Welcome!

It is good to have you share in this retreat and I hope that the material provided will help you with your prayer and reflection. 

There are three videos and some written material for reflection. I hope they give you food for thought and questions to ponder in your own situation, whether your home life is alone or with others. 

The first Video Conference reflects on the importance of the home at the very beginnings of Christianity.

The second Video Conference draws on some of St Benedict's wisdom from his Rule for all Households of God.

Finally there is a Video Reflection on a  wonderful painting.

Fr Brendan

In the course of their journey he came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord's feet and listened to him speaking.  Now Martha who was distracted with all the serving said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.'  But the Lord answered; "Martha, Martha,' he said, 'You worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her." 

Generous God, 

whose Son Jesus Christ enjoyed the friendship and hospitality of Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany: 

Open our hearts to love you, our ears to hear you, and our hands to welcome and serve you in others, through Jesus Christ our risen Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

It is easy to talk about home life in an ideal way. Jonathan Sachs describes families as 'not easy places...full of stress.' but where  we learn the 'complex coreography of love' and where 'we first find that others are there for us, and we must be there for them.' He says: 

“Through my parents I have a history. Through my children I have posterity. In the family I learn the complex choreography of love - what it means to give and take and share, to grow from obedience to responsibility, to learn, challenge, rebel, make mistakes, to forgive and be forgiven, to argue and make up, to win without triumph and know when to lose graciously. It is where we acquire emotional intelligence, that delicate negotiation between the given and the chosen, the things I will and the things resistant to my will.”  From Jonathan Sachs, Celebrating Life p.100

If the home is a School of Love, am I still learning?

"Love is like bread, 

it has to be made fresh every day."

Old Saying

There is something religious in the way we sit

At the tea table, a tidy family of three.

You, my love, slicing the bread and butter and she,

the red-cheeked tot a smear of blackberry jam, and me.

Apart from the marvellous doting

Of a world’s interchange with each other...there’s tea.

Stupid, they say, to think of the thing as an ordinance.

And yet all the elements are found to change in our hands.

Because we sit there and share them with each other

There’s a miracle.  There’s a binding of unmerited graces

By the cheese, and through the apples and the milk

A new creation of life is established, a true presence.

And talking to each other, breaking words over food

Is somehow different from customary chatting.

I know perfectly well that the generations must, 

Of necessity, have performed this petty action.

And surely their pattern has long since burrowed

As part of our consciousness.  Then too, back beyond the epochs

Is depending, turning back to the fountainhead,

And listening on the connecting wires to a Voice

That is at the same time food - he expresses

Himself here from the beginning.  All would acknowledge

That the food itself is a pleasure:

The spirit grows stronger too in its wake.

Still tea is not worship...But it overcomes

Things so the spirit may happily hop

In our hearts.  Assimilating heaven’s carol

Into our constitutions, we are a choir, our throats

Blending calories and words together in the 

presence

Of the unseen Conductor who laid the table.

Bobi Jones,1929-2017, was a Welsh poet and academic, and commited Christian. Although a fervent Welsh nationalist and egalatarian, he taught Prince Charles Welsh in preparation for his Investiture as Prince of Wales.  In the poem he reflects on God revealing himself at family tea.

Our life and death is with our neighbour.  If we win our neighbour we win God. If we cause our brother (or sister!) to stumble, we have sinned against Christ. 

Antony 9 

What does is it mean to have sacramental vision of the world? 

"He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar" Rule of St Benedict, Ch 31 on the Cellarer

“The Lord walks among the pots”

St Teresa of Avila,  The Book of Foundations Chapter 5.8. 

“I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king.”  Br Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God.

When that day comes, the horses bells will be inscribed with the words, "Sacred to the Lord," and in the Temple of the Lord the very cooking pots will be as fine as the sprinkling bowls at the altar. And every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall become sacred to the Lord Sabaoth. Zechariah 14:20-21

“The day of my spiritual awakening 

was the day I saw - and knew I saw - 

all things in God 

and God in all things.”

Mechtild of Magdeburg:

The following poem was written 

by a 19 year old English servant 

girl, Klara Munkres, in 1928.

Lord of pots and pans and things,

Since I've not time to be

A saint by doing lovely things

Or watching late with Thee

Or dreaming in the dawn light

Or storming Heaven's gates,

Make me a saint by getting meals

And washing up the plates.

Although I must have Martha's hands,

I have a Mary mind

And when I black the boots and shoes,

Thy sandals, Lord, I find.

I think of how they trod the earth,

What time I scrub the floor,

Accept this meditation Lord,

I haven't time for more.

Warm all the kitchen with Thy love,

And light it with Thy peace

Forgive me all my worrying and make

My grumbling cease.

Thou who didst love to give men food,

In room or by the sea

Accept this service that I do,

I do it unto Thee.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's 

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices; 

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; 

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — 

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Poem by Kitty O’Meara

a retired American teacher written during this crisis.

And the people stayed home.

And read books and listened, and rested and exercised,

and made art and played games,

and learned new ways of being and were still.

And listened more deeply.

Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.

Some met their shadows.

And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed.

And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless and heartless ways the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again,

they grieved their losses, and made new choices,

and dreamed new images,

and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully,

as they had been healed.

O BLESSED are those who fear the Lord

and walk in his ways!

By the labour of your hands you shall eat.

You will be happy and prosper;

your wife like a fruitful vine

in the heart of your house;

your children like shoots of the olive,

around your table.

Indeed thus shall be blessed

the man who fears the Lord.

May the Lord bless you from Zion

all the days of your life!

May you see your children's children

in a happy Jerusalem!

On Israel, peace!

Visit this this house, we pray you, Lord: 

drive far away from it all the snares of the enemy.

May your holy angels stay here 

and guard us in peace, 

and let your blessing be always upon us.

Through Christ our Lord,

Amen.

Thanks for following this retreat.

Pray for us all at Belmont as we pray that you and your loved ones stay safe and well.