OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

"They were men with restless hearts, not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of reading God’s signs, his soft and penetrating language." (Pope Benedict XVI) Sahara 2020 In the above photo we resemble modern day Magi, trekking through the desert in search of that which God had in store for us. We set out as strangers to each other with our own personal, private pursuit but it was necessary that we travel and arrive together and, like the Magi of the Gospel, we would return to our own country a different way. The route back might look the same but it was we who were different in our returning and our destinations would never be the same again. All pilgrimage draws our gaze forward and upwards, with little time for looking back. Like St. Paul we leave the past behind, straining forward for the gift to come. The gift and the victory. And even if the past chases us, even when

  One day in the silence after the Gospel at Mass I picked up St. Faustina’s diary and asked God to show me something that needed to be seen in that moment. This is what I saw, “I saw the Infant Jesus near my kneeler. He appeared to be about one year old, and He asked me to take Him in my arms. When I did take Him in my arms, He cuddled up close to my bosom and said, “It is good for Me to be close to your heart. … Because I want to teach you spiritual childhood. I want you to be very little, because when you are little, I carry you close to My Heart, just as you are holding Me close to your heart right now.” ( Aleteia ) There is the danger at this point of the Christmas season that, as we begin to put away the decorations, we might also be inclined to put away the child Jesus, forgetting about this essential aspect of what He came on earth to reveal about who God is, what God is like. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Flesh is an important word here, a vital part of the birth o