Prune those bad habits during Lent to replenish the soul

Let the Busy World be Hushed

Fr Jason Murphy

We had three neighbours at home by the name of Johnny White - Big Johnny, Young Johnny and Convent Johnny. Big Johnny lived in a blue caravan at the end of the road and therein sat at an opened door all day long, summer and winter, talking to all who passed by, before heading up the town in the evening to the snug of Mary Donohoe’s pub for a couple of mediums of stout to bring the day to a close. Young Johnny was Big Johnny’s nephew and Convent Johnny, as his name suggests, worked his days with the nuns in the Convent of Mercy in the town.

Its orchard, glass houses with vines of low hanging grapes, sloping gardens of ridges filled with potato and cabbage plants, rhubarb and scallions, carrots and parsnips, parsley and thyme and every vegetable under the sun were all under the care of Convent Johnny. As he passed by on foot in the early morning on his way to work dressed in a jacket, shirt and tie, dungarees and boots with his grey hair slicked back, we felt that Johnny had the most responsible of jobs on a par with the bank manager, Mr Deasy, taking care of the much-treasured convent gardens.

But those, which were most admired amongst all that grew there, were the roses in their array of variant colours; hybrid tea, floribunda, climbing and rambling o’er the Lourdes grotto that stood in the centre of the paths. Come the summer months of May, June and July, the scent that wafted through the gardens would take your breath away as old nuns, long retired, strolled deep in prayer in black habits aclad, moving the beads of the rosary, meditatively, through their fingers.

As children in the adjoining primary school we were taken on nature walks around the gardens, there on bended knee, a transistor radio at his side, Johnny was invariably found along the rose beds picking off the leaves dotted with back spot so as not to spread the spores of the fungi to other plants.

On Saturday mornings in the springtime of the year when Johnny didn’t walk the road to the convent, he was to be found in his own front garden tending to the roses, which grew there - cuttings of the old roses which grew along the pathways of the gardens which o’er - looked the river Erne. Here we stood and watched as he pruned with care his array of Hybrid tea and Floribunda. Hybrid teas being pruned to four or six buds above the ground in what seemed like a desperate act of violence against the most beautiful of species and floribunda less vigorously. When we asked why he had to cut them back so harshly, he told us that if he was to enjoy the same display of colour as he had the summer previous, pruning, though harsh, was essential if the roses were to grow vigorously and produce the colour that we enjoyed come the summer days.

Lent is a time for pruning. It is a time, which coincides with the springtime of the year, when we take out our secateurs to prune back, sometimes harshly and remove all the diseased stems that have grown unbeknownst to us in the year that has passed. If we fail to prune, the stems will grow tall and gangly, failing to produce many buds and will blow, to and fro, and perhaps break in the breeze; whereas to prune, sometimes harshly, will produce strength and vigour for the summer days to come.

So be it for ourselves, we need to prune. As children our parents did it for us as they set parameters, created boundaries, checked us when we were bold and so, over time, though it seemed our freedoms were curtailed - not being allowed to this, not being allowed to that. In fact, each time the pruning took place, our growth was all the time being enhanced, averting our growing gangly and perhaps breaking in the breeze.

In this time of Lent, we as adults, need to prune, we need to look inwards to see where it is that the thinning out has to take place, the branches that have grown unchecked, those that have become diseased. For the good of our wellbeing, be it spiritual, psychological, emotional or otherwise and for that of those with whom we share our lives, Lent is a time when the secateurs need to come down off the shelf. Sometimes the pruning needs to be harsh, sometimes less vigorous but, if we are to bloom and grow towards the light, towards that which is good, with roots deep in the ground, then we need to prune.

Convent Johnny spent his days, slipping and cutting, mulching and pruning in the spring and summer of the year until the Autumn came and it was time to rest and he too laid down his shears to spend his days in the great Garden in the sky.