Edmund Rice - The Man    Edmund's Educational Legacy    Edmund's Spiritual Character      Blessed Edmund Rice Shrines 
 
Edmund’s Spiritual Character
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It would be a gross distortion of the vision of Edmund to focus only on the social dimensions of his work. Edmund, the founder of two religious institutes, was first and foremost a man absorbed and beguiled by the experience of God in his life. The twelve long years that followed the death of his wife were for him the years in which his spiritual character was formed. It was formed in the crucible of human pain and desolation, in the shattering of dreams, in numbness of loss, in the search for a meaning that could make sense of all that had happened, in the gradual acceptance of his loss, and in the recognition that even in this woeful experience there was the possibility of hope and resurrection. In this dark experience, God touched Edmund’s soul to such an extent that his whole life was changed. Nothing could ever be the same again.

    The man who emerged from that period of spiritual testing was a man transformed. For him now, God was everything. He had developed over those years a deeply contemplative heart attuned to the ways of God, drawn to search for God in all things. Edmund’s constant reading of the Scriptures, his daily commitment to prayer, his devotion to the Eucharist, his love for the Mother of God, and his practice of regular spiritual reading, with a particular attachment to the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, nurtured in him this contemplative heart.
    After his period of spiritual testing, not only did Edmund emerge with a passion for God and the things of God, he also emerged with a clear focus on where God was to be encountered. Not for him the seclusion of a contemplative monastic life on the continent. Not for him the quiet routine of an enclosed monastery.  No, God was drawing him in another direction. For Edmund, God had something different in mind. God led Edmund to conduct his search for the Divine Encounter among the least of his brothers and sisters. This is what Edmund did for the rest of his life.