-----
Forwarded Message -----
From: Fr. Edward
 |
| The Lady Cloister - Nunraw Abbey ... |
To: Donald ....
Sent: Sunday, 5 May 2013, 1:10
Subject: Some more Marian
Lines
Dear Father
Donald,
You might have
some interest in these lines, which I managed to write straight into the
computer in a day filled with computer problems, though I think I avoided the
devil who can expand trivialities into a cause for what they call
"computer rage". It is actually a shortened version of something much
longer which I could not drive to a conclusion. Perhaps a copy for H...?
Blessings in
Domino,
fr Edward O.P.
Dear Fr. Edward,
Thank you.
It is the Month
of May for Mary.
 |
Foot on serpent
(Genesis 3:15). |
The title of
your inspiring poem sets some wheels spinning for reflection.
The lines of “That Mary reigns from Heaven intimately
linked with the Earth” are impelling me to read
between the lines and find the impressions you describe as ‘her visits in all their modalities’.
So far in my life, I was not tempted to compose
poetry but, after your lines, Mary thoughts in the cloister came to mind. I am
the door-keeper. First in the morning I switch on the light on the Lady-Cloister.
At the shrine, in passing I touch the foot of Mary upon the serpent, to be
reminded of her care of all souls.
Of late, I change the view and move higher,
and touch hand to hand of Mary – and that becomes a live open-sesame contemplative
moment.
It must be the makings of a poem. At least, the pictures
may serve the purpose! (Photos)
 |
...touch hand to hand
of Mary |
At Nunraw 1946, the statue of the Blessed
Virgin of Mary, Our Lady Immaculate was given by the abbey of Roscrea. It became
the Salve Regina statue in the wood hut first
Chapel of the community in the foundation. After the construction of the abbey,
one of the cloisters designated the Lady Cloister.
In Dno.
Donald
That Mary reigns
from Heaven intimately linked with the Earth
Our Lord shares with his Mother a special access to the
Earth.
John, as the disciple of praedilection wrote up at the
end of his gospel
an account of those appearances in Galilee.
Despite the wounds on his feet and side, no doubt
protected by a clean scab,
his familiarity with them was complete, and
over the series of scenes by the lakeside
a heavenly reality has descended
protectively,
and for the future
hopefully.
From the moment when Jesus as stranger raised his voice
in instruction of where to fish, the apostles were at
ease.
Relations were re-established in a heavenly mode.
But where he existed humanly invisible
before and after the encounters
one could only assert that he moved to and fro'
between there beyond and here below.
The reality was undeniable, the heavenly haven sure but
not then reached;
only after the intervention of death.
Mary, his mother most dear, passed into the same mode
after her death
as a quasi "Dormition".
So the allegorised Apocalypse encounter
would have encountered Mary as assumed into heavenlyness,
though allegorising the pastness:
the Son being more the Body Mystical
in closest union with the real Body reigning in heaven.
Like an angel sent across the border between time and
space
and their transcendental, God-contained causes.
She spoke the languages, even the dialects of her
contacts:
indigenous Mexican to Juanito, French Basque patois to
Bernadette,
even Saxon to the Hwiccian swine-pastor, Eoves, at
Evesham.
The clothes sought to be familiar yet with higher
dignity.
So she passed that same border to be welcomed,
any initial fear being swiftly despatched.
As an Angel and more (their Queen!),
her visits in all their modalaties have an extended
significance
overflowing with purest hope:
she brings heaven with her, and its presence arouses the
purest of desires.
No negativity in the presence of terrestriality
for one reigning in celestiality.
Where Christmas is celebrated in Australasian mid-summer,
or in the coldest blizzards of Artica and Antarctica
and their high-mountain equivalents - Kilimanjaro in
Kenya!
Bringing the consolation of fraternity and sorority
to those Canadian oblates of hers, "Oblates of Mary
Immaculate",
with a punishing winter rigour reaching out to an
ice-melt probably precedented.
She is not more touched in her essentialies than those
who enjoy
a homeland Christmas feast meant for a passing cooling.
John was given a vision of the heavenly reality of Jerusalem
descendiong on the earth.
A structure diamond-walled, with pearl-gated entrances
opened with permanence, with its non-seasonal
unchangingness,
moonless and sunless,
but lit - Oh marvel! - by the Glory of God and the
Torchlight of the Lamb,
with no night, with medicinal trees meant as a cure-help
to the pagans.
There were signs of human presence, but celestialized
into beings of praise.
No descriptions in detail because they had been
transformed
into sublime participations of God.
Mary is not located there, but appears as begetting the
Church,
menaced by a dragon seeking to drown her Son with his
water-filled belly.
She was transferred to a desert place before the end.
Her non-presence coincides with the inhabitants of those
hardly filled streets.
They are by choice all given over to self-emptying
praise:
filled completely with God and his over-shining Lamb.
Mary remains the watcher over the earth where she reigns;
waiting for her sendings.
Fr. Edward OP
Stykkishólmur
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