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I drink from your cup

SIMON

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  Sometimes I have to haul myself up out of the pit of my body – with great effort – in order to keep going and do what must be done. It was like that at Mass on Sunday and my voice felt raw, deep, and oddly too strong. Too loud. This morning it seems like I have no voice at all. And I need it. But sorrow seems to have sucked it out of me. In the end it was all right, as it often is, though it still demanded that I dig deep. But it was all right. The funeral was remarkably tranquil. Dignified and heartfelt. Perhaps we all felt that his time had come. His time for rest. Many years ago, someone told me that animals have an instinct for good people, even for what is Godly in them. It must have been like that to a near perfect degree with St. Francis. Simon had a way with dogs – the wounded and the strong. They were safe with him and, perhaps, he with them. The first time we met, about thirty-five years ago, there opened up in my heart a special place for him. His mother asked me
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My Name

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  My name Is not a word To be pronounced More a sound Emanating From God Most High Like the silence Of interstellar space The calm deep of ocean Washing the shore The quiet falling Of an Autumn leaf And then again The roaring of wind Waves crashing on rocks Groaning of the elements A pristine primordial cry And the laughter of delighted children My name is a mystery And I have heard God call it In the unfathomable  Sacrament of the Altar  And in those hidden places Where only He has ventured
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Preferring The Deception

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  Darkness presents itself as light Death as life Ignorance parades as wisdom Wrong declares itself to be right The wolf is dressed like a lamb Hell pretends to be Heaven "Their speech sweet as honey Their throat a wide open grave" Tears of partial compassion A cult of softness. Preferring the deception We do not test the spirits Surrendering ourselves To our own destruction The destruction of our children
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Follies Forgotten

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  From the pocket of my jeans I take the bunch of keys Fumbling bundle of responsibilities That are carried with me everywhere The discomfort of them Prodding my flesh The clumsy weight of them Too many of them And I thrust them To the bottom of my backpack And throw it to the bottom Of the wardrobe Free now for the quiet Of this strange bleak place Drab and most dreary of days But free nonetheless For brotherhood And solitude with the One And only necessary Good For whom Through whom From whom All else flows And all my follies forgotten 
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Holiness of the Imperfect

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At a meeting on the new Parish that will be established in November, I was struck by the fact that most of the questions and discussions focused on finance and structure, matters for which there are no adequate answers yet. Not yet. My attention went in the direction of inspiration, specifically on what Bishop Richard refers to as “communities of saints.” This is what we are called to become, though becoming saints is probably the farthest thing from most people’s minds, engrossed as we are in the throes of daily living. From childhood I have been drawn to the idea of holiness, the call of God in the Bible when He says, “be holy, for I the Lord am holy.” (Leviticus 21:8 and 1 Peter 1:16) Becoming holy and becoming saints are the same thing. For centuries in the Church, it was thought that, in order to become holy, one had to become a priest, a nun, a brother, a monk or a hermit. These were the vocations of saints yet when you look at the Bible, the very first vocation mentioned is to m
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YOU WILL SEE YOUR TEACHER

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  “You had not yet come forth into the light, Not even the world itself had come into existence When already I was loving you. Throughout my Eternal Existence I have loved you” (Words of God spoken by Saint Alphonsus Ligouri)   On the fourth day of my Aran retreat, before the boats had arrived from the mainland, I took the Pump Road, turning left up past the water works, a path I had never taken before. It narrows into a beautiful lane, framed by stone walls and beautifully decorated by hundreds, maybe thousands of wildflowers.   The path led me to the cliff facing the Atlantic Ocean with the Black Fort further up to my left. This is a route I’ve wanted to take for years, and it is utterly solitary, a road not travelled before, symbolic of seeking God in places where I had not searched before.   The search is always the same but sometimes it is necessary to get a different perspective. “It is Your Face O Lord that I seek.” (Psalm 27)   Out there near the cliff edge where seagul
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COME ALONE TO THE ALONE (A Silence to be Felt)

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Samuel, "the man who listens to God" - that's the meaning of his name. Samuel who pitched tent outside our church in the winter of a few years ago. Samuel, who returns from time to time and gives thanks that we gave him a welcome. And I give thanks that he is now settled in his own home and has a job. The man who listens to God, the one by whom God is heard, turned up appropriately enough with his girl friend yesterday before the Sunday vigil Mass. Appropriate because she is deaf and unable to speak clearly. Appropriate because the Gospel of this weekend has Jesus addressing the deafness of a man and healing him. Samuel's friend is not here to be healed. She isn't healed of her deafness but what is beautiful is to see the communication that takes place between the two of them; communication on all sorts of levels; a loving communication. He is heard by her, and she is understood by him. "Be opened!" This is how Jesus addresses the deafness of the man. Be
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