Matthew under the arm 5
Every pilgrimage is about 'sacred/holy places', some will be noticed and most go unnoticed. Following Columba means being acutely aware of the possibility, if not the probability, that sacred places will be revealed to you. They are vitally important.... Here's why...
So get yourBible out and read the passage with your hot chocolate... or....
Enter the holy!
Matthew 2:19-23
At the beginning of the Gospel, the Holy Family make their way into the region of Galilee. At the end of the Gospel, the angel tells those who are looking for Jesus to go to Galilee where the risen Christ is. It is also in Galilee that disciples first encountered Jesus. The sacredness of place because of the significance of the event there… Such places are embedded in our memory. For Mary and Joseph, Galilee gave some safety, as the child was still under threat. Pablo Picasso, the 20th Century sculptor and painter, when he was a little boy was loved and held firmly and lovingly in the arms of his grandfather, when he experienced an earthquake – love and tenderness in the middle of trauma. The place of such love is sacred. A ‘Galilee’ place.
I thank You for Your Holiness in the places You have led me.
In the silence of your prayer, recall from your memory a few of the places where you have experienced important events in your life. Allow your imagination to relive the event with as much detail as comes to you. Use all of your senses to relish each moment of the experience. The Spirit of God will bring the memory into the present moment. This is a recollecting of the sacredness of place. It is your ‘Galilee’ moment. It may well be that it is a place which is important to you because of surrounding darkness in your life. Christ is with you there bringing deep healing and strength. Take a brief note of your prayer experience. It could be important in God’s love and will for you.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
So get yourBible out and read the passage with your hot chocolate... or....
Enter the holy!
Matthew 2:19-23
At the beginning of the Gospel, the Holy Family make their way into the region of Galilee. At the end of the Gospel, the angel tells those who are looking for Jesus to go to Galilee where the risen Christ is. It is also in Galilee that disciples first encountered Jesus. The sacredness of place because of the significance of the event there… Such places are embedded in our memory. For Mary and Joseph, Galilee gave some safety, as the child was still under threat. Pablo Picasso, the 20th Century sculptor and painter, when he was a little boy was loved and held firmly and lovingly in the arms of his grandfather, when he experienced an earthquake – love and tenderness in the middle of trauma. The place of such love is sacred. A ‘Galilee’ place.
I thank You for Your Holiness in the places You have led me.
In the silence of your prayer, recall from your memory a few of the places where you have experienced important events in your life. Allow your imagination to relive the event with as much detail as comes to you. Use all of your senses to relish each moment of the experience. The Spirit of God will bring the memory into the present moment. This is a recollecting of the sacredness of place. It is your ‘Galilee’ moment. It may well be that it is a place which is important to you because of surrounding darkness in your life. Christ is with you there bringing deep healing and strength. Take a brief note of your prayer experience. It could be important in God’s love and will for you.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
posted by Martin at 3:02 pm
2 Comments:
Standing in the choir stalls, singing the Kontakion for the departed. His coffin is in front of me. I have never been to a funeral before, and this is the first friend I have lost. Relatives are one thing - friends are different. I am desolate. At 27 I feel I have no resource that will help this empty feeling. I am there only to sing; I am not a Christian.
In the middle of this, something happens. I realise that all this stuff is real, true, meaningful - for me. I end that day not desolate but purposeful: I have to find out more. I have a journey to make.
The journey continues, but the place is still special. I return "home" every time I am there.
Stormbound in Inverness on Monday ,it was an unexpected day of sunlight and the last glory of gold in the trees on the drive to Pluscarden. Slipping into the side chapel, into the deep hush of silence, a silence that took me back in time to the convent chapel in Bristol.As sacristan, opening the heavy oak door of the chapel in the mornings , I moved into that august stillness. I drifted in and out of it all day, and after the 'Salve Regina'stayed behind in the darkness, resting in it. James Kirkup has a poem 'The Cave ' which speaks of 'A vast and terrible silence under which my small heart smothers its pindrop beat'
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