Years ago, I was in Burundi in southern Africa – doing some conflict-resolution work in a seminary at a place called Gitega. I was accepted by the students who were from the Hutu and Tutsi sides as they knew that I came from the border area of Ireland – Co. Monaghan to be precise – where the conflict in Northern Ireland touched us.
There comes a time in most people’s lives when discursive prayer or meditation becomes burdensome and is no longer life-giving. This happened to me some thirty years ago and I was wondering what to do or what to turn to then. But like the three men who appeared to Abraham in today’s first reading and who offered him what he had been seeking, God continually finds His own way to nourish us, and I was asked to cover for another Spiritan as chaplain in Ireland’s National Rehabilitation Centre in Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin..
In 1994, at the height of the genocide in Rwanda, I was invited by John O’Shea, then Director of the aid agency Goal, to Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwandan refugees had fled there from the conflict. I joined Irish soldiers to collect the bodies of those who had died during the night and to bring them for burial in mass graves. My other task was to go in the evenings to do a blessing on the graves; the vast majority of those who died were Rwandan Catholics.
We are a Roman Catholic Congregation of Priests, Brothers and Lay Associates. Our congregation was founded in Paris in 1703 by a young 24 year old Breton Lawyer, Claude Poullart des Places.
He founded a community for young men who wished to become priests and dedicated it to the Holy Spirit.
