Let's Keep Jesus Company this Lent
Pam Aherne
Some years ago a Carmelite priest, Fr. Matthew McGettrick, RIP, came to Manchester to give us very helpful talks on prayer. In one of his talks, he describes something he read in a travel book which moved him. A whale had become beached on an island, with part of its body on the sand and part in the shallows and it was thrashing about desperately trying to get back into the sea. All the villagers came to see it but were unable to do anything, it was so big. A little girl came forward and sat down next to the whale, out of sympathy for it. Gradually the creature stilled, as if comforted by the awareness that another living being was keeping it company. After some considerable time it died peacefully.
We too can think of those times in our lives when we have been consoled by the presence of one who is in empathy with us, even if they can do or say little to really help us. Indeed how wonderful it is to feel that we don't even need to speak when we are with someone who we know loves and understands us. The amazing thing is that God allows Himself to be somehow affected by us in a similar way. There are so many examples of this in the Bible. We need only read the account of Jesus with the woman at the well to see this. He is tired, thirsty and hungry when He meets the woman but after she has responded by faith and trust to what He said to her, His disciples are surprised to see that He is no longer tired and hungry.
Fr. Matthew taught that we can learn how to 'keep Jesus company' in our prayer. He said that the essence of prayer is the contact of the heart with Jesus and that Grace flows from Him to you in this loving attentiveness. If we are at home, we can picture Jesus in front of us, or gaze at a favourite picture of His Sacred Heart and let 'heart speak to heart' or say little or nothing, just love and be loved. Of course if we can go into Church and just be with Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, this is even better.
Or we can choose a scene from the Gospels and, after we have driven off our distractions by imagining the details, we can just focus on the Person of Jesus in that scene. We can gently repeat a phrase to keep our mind from distractions as we stay with Him and try to understand what Jesus is feeling and just love Him, in that scene. He may be weeping over Jerusalem, weeping for the souls who will not turn to Him and be helped and redeemed by Him. He may be in agony about our sins in Gethsemene. Here our phrase may be 'will you not watch one hour with Me?' He may be awake at night in the mountains, praying to His Father or fasting in the desert for forty days and nights. We can't take it away but we can console Him by our simple loving presence. And we are doing that in the present even though we are picturing an event of the past for Jesus is living now in our souls. Also, being God, Jesus is outside of time. What we do NOW affected Him THEN. All the events of His life are timeless.
I am often aware of my inadequacies and think how could Jesus want me to keep Him company when He has much better and more exalted followers to do this. But then I remember how I felt when I was teaching children with severe learning difficulties, including autistc children. Any little response from any one of them, even just a fleeting look in their eyes that showed me they knew I loved them and was trying to understand them could make me feel a million dollars. This or some little useless thing one of them would give me would mean as much to me as whatever a good understanding friend did for me. Any parent knows this. Well surely it's the same with God. I often think I'm autistic with Him. Sometimes when I try to keep Him company, I can't have the right feelings or thoughts or say anything that sounds holy. Then we always have our set prayers and the rosary to help us. Or. Being in the company of the One we trust loves us, we can just be silent and join our dryness to His agony in the garden.
It is so important to remember that no-one else can take your place in the Heart of Jesus. He loves every single one of us as if there were no other and each of us has a unique relationship with Him and our own way of praying or communicating with Him. Jesus wants us to be ourselves, doesn't He, and never mind if we feel we're 'not much'. Mary, His mother and ours, will help us as we try to keep her Son company this Lent, for she has His love for each of us and she is the one person who always loved Him and let Him be Himself, even if this was not the way people expected the Messiah to be. All her life she strove to understand Him and His ways and she wants to help us do this too.
Fr Matthew wrote this poem:
Oh Jesus let me live always in Your company.
In your love for the Father
I keep You company
In Your nights of prayer
I keep You company
In Your sorrow for sin in Gethsemene
I keep You company
In Your search for souls through towns and villages
I keep You company
In Your pain of rejection, weeping over Jerusalem
I keep You company
In Your saving death
I keep You company
In Your final victory
I keep You company
Oh Jesus let me live always in Your company.
By a legionary of Mary.