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.”

Image: pixabay.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The life of Alfred Batzdorf

Image
  I heard recently that Alfred Batzdorf died on April 2nd 2022, at Santa Rosa, California, aged 100. Alfred was the husband of Edith Stein’s niece Susanne, now 101. Together they have done great work to promote holocaust awareness. In November 1988, the Batzdorffs’ began speaking publicly to churches, community groups and schools about their flight from Nazi Germany. Alfred, known as Al was born in February 1922 in Breslau, Germany. In 1994 he gave an oral history interview for the holocaust Memorial Project. He told of his experience on Kristallnacht November 9th-10th 1938, that terrible Night of Broken Glass, when synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed and over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Al’s father who was a surgeon had already registered for emigration and was in Berlin that night. On the morning of 10th the storm troopers entered the Batzdorff’s apartment intending to arrest him but when they found he was away they took Alfred ...
Read more

Storms and springtime

Image
At this time of year, the weather here in Ireland vacillates between cold winter storms and warm bright days with a taste of springtime. This can happen even within the same day! In the midst of particularly bad storms, like we had recently with Storm Isha, and especially for those whose homes or property was damaged, it is hard to imagine the good and pleasant days of late spring and summer. Similarly, on a lovely warm spring afternoon like we had here in Dublin a few days ago, with temperatures hitting record highs for January, it is hard to remember that only a few days previously the top came off our old monkey puzzle tree trunk in Storm Isha! This reminds me of the verse from the Book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach): “At a time of prosperity, adversity is forgotten, and at a time of adversity, prosperity is not remembered” (Sir 11:25). Isn’t human life just like this? We have storms and sunshine at different times during our lives. Hopefully nobody has a lifetime full of only storm...
Read more

Summer is comin'

Image
  As the days become warmer and brighter, I think back to the glorious childhood summers of endless joy and sunshine.  I suspect the memories are coloured with a fair slice of imagination as the weather was clearly as changeable then as now, but we only remember the good days!   One thing about summer that didn't change was the Summer concert and the predictable 13th century song 'Summer is a-coming in'.  There are many versions of this, which I suppose is not surprising given the length of time it has been around. I still remember the version we sang: Summer is a coming in, Loud now sing, cuckoo. Groweth seed, and bloweth reed, And spring the woods anew.     Sing Cuckoo. Ewe now bleateth after lamb, Loweth after calf the cow, Bullock starteth,  buck now verteth, Merry sing cuckoo, cuckoo  cuckoo.  Well singst thou cuckoo,  Nor leave thou never now. We were told that it dated from the thirteenth century and the earliest copy wa...
Read more