´óÏó´«Ã½

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Fr Dermot Preston

Good morning.

In the First World War, my grandad, Bill, had a commanding officer in the Royal Horse Artillery who took a shine to one of the South American horses being brought into battle to replace the European animals being lost on Flanders Field. Bill was given the task of escaping the frontline for an afternoon and taming the feisty horse.

Bill had a vivid memory of riding up to the gates of a farm on that winter day. The farmer was in the yard with a cloth-bag in his hand and he was shaking it. The farmer looked up with alarm and waved my grandad back. Not in an unfriendly way, just wanting Bill and the horse at a distance.

With a dramatic flourish, the farmer flung the bag into the air and three rats and a cloud of green powder fell to earth. The liberated rats charged-off seeking the cover of the rambling farm buildings and within minutes the yard was teeming with thousands of rats.

What had happened was that the three rats had been covered in luminous powder and when they raced off into the drains and tunnels, they had terrified the resident rats into panic.

As the farmer explained later, it only gave the farm respite for a short while before the rats came back to re-settle – but the respite was worth it.

Advent presents us with opportunities to cleanse the soul, but sometimes we just don’t try because we think that things will just revert back to normal.

Lord, give me the nerve to purge myself of something damaging and let me trust You to imaginatively re-use the space created in my soul.

Amen.

Show less