OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

Imprisoned fire Of a kiln Burns within My bones Rages within My heart I just don't know What to do To hope Or not to hope To trust Or not to trust To speak Or not to speak To reach out Or not to reach out To be restrained Or To burst forth A bellowing flame And wail and wail Like an animal in travail Writhing in the horror That has befallen From the blueness Of a Summer's Fading day Do I bellow Or do I remain Silent?  

Yesterday I helped with the Pallottine Mission Appeals in Limerick Cathedral and St. Michael's church. I'm useless at selling anything and can't do the usual pitch that will motivate people to empty their pockets, so I settle for the Word of God as it was given to us in the readings. For the first Mass I concelebrated with the young Father Peter from Nigeria, a member of the Sons of Mary Mother of Mercy, four of whom serve in the diocese of Limerick. A tall, fit and charming man who was most hospitable. It was an interesting expression of how the Mission of the Church has evolved. An African missionary to Ireland who leads the penitential rite in Irish and a former Missionary to Tanzania. "Think of God's Mercy...and worship Him." So wrote St. Paul. The Mission of the Church, our Mission in East Africa, is nothing other than one great act of God's Mercy and one great act of worship. God's Mercy in Hosea is expressed in terms of a Mother leaning over her...

  Prayer to God the Father Almighty God, my Eternal Father, from the fullness of my soul I adore You. I am deeply grateful that You have made me in Your image and likeness, and that You ever hold me in Your loving embrace. Direct me to love You with all my heart, with all my soul, and with my whole mind. Direct me to love all Your children as I love myself. O, my Father, my soul longs to be united to You, and to rest in You forever. Have the Holy Spirit touch my soul so that I may love You as He does, and as Your Beloved Son Jesus does. Amen . https://www.myprayertower.com/prayers/prayer-to-god-the-father

A lonely place, this is A lonely place A place of Hunger Anxiety Unsettlement The sadness of loss The yearning for a belonging That only exists in the womb Every conceivable form Of suffering And they would send us away To other places in search of All that we lack There is no need to go Says the Master Come to Me Surrender to me The little you have Remain with Me And eat with me The loaves and fishes Of My abundance Come Let your hunger Be satisfied Listen Let your thirst Be quenched Live Let your sorrow Be consoled

  Oh my Lord I am here again In the muddied boots Of my soul Having stumbled and fallen Through mire and dark I am embarrassed And yet In your great lenience You bring me To Your Sanctuary Stable of shepherds  Clothing me once more In the robes of Your own White brightness Without removing These boots

  "... a lonely place... this is a lonely place" (Matthew 14) I went to visit my cousin Johnny in hospital late last year. His regret was that he had forgotten to bring his Rosary beads with him. They were as familiar to his hands as the mobile phone is to mine. I gave him my beads and we prayed the Rosary together. Anyone who ever visited his house would understand that at least a decade of the Rosary would be said before they left. It was as natural to him as a cup of tea. Unashamed. Unpretentious.  The Rosary and the Mass were pillars of his life. Nothing could separate him from them. As in the words of St. Paul in  Romans 8: " Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ, even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food or clothes, or being threatened or even attacked. These are the trials through which we triumph, by the power of him who loved us. For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists...

  Homily for July 19,2026

There is a small stone church on top of a hill about 10 km from the beautiful city of Salta in Argentina. It is the shrine of the Immaculate Mother of the Divine Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. I call her Our Lady of Salta. About twenty years ago, while on visitation as Provincial to the community in Mercedes, a man from the parish told me about the apparitions of Our Lady that were taking place in Salta and insisted that I should go. He was very sincere, but I didn’t want to get caught up in the hype of something that might not be true. I wanted no false visions, no false hope, no false religious experience. A second person in Mercedes — Marta, a friend of Derry — also spoke to me about it and was equally insistent. I had experienced her as a forthright, honest person. At that time, two challenging situations in Argentina were causing me great distress — encounters that had previously gone very badly wrong, harsh words spoken, hurt inflicted. The thought of facing them again was stressing...

In the early hours of July 4th 1976, five members of the Pallottine community at San Patricio, Belgrano, were taken from their beds and executed in the living room of their presbytery. It was during the era of military dictatorship in Argentina. +++ Everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything that is now hidden will be made clear. Jesus spoke these words to us a few weeks ago, reminding us that God scrutinises the heart and soul, uncovering what is hidden within us and revealing what is truly there. There are times when what God reveals to us about ourselves calls us to be converted, to change and to try to improve certain areas of our lives. But the scrutiny of God also seeks to uncover what is authentic within us: who we truly are, who I truly am, in my authentic self, deep within my heart and my soul. To uncover and to use it in His plan of salvation. I was walking in the garden at Pallotti House in Dublin, and I found an old statue of Our Lady propped up agains...

According to Your word I have laid bare my wound And have not disguised my sin With vague expressions of sorrow But named it for what it is So that Grace may find and heal And still Lord Nothing changes We go round and round The same circle Hoping against hope With despondency Kept at bay Is it thus that Pride is humbled? That I must learn again That Your Power Is at its best in weakness And Grace itself is enough? +++ ... a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses... For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

A bold boy sitting at the back of an empty church when he should be at school. A complex, troubled boy who is threatened with the industrial school because he mitches and doesn’t do his homework. The teacher said he was a house angel and street devil. But to himself he was simply afraid and didn’t know how to explain it. So, he took daily refuge in the empty church, feeling that Jesus hidden in the Tabernacle somehow understood what no one else did, the thing that could not be put into words. That was me when I was ten years old. It is not me now, but I still possess the gift that was given me in adversity, a strong relationship with the hidden life of Jesus in the Tabernacle. St. Vincent Pallotti places great emphasis on the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth, the life he lived away from public view from the age of twelve until He began His public ministry. The Tabernacle is my Nazareth. Forty years ago during a thirty-day Ignatian retreat, while praying before the Tabernacle in ...

O night O night You come to fight With me again And I take flight Into the wandering Avenues of my phone And hide And hide From all that assails The mind The body The soul O night O night That I might recognize The gate of heaven That you are And be a Jacob Wrestling For the injury And the blessing

“You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity” (St. Catherine Of Siena) The Image of God That you seek In the mirror Might not be The beauty you require Of yourself It may be more The Hidden wounds Of your heart Scars of your illness Sickness of soul Or perhaps you behold The bloodshot eyes of Christ Afflicted with addiction Jesus weeping harrowed tears Over the loss of a child An unspeakable grief It is the Face of God In you.

  I can’t stop writing in my head. It’s like everything I experience; I’m thinking about how I will write it. Or take a photo of it. And so, it is now, here in Our Lady of Silence Abbey where I’m spending two nights. The thought came to me in the chapel in Dundrum the other day when I was finding my mind to be rather frazzled and in need of some release. The time here is also an opportunity for me to say a personal farewell to a place that has blessed me for more than fifty years. We would come here occasionally on Sundays when we were students in Thurles in the 1970’s. I’ve always been attracted to the monastic and also to the fabulous brown bread that they used to bake here. We came here for our diaconate and ordination retreats in 1979 and 1980. The former took place during Holy Week when we had our feet washed by the then Prior Father Laurence who is still here in his nineties. A pillar of this community. At the washing of the feet he kissed our feet, something I had never ...