Pause for Prayer

Today, London elects its new mayor.

Last night, as I hurried past the Houses of Parliament, through the heavy rain, one of the two men walking towards me, was one of the mayoral candidates. On this occasion, he was not electioneering and was merely deep in conversation with his companion. He appeared exhausted, bedraggled and very human. He had no umbrella and was merely becoming increasingly wet.

Recently, a friend who is ‘in the know’ remarked in a conversation that “Gordon Brown is a thoroughly decent person” but that “it’s not fair because the media does not give him a chance.”

Regardless of Party politics and policies, what is it about our society that automatically puts up someone in public life as one to be pilloried? Somehow there is a tendency to criticise, sometimes cruelly, sometimes unjustly, politicians and celebrities in a way that we would never dare with those who are in our immediate circle. It is almost as though, once an individual ‘goes public’, they lose their humanity and their right to a good name or to personal privacy. If, on the other hand, we are denied the right to criticise, then somebody, somewhere, is acting against ‘our right to free speech’.

When does our exercise of ‘free speech’ become merely a gross lack of charity?

Why do we sometimes allow the media to direct our thinking and acting, so that we, albeit unconsciously, assume their bias as our own without stopping to evaluate the reality of the situation? We speak of a ‘media bandwagon’, see the damage it does, and yet, somehow, fail to push that same media to use its power for good.

In a few minutes time, I will join the large number of people at the polling station. In one sense, it is free and fair. There has been an enormous effort made to portray each candidate in a balanced fashion, such that most voters can list all the good and the bad points of each candidate. I do not intend staying up tonight in order to hear the election results: they will, no doubt, be exhaustively covered by all the media tomorrow morning.

Yet, as I go to cast my own vote, my thoughts are turning back towards one very wet, very tired, mayoral candidate who, whatever his chances, has exhausted himself in the election process. The media did not portray a human being like the rest of us, trying his best to persuade the voting public. He will be covered in glory should he win, although his will be an unenviable responsibility, but, should he lose, who will be there to ease the disappointment and to inspire him to ‘keep on going’?

When does our exercise of ‘free speech’ become merely a gross lack of charity?

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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It was a tiny, inconsequential but thought-provoking incident. An elderly woman glared disapprovingly as I pulled out and used a hairbrush. I knew it wasn’t the place for it, but tossed up between good manners and tidiness. She was not to know that I had just worked an eight-hour shift and walked four miles in the wind and rain to reach the meeting.

How often do we jump to conclusions about others, especially when they are complete strangers? How often do we make allowances for circumstances of which we know nothing?

How often do we allow charity to triumph over our own, possibly faulty, conclusions?

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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There was a press conference immediately following their meeting with Pope Benedict at the Wednesday General Audience. It was then that I had my first contact with Kate and Gerry McCann, although Kate and I attended the same school (some years apart) and her parents live close to my own family.

When I saw Kate and Gerry, I was utterly convinced of their innocence, and remain so after one year of frequent conversations with Kate’s parents. I have been deeply humbled by their faith and courage, the persistence of their prayers even when the days have been dark and pain-filled.

Knowing the widespread concern for Madeleine and her family, I thought that I would reproduce the article from tonight’s Liverpool Echo as my own way of marking Madeleine’s anniversary, as my own little offering of support to a suffering family who also represent the anguish of similar families across the world.

May God bless, support and comfort the McCann family and all families in their situation. May missing children come home, safe and sound and may all the wounds be healed.

God bless,
Sr. Janet

Madeleine McCann - if she’s dead, we need to know
Apr 28 2008 by Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo
IN the first of a two-part series, to mark the first anniversary of the abduction of Madeleine McCann, chief feature writer Paddy Shennan talks to her Liverpool-based grandparents, Brian and Susan Healy
IT’S A tough question to ask and an almost impossible one to answer.
As they approach the anniversary of the disappearance of their first grandchild, Madeleine McCann’s grandparents bravely face up to the horrendous possibility of their worst nightmare coming heartbreakingly true.
For Brian and Susan Healy, who have spent the past 12 months doing all they can for Madeleine and all they can for her mother, their only child, Kate, the agony and the anguish can only intensify on the anniversary no one wants to see come round.
We are sitting in their suburban home in a quiet, tree-lined street off busy Allerton Road, a house where the gates remain bedecked with yellow and green ribbons. A house where the first and last thing you see, as you enter and leave, is a framed photograph of their smiling granddaughter, Madeleine, in her Everton top.
An ordinary family photograph which is now, for all the wrong reasons, familiar to millions of people around the world.
It is here, then, in this seemingly unremarkable, ordinary and everyday world, that these devoted parents and grandparents fight a daily battle against thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable.
So do they now, after all this time, believe little Madeleine is dead and, if she is, would they rather face this devastating fact – or continue living in ignorance, with only their daily turmoil and torment for company?
Susan, 62, takes a deep breath, and says: “I think Kate feels she needs to know what’s happened to Madeleine, because her imagination . . .”
Her voice trails away as the enormity of what she is saying hits home, before she adds, softly and sadly: “Kate said ‘If Madeleine is dead I need to know’. That goes for us as well.”
But explaining the trap they fear falling into, Brian, 68, says: “If you say ‘We want a resolution’ you are tempting fate . . . If I was talking about any other child, I would probably think ‘She’s gone’. But it’s Madeleine, and so we have hope.”
Susan, as if grasping hold of that most powerful of four-letter words, stresses: “We still have a lot of hope, because we have no reason not to have.
“Sometimes when I’m having a bad time – which has been most of the time recently – I would be quite fearful of the chances of Madeleine being found alive. Then I’ll read something or speak to someone who will say ‘You WILL get her back, you know’. That makes me feel a bit ashamed, so I pull myself together.”
And Kate? Is she, as some newspapers have suggested, on the verge of falling apart?
Susan says: “I can’t believe how strong Kate is. I just don’t know where she gets this strength from. Prayer does give you strength. If nothing else it’s something that has kept us going . . . prayer and the support of other people.
“I do fear for the future, of course I do. But as for her appearance now, Kate’s always been thin and I don’t think she’s any thinner than before. I’ve looked at pictures in the early days when people said how cool she looks and, to me, she looks in anguish.
“I think, if people can’t see the anguish in her face, they are blind, they really are.
“No one takes less time on themselves than Kate. She’s not into make-up. She comes across in pictures quite well. She looks very attractive, though she wouldn’t think that.
“But some people want to write anything at all to make her appear less caring about her children and more caring for herself.
“I am absolutely amazed at the strength she has shown. I know she feels she let Madeleine down. The only way she can cope is by trying 100% to get Madeleine back. She can’t possibly give up because the twins deserve everything they had before.”
This mention of three-year-olds Sean and Amelie, as with so many things the grandparents say during the course of our conversation – a conversation punctuated by the tears which occasionally fall down Susan’s face and the unutterable sadness in Brian’s eyes – prompts memories of happier times.
“When you see the two of them laughing together now,” says Brian, the proudest of grandads, “it’s always in your mind that there should be three of them laughing.”
So much has happened in this past year from hell – and yet, so little has happened. Nothing, essentially, has changed since Thursday, May 3, 2007 – Madeleine went missing that night in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, and she is still missing.
It’s impossible to imagine what Madeleine’s family have gone through and continue to go through – and it’s hard enough for them to comprehend what has happened and is happening to them.
Susan says: “It’s quite frightening to think that 12 months has almost gone by – 12 months since we were sitting in this room and just expecting the ‘phone to go, and hearing they had found Madeleine.
“Maybe the way I’m feeling at the moment – and I’m feeling probably the worst I’ve felt for the whole year – I suppose I am a bit frightened and panicking that we still haven’t got Madeleine back.
“I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Madeleine now; what she’s doing, who she’s with and is she OK. There’s almost a feeling of panic and of needing to know the answers overtaking me. I am struggling more than I have before.
“When the six months was marked I felt . . . I was quite happy with the buzz going out and busy organising things. But I feel a bit flat now and I don’t want this stage to be reached.
“And if anything needs organising I want it done without me taking part. I don’t feel I have the strength. I feel quite squashed and depressed.”
Fighting back the tears again, she adds: “In the earlier days it was new and we were coping with our emotions because we were kept busy organising things.
“I think, now, we have done all that and, somehow, there’s nothing to protect you and you are thinking constantly about Madeleine and her situation. And there’s a fear, I suppose, that people will accept that Madeleine has gone.”

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God has created me
to do him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me
which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission -
I may never know it in this life,
but I shall be told of it in the next.

I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught,
I shall do good,
I shall do his work.
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth
in my own place
while not intending it -
if I do but keep
His Commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness,
my sickness may serve Him;
in perplexity,
my perplexity may serve Him;
if I am in sorry,
my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain.
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me -
still He knows
what He is about.

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The phone call was one that I had postponed for days. There was no way in which I wanted to phone the utility company in question, even though I have usually found them helpful and accommodating. Generally, the company from which I needed help would be at the top on the list of the ‘unloved’ for most people in Britain.

Eventually, I could delay no longer. I dialled the number and, as always, was put in a long line, waiting for ‘one of our assistants to answer your call’. I was not particularly impressed when the recorded voice informed me that my contact and custom were valued. Finally, someone responded and told me that I had dialled the wrong extension… Stubbornly, I continued and was finally connected correctly.

I do not know the age of the man to whom I eventually spoke and can only say that he was a Londoner and had possibly been near a church once or twice in his life, possibly even a Catholic church, for that matter. Whilst he worked on the subject of my phone call, we chatted. Soon we were both laughing over each other’s stories and jokes.

As our conversation and business drew to an end, I heard that, only a few days ago, this same man had responded to two, consecutive, abusive phone calls, the second of which was so bad that he put down the receiver. This afternoon’s had been rather different! “Thank you for your fantastic call,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed it.”

To be honest, so had I and a potentially major inconvenience had turned into a very pleasant interlude.

There is no excuse for rudeness and abusive behaviour. So much can be done by courtesy. Of course there are moments of intense irritation when any one of us would like to explode with all the pent-up frustrations that have hitherto been held in check. But we rarely know all that our intended object has also been bearing. I might have been another person’s ‘last straw’ every bit as much as they might have been mine.

The story is told of a monk with a very quick temper, who died in the midst of one of his outbursts. His community decided that he could not possibly have been forgiven by God for such rage and so they didn’t bother to pray for him. Then came the night when the abbot had a vision. God told him, “You thought that your brother died because he lost his temper. I know that he died because of his efforts to control it.”

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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