OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  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