OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  The sighing breeze in the wake of a howling wind. Such is grief in the wake of death that is unexpected, in the wake of any death. A sigh that settles in upon one’s life; a grief that does not have words. No matter how much people want you to talk and unburden, you can't. You grow weary of its effects on the everyday things, weary of its exposure to the gaze of others who in turn must have grown tired of seeing how you are and are not. Do they want to say, “get over it and get on with life”, as is often said, or at least thought? It’s what you want to say to yourself. But it doesn’t work because you are flattened and disabled. Disabled. Mentally, emotionally and, as a result, physically. Winds that go howling, breezes that sigh. A line from “All Kinds of Everything”, the song that won the Eurovision for Derry Lindsay, Dana and Ireland way back in 1970. The excitement and innocence of it all. An innocent song that I have always thought of as harmless, associating it with butterc...

  I’m thinking about the quest ion Jesus asked of those who came to arrest Him – “who are you looking for?” and the answer they gave is, “Jesus of Nazareth”, though they were looking for Him for all the wrong reasons. We are looking for Jesus. The whole of humanity and all of creation has been searching for Jesus down through the ages. This is the core purpose of our lives as Catholic Christians and St. John of the Cross compares this searching for Christ to the exploration of a mine that contains precious minerals. We enter into the cave of the mine and, when we reach a certain point, thinking that this is the end we discover a new turning that takes us down a new channel and the discovery of new riches goes on infinitely. In this world we are never finished discovering who Jesus is. As St. Paul says, now we see in a glass dimly, now our knowledge is imperfect but then in eternity we shall know as fully as we are known.” The women in the Gospel show us what the searching is like...