I Am Said I (Huruma)

A couple of years ago Vicka, one of the M edjugorje  visionaries came to Dublin to speak at an event in the RDS. I went along because she is one of the reasons why I believe in what is taking place Medjugorje. I trust her sincerity, the radiance of her face. Her talk was followed by Mass and during the distribution of Holy Communion people surged forward towards where she was sitting on the stage, hundreds of hands stretching forward to touch her. To my surprise she herself came forward to touch the outstretched hands. My surprise was not that she responded to the need of the crowd but that all this was taking place immediately after receiving Jesus himself, while Communion was still being distributed. It showed that people didn't really understand what they had just received, who they had just received. I know, understand the need to touch, to be touched in order to be healed but in that moment I thought 'however gifted, impressive Vicka is, she is not Jesus. In ...

June 10, 2012 The feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus (Corpus Christi) brings back memories from a distant past of processions and first Holy Communions and innocence. When Sister Frances was preparing us for our first Communion she said that our souls would be shining bright when we received Jesus and when the day arrived it was this brightness that I was looking out for. I watched the children ahead of me kneeling at the altar rails and I looked at the soles of their shoes to see the brightness shine there, not knowing the difference between soul and sole!  Of course there was no brightness to be seen but I adjusted to this by saying to myself that there must be something else, another soul. And when my turn to kneel came I closed my eyes, put out my tongue, received Jesus and saw the brightness at the back of my eyelids. It's been normal ever since for me to experience the brightness that comes with Holy Communion. Sally Read expresses it well for me ...

You get what you ask for but not when you expect or in the way that you imagine.  A young-ish black haired man in a tracksuit ran down the platform and just managed to get on the train before the doors closed and it pulled away. He sat opposite me, one seat further down, and he was clearly in distress about something. I prayed for him silently and wondered to God if there was anything I could do for him. There wasn't! But I'm always wondering. Later, at 10.00 p.m. on that pleasant night in May when I had it in mind to go the bed early, the door bell rang. We don't usually answer  at this hour but when it rang I opened the door on instinct. A slim fair-haired man was swaying back and forth with an unmistakable smell of drink off him. He wasn't badly bruised or anything but he had the look of having been beaten. There was blood above his left eyebrow. His clothes were dirty. "I promise I haven't been drinking" he began, his speech refined, even ...

Jogging Around the Swamp  (Sunday 6 of Easter) Everyone wants to be picked, chosen by someone for something. We want to be included and not excluded. A small child wants to be picked to share in a game, another wants to be picked to play in a team and when we are picked we want to show that we have credibility, that we can play the game well. I started secondary school in the old Bish in Nuns Island. It was surrounded by fine black wrought iron railings with spikes on top. Mr. Dunleavy was teaching us volleyball in the yard and picked me to serve. So I served. Off to the right went the ball, landing on a spike and it burst! He gave me another one and to my horror off it went again in the direction of the railings, landed on a spike and burst! Such humiliation. I was dismissed with disdain. A hopeless case.  It was  beyond me to  master a game that involved a ball and was relieved when relegated to jogging around the Swamp in the Claddagh. Much of human ...

Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes. (Luke 23) When Maura died I ached for two things - the sound of her voice and her physical touch. We were always physically present to each other - when I came home from Tanzania her hug was fierce and long; we sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch; she linked my arm when we walked. The ache for her touch was my prayer. One night I dreamed there was a knock on the front door at home. I ran to open it and there stood Maura. She had come for a visit from her place in the great beyond. I hugged her tight and said with delight "I can actually FEEL you" and brought her to the kitchen wher...