irish people and gave it meaning. The two belief systems got fused together to create a very potent spirituality which is deeply rooted in the natural world and this is the flame that all people with Irish blood carry today.
Over the years the Irish have worked to keep this light burning. The monks written about in Thomas Cahill’s book, “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” protected this flame and kept it safe during the dark ages of Europe when so much spirituality was stamped out.
St. Patrick’s Day is a day of celebration all around the world. To many it may be associated with alcohol and parades but St Patrick’s Day has a much deeper meaning. This day of celebration exists to remind people with even a drop of Irish blood of their roots, to rekindle this flame of light within them.
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The Spirituality of St Patrick
These excerpts are taken from an essay by Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm., which appears in “St Patrick: Spirit and Prayer” and are reproduced here with permission.
We have from St Patrick two brief works: his Confession, a spiritual autobiography, and an angry letter to the soldiers of the pirate Coroticus who had kidnapped and murdered some of Patrick’s Christians.
Every time we read the Confession we can be struck by some other new thought. There are any number of ways of summing up this great work in a few words, depending on what element of Patrick’s teaching or complex personality we focus on at a particular time. But there is perhaps one key to his spirituality, what he called the “desire of his life” which he wants others to know. This lies somehow in his single-mindedness. He had fallen in love with God, he wanted nothing but what God wanted. God’s will was expressed for him in the very concrete terms of a mission in exile – so nothing else mattered.
People today seek spirituality. Some find a value, a meaning for their lives which continues to sustain them. Others try on spiritualities like new clothes, and abandon them when they become tired of them. Patrick shows us a spirituality, which is very simple. He is loved, blessed and called by God and he responds. Patrick had stickability. His holy mountain in the West of Ireland – Croagh Patrick – has many lessons for us. We can see its majestic summit from a distance. But as we begin to climb, the summit vanishes and all we can see is the intervening slope. The summit is often covered by fog. For ordinary people Croagh Patrick is quite a difficult climb, and it demands grit and determination to get to the top. Patrick can lead us to ascend life’s mountain where, like Moses and Patrick, we meet the living God.
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Saint Patrick is the patron saint and apostle of Ireland. He was born about the year 389 in what was then Roman Britain, possibly in Wales. Around the year 403 he was carried off by pirates and sold as a slave in Ireland where he remained for six years before escaping back to Britain. However, the call of the people of Ireland was ever with him and so he became a priest and was consecrated bishop by St Germanus at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland to take up the missionary work of St Palladius. He travelled about the island bringing the message of the Gospel and his work was supported by miracles, though much of his life is now unknown to us. There are only two writings of his known to us today, of which the Confessions are the largest and most important. Patrick established what is now the primatial church of Ireland at Armagh about the year 444.
He died at Saul on Strangford Lough in northeast Ireland about 461. At Saul there is a grave reputed to be that of St Patrick and also of St Brigid and St Columba (also known as St Colmcille). The three bodies are said to have been brought there by John De Courcy in the twelfth century, thereby fulfilling the old legend that the three saints should lie together in the same place in death.
Patrick’s feastday is celebrated with full solemnity in Ireland and throughout many parts of the world on March 17.
In the west of Ireland there is a mountain named after the saint – Croagh Patrick – to which many thousands of pilgrims come each year to climb to top of this stony mountain and to pray for Patrick’s protection on Ireland and its people. Many still complete the walk barefoot.
“St Patrick: Spirit and Prayer” by Jude Groden, RSM, with essay on the spirituality of St Patrick by Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm. © Jude Groden and Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm. 2002. ISBN: 0 85597 637 3. Published by McCrimmons: Great Wakering, Essex, England.