OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  LONGING is the title of a book being advertised on Instagram. It was published about thirteen years ago. Longing is something I am seldom unaware of – all the physical longings that stir in me every day. The emotional ones. Spiritual – my longing for God. And they are all interconnected. And, mistakenly, I tend to think of them as MINE! The author, Joey O’Connor, suggests that the question we need to ask in life is not “who am I?” but “WHOSE am I?” That second question brings me back to the time after my Mother died and a woman asked me, “whose are you now, whose son?” It stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t something I had thought about. I am nobody’s, I thought, nobody’s son. This left me with a profound sense of emptiness and, at the same time, a certain sense of liberty. The liberty of no longer being answerable to my parents. But there was emptiness in that liberty. To my great surprise, at the age of fifty-three, I became my Mother’s “lovely son.” It was one of the last thing...

  Sunday evening sitting on Seamus McDonagh’s bench down at Rock-a-Nore. June first. A strong westerly wind presses cold against the back of my head, the sound of it merging with the waves washing radiant white on the shore. The roar of wind and sea is all I can hear. And the occasional sound of twittering birds. Seagulls are strangely silent as they swoop and soar at high speed out into the horizon. I lean back, looking up at the white wispy clouds and further into the blue of the sky. Then close my eyes, with mind and heart raised up to heaven. The glory of it. The word GLORY has been with me all day and I estimate that I have used it at least sixty times today in prayer. It occurs more than six hundred times in the Bible, and it refers to the radiant manifestation of the majesty of God. We are touched by it; we enter into it in Jesus who shares His divine Glory with us. This is what we are called to when we pray. Our entry into glory is facilitated by two important mov...

May and Pentecost Mary and the Holy Spirit Conceiving Jesus, giving birth to the Church. “Wild air, world-mothering” Wind that blows where it will. The Holy Spirit teaching. Promise of Jesus Ever unfolding the More of God. And suddenly the familiar surprises. It often happens with Scripture. A passage I have been reading all my life unexpectedly says something new. You can be doing the same thing day after day, seeing the same reality year after year when, out of the blue it causes you to pause, to look and look again. To see with new eyes. The statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It has been part of my life since birth. At home. In Castlegar Grotto. Lourdes. Here in Hastings. I’m very fond of it. But it is always just a statue, a reminder, never taking the place of the reality. Even as I pray beside it here, I turn my gaze to the Tabernacle. To Jesus. On Friday evening I closed the church as usual and went up into the Sanctuary for a brief prayer and, upon turning to leave, something about ...

The Pleasure and the Pain Sacred hush On Holy Ground I whisper to God The pleasure and the pain Of Temptation Beguiling and persistent In pursuit I fear its strength I fear my weakness I trust in grace - but for it I fall Lord, that I may      Desire You more      Love You more Than every passing passion As it once was So may it be again Amen! +++ The Train I would never  Have fallen for you Had I not left the train In search of a faster Journey home Had I not missed The connection  I would never Have seen you Your young loveliness  Drawing near to my ageing senses Seeking direction I might have averted my gaze But let my foolish eyes Linger longingly Drawing you in  To the long grass Of my dreams Falling over a threshold  That was not mine To cross

  “Behold I am making all things new… …A new commandment I give you”   The Apostles of the early Church were keen to tell what God was doing in their lives in order to encourage and put fresh heart into their fellow Christians. We need the same kind of encouragement so that we know that God is actually at work among us, doing something new, sometimes in very small ways. After Saturday evening Mass I spent almost an hour hearing the confessions of those who are keen to experience God’s Mercy in a definitive way. The thing is, these were not old people at all, but they were young people in their teens and twenties. So, when we lament the absence of the young, it is necessary to know that they are with us, even if that is in small numbers. But they are emerging, and they are very committed to their faith. Earlier in the day I heard the First Confessions of almost forty children who are preparing for their First Holy Communion. A most beautiful and pure experience of the i...

It happened while I was in the kitchen, shortly before 5pm, putting away the groceries and listening to BBC World Service which gave excellent coverage of the Papal Conclave. The reporter said there had been hope of a result around 4.30 but when that didn't happen we would have to await another ballot.  Then suddenly he exclaimed, "white smoke!" I ran to the television. What a sight, what a sound, what utter joy on the faces of the people in St. Peter's Square. It was electric!  White smoke billowing from the most watched chimney in the world. And the family of seagulls on the roof beside it. The new-born chick almost symbolic of what was taking place. Despite the abundance of seagulls in Hastings, I had never seen such a young chick before. A first! New life!  I had tears in my eyes. We were witnessing something quite unique, very special, a universal and unifying joy. A vocation unfolding before our eyes. Our common vocation. The vocation of the one w...

  I found myself sitting across the desk from a young psychiatrist who communicated with me through her computer screen, a different doctor each time for six months, and none of them ever seemed to get me. They just thought I was suicidal, which I wasn’t, and I didn’t seem to have adequate words to express the true nature of my sense of the pointlessness of life. It was a time in my life when I might have been relishing the fact that I had been elected Provincial of the Irish Pallottines, enjoying the “honour” given me. But there I was in an acute state of disintegration, embarrassed and ashamed. A priest in a position of authority, reduced to this. And I realize now that the honour was in fact in that very place where I thought it was not. Throughout my life I have sided with the underdog, felt empathy for the poor and the suffering and have found myself to be “with” people, side by side with them in whatever suffering they were experiencing. But in this case it was no longer ...

  You will show me the path of life, the fullness of joy in your presence, at your right hand, bliss for ever.   (Psalm 16 from Mass on Easter Monday) Do not judge and you will not be judged. Words of Jesus. Mostly I have thought of this in terms of not judging others negatively but it also means not judging others at all. Who am I to judge someone to be good or bad, right or wrong? The death of Pope Francis has shocked us all and there has been a great outpouring of affection and respect for him. Largely positive assessments. Yet, even in the positive comments you get the sense that experts are judging him to have done a fairly good job. But who are we to say even that? As Jesus himself said, human assessment or approval means nothing. Only God can judge.  But we have to say something because Pope Francis has touched and affected our lives from the moment he came out onto the balcony and stood in a long silence before speaking on the day he was elected. We remember ...

Holy Saturday morning. An open, empty Tabernacle. Strange praying without the Blessed Sacrament. Strange here where I am so used to having Jesus present to me in this way. It’s like having no reference point for this day. Tabernacle open and empty. Tomb closed and not empty. Waiting. Silent. I close my eyes, imagining myself to be in the tomb with the body of Jesus, in His body, wondering what it was like in the moment when He rose from the dead. But there’s no knowing. Only God was there. Only God knows. We don’t, and there’s something correct about this unknowing of ours, the realization that there are sacred mysteries that we will never know, that it’s not for us to know everything, even if we think we should. There is a mystery within each of us, that place which belongs only to God, that is known only to God and ourselves, and maybe not even to ourselves. It is in that place, from that place that new life is called forth. I see it in the fourteen adults who are baptize...

In the end When there is nothing Left to say And I cannot pray Properly With words  And the finger of silence Rests on my lips As the Holy Spirit broods Upon the formless void Before creation Breathing over The outer whitewashed Handsomeness To the shabbiness Of my inner being Whispering the Name That is dearest to my heart That Holy Name Most beautiful Yet most reviled Jesus! Delight of my eyes Desire of my soul Jesus! The only Name Jesus! The final Prayer Jesus! The ultimate Word Jesus!

  I love You Lord, my strength. My Lord and my God My God and my all My Lord, my life and my love I adore You profoundly To You I surrender, give and offer my whole self For the glory of Your Name For the Mercy of Your plan For the salvation of the world O God You are my God For You I long For You my soul is thirsting  My body pines for You Like a dry weary land without water Through all my disordered affections O Lord it is You who are my portion and cup Against you alone have I sinned O God be merciful to me a sinner Heal me Lord and I shall be healed Save me and I shall be saved For you are my praise. Heal me with the medicine of repentance Teach me perfect self-forgetfulness Grant O Lord a joyful purity of heart Guard me as the apple of Your eye Hide me in the shadow of Your wings It is Your face O Lord that I seek Hide not Your face Show me Your face Let me hear Your voice For Your voice is sweet And Your face is beautiful (A compilation of Scripture and other aspirations...

An April wind swirls About the open door Of the church Gathering fallen feathers To itself The lingering leaves Of last year’s Autumn And every bit of debris That comes its way Sweeping all of it Onto the recently Vacuumed carpet Like some prophetic saying! Are these My own old sins Come back to haunt Or new ones freshly revealed? Or are they the sorrows Of our people And those of strangers Seeking solace here? And is the wind The Holy Spirit That gathers them in?

It’s funny where a reading can take you. Moses on the west side of the wilderness brings my mind to a kind of wilderness of the West of Ireland. The Bog. Not that it’s confined to the West but that’s where I have known it, this very Irish reality. Bogland has yielded up turf to generations of Irish people, gift of the earth to us, this God-given gift that has warmed the homes of countless families when there was little or nothing else to keep them warm. Turf has given us the fire on which the kettle was boiled for the tea. On it bread was baked and dinners cooked. It gave our homes an unparalled atmosphere, feeding the contemplative spirit by which we gazed in long silence upon its flame, learning our own lessons there. It facilitated companionship, the gathering of people around the open fire in night-time conversations and music. The Rosary and other prayers prayed there. The harvesting of turf speaks of good neighbourliness, people out working together, helping each other out. ...