Poetry by our Sister Sheila Reilly, IHM

Does God Cast a Shadow?

Does one ever see the shadow of the sun?
How vain to try to catch reflection of this star!
The Source of light is all too blinding
for capture by the eye entrapped in shade.
So truly has it e’er been entertained
That mortal cannot look on God and live.

Thus God, in only God’s compassion
Enfleshed what mystery hides from human sight
And bowing to our present state of weakness
Takes on the form that answers human need.

You query, “Does God Cast a Shadow?”
Unchanging negative the answer e’er will be.
But if I catch no sight of God
How, then am I to love God?
The Triune in mercy gives a Presence

That caught between one’s person and one’s God
Lends friendly overcast and cool of darkness
In the Son that lets one gaze upon the Sun.

The bridegroom is here,
go out to welcome him,
The king desires your beauty.
He is your Lord. Psalm 45

You have stood on thresholds many in the past
Beckoned by vistas fair to see.
Yours it was to choose the pathways,
Yours the choice to govern years to come.
and till now your choices have been wise ones
Life has gifted you with love and joy and peace.

And now you stand before another open door
Beyond, your vision catches sight of Life.
You hesitate to venture out, to test your intuition
To choose the road best suited to your gift and gear.
Then, casting fear aside, you confidently cross the sill.
With head held high, the uncertain journey you embrace.

Why, this pathway have you chosen?
What is it that draws you on your way?
You answer, “Tis the king desires by beauty.
From lure of earth’s love do I turn away.
The bridegroom’s here and O go out to meet him
My Lord, for only he may have my hand.”

Do you understand the cost of this decision?
Do you know what you are giving up?
T’ will be only after years of giving
You will know the fullness of reward,
Will give yourself to ever stronger love
And receive the groom’s embrace in turn.

Mute Adoration
Advent 2006

Tell me, Zachary, tell me.
Whence came this muteness?
Was it punishment for lack of trust,
imposed to make you reach for God?
Were you brought to recognition
that it is He in charge?
Perhaps it was payment for the gift,
bestowed to help you share in Incarnation.

Zachery, tell me rather,
that to stand so close to mystery,
to look on angel countenance alight,
can paralyze a human tongue.
Tell me, power of speech regained,
that what your gaze caught sight of
was gift of vision, close to eyeing God.

Yes

There is the Virgin’s way of saying yes
and then there is mine.
There is “Be it done unto me.” responded.
with instantaneous spontaneity.
And there is “Be it my way.” while
slowly I come to understand wonder
that follows on a willing yes to You.

Divine intent awaits with patience
while sorrow makes tracks within my heart.
Love has power to change my human yes,
to help me see that my annunciation
can, in that heart become
as surely as it did in Mary’s womb,
Conception—of the Son of God!

Union

It is said when loved is found by Lover’s eye
across the wide expanse of peopled space,
all others simply disappear
creating One in deep felt solitude.

But Lover’s goal is more than metaphor
heart-starved it is for bonded-ness,

is loathe to share Love with any other,
would be Love’s love alone

As lover ages in the Spirit’s wisdom,
two commands are wont to coalesce
to form the One of Love’s demand
for loving love is part of Love.

Can You Hear Me Now?
January 19, 2004

Yesterday I remarked that the Holy Spirit was working overtime in me when I read that question in America magazine in Diane Bergant’s reflection on next Sunday’s readings. Her clever use of that cell phone ad. really inspired me to reflect on call.

In Church parlance call is referred to as vocation. At some time in our life we have each been asked, “Do you have a vocation?” For some reason most of us have answered -“Not me.” But that was due to our misunderstanding the term, -perhaps because we thought we were not cut out for life as a religious because we felt unworthy, because we wanted a mate and children, or – we – each had her own reasons. I want to insist now that for each the answer had to have been, “Of course, doesn’t everyone?”

If you are thinking, “Not me,” you are dead wrong.

The reasoning that divides Christian membership into two distinct entities: religious and lay is wrong. Some, certainly, not all religious found that out sometime in the past; The Church seems not to be convinced yet. Nor have all of the clergy.

You DO have a vocation and a further call. God’s love has singled you out to be a mother, a religious, a single God-lover, a self sacrificing support to parents, brothers, and sisters when misfortune or bereavement was God’s Will for you and them. Your life’s story names it.

Now this long stretch of Ordinary Time is calling you again to your vocation within a vocation – to your conversion to a more faithful keeping of your covenant with God.

Personally, I have heard this call as a more serious effort to dig deeper into my commitment to learning to love. Each dawn I am being urged to get down to a deeper level of my heart to love God unreservedly and to learn to love myself so that I can love you because God loves you.

Don’t you feel alive to a renewed covenant with your God? What – specifically – is it? Is your now answer a yes that sets aside circumstances in the conditions of your life as you are living it?

Reflection on a Papal Election

It was a day of mixed emotions
that brought the certainty that
it indeed was white.
Dismay rode rife o’er exultation
Rumor joined reflected history’s company
to spell, not triumph, but
to plunge one into gloom.

But wait, you who reverence wisdom.
It’s not the story’s ending yet.
Wisdom must need have within it
goodly portion of divinity’s thought.
Has to mirror Maker’s mien.

This new one of the Spirit’s labor
though he seemed not free to be,
now manifests becoming;
allows what obedience had governed
to break forth into exultation
in freedom, hope, in hidden faith transformed.
Freed now, his human voice
makes proclamation of the truth of self.

As for this self:
To my veneration of the intellect
vindication late has come on leaden feet.
Warmth of love for our new leader
can take its time, find its fullness as it grows.
A shepherd whose humor sees responsibility as gift
has got to know his own uniqueness
has got to have the soul to face the cross
as blithely he continues to concertize his world.

Incarnation
Advent 2006

You came into the stillness of that midnight
and now things will never be the same.
For it will take millennia to come
to understand the vastness of the change.
How can humans, even gifted far beyond our ken,
plumb the depths of what has happened here?
How can any real-ize the unreal?
How comprehend that:

One of us is God!

Divine Kinship

Truly has it been said of God
that one cannot survivethe viewing of His countenance.
But what defines survival?
Both desperation and determined growth are in the mix:
One denotes the ending of this earthly life;
The other reaches for the real increase of Truth.

But with His love God reaches out to all of us
in glimpses that reveal the utmost wonder
of Whom by speech will never captured be.
Each human face that comes across our vision
bears traces of our Father’s noble visage.
Our kinship can never be denied.
We have one Lord, we are family.
Yes, Lord, we are Yours

Blindsight

I cannot pray for banishment of dark
when I entrust you to God’s loving will.
And even though you cannot see me here
I try to sit with you and share the emptiness.
Holding your hand clasped tightly in mine
we set about exploring boundless spaces.
You know that I am here. You feel my
presence and listen to my voice.
I try to bolster courage with remembrance.
We speak of friends long gone, are warmed
by sunlight of the past.

But it isn’t empty, dearest friend,
this darkness that surrounds.
You see them, Miriam, do you not?–
the company of witnesses, the leaders
on the journey, peopling the gloom.
They would help you to another kind of vision
the gift that sightlessness bestows.
They would have you open now blinded
to splendors that foretell of everlasting life.

Immensity

Drowning must be the ultimate experience
of permitting God’s will to prevail.
Humans can practice innumerably
though finality’s forbidden to decide.
In the fateful scenario it must God the mover be
with nary a trace, a shadow of human pride.

In practicing, it seems the lungs would burst but
vacuum state propels one surface-wise
One cannot cede one’s soul to eternity
until Providence decrees the open door.
God it was Who held out wondrous promise
His to flesh the vision to reality.

So let me, Lord continue to practice;
Let me, fortified with gulps of prayer,
submerge being in Your immensity
until I say my “yes” one final time
to Father’s will that takes me home.

Choose Life

You alone, Mary, said yes to Incarnation
though with God-taught knowledge,
You looked squarely at the truth of it.
No little-girl mind was at work in you
as you looked awarely, adultly at the implications,
knowing well the arrow that would pierce.

And the Spirit taught you trust!

The long line of all who choose life
began to fall in line behind you
bent on emptying a sheltered place within
where God’s Word could unencumbered grow
be nourished and give nourishment
while self decreased to give Him space.

And the Spirit taught them trust!

May we, pilgrims on the kingdom way,
learn the yes of faith that Mary’s was,
armed with hope, bereft of fact, drawn by one desire.
Help us, Lord, to acquiesce to choosing life,
to open wide a space for You to grow.
Holy Spirit, teach us –

Teach me trust!

Integrity
For Sr. Kathleen Toner, IHM

Buried deep within lies self- unidentified.
One spends moments, days, yes, even years invested in discovering her name.
Someone other yet to be displayed there is
than she who dons this cover -this disguise.
Surely that one lives within her heart.

Costumes vary as perspectives change.
Today she is a princess, royal child,
clad in purple, gems and linen fine.
She can take delight in being chosen,
bestow her riches where they court acclaim,
but truth is she assumes an actor’s role.

Were she to seek the self of truth,
determine to reveal the really real,
she must labor for convergence
-to unite the outer and the inner image.
Then she would project a beggar, not a queen.
Now she begs You, Lord, show me who I am.

Praying Pater Noster

Should I risk the rudeness of eavesdropping by listening in on God in conversation?
Is it meet to trade on human-ness of Christ? Response to gentle urging of prophet-priest dares to chance on intimacy to mystery alone allowed.

You, Jesus, with your Abba, have no problem
with priorities
when in prayer you lovingly exchange.
First things first is order to Divinity
as the hallowed-ness of the King takes pride of
place;
only then, the King’s glory is reflected.

Next, Your One-ness, God, stands in contrast to our myriad;
as Your Will rules heaven and earth.
Now You look upon our helpless hunger
and in mercy nourish us with food Divine to make us one with You.

You conclude with a forgiveness
that forgets what’s in the past
and stretches ever toward the fault that’s
yet too come.

Hold us close, Lord. Let naught of evil intervene. Amen.

Image of Submission

It is right, surely set by God alone,
that Jesus came to Be by stages
as it so for every human to Become.
Being happens so for all of us.
And was meant to image the perfect One.
Yes, for Him the sun’s first rays
would be measured by zone and season.

Thus God patterned daily living for us all.
His Sin alone could be our savior
Having nature like to ours to be redirected with one exception
His Son alone could our redeemer be
Having perfect sunless nature as He made it

It is right – so ordained by God Himself
that Jesus come to Be by stages
as is so for every human to Become.
Being happens so for all of us –
was meant to image our creator

The Narrow Door
Luke 13:24

When first one answered to the call
Unperceived was measure of the door
Luggage seemed not over cumbersome
For passage through a beckoning frame.
Things abandoned at the portal
Treasured, held in high esteem,
Found to be of lesser value
Weighed ‘gainst hoped for future gain.

Years and myriad doorways later
Ceaselessly the call still sounds.
Must one go on to further stripping?
What more is there that love demands?
Lord, deign the courage to bestow
Through the Needle’s Eye to pass
That one final act of giving
Bring one home to you at last.