Joy in Being Possessed

A reflection by Genevieve Behan.

For me, the spiritual journey has been a lifelong experience of transformation, both personally and communally. This paper is a deep reflection on my experiences, with particular reference to authors whose writing has had the most significant impact on me. I hope to encourage the reader to conduct their own deep reflection.

Transition in my adopted family

For the last 50 years I have been a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (my adopted family). This is a Catholic centralized religious institute of consecrated life of pontifical right for women established in France by Madeleine Sophie Barat in 1800. In French, it is Religieuses du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus. In Latin it is Religiosae Sanctissimi Cordis Jesu, abbreviated RSCJ.

Transition and transformation have been a theme of my journey. At the communal level this was the consequence of our transferring the responsibility for the principals of each of the Sacred Coeur Schools in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland (NZ) into the hands of our lay colleagues. This was followed by the establishment of the Educational Boards of SHEM, Sacred Heart Education Ministries, and SOPHIA, the Board of Directors.

Transition is that process of a passage or change from one place or state or act or set of circumstances to another. I have known transition through the momentary modulations of Music and from one style to another in Art. In facing the change from the Monastic system in Religious Life to living in the community, I recall the words of Pope Francis:

"The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds

and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity."

Personal transformation

This process began in the 1970s and gradually unfolded in the decades that followed. 

During this reflection on my spiritual journey, I began with asking myself: “What has been and still is your deepest desire?” The answer to this question is captured in the following quotation from Teilhard de Chardin:

“Now that I have in fact laid hold on you, Jesus,

I realise that my deepest desire was not to possess you, but to be possessed.”

This led naturally to a second question: ‘With what have I been possessed during these last fifty years, while working and professionally serving the Educational Mission of the Society?”.

Inspiration came from the author Daniel O’Leary and his book “An Astonishing Secret”…. ‘ the Love Story of Creation and the Wonder of You’ Pg224/Chapter 38. Under the title is ‘The Fierce Universe of Blazing Love In a Fragile Wafer on our Tongue.’, O’Leary writes:       

“When we sit at the table of truth, love and beauty, immediately after receiving Holy Communion, we hear the vital whisper of assurance:

‘I am now the living food of your flesh

I am the vibrant wine of your energy, the power within you .

In me you are made complete,

and you are invincible even in your darkest winter.

And when your heart is full, it will overflow into other hungry hearts.”

The answer to my question became so clear: I am now able to ‘read in faith the signs of the times…and to respond ... with creativity to the needs of ‘our blessed and broken world.’

And is not all this the work of the Holy Spirit?

Further inspiration came from an analysis by P Steele SJ in his “The Autobiographical Passion” (Ch.8/Pg129):

“For whether we stress the ‘autos’, the ‘bios’ or the ‘graphe’ in each work- the selving, the living, or the writing-we are always going to be left with some tension between the three.”

…At best we can establish lines of communication, terms of transaction,

..between the self’s reality and the self’s self-utterance

..between the firmness and the fluidity of the selves we know,

..between the registrations and the adumbrations of those same selves.

As I tried to name the lines of communication between

the reality of my own self and the self-utterance of my many selves, I turned to the Sunday reflection for the Feast of Christ the King, from “The Rosewood Table” by Fr. Pat Richards.

The name given for this feast is ‘Village Life.’

The words ‘Village Life’ and the images associated with these words

provided a way of identifying the means of communication that I have developed with my own blood family, my religious family, and so many other ‘Villages’ whether in an educational context, or that of Catholic Psychiatric Pastoral Care, or TWHospital, and of course within the local Parish and local neighbourhood.

Inspiration in music

If I attempt to establish lines of communication between

‘the firmness and the fluidity of the selves we know,’

I am able to say that the “dubiousness or non-existence of the stable self”,…. 

I can express most powerfully with my violin.

For the Feast of Christ the King I played the Largo by Vivaldi-Bach. After many years of ‘Practicing the Presence of God’,

did the sound I drew from my violin have its source in that divine presence?

Many of those celebrating the Mass, came at the end to express the beauty of the violin. Perhaps the sound helped them to hear:

“the vital whisper of assurance:

‘I am now the living food of your flesh I am the vibrant wine of your energy , the power within you .

In me you are made complete,

A Final word.

From the Memorial of the Immaculate Conception…

As I prayed on this day I was made more aware

of the immaculate conception of our Lady in the womb of St. Anne,

And the annunciation of the incarnation of the son of God in the womb of Mary.

All that I have written is born of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, from the reflections of Richard Rohr, Ilia Delia writes:

The Christian message is that God has become flesh [sarx in Greek or matter] not a part of God or one aspect of God,

but the whole infinite, eternal God Creator has become matter. The claim-God has become flesh is so radical that it is virtually unthinkable and illogical

Christianity is the most radical of all world religions because it takes matter seriously as the home of divinity.

So does everyone have to become Christian to know Christ?

Absolutely not.

Christ is more than Jesus.

Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality-every star, leaf, bird, fish ,tree, rabbit and human person.

Everything is Christified

Because, everything expresses divine love incarnate.