I love St Michael the archangel. He’s my patron saint and perhaps for good reason in light of my life of demon busting and controversy!!

So one day when I was praying we had a chat and I felt him inspire me with this vision…

Imagine a modern house and imagine the owners have installed a state of the art security system! Camera, motion detectors, security dog, steel door, double locks, heck even a gun!!

But imagine as they go out that they leave all the windows and doors wide open and that they forget to activate the alarm. Burglers come and empty the house!

Well many christians are like this. They have 1000 prayers of protection (I have managed 11 years without one). They have a novena to St Joseph, 5 first friday’s, 7 second saturday’s, 9 fourth wednesdays. They have the holy rosary, they have the divine mercy, they have St Michael prayers. They have a stone from Medjugorje, oil from Fatima, water from knock. They have a relic of mother Theresa, St Padre Pio’s mitten, St Faustina’s hip bone! They have a benedict medal, a scapular, a cross not to mention sleeping on a plank and fasting on peanuts while attending 3 masses a day!

And yet, they are being robbed. They are depressed, sad, joyless and meeting them is like an encounter with death!

Why?

The answer is simple. A lot of people who are very religious do not know Jesus or the Father from the heart. Sure they talk about Him as I might talk about Donald Trump, but they don’t know him!

Satan has a field day adding devotional after devotional, pelgrimage after pelgrimage to somehow help them. Often scruples and depression follow especially in traditional catholic environments where laughing or smiling is considered mortal sin unless of course it’s to gossip, that’s aparently ok!!

So going back to what I was saying, so many have never surrendered fully theie lives to God. Often their prayers have a ‘pray and stay away from me’ undertone where they ask God to bless all their lives but do not want to get close enough to God that me may ask them to sell their expensive jewelery or expensive wardrobe or ask them to stop colouring that white hair not to mention to give their whole lives including houses, jobs, careers to God to do as He pleases!

So you see guys, these people are bound by attachments and often the same people can have an awful lot of hidden anger and hatred in their hearts not to mention the lost deadly sin of religious pride.

All these ungodly attachements leave them fighting with God and render many if not most of their prayers absolutely useless and powerless and are a walking contradiction to christianity and an insult to the Holy Spirit who wishes to detach them from all these things so that they can enjoy true freedom and happiness from a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus.

Without a personal intimate relationship with God, your “house” may have the best alarm system in the world, but it’s switched OFF and St Michael the archangel is sleeping and only laughing at you who don’t really love God!

And so today being Friday, take a moment before Jesus and ask Him if you are really dying with Him to the things of this world. Do you really know Him? Do you really trust Him? Is your faith alive and vibrant or is it lipservice? Do you trust Him with your material life? Are you open to making steps of faith? Are you open to being ridiculed for the sake of the Gospel!

If you answered yes to all these, well done. Soon you will be beatified and I will come to touch you and be healed!

But if not, then you are surely a work in progress and the place of change is the cross.

Eucharistic adoration at 3pm! Be there!!

One of the most deadly sins of all is the sin of pride!

What is it? Well in summary it boils down to all the places where people deny God and give themselves the credit!

It is most prevelant among the very well educated who see themselves often as superiour human beings to the likes of me! Pride blocks people from thanking God for their health, their background and from being able to see that under different circumstances they could have ended up like the man on the street!

Pride is stomach turning to Jesus because the prideful person doesn’t see his own need for God. Many a person filled with pride can be found at church on a daily basis, praying for the conversion of “sinners” and yet forgetting about their own conversion!

Over the years I tended to avoid like the black death certain rosary groups. The same ladies who could be found praying the rosary at 9.30 could be found at 10 o’clock gossipping and talking about everybody. The humble rosary beeds seemed to quickly transform into a prideful whip to beat and slander the afflicted!

Pride knows no honesty and Satan, the prideful one is also known as the father of lies. So it should come as no surprise that those people filled with pride are full of secrecy and hypocricy and while they would like to know every detail of your life including what you had for breakfast and what time you excreted it out, they will tell you nothing about themselves!

Prideful people love to manage you. Because they are by their own reckoning superiour human beings, they feel that it is their duty to tell you how to live your life. They know everything about everything and if you don’t listen, then you are the prideful one for daring to go against their divine wisdom!

Prideful people have no problems. They are always excellent. I have an aunty who for 10 years wobbles like a duck and you dare not mention it under fear of death! Every family has at least one!

Prideful people will never be vulnerable because vulnerability requires humility. Even today I was speaking to my own Mum who still after 11 years is afraid to tell the neighbours of how Jesus saved me, her son, from suicide. Pride blocks her from being able to admit that homosexuality and other problems could hit “her son”.

Pride kills the healing ministry. Some people clean before the cleaning lady arrives and similarily some people go to the priest or healer with only their ‘small sins’. The biggies are nicely swept under the carpet in case the priest should think badly of them!

Pride denies sin. To ackowledge sin would be to acknowledge their brokeness, prideful people are perfect therefore sin cannot exist!

Prideful people do not pray. You may see them in Church sure, but they are simply there to tell God what to do. They do not need His wisdom or direction for their lives which are already perfect!

And finally, we all have pride, me included and so to finish, prideful people don’t know that they have pride, but they see that you and I do!

Bless u all

Michael

Yesterday I wrote a short blog on how your weakness can be transformed into your strength and your ministry! Today I will share a reflection on the opposite, how the areas where you are strong are so often the areas that will hold you back spiritually!

Best illustrated by an example and no better spiritual guinea pig than myself who has made all the mistakes in the book (they may even need a new book by the time my life is over!)

Ok, where was i strong? I was very strong rationally, bit of a maths wiz kid and so this made me very rational in my thinking. I had fully comprehensive car insurance, I had a savings plan, I had a pension plan..looking back I was extremely sensible and structured!

So to be called to live on providence went utterly against everything I ever stood for and also against my own way of thinking and so this is without doubt the area where I have struggled the most to trust in Jesus!

Even as I write, €14 lies in my bank account! Am I worried? A little bit! Should I be worried? No!

And more recently I have being interacting with perhaps the most dangerous beasts of all when it comes to rational thinking!! Who? Doctors and nurses of course!!

It is so dangerously easy to put medical facts before faith for both doctor and patient alike. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times people advised me to go to the doctor when I had the beginning of a flu or sore throat and when I refused because I knew Jesus would take it away at adoration, the same people hated me!!

Now of course finance and medecine have their place. My sister is currently studying to be a doctor and and one of my brothers has a very big job in finance and drives a BMW so i’m told! But my point is that our challenge is to know when to act rationally and when to act spiritually….and to come to the point of realising that acting spiritually is actually a superior form of acting rationally because God is not an idiot!

In other words, we need to be detached from all of our own learning and be able to say a prayer like this

“Jesus, my rational mind tells me that this is what I should do. But your ways are beyond my university professors and every book I ever read and so if you have a better idea, I surrender my way to you and I agree to follow your way in faith”

If you do this you’ll find that your faith and your career will both take off exponentially! I knew a great doctor in Australia and the Holy Spirit would tell her the diagnosis for the most difficult patients who has visited every doctor in Sydney to no avail! I know a pentecostal business man who came from nothing in indonesia and now builds sky scrapers in Sydney because he has allowed the Holy Spirit to guide his business decisions and he now uses the money to preach Jesus all over the world! The lives of the saints, mother Theresa for example scream the same message, let go let God and trust!

I also know of a seemingly cheeky young irish guy who jumps countries like others move houses and seems to live off love and fresh air…..wait, that’s me!!

So yea, in summary, let us strive to submit ALL the areas of our lives to God and especially the areas where ‘we know best’.

How? For beginners I recommend having a prayer partner. Bring your problem before Jesus. Invoke the Holy Spirit and ask Him for His solution. Ask for a scripture reading, a word of knowledge, an image, a vision and ask your prayer friend to do the same. Keep away from over rational people as they will shoot you down before you start, their moaning and groaning and criticism is more than enough to show what spirit they follow!

Over time you will get better at it. You will develop your own way of communicating with the Holy Spirit! Sometimes for example I get the word “green” when I’m to do something and “red” when not! Some people get other signs….over time you’ll get your own!

Must go now, i’m off to the best meal of the day…Holy Mass!

Please pray for me for even more trust in Jesus and I will pray for you too!

Thanx 4 reading!

In this morning’s reading at Mass we read about the conversion of Saint Paul. It is worth re reading just to consider the extremity of the situation!

Not only did he not believe in Jesus, he hated Jesus and hated him so much so that when he was converted even the christians were afraid of him …yet Jesus saw him differently and Paul became the apostle to the pagans!!

We also see in the saints that where they suffered is where God used them afterwards. Padre Pio seems to be ever present to help those with mental health and spiritual illnesses, St Theresa continues to show her little way to the simple, the curé of Ars is busy helping priests, Mary Magdelaine continues to give hope to those soiled by sex, saint Francis gives hope to the poor and Matt Talbot is busy helping alcoholics!

So you see even in heaven their area of expertise continues!

In the irish language we say “aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile” which approximately translates as “it takes one to know one” and how true it is! Isn’t it far easier to talk to someone who has lived what you have lived such as someone who had survived cancer, someone who lost a child, someone who came out of a drug or alcohol addiction…..they have a heart knowledge, the human factor that no learning can give!

And so today you might be wondering where is your ministry, where is God calling you! And ironically the answer is simple, the ministry is where your weakness is because this is where God’s grace will be the most necessary and active in your life. This is where you will find humility as your faults stare you and everybody else in the face every day of your life!

My own ministry lies with the poor in spirit and the sexually broken! Am i perfectly healed? No! Have i shortcomings….many! Can God use me anyway…yes!

So friends, do not be ashamed of your weaknesses but as St Paul says, boast of them and give glory to God’s mercy! Don’t see the mistakes of your past as a setback, but trust rather that with God’s grace that they can become a set up!

And so guys, never lose hope because no matter how bad or impossible things seem, there IS a way forward!

Jesus, I TRUST IN YOU!

BLESS U ALL

ME!

This morning as I sit in the hospital cafeteria I think of a dream that God has placed in my heart for ten years! A spiritual healing centre for all!

In my 10 years of travelling all over the globe, it is the pentecostals in Australia who have come the closest to this with many developped inner healing ministries. But even here they are missing out on the mind blowing (pun intended) power of the mass, eucharistic adoration and not to mention God’s secret weapon, Mary!

Perhaps the nearest thing i’ve seen to this in catholic circles is in the Cenacalo community; a place where people go to live and pray as they recover from addictions. However, even here the ministry of inner healing and deliverance isn’t really a part of their system!

In an ironic way, the psychiatric hospitals can teach us quite a bit! A place where people may come and stay and receive counselling, medications and therapy! The only problem here is that there is no mention of Jesus when it comes to the counselling, medication or therapy!! The Holy Spirit is a counsellor and his ability to heal memories more effective than any human doctor….and the best medication of all is the best medication of all, the body of Jesus when received with faith!

So my dream is a residential inner healing centre with Holy Spirit filled therapists, with Holy Spirit filled doctors and nurses, with Holy Spirit filled priests, with people gifted in deliverance, prophesy, creativity!

My dream is to see a place open to everybody, black white, gay, straight, man, woman, catholic, hindu, muslum, atheist….

My dream is to see people rise from the depths of hell through the power of Jesus, to set these people on fire with the Holy Spirit and to bring the power of Jesus to all!

My dream is to see these people smiling, to see families set free, to see the Holy Spirit jumping out of these people and using all their creative gifts such as art, music, danse released!

My dream is to see young people praise and thank Jesus their saviour and healer with more enthuasism and energy than a drug addict at a rave party!

My dream is that all come to know the most gentle powerful awesome and loving woman in the universe, my mother and yours, Mary.

My dream is that all will know and experience the simple truth that they are loved!

My dream is to see dead priests come alive and to see new priests and vocations arise out of the most unlikely canditates!

All it takes for dreams to become reality is belief, belief in Jesus, belief in the greatest dreamer of all who dreamed us up out of nothing, God!!

So now folks I’ve shared my ten year dream, a dream I’ve paid for in tears but a dream that He has put in my heart and that He has paid for with His blood!

Won’t you help me bring it alive!

Saint mother Theresa, pray for us!

A few months ago Our Lady asked me to come to Split in Croatia with my evangelisation partner Seamus. We arrived with nothing and in many ways blind as to why we were here! My first day was met with a horrendous demonic attack that took almost 3 days to recover from. In these moments all one can do is suffer as death seems close!

Over the years I have come to accept the attacks and the nastiness of many people who use these moments to beat me down even more. Jesus too had many friends as he preached but few as He suffered and so my offering is for Him to use my suffering to help those who are suicidal to live.

And so after 2 weeks here in Split a man came up to me one day after mass. An utter stranger who invited me for coffee which meant so much to me as I was both lonely and broke.

I shared my story with him and his friend, both university professors of history and metaphysics! They listened attentively and with much encouragement. They were deep men of faith. I asked them if they knew of any charismatic minded people and they put me in contact with Lovro who agreed to bring us to a prayer meeting!

What they did not tell me is that Lovro was also a psychiatrist!

A few days later I met Lovro and was amazed! A charismatic psychiatrist with Jesus radiating out of His heart and fully aware of spiritual healing, demons etc! We all quickly became good friends.

And so yesterday when I woke up the Holy Spirit told me to go to mass in the Hospital. The chapel is right beside the psych ward, a ward I know only too well!

After mass Lovro gave me a guided tour of the psych ward, introducing me to His collugues and giving me a chance to share about the best psychiatrist of all; Jesus! At this stage I have no shame talking about Jesus to anybody that will listen!

The hospital conditions were poor, some patients chained to the bed, minimal facilities. Lovro introduced me to some patients and I was hit by his love for them. It was clear that he didn’t see them as patients, he saw them as people as he smiled at them and even hugged and kissed them!

As I reflected on this over coffee this morning it brought tears of healing to my eyes. My own first experience of meeting psychiatrists was 12 or so years ago and their coldness and indifference left me even more crushed and depressed!

And so as the day progressed the Holy Spirit arranged it that a young man in need of prayer and deliverance arrived to visit Lovro unexpectedly! And so there I was praying over this soul in the psych ward in one of the rooms. Fortunately he didn’t make too much noise as the demons left (coughing, spitting, vomiting etc. Are all normal with this stuff).

After all that I was hungry and having almost nothing at this stage I was asking Jesus to help me. Bingo, the man I prayed for invited me for lunch!

What a privilege it is that Jesus should use all my past and sufferings to help others. What a privelege to meet this wonderful psychiatrist. What a privilege to walk into that psych ward and smile, what a privelege to bring hope to the hopeless!

And so this morning, despite being utterly broke I look to Jesus and say “thank you”. Thank you for the breakdowns, thank you for the suffering, thank you to all the people who even caused the suffering for each one of them have brought me even closer to my best friend Jesus!!

I am off to Mass now to be filled with more love and grace.

Please continue to pray for me that Jesus may use me even more to reach out to those in need.

Bless u all and thanx 4 reading!

Michael

Last week I visited Medjugorje where I was invited to attend a charismatic conference with the team from the USA for “unbound ministry”.

For those of you who don’t know, “unbound” is an inner healing and deliverance ministry specifically geared towards the healing of the past!

It was extremely powerful and the presence of the spirit was palpable on entering the room. As for the praise and worship, it was electric and it was awesome to see every age and generation there, often crying as God’s love washed the scars of the past!

Ministries like unbound offer spiritual solutions to life problems such as depression, anxiety, fear, grief, trauma, addiction….and have enormous success rates.

People feel and experience the healing power of Jesus Christ and get to know him personally.

As I left Medjugorje and returned to the “normal” world, I couldn’t but ask myself “What if?”

– What if priests were taught about the healing power of Jesus in the seminary training? Would they be more enthuastic about their vocations and how they celebrate mass?

– What if all priests were charismatic? Would their preaching be on fire, would the youth flock to them with all their problems?

-What if every Church was a charismatic church? Would the psychiatric wards be empty? Would the new age gurus be perhaps holy spirit healers!

– What if every priest could preach and teach from the heart, would young people take the faith more seriously?

-What if we all grew up knowing and experiencing Jesus from a young age through the example of our parents and community?

-What if inner healing and deliverance was known all over and things like prophetic dreams and visions understood and welcomed.

-What if the spiritual roots of “mental illnesses” were explained to people and Jesus’ power to heal made available cost free?

What if….

Perhaps people like me would have been saved multiple nervous breakdowns, perhaps others would never have turned to drugs, others may not have left the Church with hatred while others may still be alive instead of suicide.

Perhaps psychiatric wards would be empty and therapist’ waiting rooms desolate. Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry would go out of business.

Perhaps there would be large attendances of every age at mass. Peehaps one would have to fight to get a place at adoration.

Perhaps we could read about Jesus on the newspapers and His latest miracles. Perhaps Jesus would be on the news instead of Donald Duck.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

And so dear Bishops, priests and people in authority; why are you depriving us of the Holy Spirit? Why do you supress Him? Why do you keep Him out? Why do you not encourage the healing ministry? Why do you keep silent on Jesus’ presence to heal?

Are you not our spiritual fathers, to bring us to Jesus, to heal our wounds? To teach us the ways of the spirit through example….

Why have you abandoned us?

Please open the doors to the Holy Spirit. Open your hearts to the broken of the broken. Put your reputations and your careers aside and allow us to see Jesus! Rise to your vocations our dear brothers in Christ and bring our Church back to life!

According to statistics they say that maybe 1 in 10 men and I think somewhat less for women will have gay tendancies!

Never one to be in the main group, to my horror in my early 20’s I discovered that I fell into this group of gays, queers, faggots……the list goes on.

And like nearly all the gay guys I meet, suicide seemed like a serious option.

Of course after encountering the real Jesus I have come to realise that I am loved despite these tendancies and that the love I really need is His.

However this does not stop me at times from feeling lonely. An outcast to my own family and indeed to many in the Church for simply being honest!

For 10 years now I have lived a single life and have cried many many tears at the lack of support!

Things people don’t realise about having homosexual tendancies and trying to live a single life include

– It doesn’t just go away. You have to face these fellings every day, every week, every year. It’s not like a tooth that you get pulled out!

– Shame, people constantly asking you if you are married or a priest and why not? It’s like sticking a knife in an open wound!

– Loneliness, you see your friends getting married and having kids. Your heart yearns for the same, to be normal. Yet another death!

– Isolation, going out socially can be hard in a pro gay world, yet your friends are all loved up with families, where do you go or what do you do on those long weekends?

– Family, family are often ashamed of their unmarried son. The gay elephant in the room is never spoken about. The isolation and shame continues.

– Counselling, professionals will mostly tell you to get a partner and that the church is outdated! More confusion and turmoil

– Church, silence, never in my life have I heard a sermon on a Sunday as to how to deal with homosexuslity (this is left to the professionals above)

– Pornography, available at the click of a button to soothe the pain of the loneliness

– Suicide, many go this way. After years of rejection the soul is empty, some don’t even make it this far and depart early. Jesus have mercy.

-Sexual addiction, to soothe the agonising loneliness sex is readily available along with all the health issues that it may bring.

– Drugs, drugs add to the multitude of other ways to escape the pain

– Nervous breakdowns, anxiety, depression… along with many others I could write that book..

And so why such silence? Why such refusal to help people with a homosexual orientation? Why such fear?

Is it because of the pro gay lobby in the vatican?

Is it because a big percentage of bishops accross the world are freemasons and don’t give a hoot about Jesus?

Or is it because simply the Church doesn’t care?

Maybe you can help us understand?

I first heard of the term “evangelisation” when i moved to France 10 years ago. It seemed like an expensive catholic marketing campaign that amounted to not much. Needless to say my input was not appreciated!!

Evangelisation is about sharing the good news of the Gospel and so it is about sharing a person rather than a story!

Without the Holy Spirit, evangelisation is nothing short of sharing a nice story of a person called Jesus who died 2000 years ago and while He meant well, is of absolutely no practical help to us nowadays!

There is little point in sharing the story of Jesus to a drug addict or a person in a psychiatric unit if the same Jesus is powerless to help and heal!

Usually the worst evangelists are those who have studied the most! Too much study of things like philosophy and theology make it seem like one needs a degree to get to heaven and cuts off the poor and the simple from Jesus.

I once recall being at an easter sermon in France where the bishop went on a rant about rationalism, humanism, totalitarianism…not forgetting secularism and atheism…..I hadn’t a clue what half the words meant in english not to mention in french and neither did 90% of the people there!

This sort of religious babble of course has it’s place among the elite but as far as evangelisation goes it is utter nonsense!

As a daily mass goer and a daily coffee shop goer it never ceases to astonish and disappoint me that I can go to morning mass at 8am and it is like a retirement village and at 8.30 I grab my coffee and it’s like a young people’s holiday resort!

So why do most young people prefer coffee to Jesus? And even after millions being spent on evangelisation, why is it that the Catholic Church is failing to bring the younger generations to the pews?!

Is it that younger people are arrogant and Godless or is there another explanation?

To help answer this question let’s travel back to Charleville in county Cork where i lived about a year ago. Daily mass was the usual retirement village experience as was Sunday mass. However one Thurday an irish singer “Bressie” was giving a talk on how he struggles with depression and anxiety and how he is overcoming it. The venue was the Charleville Park hotel and the hall was packed to capacity. Over 500 people were there and the vast majority were the younger generations that you will not see at mass !

Bressie’s talk was relevant, vulnerable, inspiring. He spoke in ordinary language that we all could relate to and most of all, he offered hope!

So often sermons at mass are the opposite. Boring, dead, impractical and hopeless. Nobody will be drawn to that!

And yet the real message of Jesus is one of hope and healing. When I was in Sydney Australia I was shocked to find the pentecostal churches packed to capacity with my age and younger. Why? Again because the main guest was the Holy Spirit rather than misery guts !

In her most recent message of Medjugorje Our Lady speaks of allowing Jesus to love in and through us. This means reaching out in love and mercy to those girls with the short skirts and even shorter tops, it means loving the man covered in tatoos and piercings. It means loving your neighbour who is a new age guru…

It also means bringing the healing power of Jesus to these people. Some people reading this may have never experienced God’s love and healing and if that is the case how can they possibly share it with others?! It’d be easier sell ice to an eskimo than to evangelise!

And so to finish. Evangelisation is about sharing the real true living Jesus with others. It’s about sharing our hope, our own personal testimony, His power to those who have not experienced it yet.

Evangelisation works best when it’s genuine, from the heart, personal and vulnerable. Everyone knows the difference between love and Bible Bashing!

And so today, may we become powerful instruments of God’s love by simply starting with our own hearts and humbly saying

“Jesus, love me so I can love them”!

Bless

Michael