MOTHER MARY CLARE SLG (1906-1988)

LIVING THROUGH THE DYING

Any Christian whether living in the world or in the Religious Life, active or enclosed, is being called as was St Antony of old to go down into the most frightening places of world history. If we are really trying to live this life in Christ, we are called to go down into the work! situation of today, which is rapidly be­coming divorced from God. It is only in prayer that those truly given to God can face this awful sense of disintegration, and face it united to Christ not only in his Passion but also in the power of his Resurrection.

We have got to live now in and through the dying, in order that we may bear witness to the Resurrection life … If we live in this glorious perspective, we do not have to wait for the fullness of life after death. Life in God is here and now, experienced first and foremost through experiencing death. Do not be afraid to die, do not be afraid when you are overwhelmed by the sense of your own weakness and sin and muck and desolation. Let everything which is in you, and everything which is thrown up against you by the power of evil, be held in Christ’s healing power. Do not absorb it or be overcome by it, but let it in you meet Christ’s power to heal; let it in you meet this almighty power of God, so that in you the mess can be transformed, answered.

MOTHER MARY CLARE SLG

from a Conference given to the Community, Sunday in the Octave of Prayer for Unity, 1968