OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

I'm not much into country music but the first time I saw Charlie Lansborough on tv he made me cry with his song  “ My Forever Friend”, which is about the friendship of Jesus. My tears were not of sadness but of recognition. I felt the inner conviction that Jesus is my forever friend. This conviction is better expressed for me in the song by Delirious? - “What A Friend I’ve Found”.  My life, my vocation is based on my friendship with Jesus.   When God says to the Prophets “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you. I have called you by your name. You are mine.” I know what this means. I feel it! Because of it I know that I have been destined for priesthood from my mother’s womb and even before that.   I’ve always had an instinct for God, an attraction for Him and I’ve always wanted to be a priest at the altar for as long as I can remember. During the Easter holidays of my final year in secondary school there was

Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes. (Luke 23)   When Maura died I ached for two things - the sound of her voice and her physical touch. We were always physically present to each other - when I retu rned home from Tanzania, having been away for two years, her hug was fierce and long; we sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch; she linked my arm when we walked. The ache for her touch was my prayer.   One night I dreamed there was a knock on the front door at home. I ran to open it and there stood Maura. She had come for a visit from her place in the great beyond. I hugged her tight and said with delight "I can actually feel you

Should have gone to Specsavers. Should go! And yesterday on the M6 I thought, "I should have taken the train!" It was my plan to do exactly that - come home by train for the sheer pleasure, the pleasure of seeing Ballyloughan and Loughatalia as we neared Galway's Ceannt station, reminders of youthful homecomings and the excitement of it. More importantly in the present to be without a car so that I would really rest and not be running all over the place. But in his kindness the Provincial offered me the use of a car. And I took it because it made it easy for me to visit a friend who is I'll in Dublin. That was the right thing to do. Twingo is 10 years old and lively. She gives me the feeling of being a boy racer, another fantasy of youth! I've driven her before and she's not due a service for another 8,000 km. But by the time I reached the Athlone bypass seven lights had come on in the dash. Was I imagining that the steering was heavy? The indicat