We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or a helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.
Silent Reflection
BLESSING OF THE ELEMENTS
Air: One of the oldest words in Greek is the word for “air”—pneuma—and it is also the word for “spirit.” One of the first words for God in Hebrew is Rua, which also means “wind.” Bless the air we breathe, Lord. Let us close our eyes and breathe in the fresh air of this dawn and then breathe out the darkness that is within us and inhibiting us.
Silence
Earth: Our bodies are made of the earth, and at the end of our lives will return to the earth. We ask forgiveness of Mother Earth for all the ways we have abused and poisoned and destroyed her. We put our hand to the ground and ask the earth to heal us and bless us.
Fire: Fire is the great cleanser and purifier. We ask that this fire of Easter may burn away from our hearts all that is false and useless and negative inside us.
Water: Water is the gift of life, and without it there is no life. We thank God for the gift of water and ask him to bless with Easter light this water taken from the ocean surrounding us, and in receiving it may we be cleansed and blessed, that we may be protected from all danger and darkness, so that the spirit of evil may have no power over us or those that are close to us among the living and the dead.
PRAYERS OF THE FAITHFUL
That the light of Easter may fully enter our hearts and change us and bless us.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
For all those that we love, and especially for the gift of friendship, and that our friends may be blessed with the same kindness and generosity which they show us.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
For those who are suffering in the world. For those in hospital, that God might bless them and that the light of Easter might surprise them and give them courage. For those who are depressed and for those who are haunted and locked away in institutions, that they too may receive the special peace of Easter. For prisoners everywhere, that though they have lost the outside world, the gifts of the inner world might be opened up to them. For those who suffer injustice in the world, those starving to death in a world where there is too much food—and that we may be forgiven for our guilt in participating in systems that cause suffering to others.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
For all the people of this parish, especially those who are ill or who have died in the past year. And for all our own particular intentions.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
Lord, you know the deepest needs of our hearts. We ask you to renew us and transform us in the new dawn light of Easter.
Amen.
Music
Priest and congregation move inside the ruined abbey for the Consecration of the Mass. At the end of Mass, John gives the final blessing.
May the spirit and light of this Easter morning and the special spirit and light of this abbey of Corcomroe bless us all, watch over us and protect us on our journey and open us from the darkness into the light of peace and hope and transfiguration. May the spirit of the sacred Trinity, the light of nature and all good spirits and angels and our friends among the dead bless us and heal us, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
This Mass is ended, but don’t go yet because there’s tea and buns outside and a feast of reels to send us home happy!
A Morning Offering
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer,
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
From To Bless the Space Between Us
BALANCE
“Most of us are moving through such an undergrowth of excess that we cannot sense the shape of ourselves anymore.”
Between 1998 and 2010, the Céifin Institute (largely under the driving force of Fr. Harry Bohan) held a series of annual conferences in Ennis, Co. Clare. They took a hard look at “our society in the new millennium,” beginning with the prescient question “Are we forgetting something?” (I.e., in the midst of an economic boom, what has happened to our values?) These were stimulating and challenging events, addressed by high-powered speakers from home and abroad. For me as a broadcaster they were the source of many lively contributions to “The Open Mind,” in either interview or extract form. The theme for 1999 was “Working Towards Balance” and John O’Donohue was a guest speaker who undertook his own exploration of “Balance.” As an introduction to his talk, John read his poem “Thought-Work,” in which the working of the mind is compared to the work of the architect-crows he observed building their nests in the Burren.
Thought-Work
Off course from the frail music sought by words
And the path that always claims the journey,
In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,