“For the
glory of God, and because I desire with all my heart to respond to the call of
Jesus Christ to preach the Gospel with my life, I, N., promise with the help of
Our Lady to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience (for one year, two years,
forever) according to the Madonna House spirit and mandate.”
Yes, it is
June 8, the anniversary of the blessing of the statue of Our Lady of
Combermere, and hence Promises Day in MH. This year we are very blessed, with
four making first promises and receiving the Pax-Caritas cross, four making
final promises and pledging their whole lives to this vocation, and six making
temporary renewals here and in our mission houses. God is favouring us with
vocations at this time, and it is truly a great and joyous thing.
The house is
packed with guests already for the big event—families and friends of the eight
firsts and finalists mainly, and there are quite a few coming up just for the
day today. There will be a festive Mass, with our bishop Michael Mulhall as the
celebrant, followed by a reception. Unfortunately it is looking like a pretty
wet and soggy day which will make the reception an indoor (and hence very
crowded) affair.
Later on, weather permitting, we will gather at Our Lady of
Combermere and pray the rosary together, followed by supper with all the
trimmings. Trimmings, in MH language, means such luxury items as… butter… and
cream for the coffee… and napkins (!)… and wine. When your daily life is
relatively simple and austere, it is amazing how these little touches make for
a feast day atmosphere.
I had the
great privilege of coordinating the retreat for the promise-making people. I
chose the theme, based on the current year of prayer for consecrated life and
the coming jubilee year of mercy, of Consecrated to Mercy: A Two-fold Jubilee.
That really is what it’s all about. Our MH life, so simple and little and
ordinary 95% of the time, is all about making God’s mercy visible.
As I said in
my Little Mandate series last week, putting love where there is not love.
Expressing that love in a thousand little acts of service and direct care of
those God sends us. Doing little things well, and in that building a house of
love, a place where God is loved and where people are loved. The Gospel on
Saturday, the last day of the retreat, was the widow putting her two coins into
the treasury of the temple. It’s that kind of thing—giving all we have right
now to create a house for God to live on earth.
We are not
alone in this work, of course. It is no part of the MH spirit to pretend that
we’re the only people who are doing this kind of thing. All sorts of people lay
down their lives every day to build a house of love on the earth.
But it is
the only point of MH’s existence to do this, and in a sense we are unique in
that we understand that this and this alone is what counts in all of our lives,
all our vocations. The parish priest, the consecrated religious, the married
couple, the single person living in the world—whatever else they are doing, the
value of what they are doing lies in
the love they put into it, the love they are bringing into the world by doing
what they do. Mercy is the face of God’s love in this world, and that is why
the last three popes have put such strong emphasis on this work of mercy.
MH has a
certain prophetic quality to it, in that we really have nothing else to
offer—our lives are about this, or they really are about nothing at all (it’s a
pretty pointless place apart from that, to be quite honest). So pray for our
four first promisers and our four finalists, and the six renewers, that they
may make their promises with full and sincere hearts, and live them out with
‘the help of Our Lady’, and so restore all things in Christ by their lives of
love and service ‘according to the Madonna House spirit and mandate.’
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