OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  Naomh Éanna's chapel “…proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. Refute falsehood, correct error, call to obedience – but do all with patience and with the intention of teaching.” (2 Timothy 4) +++ The Gospel given for this St. Patrick’s Day Mass was somewhat surprising – the parable of the darnel in Matthew chapter 13. And yet appropriate because it is true. The Master planted good seed in his field, only to have his enemy come along in the secret dark of night to plant darnel alongside the wheat. Both crops grow up together. They are very alike, so that it’s difficult to distinguish one from the other and, what’s more, the darnel hooks itself onto the root of the wheat so that separation is quite tricky. That’s why the Master doesn’t want the darnel uprooted before harvest time, because the wheat, the good could be uprooted with the bad. It’s clear that the enemy of God has planted darnel in the good field of His people. It has happened in the Church and in ...

May the Lord, who formed you in love, bless you with joy for the care you have given, patience for the days that feel long, and peace for the moments that weigh heavy. May Mary, Mother of God, wrap you in her gentle mantle, guiding your heart with faith and tenderness. May the Holy Spirit strengthen you,  filling your home with grace, your hands with kindness, and your life with the light of Christ. And may Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son ✝, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

  During the Sahara Desert retreat six years ago, we walked for about seven hours every day for a week. There were three breaks during the course of a day and the toughest part was in the afternoon when the heat was at it's height and we were feeling pretty tired.  One afternoon we came upon a well out in the middle of nowhere. A well with a pump from which we drank of its abundance, soaking our cheich's (Moraccan headscarf) in it. My scarf was a middle-eastern kufiya, given me by Chris, a parishioner who had served in the Iraq war.  I remember placing my saturated, dripping kufiya on my head. The cool wetness of it. The sheer relief of it, until it dried out all too quickly. But in the moment it was pure bliss, not only physically, but it seemed that through the physical touch of water God was reaching into the weariness and deepest thirst of my soul. Reaching in, speaking to my inner reality, ministering to it and somehow releasing me. So, I feel for Jesus in the Gospel...

  The loveliness of Spring peeping though the grey wetness of a long dark Winter. Light is brighter, lengthier and life is pushing itself upwards from the cold earth. Branches bulging with buds that signify hope, new possibilities. Our souls too are looking upwards, our hearts more open to the immense love that God is constantly expressing, often in a language, in gestures that we do not quite understand. Or believe. This is my Son, the Beloved, He says of Jesus. You are my Beloved Son, He has said directly to Him. And what Jesus experiences is also meant for each one of us, without exception. You are my Beloved daughter. You are my Beloved son. To understand what God the Father is actually feeling we need only look at our own experiences of loving. What a mother and father feel for their child is what God feels for you, only His feeling of love is infinitely more intense than ours, if you can imagine anything more intense. Not being a biological father, I have nonetheless ...

  On Friday, my sister Evelyn and I flew to Birmingham for the funeral of our cousin Sharon. It was an emotional, blessed and even a joyful day of family coming together on one of those rare occasions; the awareness within us that, though we hardly ever meet, we are strongly connected by blood with a genuine love shared among us.  It was a long day that found us at the airport for the return flight that was delayed by about an hour. Delays are normal and fine enough but it’s what the airline does with the delay. And it wasn’t Ryanair just in case people might wrongly put the blame there.  It’s what they do. They pretend that they are boarding us. We scan our boarding pass barcode; they check our passports and move us on. Things might not be as bad as we thought. But they were. And somewhat worse. We were all crowded on to the stairs and kept standing there for over half an hour, with the door to the tarmac firmly locked, presumably because the plane was not actually r...

  “You called my youth, sidestepping me away to exile of the heart…”  - words I wrote to You my Lord more than thirty years ago when I felt my separation so keenly.  A deep and all-pervading ache. Not remembering that I was actually born with that ache, an emptiness deep inside that would never let me go no matter how much I tried.  And I have been trying hard to give solace to that ache, to fill the emptiness with what is not You. Rain mesmerises.  Rain on a dark November evening pecking at my face, battering my hood.  Rain on the seafront.  Deserted seafront, releasing what is deserted in me.  Thoughts and feelings that are comfortably restrained, kept in check – now, almost unbeknownst to me, begin to stir like skittish horses, taking on a pace of their own.  I had thought never to revisit this again. The thought of loss.  My failure that somehow led to that loss.  The feeling that goes with it.  And the shock of how it happ...