“If I have to dance on tables for people to know Christ, I’ll do it.” Jaime Bonet Bonet, Founder of the Verbum Dei Family

This seemingly random statement I heard more than once from Jaime Bonet became an interpretative key for me, as an Irish woman seeking to incarnate in my own flesh and blood the charism I found, without seeking, through the person of Jaime Bonet, the people he drew to Jesus, and the vision born of his experience of prayer. It speaks of a freedom born of priorities: Jesus at the centre – “that they may know him and One who sent him, and in Them have eternity life” (cf. Jn 17:1-3), such that all the rest is relative.

This is what he gave to me: an experience of prayer that became the centre of my life and the only absolute. Everything else is about others getting to know him. This understanding of life is still my north, in life, ministry, and theology.

I remember the taste of his preaching, even before I could understand him, in a Spanish month’s retreat before I could speak a word of that language, with some kind soul whispering its translation in my ear. But his passion and the truth of what he was saying crossed that language barrier and pierced my life in a way that it could never be the same. Once you know, you know. This prayer-sustained vision is what I am most grateful for.

I believe this passion was a painful thing for him, such was the clarity of his vision of who and what Verbum Dei was meant to be. He felt he was custodian of this gift, this charism, this way of being Church. And he was ahead of his times: I have serene clarity about by baptismal calling, my prophetic and apostolic calling as a woman in the Church, to lead, to create communities, nourish them, form from within them leaders and move on to more influence, more eternity life. I have felt the Spirit breathe through my words, and I have and do, from time to time, speak, preach to and teach bishops (as he told us we would). The Church more broadly is still reaching for this, in some places, or struggling with what it means. He was ahead of his times. I am grateful for this understanding and how it is second nature to me now. I often wonder why this amazing charism and vision has not grown more, and born more fruit, although that is, perhaps, an overly human question and perspective, as only God knows what fruit is really being born, in the hidden places of the Body of Christ.

He was not an easy man to follow. The clarity we sensed from his preaching was not easy for him to reproduce in one-to-one spaces, especially when there were differences of opinion. Those who got close to him knew, I intuit, that the prophetic nature of his preaching did not cancel out the individual care for each one that had felt drawn to this community. But strong characters are not easy ones. That is simply a fact. And he was not formed in the understanding of human formation and the multi-layered nature of human flourishing: his life straddled the Copernican shift of the Church, and of culture, before, during and after the Second Vatican Council, with which we still battle. I knew myself to be respected by him and sensed he could recognise in me that same gift and charism, which gave me confidence, but I did not fly too close to the flame. My artistic creativity and Irish temperament may not have managed well the balance needed to hold that space. But I “sat at his feet” for many years, through months of preached retreats and community meetings, internally digesting and translating what was core, in my mind: the message of the Spirit for that moment.

That dynamic led me to the two constitutional axes of my preaching and teaching and missionary life:

• “We transmit not what we say or counsel but rather what we profoundly pray and live.” Constitutions Verbum Dei  43
• After the words, only Jesus and the living experience of Christ should remain in the hearts of the listeners.” Constitutions Verbum Dei  47

That is the aftertaste of Jaime’s life, for me, about which I intuit he would be pleased.