Good Monday morning!

Today is the last day of September and tomorrow begins October and with that an extraordinary month of mission announced by the pope!

Of course every month is a month of mission but this extraordinary month is when we are invited to step it up a notch and get out there more among the broken and the needy!

To kick it off I was at mass yesterday evening in Westminister cathedral where the bishop encouraged us on this mission to be the light to the world!

The mass was packed and there were many colours and flags as different nationalities joined in!

Ironically I had been out in Soho the night before and seen a drag show! At times one can’t help but see the funny side of things and remark that the only 2 places that it is acceptable for men to wear a dress and many colours is at a drag show or in church!!

I recall a pastor friend in Australia who said he could never become a catholic priest as he had a tendency towards cross-dressing when he was younger and that he’d get carried away with the vestments!

Of course on a more serious note the clergy do not wear dresses and the different vestments and different colours have different spiritual meanings. Red vestments symbolize the blood of the martyrs etc.

However to the newly converted and indeed to many not so newly converted these different colours and outfits mean nothing!

In a recent video I listened to from Bishop Barron I heard that 80% of ‘catholics’ do not believe in the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist not to mention knowing anything about liturgical vestments.

And all this makes me think that during this extraordinary month of mission the greatest mission territory is perhaps within the church herself where Jesus is so little known!

And so this month let’s make an extraordinary effort to deepen our own faith and understanding of the church so that we will be able to explain to others what it’s all about and how our church liturgies and ceremonies are any different from a concert or a drag show!!

John Paul 2, pray for us and for the renewal of the church (and remember to thank God too for google where nearly every question or query we may have may be answered).

Have a great mission

Mike

Good morning!

Yesterday I had a day with 2 incidences where people specifically requested for God NOT to bless them!

The first was on Oxford Street. A lady was handing out fliers and shouting ‘Give your life to Jesus, Jesus loves you’. Personally I run away from these types of people even if I know that their hearts are in the right place. It just doesn’t seem to be the approach that works in these type of countries!

A young guy hearing her laughed and said:

“I don’t want to be saved”.

The second incident was with a guy I met who didn’t believe in God but does believe in angels (which for me is such a terrible irony because if he could see how much the angels love God). As we parted I said without thinking “God bless you” to which he replied:

“God don’t bless me, angels yes”!

I laughed it off! I’m too stuck in my ways now and I won’t apologise for my love of God or mentioning God in my speach!

So what can we learn from these 2 incidences?!

The main thing is that people have absolutely no idea who God or Jesus really is and what they are saying!

When these people said these things, I didn’t feel the Holy Spirit angry at them, I felt Him sad for them.

God knows that these people are not saying ‘no’ to a God they know. They are saying ‘no’ to a God that they don’t know!

Dig a little deeper and all goes back to our image of God and who we think Hr really is!

Thinking can be dangerous as it involves our imagination and we can build up an image of God that is totally false based on what we have read or heard or experienced.

All the scandals in the church haven’t helped and do God no favours when it comes to making him known.

So what are the main blockages when it comes to God?

1. The angry father that expects me to be perfect over night and live in perpetual misery as a way of atoning for my sins.

2. The unfair God that allows innocent people to suffer could not possible be a God of love and cannot be trusted!

3. The serious funless God that will ruin my life and make me miserable. Best live my life and turn to him on my death bed when I’ve had my fun!

The list goes on but all these type of thoughts successfully block people from really allowing God to bless their lives!

If people really knew in their hearts that God is a majestic loving father who desires to bless His children and their lives in ways unimaginable, only an idiot would refuse His help!

Yet the universe is full of idiots, Satan being the first and all the others who have followed him and will never have peace!

But Satan was in full knowledge. He saw God and knew God and he knowingly and purposely rebelled.

How many souls today knowingly and purposely rebel?

The answer is probably fewer than we think because God is so unknown today and the church is so broken!

And so we fall back to the same conclusion. The God of mercy who desires to make himself known to those who don’t know him and who desperately desires healing of the church and especially of the clergy who are God’s special ambassadors on earth so to speak!

So today I pray God’s blessing on all and that people will really come to know the Father’s love in their hearts so that the ministry of evangelization becomes simple a call of loving, sharing, caring and healing!

God bless you all!

Mike

Good morning!

The weather is getting colder and yesterday I had to purchase a coat for myself (again Primark). Some may accuse me of supporting child-labour as I am quickly becoming Primark’s best customer!! Rest assured, it is not the case!

On Wednesday night I had the opportunity to go to the Corpus Christi catholic church in London!

There was a mass in honour of Our Lady of Walsingham which was the day before.

Our Lady appeared in Walsingaham (England) in the 11th century and asked for a replica of the house at Nazareth to be built. Since then and up to now it is a very big place of pilgrimage and I’m praying that somehow she brings me there with Seamus and Toni !

It is wonderful for me to see such strong faith here as my only prior familiarity with England came from what I’d heard as a child and most of that wasn’t positive due to historical tensions.

Back to the Corpus Christi Church where a bearded Francisan friar of the renewal celebrated the sacred mystery. An inner voice said to me “sit up the front” and I felt escorted by a supernatural force to the front pew. Left to my own devises I’d have sat at the back as I’ve always liked to be anonymous!

All of a sudden it hit me! I knew the priest! I’d met him in Galway before he joined the order 3 years ago and we had exchanged quite a bit!

I was ecstatic to see him so happy and fulfilled and full of the Holy Spirit! After mass I went to talk to him and he quickly remembered me! God is good and as our parish in Notting Hill is soon to host a mission run by the franciscans, it seems likely I’ll meet him again and hopefully have a coffee!

The real message I wanted to share this morning came from his sermon. It went like this!

A man was climbing a very high mountain and was finding it difficult. His friends were advising him to give up.

‘It’s too hard, just stop half way…”.

Yet the man would not give up. His friends asked him

“How are you going to make it to the top?”

To which he replied

“My heart is already there, the rest will follow”.

Jesus perhaps said the same thing as He climbed calvary. In His heart He had already died for us (He even celebrated the first mass the night before He died). But on good Friday He had to follow it through!

It was not easy and He fell 3 times as His body surrendered to the pain. Yet His heart of love and determination rose Him back up to the top of the mountain and to His crucifiction.

You or me may not be mountain climbers or ever be crucified and yet we too have our own mountains to climb!

Often they are inner mountains of deprssion, addiction, pride, impurity, laziness, sloth etc and often we too are tempted to give up!

Our bodies rebel against us. We feel tired and lazy, we get muscle pains and migraines. The negativity tries to take us when we seem to slide back!

Yet, if we believe in our hearts that we can do it, if we can already taste and feel the victory through the eyes of our hearts then when hard times come along and when people ask us how we are going to continue, we too can reply

“My heart is already there, the rest will follow”.

So friends, keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and we too will climb our mountains, smiling victoriously one day as all the people who didn’t believe in us are put to shame!

Have a great day!

Mike

This morning like every morning I was at mass. The priest’s homily was so simple and yet so powerful that he wrote this morning’s blog for me!

Today’s gospel was when Jesus sent his disciples out 2 by 2 to heal and cast out demons with the instructions not to bring money and to stay wherever they were welcomed, remarkably like how he sent myself and Seamus from Medjugorje to Dubrovnik, Split and now London (2 became 3 with Toni when Jesus healed him)!

The priest explained that this call of being sent out is the root of our church and faith.

He then explained that an institition was needed as the movenent grew and that this institution is called the church!

But like all institutions he explained, human corroption can set in and they can lose touch with their roots.

He went onto talk about the sexual abuses and finsncial improprieties committed by many priests and of the pain that this has caused the church and other priests by association.

And so he concluded mass with a healing service and not a self-focused service for our own needs but an outward focused service focused on the church.

I thought that it was wonderful how he could love and pray for church and at the same time be so simple, honest and humble about the brokenness and corruption that still exists!

What a wonderful example of love, mercy and justice and how encouraging to see his love for Jesus, for the church and for the people all at once!

God bless Fr X!

Pray for more priests like this!

Have a holy day

Michael

Good afternoon!

Last night I was out in the Soho area of London and once again met with some painful stories.

One guy was from a muslim family and being gay and muslim is even harder than being gay and catholic!

Once again I felt convicted of the need for this gap between sexuality and religion to be bridged!

Recently I read about a book called “Why I don’t call myself gay” and to be honest the title disappointed me!

The writer had an experience of God and now does not practise gay sexual activity.

Admittedly he is still attracted to men but because he does not act on these attractions he does not call himself gay!

But what does he call himself? Straight, in between, confused?

Now this guy is a good guy and has had a genuine experience of God which I’m not doubting for a second.

He says somewhere to call himself gay and catholic would be hypocrisy but I don’t see why!

Every time we pray a hail Mary we admit that we are sinners as we say “pray for us sinners”. Are we hypocrites or are we simply broken human beings who fall short of perfection?

If a person says that they are straight we don’t automatically assume that they are sexually active so why do we for gays?!

This seems to be the core of the issue where saying “I’m gay” has become synonymous with saying “I’m a sexually active gay”.

There are many happy, single and celibate gay men. Indeed many priests are gay and live perfectly celibate lives!

And so I think the gay community and the church needs hope. It needs people to show that yes, you can be gay, you can be fully catholic and you can live a very fulfilled life without being sexually active.

And it is for this very reason that I tell gay people that I’m gay too! When I tell them about my life and explain why I’m not looking for sex they take it very very well!

They listen, they understand that I have experienced something that they have not and they feel hope as I am not condemning them or refusing to see myself as ‘one of them’!

In many cases they allow me to pray with them, they share very intimately with me and are extremely thirsty to somehow understand how God and the church see them!

So good on the author of “Why I do not call myself gay” and I know that with a book title like that he will be far more accepted in church circles than myself and “Why I do call myself gay” even if in reality we are both saying pretty much the same thing!

However, I’m here to please nobody only to follow my conscience and to reach out in honesty, vulnerability and simplicity to the gay community and to the church and to give testimony to what Jesus is doing in my life!

May more and more members of the gay community come to know the love of Jesus and may they too find their place in our church!

Pray for Soho!

Mike

Good morning!

When it comes to healing how often do we say to God “how long”?

And usually in the tone of “because I’ve got a busy life and haven’t got time for this setback”!

I was one of these people and I roamed from therapist to therapist where the ‘magic number’ was 6 weeks!

Of course 6 weeks became 12 weeks and 12 became 18 and so on and so on!

When eventually years went by I gave up and this is what God needed!

I said “who cares, I give up my agenda, my timeline, my ambitions and I give the lot to God”!

Bang! My life changed!

You see up to that point I was trying to fit God into my agenda!

I wanted to keep my job as an actuary, keep my volvo car and salary and I wanted God to heal me of anxiety so that I could enjoy it!

In return I would be a nice person, go to mass on a Sunday, throw a few euro to the poor and have a great life!!

Sounds like a great plan right? How could God not be delighted with that?!

Well let me tell you that God wasn’t happy at all with this plan because it was my plan and it was not His plan!

I wasn’t willing to give Him my career, my car, my security, my reputation! I wanted to keep all that and then throw Him a few crumbs in the form of leftover cash and an hour on a Sunday morning!!

So God had to crack me more! Why? Because He’s horrible and mean?

NO! Because God had a far better plan for me than sitting behind a desk in a stuffy office with people I didn’t like working with figures that meant nothing to me!

However in order to embrace God’s plan I needed to let go of mine and it took time for me to see that my plan wasn’t so good after all!

Now today you might be in the same position. You may be asking God “how long” and have your own plan and agenda!

God on the other hand may be waiting and also asking you “how long”?

“How long will you keep asking me how long?”

“How long will you keep holding onto your own plan?”

“How long till you realise that I have a far better plan for you?”

“How long till you trust me more?”

“How long till you surrender ALL of your life to me?

And so today dear friends, ask God for the grace to let let go of the ‘how longs’ and to surrender all your plans and projects to Jesus, even the ones that seem good!!

At the end of the day none of these things matter as the only thing that we will bring from this life to the next of any worth is our love and trust in God!

Have a great day

Padre Pio, pray for us on your feast today that like you we may come to know and accept the will of God for our lives and their in find the peace and happiness that we are so desperately seeking!

Mike

Good Saturday morning!

Another weekend is upon us and the weather is definitely getting that bit colder! School term has started and so have many church programs including the RCIA (rite of christian initiation for adults) for adults seeking to be baptised!

I had the interesting experience of sitting in on one of these classes during the week and it was very interesting!

In Ireland we all sort of grew up catholic and I say ‘sort of’ because looking back that is all it was!

Being catholic and being nice pretty much amounted to the same thing and let’s face it you can be nice and not have any religion at all!

At the class we were played a DVD from Bishop Barron and it was excellent!

Barron explained how Jesus wasn’t just a nice guy, that he was a revolutionary! He pointed out that Jesus was a miracle worker and that in many cases people were afraid of Jesus and of His powers and authority!

As the class continued we all shared a little and it seemed that a lot of people still associate being a catholic with just being a nice person!

Of course catholics should be nice people but does it stop there? Is that all the catholic faith has to offer? And if so, why become catholic rather than muslim or Buddhist which also teach about being nice?

The answer of course goes back to Jesus. Cathilicism isn’t just a religion, it is a spirituality and a direct relationship with a supernatural, miracle-working revolutionary named Jesus who desires to transform us and make us not only nice but spiritually strong too!

Jesua desires that we open our hearts to Him so that He can work in us and through us!

When we see powerful healing priests and preachers we get a glimpse of this reality and we see that being a catholic doesn’t stop at learning the catechism and being nice but that it is an open door to allowing the person of Jesus to work through us to love, heal and transform lives!

Bishop Barron has a thirst that people come to know the real Jesus and the real beauty of being catholic together with the great challenge of it too!

I must say that I admire his simple and very humble approach together with his thirst for catholics to be catholics for real!

And so today as we take a few moments, let’s gently ask ourselves a few questions.

What does being a catholic mean to me?

Who is Jesus for me?

What can Jesus do for me?

What is Jesus asking me to do for Him?

Don’t beat yourself up if the answer to some of the questions fall into the “I’m just a nice ordinary person like everybody else” box!

This doesn’t mean that Jesus is angry with you, it means He has mercy on you and desires to reveal Himself to you at a deeper level!

So today let us invoke the Holy Spirit and ask Him to reveal Jesus to us and to open our hearts more. Let us also set some time aside to let Him do this by perhaps reading books on the topic, listening to a talk or even better by attending a talk or retreat by a spirit-filled preacher!

Whatever the case, Jesus, come alive more in me today. Correct me, teach me, love me and empower me that I may be like you and touch every broken heart that I meet!

Bless you all!

Michael

P.S. Pray for Toni today who has a trial working in a local coffee shop!

Good morning!

I’m having a coffee with a pastry ‘pain aux raisins’ which I mischievously enjoy ordering with english pronunciation putting maximum emphasis on the end letters ‘n’, ‘x’ and ‘s’ which of course should not be pronounced at all in french! (paiN auX raisinS)😂😂😂

This morning I was very proud to see Toni serving mass! Ten months ago in Split I met this stranger for a coffee and while he believed in Jesus, he would not step foot in church!

I recall inviting him into the Franciscan monastery in central Split, he almost killed me! Not to mention the Sunday evening when he almost stormed off never to talk to me again for being late because I was at mass!

Yet with God’s grace, here he is today!

And notice St Therese in the background, the saint of the emotionally sensitive and fragile!

But God has not done all the work as Toni has had to cooperate at every step with God’s grace and this has required extraordinary perseverance!

At 22 to leave your native country is no easy thing, nor is it easy to be transgender and catholic!

We have already been through many trials but simple faith, persevarance, trust and forgiveness are the spiritual tools to move through all obstacles!

So today I give thanks to God the Father in a special way for Toni’s life which already can be an inspiration for so many and I thank Him that He has used me in spite of all my own faults and weaknesses to help him!

So well done Toni and to all of you out there remember that with Jesus there is always a way and He has a plan for your life no matter what your past or your circumstances!

Have a day full of hope!

Bless

Michael

Good morning all!

Yesterday evening I was at mass in Kensington at the Carmelites. I always like going there as St Therese of the child Jesus was a carmelite and my first confession was in the Carmelites off Grafton street in Ireland’s Dublin!

‘Follow him’ the old priest said as I told him of the experience of Jesus! Little did I know what that would entail!

Another reason I like going to the Carmelites is because I like the priests there and the prior (superiour) is an old aquantraince of mine. Fr Chris used to be prior in Dublin and he let me stay at the monastery in grafton street several times when I lived in Ireland a few years ago!

How delighted and surprised I was to see him again here in London and how nice to hear an irish accent from such a kind and loving man!

In a further irony, I used to stay with the Carmelites in Dublin when I wanted to attend the catholic prayer meeting ‘Pure at heart’ in Dublin and so how surprised was I to find the same ‘Pure at heart’ prayer meeting here in London 3 weeks ago at the Carmelite church!!!

God has humour!!

And yet none of that is the subject of today’s blog!

After receiving communion yesterday the priest said the prayer which went something like this:

“Grant that its effects and not our desires may be achieved in our hearts”.

It reminded me of a teaching I heard years ago on how as we eat the eucharist, it is actually the eucharist that ‘eats’ or consumes us!

In other words, when we eat food the food gets absorbed into our bodies, our digestive system transforms it and we become stronger!

But when we eat the eucharist, the opposite is happening! We are being transformed into Jesus and not Him into us!

If this were the case with food it could be dangerous! After a good steak for dinner we might wake up the next day with horns! If we had pork we might grow a little piggy tail and perhaps fish lovers might grow scales!

However mystically when we receive Jesus, this is what is happening and hence this prayer:

“Grant that its effects and not our desires may be achieved in our hearts”

In other words we are asked to let Jesus grow in us, let him walk, talk, act, heal, inspire, write, preach, teach in us and through us!

And this requires us to let go of our desires and ideas to make way for His!

This prayer is very linked to the ‘Our Father’ prayer and the line “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

And so this brings me neatly to the conclusion of today’s blog by high lighting the critical importance of listening prayer!

Especially in those moments after communion in the silence of your heart you can present your life situations to Jesus and say “here is my plan but what’s yours?”

The Queen of listening prayer is Our Lady who listened to the angel Gabriel that day and said yes!

So if you really thirst to grow spiritually, invoke the Holy Spirit through the intercession of Our Lady and then put some time aside to sit down with God and to listen!

It may take time but over time you will get much better at it and ultimately it’ll be the best investment of your life!

So Jesus, thank you for the gift of your body and yes, grant that its effects and not our desires may be achieved in our hearts.

Bless your day,

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Pray for us!

Mike

Good morning!

It’s a beautiful morning here in London, not too hot or not too cold, just perfect!

My birthday was great, I spent the day in prayer and went to confession to receive birthday graces from Jesus. I enjoyed dinner with friends at the church and was absolutely delighted with myself that I celebrated it my way rather than the way of the world!!

Today’s topic is on comparing! Do you ever compare yourself with others? With the people who were in school with you, with your colleagues at work, with your fellow priests?

If you do then you’re human, if you don’t then either you are a saint or are lying!!

Yet comparing can be very dangerous for us spiritually as it often involves us putting ourselves down or putting others down.

When I was a kid I loved watching the olympics. I really liked watching the sprints. The 400 metre sprint puzzled me! Why did some people start ahead of the others? It didn’t seem fair!

Of course there is no difference. Some seem to start ahead but due to the curve of the track they have the same distance to run as the people at the back!

Yet when you watch the race, it is only at the end that you can see who is ahead of who and often you’ll see that guy or girl near the end bombing ahead and winning the race!

The one thing required for this race is a good psychology and certainly no comparing!

If the guy at the end looks up and says “I’m miles behind” he might get discouraged and just give up! Similarly if the guy at the front says “look at me, nobody even near me” he may get complacent and end up last!

I often think that life is the same. We may feel that we are starting at the back. We may have health problems that others don’t have, our education may not be as good, we may be less intelligent or whatever and as we see those successful people racing ahead in life out the front, we may get discouraged!

But this is not the way to live life!

1. You may have setbacks that others don’t but some of these setbacks can become ‘setups’ and teach you real life lessons very early!

2. Others who seem to have the perfect lives will experience setbacks too! Look at the lives of the celebreties and how so often they crumble apart!

And so what’s the answer?

We must enter into the mindset of one of these runners for a minute! Just as the runner trains himself to focus on his own race and to neither looking ahead or behind, so too must we train ourselves to run the race of our own lives looking up only to God for encouragement!

So today, don’t compare yourself to others or live life to somehow beat others but rather look to God, run the best race you can and you may be very surprised at the end of the race of life to do far far better than you had ever imagined!

So let’s stay focused on Jesus, stay focused on prayer and let us neither get discouraged or complacent but wake up every day giving it our best shot!

Blessings to all

Mike

P.S. Pray for Toni today who turns 23 on this beautiful feast of Our Lady!