My Aunt

My Aunt went home to Jesus on 17 August, the 'Leave-taking of the Feast of the Dormition and Assumption of Mary the Theotokos'. The Lord seems to have seen fit to bless my family with many many days dedicated to Mary (and other saints) as significant dates in our lives ... birthdates to earthly life, birthdates to eternal life, anniversaries, and others. Even my own life as a hermit brother has its Mary connexion. I am living under the Rule of St. Albert followed by the Carmelites who are dedicated to Jesus under the maternal care of his mom Mary under the title of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. St. Albert of Jerusalem wrote the Rule for the hermits "who lived by the spring on Mount Carmel" in what is present day Israel.

Oddly enough I was never really a "Mary guy" at all until I asked the Holy Spirit to show me where and if Mary should have any role in my spiritual life. Gradually the Lord revealed to me the role of maternal care that Mary can have in our life's journey if we need or want her support in Jesus. As an old priest friend of mine told me some years ago, "There is no competition between Jesus and Mary". Jesus is God and He is the one who gave her to us to "take into our home" as he hung upon the Cross. She has a ministry of helping us to know God's Love. Remember at the wedding in Cana, she told the servants there and she tell us too today, "do whatever He tells you."

New Days

Here I sit, a hermit. What's that? I don't really know. Merton said, "The hermit life is a kind of walking on water, in which one no longer can account for anything but one knows that one has not drowned and that this is to nobody’s credit but God’s …". I'm not sure if I'll even continue to try to blog as I'm concerned it may be an abandonment of my solitude...

Anyways,
I was helping care for my aunt over the last year and she passed home to the Love of the Trinity on 17 August. It's been 3 weeks as of tomorrow. Her last words, given with her very last breath were "I love you" to her family. I was there at her side, I heard it, I saw it with my own eyes. She was a woman who loved much, and now she's in the Lord's heart and with us in Him; Alive, very much alive.

I tried to start my blog some time ago, but it was too personal I thought, so here I'm trying to be a touch more... private. Deo Optimo Maximo!

It was the feast of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta yesterday. She led me to Jesus in so many ways. It was yesterday too that two of her Sisters in India were arrested for caring for orphans. They were accused of forcibly converting children. Sr. Nirmala, head of the Order, says that suffering with Christ is the reality of the Christian life and is to be expected. Meanwhile the Sisters never have in their history coerced conversions.