VULNERABLE PRESENCE
On December 17th, 2011 my wife, Linda and I spent the day at Rickard House in Blackrock, Dublin. We were invited to give a day of reflection to the community there. This came about because my aunt is Sr. Mary Dixon D.C. or ‘Kathleen’ as she is known to her relatives. Furthermore, my wife and I facilitate a domestic centre of Christian spirituality at our home in Stoneyford, County Kilkenny. This small initiative is like a marriage between a family home and a retreat centre. We live there with our four children who are aged between twelve and six. Coupled with this, our home facilitates the exploration of Christian spirituality through a programme of contemplative prayer, scripture and theological reflection, various courses, group meetings and publications. Some photographs of this centre and wooden sculptures in its contemplative garden are included in this article.
Kathleen visited our home once for an evening of prayer and reflection in 2002. We had hoped that she would visit us again more recently but this has not proved possible as her health became more compromised. Accordingly, her great friend and carer, Sr. Nuala Dolan D.C., arranged for us to bring our home to her home in Rickard House last December. There were two sessions of prayer and reflection with the day culminating in the celebration of Eucharist. Kathleen was there for all of it.
The central image of the day was the image of Mary, the Mother of God, holding the infant Jesus. This theme was drawn from the first religious gift I ever received. It is a simple ivory piece of Mary holding the fragile infant. I have kept it with me ever since and it resides above the desk in the study in our home. It was given to me when I was five or six years of age by Kathleen.
Every four years, she would return from Ethiopia when I was a child and spend a week with my family in Nenagh, County Tipperary. My parents were exceptionally good to her and she, in turn, was a beautiful presence for all of us. Hours were spent by her playing board games with my brother and myself with no visible sign of tedium by her. Having four children myself and having been subjected to endless board games, I now know how selfless this was.
During her visits, each day she would walk to the local Church for Mass at ten in the morning. She would return to the Church at four each day for prayer. As a young boy, I used follow her to the Church for the afternoon session and remain there with her for over an hour in silence. I remember walking behind her to the Church because I knew that if I caught up with her she would urge me to go home. I stayed back as she walked to the Church and then at the Church, I also remained at the back of it and watched her in prayer. Once she was finished kneeling in the Church and was seated, I would then approach her and sit down beside her.
Over time I have realised that the contemplative presence of Christ in her was of such strength and calmness that it easily stilled the distraction of my young mind. Having tried to practice different ways of prayer intermittently ever since, I have rarely returned to the stillness that I found as a child in being in her presence and in turn with the absent presence of Christ. As a young boy, I was being attracted to the presence of greatness. I knew I was in the presence.
The morning session at Rickard House centred upon the infant Jesus, upon His vulnerability. Different dimensions of vulnerability were reflected upon. The first is to see that God is a vulnerable presence. If we do not protect the constant but fragile presence of God within us, our lives cannot become agents of divine love. Linda opened some of the writings of Etty Hillesum who was inspired, through the horror of the Holocaust, to see that God is a vulnerable presence, to be looked after in the human heart. Etty wrote in her diary to God :
“You cannot help us, but we must help you
and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.”
The morning also dwelt upon the truth that God is found in our vulnerability and in responding to that of others. God allowed himself to be weak and powerless in the world as this is the condition that draws the deepest response from the human heart. Linda read from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoffer to bring out this theme. Again, in response to the destruction of Nazi Germany, he wrote that “God allows Himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross” as this is the only way that He can be fully with us and help us. This is the power of powerless love, the supreme act that draws love out from the human heart and prompts us to care for others. The charity of Jesus crucified urges us.
During the afternoon, we dwelt upon the Mother of God holding the divine infant, the holding environment of God. God creates and sustains this holding environment for each of us, the full extent and breadth of which can only be entered upon death. For in this world, there are gaps in the holding environment, gaps that Kathleen would have seen with devastating effect through the years of famine that she witnessed in Ethiopia in particular. In the middle of the great famine in Ethiopia in 1985, her community was visited by Basil Hume. When he was with a dying child, someone asked him in the presence of Kathleen as to why God was allowing this catastrophe to happen. Kathleen recounted to me that he paused, took out a cross of the crucified Christ and placed it before his questioner. He then asked why God allowed this to happen.
In the rite of passage from being Kathleen Dixon to Sr. Mary Dixon D.C., Kathleen would have experienced the trauma of being wrenched from her family, of losing her first and primary holding environment. She began her religious life in a different era which did not understand our need to be held in the environment of loving, sustaining relationships. On entering the convent, she was discouraged from having visits from her family. Her parents died within eight days of each other in 1960. She was not allowed to attend their funerals. Shortly afterwards, she left Ireland and began her mission in Africa. In this way, her life has been heroic in a most profound way, characterised by traumatic departure, the initiation of constant prayer and trials in a foreign land and then the return to her home of origin, bringing back what she found.
What is it that she found? Is it that we are each called to be heroic, to respond to these gaps in the holding environment, gaps that we are called to make good by being rooted in the contemplative experience of the loving embrace of the Trinity? Surely, this is the essence of the spirituality of the Daughters of Charity – to return constantly in contemplation to the loving, holding presence of the Trinity and then to act as their instrument in responding to the gaps of the holding environment in this world. This has been the essence of Kathleen’s life, a contemplative in action, in the world but not of the world, not the doer but letting the love of God be done through her.
As I write this piece, Kathleen lies in her room in Rickard House having suffered another serious stroke some ten days ago. On the occasions that I have visited her since this occurred, her eyes are closed, her breathing is restricted and there is little or no reaction from her. Kathleen is a vulnerable presence at the centre of the most caring holding environment that is Rickard House and the Daughters of Charity. She is the presence of Christ in the body of Christ.
In essence, she now reflects perhaps the deepest truth of our lives, that life is not about producing or earning one’s worth but about receiving generously. Ultimately, we are called to fully receive the gift of life, the knowledge of God’s unceasing love and the care of others. In this way, our only response is to be appreciative, to be grateful, to be eucharistic. For the love of God is not earned, it is a given to be received. Nothing else matters.
The last words that Kathleen said to me are ‘thank you’, said at the end of this memorable day in Rickard House. All who know her are thankful to her, however, for in being with her, we encounter in this beautiful woman the deeper world, which sustains us, holds us and cares for us. This is the world that we long for, the world that we are made for, the eternal world to which we will all return.
Kathleen cannot speak to us now. Yet, when we prayed for her at our home on the night that she had this stroke, I came upon these words of Catherine de Hueck Doherty in a book that we were reflecting upon. When I read them, it felt in my heart as if Kathleen was saying them to all of us who have been touched by the presence of Christ in her :-
“Stand still, and look deep into the motivations of life. Are they such that true
foundations of sanctity can be built on them? For truly man has been born to be a
saint – a lover of Love who died for us! There is but one tragedy : not to be a saint.
If these motivations of life are not such that they can be true foundations for
sanctity, then the soul must start all over again and find other motivations. It can
be done. It must be done. It is never too late to begin again.”
Patrick Treacy,
February 4th, 2012