OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

Islands listen to me, pay attention. The Lord called me before I was born, from my mother’s womb He pronounced my name. It is He who created me, knit me together in my mother’s womb. Already He knew my soul, my body held no secret from Him when I was being fashioned in secret, moulded in the depths. He searches me and knows my resting and rising, my purpose. All my ways lie open to Him. I am not the one you imagine me to be. (Readings for the birthday of St. John The Baptist) From the time I was a boy in the Aran Islands I knew that God was with me there, and it seems that He spoke to me through island, sea, sand and rock. And it seems that the island was listening to me, that He listened to me through the same island, sea, sand and rock. We spoke the same language, dreamed the same dream and yearned with infinite desire for simple unattainable experiences, experiences that would somehow express something of who we are in each other’s presence; who I would bec...

The 4 th chapter of the Catechism talks about ' THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH’ - faith being the human response to God’s revelation.   The ultimate goal of faith is Eternal Life with God in Heaven – that is the destination that gives meaning to our believing and all our striving.    To obey means first of all to listen attentively to what God is saying and then to do what God has said. Obedience is not just about doing what we're told but it is first of all about listening. In the Bible the most commonly used word is the name of God in its various forms and the next most commonly used word is to “listen” – listening to the voice of God, believing what He is saying and being willing to be taught, willing to learn.  Faith is about paying attention to God , paying attention to what we are doing in life, paying attention to how we are living.   I'm not the most faithful of environmentalists but a few years ago – on the advice of government – I decided to dr...

My father has been gone for nearly half my life. I was 35 when he died and one of the simple things I missed was not being able to send him a card on Father's Day, not being able to tell him I loved him in a direct personal and physical way.   But I got used to not sending him cards, I stopped looking at them in shops and gradually Father's Day slipped from my awareness. Often it would pass me by altogether.   This year, however, it has been insisting itself into my awareness. Every time I sat before God in prayer He seemed to be asking me to ponder Fatherhood.   So I did! I even googled the word "father" to see what might come up and the first definition I saw is this, "a man in relation to his child", something that is specific and clear. And while fatherhood cannot be fully lived in isolation, while it exists in collaboration to motherhood, it still has a meaning in itself and is worth celebrating in itself. It's worth celebra...