Some events can’t help but get your attention. When they
happen not once but three times within a few weeks, it’s time to figure out
what message we need to take to heart.
A month ago, a sister in the Mount community died within a
week after a mass was found in her chest. Earlier this week, the 70-year-old brother-in-law
of a Mount sister died suddenly in his home of a likely heart attack.
Yesterday, I received word that the 70-year-old husband of a friend in St.
Louis died suddenly of a heart attack after taking a walk in the park.
The message I take from these sudden departures is that I
need to prepare my heart for death, so I will be ready if it arrives
unexpectedly. How to do that? By broadening the boundaries of my heart to
welcome Christ who already comes to me every day in all the persons I meet. I
will then be ready to meet Christ at the doorway of death when I arrive there.
Last night at our weekly poetry gathering, Sr. Deborah read
the poem Abou Ben Adhem by Leigh
Hunt. In it, Abou Ben Adhem awakens at night to find an angel writing a list of
the names of those who love the Lord. He asks the angel if his name is on the
list, and the angel says no. Ben Adhem then says, “I pray thee, then, write me
as one who loves his fellow men.” The poem concludes with these lines:
The
angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It
came again with a great wakening light,
And
showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And
lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
May your own heart be blessed with broad boundaries this
day!
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