A PRAYER FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

 

To You my Lord I come
In Adoration
Beneath the world-mothering
Mantle of Mary

Asking Your morning Blessing upon
Mothers filled with purpose
Parents and guardians
Coming back from delivering
Children to school

I pray for every child
And each member of staff

May Your Grace descend

Upon hurried women and men
Going out to work
Fast walkers and runners keeping fit
The elderly who move slowly
Each nursing home resident and carer
The neighbours on our street
Throughout this town

Those who enter our church
To touch the veil of heaven

Every person I see
Each one who enters my thoughts
Those who dwell in my heart

And all the departed

Beneath the world-mothering
Mantle of Mary

I stand in the breach
Before You my Lord

An instrument of Your Grace
A channel of Your Love

Giving thanks

For all that You have given
For hearing our prayer
For all that will be given

All praise to You
Father
Jesus
Holy Spirit

Amen!

SEPTEMBER

I feel September

In my bones

BALLYLOUGHÁN SUNDAY MORNING (Psalm 131 X)

 

UNCOMPROMISING LIFE

“He hungered for the uncompromising life of a mendicant.” 

(Priest and Beggar by Kevin Wells)

I’m reading the biography of Venerable Father Aloysius Schwartz whose enthusiasm, energy and sense of purpose put me to shame, humble me. Though I have always known from a very young age that I would be a priest, always wanted to be one, it seems like I have spent my life wandering. I have always loved and been drawn to the poor, to the vulnerable but never had the courage to be poor. Vulnerable yes, but poor no. And even my presence with the vulnerable is always transient.

SORROW A PRELUDE TO JOY - Celebration in Memory of Fr. John O'Brien SCA

 

11:11 and exactly 14,000 miles on the trip meter over the hump of the magnificent Dartford Crossing. I love numbers like these. John loved to see 11:11 glow red on his digital radio clock beside his bed at night. Now whenever I see it, I think of him, pause like an Angelus to pray for his eternal rest and praise the Holy Trinity.

The Labour of Mercy

 During a retreat in the Camaldolese monastery near Frascati in 1839 St. Vincent Pallotti wrote that he was in extreme need of what he calls an “infinite deluge of divine mercy” and he says “I found myself immersed in an immense sea of divine Mercy”. The need and the experience of Mercy was vast and abundant. To describe God Pallotti uses words such as infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible. God is immense, infinite, immeasurable and incomprehensible Mercy.

Why Do You Call Me Good?

 

"Why do you call me good?" asked Jesus. "No one is good - except God alone."

(Mark 10:18)

The woman said that her house isn’t good enough to receive a priest, especially me because she said I am so holy. The way I say Mass. I’m not holy I insisted. I’m a sinner and your house is perfectly fit for me or any priest. You’re not a sinner, she said. I am, I said! But she wouldn’t hear of it. A common mistake, not just among devout Catholics but in society at large. That’s why there is such shock when the people on pedestals are revealed to have feet of clay and worse. Oftentimes, it is we who put them on pedestals.