The active and the contemplative

It’s amazing what you discover when you look on the net for the saint of the day.  Today is the feast of St Damien de Veuster – that wonderful nineteenth-century Belgian priest who gave his life to ministry to leprosy sufferers on the island of Molokai.  I can say that St Damien helped me as a convert on my way into the Church but now I discover that he had a successor as devoted and as holy as himself, an American Civil War veteran and convert from Protestantism named Joseph Dutton (1843-1931).  The thing is, Dutton was like us in the sense that he was a lay member of a Religious Order, but in his case it was the Franciscans.  Before going out to serve for forty years in Molokai, Dutton spent eighteen months at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Abbey which was later to be made famous by Thomas Merton.  I sometimes wonder if I should have given my life to the service of the poor and needy like these heroic individuals, but then I remember that the Church recognises an important calling to contemplative prayer as exemplified by the Carmelite nuns and friars whose example we aspire to imitate in the world.

Intercessions:

Brian Davis – cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela) - cancer

Siena, Elara – sick children

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant

Rebekah – in hospital