OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  My name Is not a word To be pronounced More a sound Emanating From God Most High Like the silence Of interstellar space The calm deep of ocean Washing the shore The quiet falling Of an Autumn leaf And then again The roaring of wind Waves crashing on rocks Groaning of the elements A pristine primordial cry And the laughter of delighted children My name is a mystery And I have heard God call it In the unfathomable  Sacrament of the Altar  And in those hidden places Where only He has ventured

  Darkness presents itself as light Death as life Ignorance parades as wisdom Wrong declares itself to be right The wolf is dressed like a lamb Hell pretends to be Heaven "Their speech sweet as honey Their throat a wide open grave" Tears of partial compassion A cult of softness. Preferring the deception We do not test the spirits Surrendering ourselves To our own destruction The destruction of our children

  From the pocket of my jeans I take the bunch of keys Fumbling bundle of responsibilities That are carried with me everywhere The discomfort of them Prodding my flesh The clumsy weight of them Too many of them And I thrust them To the bottom of my backpack And throw it to the bottom Of the wardrobe Free now for the quiet Of this strange bleak place Drab and most dreary of days But free nonetheless For brotherhood And solitude with the One And only necessary Good For whom Through whom From whom All else flows And all my follies forgotten 

At a meeting on the new Parish that will be established in November, I was struck by the fact that most of the questions and discussions focused on finance and structure, matters for which there are no adequate answers yet. Not yet. My attention went in the direction of inspiration, specifically on what Bishop Richard refers to as “communities of saints.” This is what we are called to become, though becoming saints is probably the farthest thing from most people’s minds, engrossed as we are in the throes of daily living. From childhood I have been drawn to the idea of holiness, the call of God in the Bible when He says, “be holy, for I the Lord am holy.” (Leviticus 21:8 and 1 Peter 1:16) Becoming holy and becoming saints are the same thing. For centuries in the Church, it was thought that, in order to become holy, one had to become a priest, a nun, a brother, a monk or a hermit. These were the vocations of saints yet when you look at the Bible, the very first vocation mentioned is to m...