As we celebrate National Vocations Awareness Week (3-10 August), Therese Carroll rsj, Convenor, Congregational Immersion & Discernment of Call, shares a poem and prayer, and an invitation to reflect on living the life we are called to live…”Who am I becoming?”
Treasure of Love
Poem by Margie Mahon (used with permission).
Life’s treasures come in all shapes and sizes.
We become like our treasures
precious pearls of great price
found in fields of promise.
Treasures shine through our eyes
revealing to all
abundant riches
gathered across years of generous loving
shining in the story that lives on
through treasures savoured and shared.
“Come”, you say,
“Share in the abundance given freely
Take and receive from this never-ending
well of gladness.”
Mysteriously, there is always more…
Riches glistening
calling to empty places
amazingly, though not surprisingly
full to overflowing
riding ecstatically on huge waves of love.
There is a line in the Irish song Carrickfergus
“I am drunk today, and I am rarely sober.”
I know the feeling of drunk on love
pouring through my life like pouring rain
soaking through every experience that ever was, ever will be.
Waters that soak through any and every kind of material
ever-present, never deserting
constant infusing of love.
Nothing can escape this drenching love
ever-generous, ever-present
always and persistent
unrelenting, uncontainable
well filling from the deep source
oceans, rivers, streams and
pouring out into every aspect of life’s emergence
waterfalls, storms, gentle rains, tears of grief.
Wells and waves, sources of generosity!
This is exciting, foreboding, stirring, daring!
Can I risk my whole life for this generous Presence
moving in and through all that is?
Am I willing to carry this expansive
generous loving in my life?
It will mean love and generosity spilling out everywhere.
Move now! Yes! it is time!!
Fall in Love
Prayer often attributed to Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ (1907–1991), but by Joseph Whelan SJ.
Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
Invitation
Go quietly into the silence of the real presence in your heart and hear the whispers of Love.
How will you respond?