The Circles of Our Lives

And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy

and continued to do him homage.

In the Celtic tradition, in Ireland,

we have a great reverence for the circle.

It is deeply rooted in Celtic tradition,

even well before Christianity.

It is considered sacred and

there are many illustrations of how important it is.

There are these interwoven circles

that were discovered in some of the burial shrines

which are older than the Egyptian pyramids.

When Christianity arrived into Ireland,

they did not let go of the circle or the importance of it.

They placed a cross in front of the circle,

and we have the famous Celtic cross with a circle.

There is a certain rhythm to the circle.

It has no beginning, no end.

It has a sense of wholeness, a sense of completeness,

and it reminds us of infinity, of life.

In Celtic Christian spirituality, we believe,

that when we are born, we become a traveler.

We move from the invisible into the visible

and then journey through this life.

Then when we die, we complete the circle

and move from the visible back to the invisible

and our soul continues the journey.

I can not help but think of that image today

as we celebrate this feast day of the Ascension

where Christ literally has come from the divine,

became one of us, and now was leaving his apostles

and charging them to preach the good news.

They understood the power of love

and that never ending circle that they were introduced to.

If you think of our lives, we are travelers

and what happens when our soul takes on our body,

we live a beautiful life.

Sometimes it can be short or it can be long.

It depends on on what happens in our life.

But what we do in those years matters.

It matters a great deal.

That is why we come here every Sunday,

to celebrate that gift of life.

We understand that our soul is eternal

and that we are on a journey, a journey back to Lord.

In that beautiful Psalm, it says:

“Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will.”

That Psalm was sung at my ordination Mass

twenty five years ago by the very same person as today, Jed.

There is again a completion of that circle,

there is a reverence to that.

Many of you were at that ordination.

I know so many of the priests were there.

We all looked a little younger back then, as we all know.

There are in our lives lots of circles.

I believe that when we reverence the sacredness of the circle

and the sacredness of our soul,

that it starts to make sense in our lives.

Many of you were there.

Some of you I have baptized.

Some of you I have given first communion to.

Some I have given confirmation to.

Some of you I have married.

Some of you I have done all of them together.

Some I have anointed you.

Some I have anointed your loved ones.

Sometimes I have buried your grandparents,

your parents, your spouses, and some of you even,

the hardest of all, your children.

What an incredible gift it has been for me

to be part of that journey with you.

I see it like concentric circles,

that like a pebble thrown into a a pond

where those circles just get ever larger and larger and larger

until they hit the shore, and

then they ripple back slowly and fade away.

Our lives do the same thing.

We have concentric circles, and

we have wider and wider circle of friends of impact,

and then slowly our circle of life contracts again

as we continue our journey back to the Lord.

They returned, the Apostles returned with great joy.

I always find what is the most important part of our ministry

is to be men and women of joy.

To understand those circles at appropriate times are joyful

and there are other times that there is great sadness in those circles,

but all can bring joy.

I find that at the root,

we cannot be joyful without being grateful.

We have to be men and women of gratitude.

That is why we come to the table every Sunday,

to celebrate,

to be grateful for God's grace in our life,

to be grateful for the gift of life in our lives,

to be grateful for all God's grace in our lives.

There are times when that is easy,

when things are going well,

and there are other times that it is harder

because things are not going well.

But gratitude is the path through to the grace of joy.

Today, Saturday, is the feast day of the Visitation

even though we are celebrating the vigil of the Ascension.

When Mary was visiting Elizabeth,

she was overwhelmed by joy.

She gave what we all say every day of our lives, a magnificat,

a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving.

So I thought it would only be fitting

for us to write a magnificat for ourselves.

Once that was given to me as an exercise

on my thirty day silent retreat

to write my own Magnificat.

I invite you, as your homework, if you would,

is to write your own prayer of thanksgiving,

your own Magnificat,

what you give thanks to God for in your own life.

And so in preparation for today,

I wrote one over this last week,

it has been powerful for me to realize

how much goodness has been in my life,

how much joy has been in my life,

how much pain and darkness has been in my life.

But that through the pain and the darkness

is sometimes where I have had the greatest return of joy.

Remember, no seed grows except in the dark.

The same is true for us in our own life,

that sometimes the pain and suffering is the end of something.

Yes, it is.

It is also the beginning of something.

Something great and glorious.

So I want to close with the Magnificat

that I wrote for this special occasion.

It is written in that same concentric circles

that John O'Donohue, the great poet, speaks about.

I wrote it in his voice.

It is my way of saying thank you to you

and to the Lord for all that has happened

in my last twenty five years, indeed my entire life.

A Magnificat of the Heart

Fr. Brendan McGuire



My soul sings the song of the hidden God,

Who has whispered light into the chambers of my years.

The One who found me when I wandered in shadow,

And called me by name into the wild pasture of grace.

He has placed in my hands the chalice of wonder,

And anointed my days with the oil of compassion.

He has sent me to the brokenhearted,

To speak not from perfection,

But from the soft clay of mercy.

He placed upon my tongue

The trembling echo of His Word

And in my empty hands

He placed the weight of blessing.

In the circle of years,

He has surrounded me

With companions for the way—

Parishioners, pilgrims and prophets,

Wounded healers and wild-hearted saints,

Who held the mirror when I could not see,

And whispered courage when I was near the edge.

He has not forgotten me in the valley

Nor left me unguarded on the high places.

For even in the ache of questions unanswered,

His presence hummed beneath the silence

Like the sea beneath the fog.

He gave me a flock

And taught me the sacred rhythm—

To lead by walking with,

To teach by learning from,

To offer by receiving.

And now, O Giver of Years,

I return all to You, my Beloved:

Every homily, every hospital visit,

Every broken heart mended by Your tenderness,

Every Mass opened that sacred door to Your love.

And when the long twilight finally comes for me,

And You call me again from the visible to the invisible,

May I go

Still singing,

Still grateful,

Still Yours

Till my last breath.

Amen.