I Am Said I (Huruma)

I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.  I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds a re but his voice— and carven by his power Rocks are his written words.  All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree. ‘The Presence Of God’ by Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the martyrs of the 1916 Rising whose marriage to Grace Gifford took place in prison hours before his execution. I was in that prison chapel, looked into their cells, read his beautiful letter of proposal to her, saw the lovely Madonna and Child which she painted on her cell wall and her wedding ring. The Presence of God is so palpable in the reality and complexities of the human experience, the human struggle for liberation, even in situations where He seems ...

New Evangelization is all the talk in the Church now and I’m a bit tired of it, somewhat suffocated by its relentless demand for new ways of doing things. I’ve tried many things and none of them seem to work in the sense that none of them endure or last for long enough. We evangelize by the essence of who and how we are. We evangelize by presence, a presence that is a living, personal experience of Jesus Christ. Sometimes who and how we are is not pleasant at all and would not seem to be very valuable in the work of evangelization. Sometimes even our experience of God is very unpleasant and all the joy of the gospel that is being demanded of us is utterly impossible. In a reflection on the authority of Peter, Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks about the position one must occupy in leadership. “ The lowest place, which is where the servus servorum (servant of the servants) must stand, the place of final contempt and insult, the rubbish-heap on which one is ‘a worm and not a ...

There are many passages in the Bible that resonate within me, words that express the meaning of life as I experience it. One is the from chapter 3 of St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians in which he speaks of the "supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" I have known that supreme advantage in my own life. Knowing Jesus personally is a singular blessing; it is a relationship which gives meaning to everything, the relationship in which I am truly and most fully myself. It is He who makes the struggles of life bearable. It is in Him that my problems find resolution. In particular I find the freedom to stand in His presence as a sinner in need of mercy; it is in Him that I experience the forgiveness that I need. To be in need of forgiveness is a holy and healthy position to be in. The Pharisees in John chapter 8 reveal a common human tendency to focus on the sins or faults of another, to hide behind the sins of another, presenting ourselves as being ...

I fear My love Is a morning Cloud In arid land A vapour  Vanishing Were my body Tortured I fear My love For You Would fail As in the face Of lesser pain I have  Denied You  And betrayed Covertly