Surrounded by love - Chris Gleeson SJ

In the middle of November last year an amazing reality drama was being played out at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Two young Bangladeshi girls, Trishna and Krishna, conjoined at the head from birth, were involved in an intricate 32 hour operation to separate them.

We watched and we prayed, many of us to Blessed Mary Mackillop, as the skill and physical endurance of the surgeons and medical team eventually won the day. It was not too long before the young girls could see one another for the first time, would leave intensive care, celebrate their third birthday, and just before Christmas depart the hospital altogether. While they face years of further surgery and medical treatment, the opportunity accorded them of leading separate and independent lives has been the richest of gifts.

Many people have played a significant role in this splendid success story, none more so that Moira Kelly AO, the girls’ sponsor and legal guardian, who was responsible for bringing them from a Bangladeshi orphanage to Australia. After the twins’ release from hospital immediately prior to Christmas, and all the publicity and media exposure, Moira Kelly said that she wanted to ensure that the girls had a much more quiet time in which they could both sense that they were surrounded by love.

I was touched by those words ‘surrounded by love’. They reminded me of a radio interview I heard in Brisbane several years ago. The spotlight was on the Reverend Graham Long, pastor at the Wayside Chapel in Sydney, and he was reminiscing about his life and the tortuous paths of his ministry. At one point he described himself as a lapsed atheist, and in his brief time as a ‘postie’ he said he learnt the valuable skill of riding a motor cycle down stairs. While he talked about his time as a prison chaplain, I was really struck by his attitude to the hundreds of people who come to the Wayside Chapel each day. He said his challenge was to see the beauty in every face, even when the owner of that face had long given up on it. Surely, that is to let needy people know that they are surrounded by love?

One of the pivotal moments in Jesus’ life is his baptism in the Jordan by his cousin, John. Mark recounts it simply: ‘No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you”’ (Mark 1:10-11).

Jesus is surrounded by love, by his family of love. This event, Henri Nouwen claims, is a blessing. Jesus’ understanding of his own lovableness, his own place in the Trinity, gives him the strength of purpose and resolve to address all the challenges and adversities facing him in his public life to follow. We all need to sense that we are surrounded by love.

Indeed, in one of his sermons of 1992, Henri Nouwen claimed: ‘And, dear friends, if there is anything I want you to hear, it is that what is said of Jesus is said of you. You have to hear that you are the beloved daughter or son of God. And to hear it not only in your head but in your gut, to hear it so that your whole life can be turned around.’

The first week or segment of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius is all about enabling retreatants to learn this same lesson—that they are ‘surrounded by love’. Sinners, yes, but surrounded by God’s unconditional love nonetheless. Not that unconditional love means unconditional approval. Far from it! That wonderful scene in John 8, where Jesus says to the woman caught in adultery—‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more’—is ample proof of this.

Timothy Radcliffe, the former General of the Dominicans, has a beautiful phrase for this unconditional love of God for us. He refers to God as the one for whom ‘no one is on the edge because God’s centre is everywhere and his circumference is nowhere. It is in the spaciousness of God that we will be completely at home because everyone will be.’ Cardinal Basil Hume put it another way: ‘God can’t count—everybody is number one.’

We are all surrounded by love. If only we could let ourselves see and sense it! Let me end with the words of the beautiful Sonnet XLIII of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
May you know that you are surrounded by love this Easter!