Paul KeenanMeeting God: Carmelite Reflections and Prayers ed. by the Irish Carmelites (Columba Press, €16.99 hb / £12.50 hb)
Anthony Redmond
Sometimes it can be extremely difficult to pray. One can be tired, distracted and occasionally lacking in faith. It can be difficult to concentrate and focus. St Thérèse of Lisieux was no stranger to this sense of spiritual numbness and desolation. Indeed, she wrote about it with painful honesty in Story of a Soul.
Meeting God is a wonderful little prayer book drawing on the Carmelite spiritual tradition. It has reflections, poetry, prayers and biography from the Carmelite heritage.
This is a revised edition. It was first published in 2007 to mark the 800th centenary of the rule which goes back to St Albert of Jerusalem in 1207. It has a night prayer in the Carmelite tradition as well as the Carmelite Rule with a commentary.
There is a hypnotic, mesmeric quality to the words of many of these beautiful prayers and poems.
One feels lulled by their cadence. In the Introduction we read: “The variety offered by this book is itself an invitation to use it in many ways, it is certainly not meant to be read through, it is a book to be used at various times to find prayer and inspiration. It needs time to disclose the riches of its many short passages, it is to be taken up and pondered, and it can become a friend at the bedside or in the kitchen or office, a book for the bus or car. The lives and writings of Carmelite saints and spiritual writers are meant to be a word for our time, for our over busy and secularised world.”
It talks about the four traditional forms of prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, asking for mercy and forgiveness and intercession. There is a particularly moving and beautiful prayer written by Blessed Titus Brandsma in Scheveningen prison in February, 1942.
It also has that wonderful poem by St John of the Cross, One Dark Night. There are reflections of many famous Carmelites, such as St Teresa of Avila, Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, St Benedicta of the Cross (more widely known as Edith Stein) and the Maltese youth leader and priest, St George Preca, canonised in 2007.
There are many illustrations from Irish Carmelite art. There is too a lovely photograph of the shrine of Our Lady of Dublin which is in the Carmelite church of Whitefriar Street in Dublin.
Let nothing trouble you,
Let nothing scare you,
All is fleeting,
God alone is unchanging.
Patience obtains all;
Whoever possesses God
Wants nothing,
God alone suffices.
As it says in the book: “Prayer is a gift for which we must pray; it is an art that we must practise; it is an indicator of the health of my relationship with God and others; it is a compass to direct me; it is a means and a test of my human authenticity.”
This is a book to dip into. In the hectic, busy, tormented world in which we live it’s good to have something to help us to pause and reflect and contemplate.
Many readers will find this delightful little book is just the thing.