Our hearts need to catch fire

Devotion to the Sacred Heart was popular in Nano’s day (18^th Century Ireland).  It was central to her spirituality.

“Nano Nagle contemplated in stillness, the fact that in Jesus the Word had become flesh and embraced our human condition.  He was vulnerable, wounded, rejected, and paid the ultimate price for self-donating love. 

Once Nano was awakened to this mystery of Incarnation, she moved to act with the self-same justice, to love the needy tenderly, and to walk humbly among them. One imagines her before the tabernacle, leaning into the heart of Christ  [ … ] . Caught by the compassionate love of Jesus, she and subsequently her companions were drawn to move from ‘the temples of riches, to the tables of the poor’. (‘The Story of Nano Nagle: A Life Lived on the Razor’s Edge’, Anne Lyons, PBVM, page 45).  

Inner Fire

Nano Nagle was both a mystic and a prophet. The core of her life, was that ‘inner fire’ which was the source of her extraordinary love and compassion.

We associate the Lantern with her humble journey through darkness. However, the Lantern, like Nano herself, was reflective of greater Light – the Light of the Word – which guided her.

This inner fire was the source of the Lantern beams cast on the darkness around her.  It was nurtured in the three hours she spent in prayer each morning, and as many hours in the evening. It was nurtured by her celebration of the Eucharist and Penance … her devotion to Mary under the title of Our Lady of the Presentation and, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  In a word, her contemplative way of life.  “In her heart there blazed a fire …”.

The handing over [as Nano Nagle did] of her life in faith, so that the Gospel would be announced to the world, is in itself a prophetic act.

Jesus proclaimed his prophetic message not just by teaching or  raising important questions in the culture of his time, but by releasing new energies for alternatives. This is what Nano Nagle and her founding Sisters were about. This is the prophetic root of our present calling.  It is part of the package – part of the gift that each of us has received and continue to receive today.

To quote Walter Brueggemann:

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke consciousness and a perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us”.  (The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press): 1978, 13)

Nano Nagle dared to break the mould.

Our hearts need to catch fire

Today’s world is as much in need of prophetic witness as was Cork in the 18^th century.  As Presentation People we have been gifted with sharing in the precious charism of Nano Nagle – ‘the original divine gift to her of spiritual energy’.  We have a responsibility for ‘doing all in our power’ to ensure that the Lantern Light does not go out in our time.

The very essence of Presentation was born from the vision and faith of a woman who was vitally in touch with the One who said: “I am the Light of the World” (Jn 8: 12).

Nano’s work continues across the globe depending on how the Spirit leads individuals and groups to respond to current need.

We need to ‘catch fire’ from the Nano Nagle flame.

“Her prophetic spirit could not live with boundaries.  She wanted light wherever there was darkness and she took very definite and practical steps to see that this prophetic work (God’s work) would be established on a permanent basis and continued after her death.

Nano’s belief in the importance of what she was called to be and do, was so very strong that it impelled her in two directions – towards present reality in compassion, and towards the future in hope”. (Women of Light … Sharing Nano Nagle’s Gospel Vision).

That inner fire took her to the darkest places, to the impoverishment and pain in the lives of her contemporaries, but it could not stop there.  It would have  future whose shape she could not see precisely – yet a future which she predicted.

Let us go forward with her courage and her faith, to shed the Light of her lantern beams in our world.

PRAYER

You God, keep reminding us that our essence is love, our destiny
Divine and that love ebbs from the heart of our being to the far
shores of the universe. 
Let the fire of Love be aflame in our hearts and in our lives.
Let the fire of understanding be aflame in our heart.
Let the fire of generosity be aflame in our hearts.
Let the fire of gentleness be aflame in our hearts.
Let the fire of compassion be aflame in our hearts.
Let the fire of joy be aflame in our hearts.
Let the fire of hope be aflame in our hearts.
Let the fire of peace be aflame in in our hearts.
Let the fire of the Sacred Heart be aflame in our lives.

(Prayer text, from preparation for CG 2018)

See also Nano Nagle A Prophet of Love

And Be the Heart of my Heart

Also Feast of the Sacred Heart

Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us) published 24 October 2024, is Pope Francis’s encyclical on the love of Jesus’s Sacred Heart, exploring how this divine and human love meets the deepest needs of our world. See Link to Full Text of Dilexit Nos Oct 2024 Doc.