VESPERS (By The Sea)

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"...he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord..." 
(Genesis 28:12-13)
Prayer turns the soul
To the red October sky
Evening respite
From relentless rain
Relief from pain


Quiet waters touching
The edge of everything


Removing her scarf
She bares the shriven
Head of her illness
Bowing with Love's
Own Humility 


To God Who Is
Known to be
In the sanctuary
Of this place


Stairway between
Heaven and Earth

He walks on the top of the heights of the world; the Lord, the God of Hosts, is his name. (Amos 4:13)

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30 Days

WEAKNESSES (My Special Boast)

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  "I shall make my weaknesses my special boast” (2 Corinthians 12:9) There's a struggle going on in me, the tiredness that comes with the end of the year, the tiredness I see in teachers and pupils as they come to the conclusion of their academic year. A tiredness and an excited anticipation of endings and freedom. I'm a bit unsteady in myself when I enter the church for the first Sunday morning Mass. I have the pleasure of my sister's company this weekend, but in normal times the first word I speak in the day is spoken when I come for Mass which is preceded by three hours of silence. Silent breakfast, silent prayer, silent preparation. I love that silence and I love the first word that is spoken in the day. The connection with the people of the parish. This particular Sunday morning a young Mum places her new-born baby in my arms. The effect on me is instant. Holding this child close to my chest, all unsteadiness is steadied, all turbulence calmed by a peace that ta
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Love Was His Meaning

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‘Love was his meaning’: a conversation about Julian of Norwich between Dr Claire Gilbert and Fr Eamonn Monson. Click on the link below to listen to the conversation https://drive.google.com/file/d/16euftBoLdrM3X1YvEAhK3RznhdAI1LFj/view?usp=drivesdk Claire Gilbert wrote her doctoral thesis on Julian in relation to the ecological crisis, but when she was diagnosed with myeloma, a cancer of the blood, Julian stopped being the subject of her academic study and became her spiritual companion and guide through two and a half years of gruelling treatment.  Claire wrote about this in letters to friends, published as  Miles to Go Before I Sleep .  At the end of the treatment she heard a call to tell Julian’s story and wrote  I, Julian , a fictional autobiography which seeks to do justice to this extraordinary woman’s life. Dr Claire Gilbert is an author.  She is the founding director of the Westminster Abbey Institute, and has worked for the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England as poli
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Out Of Touch

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Down to the edge Of the island We will go Once more Beyond the reach Of electric power Out of touch  With everything Where Elements Alone remain Salt sea water Washing my face My sinners soul Transformed by grace Mother of Mercy Is present here Speaking of surrender To the Spirit Here is the wind The waves The crashing And the upward surge Of everything
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Scallop Shell and Camper Van (CORPUS CHRISTI 2024)

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From my earliest years as a young child, there has been a close connection between the Divine and the ordinary things of life. I understood and accepted that God was everywhere, so I prayed to him anywhere, told him my simplest desires. Many of these have been answered, some taking years – like the yacht that I’ve written about before - and others almost instantly. An instant answer happened the other day as I was out on my walk. Something in me said it would be good to have a real scallop shell for Baptisms and I wondered if I should use my Camino shell which is at home in Mervue, but I felt that it has its place and memory. And as I approached the Goat Ledge outdoor café, I noticed William decorating one of the walls with hundreds of scallop shells. Stopping to chat with him, I mentioned my desire for one. He promptly produced a box full of them and offered me two to take away. Another experience has to do with the blue and white Volkswagen toy Minibus I had when I was about three or
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INSOMNIA: They Who Fly Home To God

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"Insomnia can become a form of contemplation. You just lie there, inert, helpless, alone, in the dark, and let yourself be crushed by the inscrutable tyranny of time. The plank bed becomes an altar and you lie there without trying to understand any longer in what sense you can be called a sacrifice." (Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas) Insomnia! A brand of coffee and a state of being! Being awake when you should be asleep. It's been part of my whole life since childhood, though it's less of an affliction now. Most religious people seem to resort to formal prayer like the rosary to help them through the dark hours. Not me! I just groan - "oh God!" One such night many years ago my distress was so great that I sat up, took hold of my Bible and asked God to speak to me. What opened before me was Ezekiel Chapter 13, and I was particularly struck by verse 10:  "...they have misled my people by saying Peace! when there is no peace." My inclinati
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Back to Her First Love

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April 29, 2024. Forty-five years ago today I made my Final Profession as a Pallottine on the Feast day of St. Catherine of Siena who expresses well what goes on in me when she speaks these words to God, “ You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you. But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more. When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light. I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are. ” But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more. Desire! For a long time, I have thought that every desire of my humanity is at its heart a desire for God but maybe that’s not the case. Maybe I glamourize my desires when, in fact, they are actually mundane, and even base, having nothing to do with God at all. Vocation Sunday leaves me questioning the sincerity of my own vocation. Not the vocation
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FATHERHOOD: A Man And His Child

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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
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A SONG IN SEARCH OF A VOICE: In Memory of Father Michael Cremin SAC

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Waiting beneath a weeping willow tree in the garden of Holy Redeemer while my car is being serviced up the road. Traffic roars beyond, but in here there is peace, sunshine filtering through the leaves, light and shadow falling onto the page on which I write, “a page that aches for a word” – a phrase from Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Neil Diamond. And a song in search of a voice. The voice of Michael Cremin stepping out into the middle of a gathering, hands clapping, singing the kind of song that I don’t particularly like, but they were lively songs, drawing people in and out of themselves, diffusing an air of real happiness. Of course, he sang songs that I loved too and I’m trying to remember one in particular! Was it ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ or ‘The Green Fields of France’? His voice vibrated and soared. The thought of him makes me quiver with sighs, the thought that he is dead to the world now, gone home to God. No more will we see or hear him again in the flesh
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THE LILAC TREE: Connection and Communication

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  In the back garden of my home in Mervue there’s a lilac tree that was planted by my Mother and it was once tall and beautiful when in full bloom. The winter after she died a storm uprooted and knocked the tree flat on the ground and we were all very sorry for it because it represented her. The tree lay there through the winter and into the spring. I left it like that because I felt it had something to say to me about what is fallen in life, even though people were urging me to get rid of it and then to my great surprise, the following May new lilac blossoms emerged from the fallen tree and when I went to look at the roots I noticed that one single slim root was still connected to the earth and by it the tree lives on. So, it rests there as a parable for me of the hope that abides in the fallen states of life, in times when things fall apart and out of place. A reminder of the line from the Book of Job,  " there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and
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HOLY WEEK: A Reflection

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“My soul at once becomes recollected and I enter the state of quiet. Everything is stilled and the soul is left in a state of great quiet.” (St. Teresa of Avila)         As we enter into Holy Week we are invited by God into a state of quiet recollection in prayer as we contemplate Jesus in His Passion, as we “look upon the one they have pierced.” (Zechariah 12:10). The appropriate form of prayer is that of silent gazing, a silent gazing on the person of Jesus, a loving gaze and a total surrender to Him in which I put aside my own thoughts, my agenda and my struggles. I surrender my self-preoccupation and allow love for Him to be stirred, awakened within me in the silence.     We sometimes flinch and turn away from the silence beca use we cannot bear our own pain and we cannot bear the full impact of the suffering of Jesus.   “He had no special beauty or form to attract us; there was nothing in his appearance to make us desire him.    He was hated, despised and
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