Rhythms of Grace

One of our sisters supports people serving long prison sentences by regularly writing letters and emails to them and she frequently receives letters back from them. It is obvious that her letters are greatly valued by the prisoners. Recently sister shared a little about what had happened in one of the prisons in recent weeks and it reminded me of what happened in 2001 in the largest prison in Sweden. 

 Truls Bernhold, a Lutheran minister, completed the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius ---- that is, a 30- day silent retreat during which meditation on the life of Christ is central to the exercises. Each person is accompanied by a spiritual director for 1 hour each day. Sometime later Truls received training on how to LEAD the Spiritual Exercises. 

 In 2001 he was invited to lead a meditation group in the Kumla Prison, the largest in Sweden that houses the country’s highest-risk prisoners. The effect of the meditation course on the prisoners involved impressed the authorities and a disused building was converted to accommodate 8 prisoners in a centre known as “the monastery.” 

 There Truls began to lead small groups of prisoners in a 30-day retreat using the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. He listened to the prisoner and then invited him/her to meditate on a passage of the Gospel--- on different episodes in the life of Christ. Truls believed that by simply offering the prisoner the words of scripture, the presence of Christ was made possible in a way among the unbaptised and those who will largely remain unbaptised. Like the story of the sick woman who didn’t want to meet Christ but sought healing by reaching out from the crowd to touch the fringe of the Lord’s garment as he passes by --- “She came up behind Jesus through the crowd and touched his cloak and she felt in herself that she was cured” (Mk. Ch 5.) ---so here, women and men can reach our for healing and the retreat leader does not proselytize: he just lets the grace of the Word quietly do its work. Yes, the in break of God’s grace can take place anywhere! 

 As we begin this season of Lent we might gently remind ourselves that---if moments of quietness are woven through our weeks of Lent, our innate capacity to hear God’s Word can be sharpened and our hearing aids recharged! To take the Word into our minds and hearts, and to allow it to change us, is the work of Lent! 

As ABBA POEMEN said: “The nature of water is yielding and that of a stone hard. Yet if you hang a bottle filled with water above the stone so that the water drips drop by drop, it will wear a hole in the stone. In the same way, the Word of God is tender and our heart is hard. So when people hear the Word of God frequently, their hearts can be opened to the rhythms God’s grace.”

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