By Sean Byrne
Doing a sales call a number of years ago I had the privilege of meeting a man who had been recently widowed and who was confronted with the reality of living alone. In my chat with him he told me a lot about his wife and her battle with cancer. Shortly before she died she told him she would be back to him like a little butterfly. My jaw dropped in awe when he told me a little butterfly landed on her grave approximately one week after her burial as he visited her grave.
Well known RTE sports commentator Marty Morrissey spoke on the Late Late show recently about the loss of his mother in a tragic car accident just before Christmas. He spoke with pride of his own faith with humility as he shared the story of coming on the accident with the emergency services on the scene.
He asked them to say a prayer with him as her remains were removed and he prayed that he would have some presence of her at her funeral. To his pleasant surprise a butterfly landed near her coffin during her funeral mass, and another one landed on the pew she regularly knelt on when she attended Mass in the small church in Craclow, County Clare.
It could be argued that these two people are mystics in their own way. In other words, they see the transcendent in ordinary things, especially in nature and in creation. At a papal audience in June 2017 Pope Francis said “What the world needs today is mystics and saints, men and women who believe so deeply in Jesus that they become the image of Christ for the world”. He defined the mystic life as an interior life of union with Christ. He also outlined in the same address that we do not have to have extraordinary graces to be a mystic.
In a later address he outlined a mystic could see Christ in a leaf.
Easter is a season of new life and growth. Birds are busy building, young livestock are busy playing in the fields and the toils of the farmer are beginning to yield results as the emerging cereal crops give the countryside a fresh green appearance. Observing this change is like listening to a symphony orchestra playing in tune as nature takes its course .
In this Easter season may we all see this in a mystical way, that a force greater than ourselves is at work , bringing the hope of the resurrection closer to us all.
