OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

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 ...

Jesus invites us  To consider the birds of the air To look at the flowers of the field To learn from them Gaze Consider Contemplate Listen to the beautiful song Of the blackbird and the robin Observe the flight of the swallow The soaring of the seagull In the blue blue sky I am inspired I am lifted up I am filled with their freedom Look at the variety of flowers in the garden The wild flowers of the field The majesty of the trees The beauty of a simple bush I am filled with their beauty  And their majesty And the wonder of the sun rising As it dissolves the darkness of the night And warms the cold of the morning And the sheer sheer beauty The majesty of the setting sun And I look at your face And there I behold a beauty like no other It is the beauty of love In all its shapes and forms and sizes Only you can love like you do  And that is your beauty Consider the love that you feel In your heart and in your body And your soul Consider that this is a reflection Of wha...

  Prayers for Healing offered at Mass in St. Patrick's Church, Corduff, Dublin on May 1, 2026 "Heal me Lord and I shall be healed, save me and I shall be saved, for You are my praise "  Jeremiah 17:14

Silence of Pallotti House Chapel "O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me...come to me disguised as everything"  (Malcolm Guite) A state of acute unworthiness! This is how I felt as I entered the chapel for morning prayer. Alone. Alone with the One, such is the definition of what a monk is. A man who is alone with the One. I am a monk then in that sense. It has been a lifelong fantasy of mine, to be a Cistercian monk in a monastery with all the Trappist trappings. I even asked Chatgpt to paint me a picture of me as a monk and that is what you have above. A fantasy. Not meant to be in the physical sense but it is there spiritually within me and I am living it now in that way. Thank God. In the chapel on the morning in question, there came to me again that silence, that incredible, absolute silence that is physical as well as everything; physical in that it inhabits the place, enfolding and filling me, so that I can only think that it is the Divine Silence, the Silence of Me...

Yesterday's Manna Is gone Its joy consumed A hunger Somewhat sated Enough Something similar Is given for today Not for tomorrow What seems the same Is new Enough Sufficient Unto the day I seek Nothing other Nothing more

  Homily for Good Shepherd Sunday 

Carve it In my bone Inscribe it In my heart Imprint it In my mind Shape it In my soul Breathe it In my every breath Your Name Lord Jesus Christ Son of God

Melifont Abbey: February 18-20, 2000 In 1999 I became spiritual director to “Ruah”, a small group of lay evangelizers, and in December of last year I suggested to them that it would be good for us to go to a monastery in order to experience a silence in which we could listen more attentively to God. It’s my constant belief that there is too much talking and not enough silence. So it was arranged that we would go to Melifont Abbey for this weekend. Six of the group travelled and as Brendan was here I decided to ask him to come along to keep me company. The two of us set off on a dirty Friday evening after what was a very hassled day for me. We arrived at the Abbey after dark, at 7.00 p.m., and were well received, though the reception was manic and extremely draining in many ways. Fr. William showed us to our rooms, gave us tea and talked to us for a long time. The guesthouse is lovely and old with all sorts of nooks and crannies. Dan, Pat and Louise were the first to arrive and after a...

  These have been days of catching up with the past. It's been too long, years of not being in contact and then, in one day, the doors of sickness and death opened and brought me back in touch with two men from my days as Rector in Pallotti House in the 1990's. Neither of these men know each other. Both sent me their phone numbers. Agustin came to us from Argentina as a very young man, not with the idea of becoming a priest, but he needed a place to stay until he got established. We got on very well from the start and remained friendly even after I told him it was time to leave and get his own place.  He did well and now has a wife and two children, one of whom I baptized here in Shankill fifteen years ago, which is the last time we met. So, he sent me a voice message and, after recounting the illness of his friend, went on to thank me for all I had done for him. "I owe you so much" he said. And, if there is anything I need him to do, he will do. He owes me ...

  The Road to Emmaus - Third Sunday of Easter Homily 

  The country is going mad, I said to my sister as we stood at the pedestrian crossing in Salthill, a place bustling with  happy young families on Easter Holidays.  The couple standing next to us with two small children decided not to wait for the green man and headed straight across the road. I was telling Evelyn that I had learned always (mostly) to wait for the green man, especially if children were near, so as not to give them a bad example. Just then a little girl from the next family decided to run straight across the road too, while the 401 bus had started to move away from the stop. Thankfully her dad, with a roar, had called her back. People are distracted, in a hurry, recklessly ignoring basic rules of the road, putting themselves and others at risk.  It happens all the time when driving. You're trying to keep the speed limit which is admittedly sometimes impossibly slow. But you try to keep it when the driver behind bears down upon you aggressively, maybe ...

  From the breakfast table I look towards the rising sun and over the distance to where I celebrated Easter last year, somewhat torn between two loves. It’s a “shepherds warning” kind of morning. Beautiful, with red blushed clouds that might be promising a later rain, but we will not dwell on that for now. Storm Dave pounded on the roof of St. Anne’s Church during the Easter Vigil last night, rattling the doors, giving a kind of Pentecostal drama to the liturgy which was led by Auxiliary Bishop Donal Roche, accompanied by Emmet the Parish Priest and myself. All I had to do was sit back and take it all in and it was wonderful to experience, special for an Irish congregation to witness the baptism of a teenage boy and three adults receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation. Something that we have been used to in England and becoming more common in Ireland now. In the archdiocese of Dublin alone 139 adults have joined the Catholic Church this Easter. It seems there is a similar trend t...

The blush of green On brown bushes Winter giving way To Spring Luminous in sunlight Fresh new leaves Trembling in the breeze A heart in the face Of adversity A soul trembling At the approach of God The tremble of anticipated Love The full extent of it On its knees Serving the reality That it encounters In this personal moment Of Salvation