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Letting go and letting GOD!
Fr Chris Thomas, from the Emmaus Family of Prayer, reflects on what he learned through a recent bout of illness and the benefit of enforced inactivity
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The 'Celebrate' conference at Ilfracombe is always a good experience from which people always take many blessings, the good teaching, the experience of being Church, the memory of liturgy that is alive. This year I took away something extra….pneumonia! Since the Conference I've been confined to home on huge amounts of antibiotics and after the first couple of weeks when I didn't care whether I lived or died, the frustration of being at home without the energy to lead the normally busy life that I live almost drove me mad. I began to wonder whether I'd ever get better. "Wanting TO DO and not being able" I remembered my mum getting weaker and weaker from cancer until there was little she could do but sit, reliant on everyone around her and I began to understand, in a very small way, what she went through. I began to know what my 87- year -old aunty means when she talks about wanting 'to do' and not being able. It was while all of this was going on that I became aware of something that both my mum and my aunty have said to me in different ways over the years. They both said, in their own way, that being weaker and less able gives more time for prayer and reflection; that it gives more time for the Spirit to work the miracle of transformation within, and that if we treat it correctly, our weakness and sickness can be a gift. When they said this to me, I probably smiled and paid lip service to them and got on with my busy life but these last weeks of enforced quiet and isolation have made me realise how right they were. I had a choice. I could moan about what was happening to me or I could use some of the time to reflect and pray. I could complain or I could use the time purposefully. "It's the attitude that counts" The desire of God's heart is that we be well and healthy. God doesn't send sickness to us but when it happens our attitude to it and what we do with the time we have can make all the difference to us. It can make the difference between life being fulfilled and happy despite the sickness or frustrated and miserable because of it. When my mum was dying she was allowed to go home after four weeks in hospital. There was nothing more to be done for her. One day she asked me to walk around her flat with her and to write down what she told me. She began to pick up the things that had been very important to her during her life and she told me whom she wanted to give them to. As she shared out her belongings I realised that they had become very unimportant to her. At one point I asked her if it hurt to give it all away. She said "No it was only lent to me and it's all for the good of others." The times of quiet and reflection had enabled Mum to let go of the material things that had made sense of her life and when the time came for her to go to God and she could pray no longer she could let go of life in peace. "The grace to see times of sickness as a gift and a way to God's blessing" My aunty says that she used to wonder why God had kept her alive for so long and what use she is now that her body doesn't let her do all that she would like. Then she remembered that she could use some of the time that she had 'saying the prayers' and that her life has purpose. I hope that, if I get to her age, I'm able to remember and to offer myself to God in prayer and that, like my mum, when it's time to meet the Lord I can do it having allowed the Spirit the space and the time to transform me. So where does all this leave us? I suppose it's to say that when the times of sickness come, whether they are transitory or terminal, ask for the grace to see them as gift. Pray for yourself, for the world and for those that you love and trust that God will be God and blessings will be yours.
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 Fr Chris Thomas |
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