John Main Seminar 1997 - Mary McAleese

The 1997 Seminar was presented in August by Mary McAleese at St Patrick's College in Maynooth. On October 30 she was elected President of Ireland. Professor Mary McAleese, who was born in Belfast in 1951, is married with three children. She is a barrister at law. She held the chair which John Main held at Trinity College Dublin and is presently Pro-Vice Chancellor at the Queen's University Belfast.

Among her many other roles she was a founder member of Belfast Women's Aid and of the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas, a member of the BBC Broadcasting Council for Northern Ireland and the Commission for Justice and Peace and Honorary President of the Northern Ireland Housing Rights Association. In 1991 she was invited to set up and co-chair the working party of the Inter Church Committee of Ireland with Cardinal Cahal Daly and Archbishop Robin Eames.

She has written a book on the trial and execution of seventeen Irish martyrs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (The Irish Martyrs, Ravensgate Press 1995) and has contributed to many others. These include a renowned article in Women Sharing Fully in the Ministry of Christ (1995) and 'Living With Authority' in Authority in the Church (Columba Press 1995). In 1995 she gave the Jean Vanier Conference on "Sectarianism" in Coleraine.

Mary McAleese is a regular contributor to BBC 'Thought for the Day', 'The Universe' and other Catholic publications. For the past three years she has been the keynote speaker at the Annual Novena in Knock attended by 8000 people. She conducts workshops on combating Sectarianism for a number of church groups of different denominations. In an article in 'The Universe' she wrote:

"Some years ago in an attempt to get my prayer life into some semblance of order I had a go at meditation guided by the writings of John Main, the Irish Benedictine monk and lawyer who did so much to reintroduce contemplative prayer into the mainstream of lay Catholic experience.
My daughter Emma, then aged four, sat in with me on one meditation. I explained to her that all she needed to do was close her eyes, sit upright and invite the Lord by reciting a little prayer or mantra. She was charmed by the idea and appeared to get into the mod enthusiastically. After a few minutes she asked: "Mammy, is God talking to you?" I replied yes he was. "Well," came the response, "He's not talking to me. Will you tell him I'm waiting?" However long Emma had to wait, the Lord must be waiting for a long time for a lot of people to check in with him".

Just a few weeks ago a chance meeting with Fr Laurence Freeman, John Main's successor as head of the Christian meditation movement, refreshed my interest in meditative prayer. Listening to his clear explanation of what to expect from such prayer I was struck forcefully by the fact that I had brought to all my early attempts at meditation all the awful bad habits of the pressurised workplace. I had wanted instant results. I had ignored the interior voice which warned of spiritual ill-health up ahead The treadmill had pushed me I hadn't pulled it. I gave meditation another chance. "That 20 minutes of blessed stillness have provided me with a spiritual resource almost impossible to describe, a space clear of the mundane, outside the world of home, work or community. It is a place to simply sit midway between this world and the next ­ a space with no shape, no sharp edges, just filled with a sense of belonging and being loved no matter what lies in waiting in those other worlds I inhabit. Those other worlds try to own all of us body and soul. It takes a bit of effort to claim back the territory of the soul but the effort is repaid a thousandfold."

To Order Seminar Cassette Tapes

To Order the book Reconciled Being: Love in Chaos