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A HIDDEN LIFE (Corpus Christi 2026)

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  A bold boy sitting at the back of an empty church when he should be at school. A complex, troubled boy who is threatened with the industrial school because he mitches and doesn’t do his homework. The teacher said he was a house angel and street devil. But to himself he was simply afraid and didn’t know how to explain it. So, he took daily refuge in the empty church, feeling that Jesus hidden in the Tabernacle somehow understood what no one else did, the thing that could not be put into words. That was me when I was ten years old. It is not me now, but I still possess the gift that was given me in adversity, a strong relationship with the hidden life of Jesus in the Tabernacle. St. Vincent Pallotti places great emphasis on the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth, the life he lived away from public view from the age of twelve until He began His public ministry. The Tabernacle is my Nazareth. Forty years ago during a thirty-day Ignatian retreat, while praying before the Taberna...
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O NIGHT, O NIGHT

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O night O night You come to fight With me again And I take flight Into the wandering Avenues of my phone And hide And hide From all that assails The mind The body The soul O night O night That I might recognize The gate of heaven That you are And be a Jacob Wrestling For the injury And the blessing
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MIRROR (The Hidden Face)

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“You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity” (St. Catherine Of Siena) The Image of God That you seek In the mirror Might not be The beauty you require Of yourself It may be more The Hidden wounds Of your heart Scars of your illness Sickness of soul Or perhaps you behold The bloodshot eyes of Christ Afflicted with addiction Jesus weeping harrowed tears Over the loss of a child An unspeakable grief It is the Face of God In you.
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THRESHOLD OF THE HOUSE OF GOD (Our Lady of Silence)

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  I can’t stop writing in my head. It’s like everything I experience; I’m thinking about how I will write it. Or take a photo of it. And so, it is now, here in Our Lady of Silence Abbey where I’m spending two nights. The thought came to me in the chapel in Dundrum the other day when I was finding my mind to be rather frazzled and in need of some release. The time here is also an opportunity for me to say a personal farewell to a place that has blessed me for more than fifty years. We would come here occasionally on Sundays when we were students in Thurles in the 1970’s. I’ve always been attracted to the monastic and also to the fabulous brown bread that they used to bake here. We came here for our diaconate and ordination retreats in 1979 and 1980. The former took place during Holy Week when we had our feet washed by the then Prior Father Laurence who is still here in his nineties. A pillar of this community. At the washing of the feet he kissed our feet, something I had never ...
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BEAUTY LIKE NO OTHER (A Meditation)

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Jesus invites us  To consider the birds of the air To look at the flowers of the field To learn from them Gaze Consider Contemplate Listen to the beautiful song Of the blackbird and the robin Observe the flight of the swallow The soaring of the seagull In the blue blue sky I am inspired I am lifted up I am filled with their freedom Look at the variety of flowers in the garden The wild flowers of the field The majesty of the trees The beauty of a simple bush I am filled with their beauty  And their majesty And the wonder of the sun rising As it dissolves the darkness of the night And warms the cold of the morning And the sheer sheer beauty The majesty of the setting sun And I look at your face And there I behold a beauty like no other It is the beauty of love In all its shapes and forms and sizes Only you can love like you do  And that is your beauty Consider the love that you feel In your heart and in your body And your soul Consider that this is a reflection Of wha...
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PRAYERS FOR HEALING

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  Prayers for Healing offered at Mass in St. Patrick's Church, Corduff, Dublin on May 1, 2026 "Heal me Lord and I shall be healed, save me and I shall be saved, for You are my praise "  Jeremiah 17:14
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THE SOUNDING SILENCE, SILENT MUSIC

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Silence of Pallotti House Chapel "O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me...come to me disguised as everything"  (Malcolm Guite) A state of acute unworthiness! This is how I felt as I entered the chapel for morning prayer. Alone. Alone with the One, such is the definition of what a monk is. A man who is alone with the One. I am a monk then in that sense. It has been a lifelong fantasy of mine, to be a Cistercian monk in a monastery with all the Trappist trappings. I even asked Chatgpt to paint me a picture of me as a monk and that is what you have above. A fantasy. Not meant to be in the physical sense but it is there spiritually within me and I am living it now in that way. Thank God. In the chapel on the morning in question, there came to me again that silence, that incredible, absolute silence that is physical as well as everything; physical in that it inhabits the place, enfolding and filling me, so that I can only think that it is the Divine Silence, the Silence of Me...
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