Greatest of These is Love , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Paul Kelly

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256 pages

English

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Joachim Flynn was born in Glasgow to Irish parents in the year 1926.He was a Catholic and went to a Catholic school with other Catholicboys, but Joachim always felt that there was something about him thatwasn't just quite right. He didn't think like the other boys and theParish Priest tried to convince him that he had a vocation to thepriesthood and that was the reason why he felt as he did, but Joachimhad no inclinations for the priesthood or for the married state. Theother Catholic boys grew up and fell in love, mostly with Catholicgirls, but some went their own way and disregarded the teachings of thechurch into which they were born and married elsewhere, if they marriedat all.Joachim grew up too and he also fell in love, but he fell in love withGod and the Shadow of God followed Joachim throughout the whole of hislife with a special vocation . . . greater than the priesthood ...greater than the married state. He was born in the imitation ofChrist, where like Christ he gave his life for another.'For no greater love hath any man ... than that he lay down his lifefor his friend.'

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	17 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781781660720
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page

THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

By
Paul Kelly

Publisher Information

The Greatest Of These Is Love
Published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Paul Kelly

The right of Paul Kelly to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Synopsis

JOACHIM FLYNN was born in Glasgow to Irish parents in the year 1926. He was a Catholic and went to a Catholic school with other Catholic boys, but Joachim always felt that there was something about him that wasn’t just quite right. He didn’t think like the other boys and the Parish Priest tried to convince him that he had a vocation to the priesthood and that was the reason why he felt as he did, but Joachim had no inclinations for the priesthood or for the married state. The other Catholic boys grew up and fell in love, mostly with Catholic girls, but some went their own way and disregarded the teachings of the church into which they were born and married elsewhere, if they married at all.
Joachim grew up too and he also fell in love, but he fell in love with God and the Shadow of God followed Joachim throughout the whole of his life with a special vocation . . . greater than the priesthood ... greater than the married state. He was born in the imitation of Christ, where like Christ he gave his life for another.

‘For no greater love hath any man ... than that he lay down his life for his friend.’

SISTER MARIE GENEVIEVE OF THE SACRED HEART had serious misgivings about her religious vocation as a Roman Catholic nun. She had entered the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Orphans in 1941 when she was eighteen years of age and strove to become perfect in her calling in all she was asked to do, since she had made a vow of obedience to her Superior, in all that is not sin.
MOTHER HYACINTH OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION was her Superior and God’s representative to all of her Sisters in the convent, but the abnegation of one’s intellect to another, even if it is to please God, is an extremely difficult thing for anyone to do as Sister Marie Genevieve found out. The vow of obedience is the most difficult of all of the three vows she had taken; the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and it is one thing to obey, when you respect the commander, but quite another thing when you consider the person telling you what to do, to be an idiot ... and who believes that sacrifice and suffering is necessary to attain salvation even if she is a Superior Religious Nun. . . SUFFERING, SUFFERING, SUFFERING was the order of the day at the convent of the Little Sisters of the Orphans . . . but . . .
Sister Genevieve met and fell in love with JOACHIM FLYNN when as a Little Sister of the Orphans, she was training as a nurse at a local general hospital and Joachim is a patient with tuberculosis. He also has a slight limp, having suffered with talipes, (club foot,) when he was born. It was Joachim’s spirituality that primarily attracted Sister Genevieve, but she eventually found that her love for Joachim was greater than her dislike for her Mother Superior and she began to have doubts about where she should be in life. After much prayer and when Joachim is tragically killed in a road accident, Sister Genevieve leaves the convent and relinquishes her vows.

This is when tragedy strikes in her own life when as plain Jenny Kershaw, she takes a job nursing, again in a hospital, but she is relegated to the Special Clinic where she meets Number 346, Ashley Chelmsford, a very young man who comes from London and is as much a cockney as you could ever wish to meet, who refuses to be numbered and calls himself Ashley Bubblecock, much to Jenny’s amusement and delight. A great friendship springs up from their meeting and Ashley turns out to be a very loyal friend indeed. Later Jenny encounters troubles of her own when under the influence of chloroform, she is raped; the consequences of which renders her pregnant and having worked so closely in the Special Clinic, it is feared that the rapist could have suffered from some venereal disease. Jenny is distraught and her world falls to pieces, but she will not have an abortion, believing that she should never destroy life under any circumstance, but happily she is cleared of any sign of infection and delivers a healthy young son whom she christens Joachim. The birth would have been perfectly natural, except for the extraordinary coincidence that the little boy is born with a club foot, but this is quickly remedied by surgery. It transpired that the rapist is someone who would never have been considered to have acted in this way and is a surprise to everyone, especially Jenny. He commits suicide and the child grows up into normal childhood.
Jenny returns to nursing only to find that one of her patients is none other than Mother Hyacinth of the Immaculate Conception, her Superior from her convent days and although much older and also blind, is still as cantankerous and self-willed as ever, with her eternal demands. . . The demands of one who considers herself to be very special, but her final demand cannot be executed . . .

“You would put an animal down if it became ill and suffering,” the Mother Superior told Jenny, “but you wouldn’t help me to be relieved of MY suffering….”

Introduction

This is the story of two extraordinary people . . . They didn’t think like most ordinary people do nor did they live like most ordinary people do . . . It is a tale of pure fiction, but somehow or other, I think this tale could well and truly have happened to two such people . . .

Paul Kelly

Chapter One

Glasgow

IF IT HAD BEEN RAINING, he hadn’t been aware, but Joachim’s hair was wet when he left the church that morning and he was sure he had only been in there for a very short time . . . that was way back in 1941 and he was just in his fifteenth year, but he could still remember the incident so well. Time seemed to be different to him somehow in those far off days of his childhood . . . in the famous or infamous district of the Gorbals in Glasgow . . . however you wanted to view it in the formative years when he was being ‘baked in the ovens of sanctity . . . ‘ and if he was a little apprehensive, he couldn’t actually say that he was afraid of what was happening to him. It seemed that everything that went on in his heart and soul was in the natural process of things and that he should be living exactly as he was in that time …and yet on the other hand, he remembered thinking that he should push this feeling of being ‘possessed’ to one side and just lead a ‘normal’ life with his school friends. They were all growing into manhood and it was understandable that things would be different . . . There would be the cinema, where he could go on his own . . . and dancing . . . and girls, but just how different, he was very soon about to find out, whether he chose to learn or not …whether he wanted to accept or not . . . there was no question of choice. It was as if he was going into a time that was new in a way and yet he had felt the experience of this shadow ever since he could remember and it was to drag him through life’s years with it, regardless of how he felt . . . Whether he opposed it or ran with it, didn’t matter. That finger moved and he jumped to attention. That ‘sigh’ within him, for that was the only word he could find to describe it, laboured long and hard and he knew he would have to obey, but he was so young, so guileless . . . so naïve, so stupidly ‘normal’ for this to be happening to him . . . within him . . . and yet he could not deny that it was . . . It was an awakening, if you like . . . into his adult life and into love, but not with any girl . . . This was a love affair with God …
He could remember walking home . . . but just vaguely and the elements of the weather didn’t come into his thoughts at all. It could have been raining . . . but if it was, he wasn’t aware . . . All he knew was that he was warm . . . and wet . . . and that there was a peculiar vacuum within him, which carried him along with it . . . It wasn’t a cocoon that contained or surrounded him or anything as mystical as that . . . It was just an awareness . . . Yes, that’s the best way to describe it . . . an awareness that despite his utter unworthiness . . . (as he genuinely believed himself to be, so firmly at that time,) God was doing things to him that he did not understand and yet, he wasn’t a particularly holy or even good child. Not a little boy that you’d look at twice . . . nor was he in any way, particularly bad . . . It wasn’t a Saul becoming a Paul on the road to Damascus . . . No nothing like that. He hadn’t persecuted His church …or murdered any of His innocents . . . and he certainly hadn’t coveted his neighbour’s wife . . . nor his ox, or his ass. The extent of his ‘wickedness’ as he entered into manhood, was a mild and furtive thought that was bordering on the impure . . . a ‘depravity’, which could bring a blush to his cheek and send him scurrying off to confession. “I have touched myself Father . . . in a naughty way and I am sorry for my sins bef