Madonna - May / June 2006

‘What touches you is what you touch.’

I would like to think that these words of Margaret Atwood are true for me.

While waiting recently in a Breakfast Creek Road service centre for my car to be refreshed, I took the opportunity to read a homily of Paul Gardiner’s on Blessed Mary MacKillop.

As the principal promoter of her cause for canonisation in Rome, Paul had been asked to preach on the feast of St Joseph this year when the Diocese of Wagga Wagga formally adopted Mary of the Cross as their patron. I came upon his words when visiting him at Penola with some Lutheran primary school principals whose retreat I was directing at nearby Mt Gambier. The beautiful simplicity and clarity of his message touched me. Let me share a portion of it with you here.

When Our Lord was asked one day, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ he replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second most important commandment is like it, You must love your fellow human being as yourself.’

Mary MacKillop was certainly devoted to educating the poor and helping the needy. But that was how she fulfilled this second great commandment, to love her neighbor. The impetus for this came from her fidelity to the first and greatest commandment, to love God with all her being.

A little fable, a parable, may illustrate how these two commandments are linked. When God had created everything he sent our sun out into the Milky Way. But then he called him back. ‘What is it, Lord?’, said the sun. ‘Don’t forget to shine’, said the Lord. ‘Lord’, said the sun, ‘you have made me so brilliant that I can’t help it. I have to shine.’

Just as the sun cannot help giving light and heat, so those who love God cannot help loving other people. St. John wrote: ‘This is how we know that we are God’s children, when we love God and obey his commandments’. The fervour of Mary MacKillop’s love of God was like the sun, inspiring her love for others. Her devotion to the will of God never wavered, so she was just as much a saint in her last years of paralysis and inactivity as she was in the prime of her life.’

I have been wondering what it is in these words of Paul Gardiner’s that touched me so much. Perhaps it has been the memory flashes of people I know and love who just shine. Perhaps it is that simple equation of our love for God flowing naturally to loving others, which Mary MacKillop personified so luminously for us. It is what Pope Benedict calls in his first encyclical ‘the unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor’.

Like the sun, Mary MacKillop just shines. Shining is what God-lovers do. Consumed by their love for God they seek naturally to share this fire, this light and heat, with others. It calls to mind a lovely prayer, which is used in Salisbury Cathedral, England:

Lighting a candle is a prayer.
When we have gone it stays alight,
Kindling in the hearts and minds
Of others the prayers
We have already offered for them
And for others,
For the sad, the sick, and the suffering,
And prayers of thankfulness too.
Lighting a candle is a parable.
Burning itself out,
It gives light to others.
Christ gave himself for others;
He calls us to give ourselves.
Lighting a candle is a symbol.
Of love and hope,
Of light and warmth.

Our world needs them all.

The great modern spiritual writers like Joan Chittister and Ronald Rolheiser invite us to learn from what touches us in life. Joan Chittister can write: ‘I have a theory that only what touches the heart is lodged in the mind. Memory is made up of what has touched our lives….It is time, I think, to release feeling into the world’ (Called to Question, p. 152)

Similarly, Rolheiser can provoke us with statements like ‘passion is God’s fire in us.’ To have a tender moment, a touching moment, is to pray. ‘We need to pray by picking up the tender moment and letting its grace soften us’ (Forgotten among the Lilies, p. 123) The prayer of all prayers, the Eucharist, is God’s physical embrace of us, God’s touch.

It is good to be back writing the editorial for Madonna. Since vacating the editor’s chair last August, I have met many people in my travels who confess that they have been touched by the magazine. For those in far distant rural regions it is often their lifeblood, their connection to the modern church. Some people even say they cannot start their day without first reading the Daily Prayer section.

While writing can often be an exercise in vulnerability, such moments can soften the heart and touch us deeply. That, surely, is a good thing for the soul. After all, we become those who touch us, as Joan Chittister would say.

To know Thee is the end and the beginning.
Thou carriest us and Thou dost go before,
Thou art the journey and the journey’s end (Boethius).

God’s touch

‘What touches you is what you touch.’

Chris Gleeson SJ