Update from Fr Laurence Freeman
Dearest Friends, I decided today to start the chemotherapy treatment straightaway even though it sadly means I won’t be able to celebrate Christmas at Bonnevaux. The doctors are optimistic of a good outcome. It will likely be an eight-week course. I am very blessed by the kindness of Anne and Tom, members of our very loving Houston community who have given me shelter in their home and extraordinary attention. So, I feel peaceful and strengthened interiorly and by many expressions of our community of love. I feel my own journey is simply part of a vast communion of people facing similar challenges both within our own fellowship and globally.
This struck me yesterday: As I was sitting in the crowded waiting room listening, with everyone, for their own unique name to be called, it became very clear we were all ‘keeping an appointment’. We formed a field of suffering, like a human battle-field indifferent to defeat or victory once a deeper purpose became conscious. But there was also a ambient tide of tender compassion on whose waves we are all connected and supported. It far exceeds the pain of life.
An old man with a mucous cough sat in his wheelchair beside his middle-aged daughter, looking blankly forward. Nearby, a young man with a woollen cap pulled low on his head, leant forward on his knees, his eyes closed. Each carried a unique amalgam of sorrow and loneliness but a golden thread of hope wove itself around the cross each of us carried. This is the silent communion of suffering that forms among us. It could put an end to wars and injustice one day in union with the birth and death of Jesus. There is a communion of sorrow but also another community : the revitalising life born of the conscious presence of the God. Ours and every contemplative community knows it because it belongs everywhere and transforms everything.
So, all things going well, I expect to be home before Easter. Thank you all for such warm and loving messages circulating my way through our waiting room of Advent. A peaceful and very joyful Christmas! With my love in the newborn, Laurence Freeman OSB, Bonnevaux 86370 , Marcay, France
Coptic Influence on Early Irish Christianity
It is part of our folklore that it was St Patrick who introduced Christianity to Ireland, yet it is known that St Palladius was sent to Ireland in 431 by St Celestine I Pope of Rome, as the first bishop of the Emerald Isle, with the task of administering the sacraments ‘to the Irish who professed Christ’.
What is less well known is that the early Irish Christianity – perhaps even before St Patrick – seems to have formed under the influence of the Coptic Church of Egypt and that the early Irish Church was quite different in its structure to that of Roman Church with its emphasis on hierarchy and legalism.
Reference to the Coptic origins of early Irish Christianity can be found in The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee – an early ninth century monastic bishop of Clonenagh (Co. Offaly) and later of Tallaght. It appears to date from the early 9th century. It has a litany, which, translated into English reads: ‘Seven monks of Egypt in Disert Uilaig, I invoke unto my aid, through Jesus Christ.’ The early ‘Litany of Irish Saints,’ linked to Oengas of Tallaght (9th Century), refers to the burial of seven Egyptian monks in County Antrim. Click here to learn more about the likely Coptic influence on the development of Christianity in Ireland.
Placing Attention by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
As the weather is changing
and the light is changing
and the birds at the feeder
in the yard are changing,
as the leaders are changing
and the feelings are changing
and the way that we see
each other is changing,
I notice the invitation to turn
toward the truth
of what does not change—
something so vast, so unnamable,
so unable to be grasped and held,
something so present
there is no life without it,
that knows itself
through you, through me,
through clover and tree and cloud
and goes on and on and on forever.
That. I turn again and again
toward that.
Reflection by Noel Keating: As we enter the mid-winter period, our poet reflects that the weather is changing and the light is changing and the birds at the feeder in the yard are changing. And then she comments on the state of the world observing that the leaders are changing. While our own recent election suggests that we will continue to experience little change in leadership style or substance, we have seen huge change elsewhere in Europe and the United States and very recently in Syria.
In addition, changes in leadership of social media make us realise the extent to which feelings are changing and the way that we see each other is changing. And, of course, we are all acutely aware of the enormity of climate change and its potential to change our lives very dramatically. Richard Rohr observes that ‘beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils – political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another, hating each other based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality – the greatest dis-ease facing us right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God certainly, but also from ourselves, from each other, and from our world. Our sense of this fourfold isolation is plunging humanity into increasingly destructive behaviour and much mental distress.’
Within the context of all of this change, our poet calls our attention to the invitation to turn toward the truth of what does not change – something so vast, so un-namable, so unable to be grasped and held, something so present there is no life without it. Our contemplative tradition reminds us that our daily practice of meditation offers us the opportunity to become grounded in and reconnected with the Divine; to appreciate that everything and everyone is within God – all space, all time and every person.
We meditate so that we might open our hearts and our eyes to His ever-present Presence. As expressed in St Patrick’s Breastplate, we believe that our practice deepens our appreciation that Christ dwells within us:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
John Main reminds us that meditation is a journey, a process. It’s not a technique that we master, but is a form of silent, imageless, wordless prayer. He stressed there are no methods of prayer as such, because in reality there is only one prayer, the prayer of the Spirit that is flowing in our hearts continuously. Meditation is a daily commitment to enter into this stream, to turn toward the truth of what does not change … and which goes on and on and on forever. Our meditation is a pathway to an ever-deepening apprehension of and relationship with Mystery, with that truth which does not change. As St Teresa of Avila wrote: All things pass; God remains. When you are at one with God, nothing is found to be missing.
Our next Dublin & Environs Meet-Up will take place in February 2025 in Balally Parish Centre, D16 E032. The date will be clarified in the new year and the speaker will be Mr Michael Lane. We appeal to all groups in these areas to send representatives. In addition, any person who would like to find out more about meditation are also invited to come along.
We are men and women from all walks of life who come together to share and express a desire for deeper meaning and service in our lives through meditating together. Throughout Ireland there are groups which meet to meditate weekly in homes, parishes, offices, hospitals, prisons, schools and colleges, in a spirit of openness and sharing with all. We believe that meditation promotes the development of human consciousness toward a deeper way of seeing and being in the world that can enable us to live as one human family in harmony with all of creation.
