Coping with hard things

To a funeral in Hampshire yesterday.  Anthony Kirke RIP produced a little Carmelite calendar every year with the feasts of the OCD saints.  He wasn’t himself a Carmelite but his widow Judith has been a member of the Order for many years.  In fact she was one of my two mentors in Carmel in my early years of formation.  She has always been a resolutely positive person and she taught me to treasure a marvellously simple expression when painful and difficult things are happening to me – “Alleluia anyway!”  Later I supplemented this with another phrase that I have found extremely helpful – “The Adorable Providence”.  God is in everything that happens to me whether it seems good or bad, and God is adorable.  Recently I have been pondering a third similar expression – “A Severe Mercy” – which is the title of a book I have just been rereading.  It tells the remarkable story of Sheldon and Davy, an atheist American couple who encountered C S Lewis while Sheldon was pursuing studies in Oxford after World War II: he helped them on their way to Christian faith in the Anglican church.  Davy died in the 50s but Sheldon lived on to become a Catholic in 1981.      

Intercessions:

Bernard - operation

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela), Agnes – cancer

Siena, Elara – sick children

Rosemarie – very seriously ill

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

RIP Roswitha Watson OCDS (former President of St Therese Community, Oxford)