Carmelite Monastery of St Joseph, Kilmacud - Sisters' Reflections

Yes, Holy Week and the Easter Triduum is a journey into the heart of God’s forgiveness and compassion – the greatest Love Story ever told.   God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not be lost but may have eternal life. (Jn. 3)    Pope Francis in his wonderful letter Misericordiae Vultus says:  “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s Mercy.” Then he makes up a new word “mercifying.” God’s gaze has mercified us he tells us, blessing us with kindness, empathy, mercy and love. Isn’t it wonderful that through the loving gaze of Jesus God has revealed to you and to me that we are his loving children. Pope Francis says, “God is always first, first to wait for us, first to love us, first to help us.”  Let us hold that wonderful news in our hearts this Holy Week .Through God’s gentleness and compassion, we have been mercified. We in turn can be merciful to each other. We can change the way we receive people into our...

It’s a leap year, so a perfect time for a reflection on “leaping” in the Bible! Wherever this word occurs in Scripture, it is in the context of a joyful encounter with God. King David was so overcome with joy when the Ark was ceremoniously brought into the city, that he leapt and danced unselfconsciously (2 Sam 6:16). To see a King leaping is one thing, but in a poetic way the psalms even speak of mountains, hills and nations leaping: He makes Lebanon leap like a calf… Ps 29:6 Mountains leapt like rams, hills like lambs…   Ps 114:4 And then there is a gentler description of an interior movement: “my heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him” Ps 28:7 Leaping for joy is the reaction of all creation when the Almighty God comes close, and even God does some leaping too! The Beloved in the Song of Songs is described as coming to find his lover (the human soul) “leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills” (Songs 2:8). What a wonderful joyful image of the Lord...

For many people Lent is a time to give up things, perhaps things that could be harmful to us if taken in excess, like smoking, drinking alcohol or overeating.  Forgoing such things can be a good discipline and improve our health, but the real purpose of giving things up in Lent is to unite with Jesus 40 days of fasting in the desert.   Some saints and spiritual writers see a more basic call to give up all that is not necessary to make room for God to enter and fill us with his Loving merciful presence. Among our Carmelite writers we see it especially in St. John of the Cross, but even further back we find similar ideas expressed by Johann Tauler (1300-1365). He was a Dominican priest and theologian and was a follower of Meister Eckhart, but he holds his own place as one of the Rhineland Mystics, who stressed friendship with God.  He wrote: It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul it must turn back to eternity. It must turn in towards itself with all i...

It is Ash Wednesday and we are all happily walking around signed with the sign of the Cross on our foreheads. The birds are singing outside and spring is in the air.   So is God’s   tender Mercy - reaching out to us as this season of grace begins. The words of a song   are singing in my heart –   Come back to me with all your heart. Don’t let fear keep us apart.   Long have I waited for your coming home to me. And living deeply our new life.   Yes, our Loving Abba Father is searching for each of us and especially his lost and troubled children. He loved the world so much that He gave His only Son…   That’s why Jesus came -   to reveal the Father’s tenderness for each one of us.   The favourite hymn of   our old Sr. Kevin now in Heaven   was –   Come as you are.   Come as you are that’s how I want you   Come as you are, feel quite at home.     Close to my heart, loved and forgiven, ...

This is the theme of the International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. This day is held on February 8, a date established by Pope Francis on the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita. Each year approximately 2.5 million people are victims of trafficking and modern day slavery. For the traffickers it has become one of the most lucrative illegal activities in the world. Bakhita was born in Darfur Sudan in 1868. She had a happy carefree childhood until it was stolen from her by slave traders. Bakhita was nine years old when she was kidnapped.   She was so traumatized by the experience that she forgot, not only her name but her family name also. Literally everything was taken from her. The traders gave her the name Bakhita which means ‘Fortunate’. Before her fortune changed she was passed from one set of traffickers to another. To them she was a commodity not a person. She was branded and tortured by her capturers. But her ‘fortune’ did change when she was sold to...

  Today we celebrate the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life...a day to give thanks for our own calling...to marvel at the gift...and to celebrate the call of those who share our lives in community. To enter Carmel is to fall into a fortune!   It is to inherit the vast riches of our Carmelite Tradition.   It is to be welcomed into the heart of a warm loving family in whom that rich Tradition takes flesh.   We share the same ‘spiritual DNA’ and recognise it in each other.   The Holy Spirit creates out of a very mixed bag of individuals of all ages and backgrounds, talents and temperaments, a communion of hearts and minds, a warm family spirit where all strive to be friends, where all love, cherish and help each other....for life! The shared goal and mutual support along the hardships of the road bond us together. I think Teresa would have loved Richard Gillard’s The Servant Song .   It captures the spirit she wished to see in her small Carmelite...

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...