Good morning!

Recently I’ve been following the activity of Donald Trump who famously coined the expression ‘fake news’!

Only a few days ago he put this image on his twitter account:

Superimposing his head on Rocky’s body he’s trying to show us his strength!

Another image I saw too!

Let the reader decide!

However it did get me thinking of Jesus!

The real Jesus is something like this!

He walks boldly on the troubled waters of life with authority and power!

Yet how often do we see him more like:

Which don’t get me wrong is very beautiful but somehow fails to communicate His power over every problem of this world!

Politicans are experts at making God’s out of men and powerless men out of God!

Jesus is no ordinary man! He is fully man, fully God meaning that He has more power than all the politicans and presidents of this world all put together!

So when we pray, let’s remember that we are not voting or placing our hopes in men! No! We are petitioning the high king of heaven who has power over all things!

Let us pray with faith and with confidence rejecting all ‘fake news’ that Jesus doesn’t exist or doesn’t care or has no power!

Jesus, we trust in you!

This morning I was reflecting on the church and how we must be merciful to her too!

At times it’s easy for us to think that the church somehow started off perfect and that men messed it up!

But no! From day one the church has been fragile and has been run by fragile men!

Instead of coming down from heaven with a ‘divine catechism’ and a set of beliefs God gave the church the Holy Spirit and more or less let her figure things out over time!

Things we now take for granted like Jesus being one person with two natures or Mary being ‘Mother of God’ which us catholics take as obvious took centuries of disputes and misunderstandings to clarify!

For centuries the church believed that the earth was flat, something laughable to us now!

So you see the church is like each one of us! Profoundly human and still working bits out!

It is easy for us to expect too much from the church! We are used to this in the business world where we expect perfection!

But in some ways the church is more like a hospital, it treats patients and is still researching some illnesses and treatments that it still doesn’t fully understand!

Some illnesses it knows how to handle expertly while for others it is still at sea!

The area of sexuality and gender is one of these areas where more research is needed!

Of course it would have been far easier had Jesus left a ‘lgbt manual’ for us all to follow but He didn’t!

The result is that we are still wrestling with it and trying to figure it out and it will take time to solve!

In the meantime we must be patient, merciful and persevering. We must never lose hope even when at times things seem pretty hopeless!

We must trust in God’s ways and trust that God loves to be searched for and He enjoys the hunt for truth!

If God was as obsessed about dogmas as some make out then He’d have surely come in the form of a divine wikipedia rather than as a little baby!

So today let us not lose track of what is really important, seeking Jesus. Let us not get over upset with ourselves or with the church who are still figuring some things out and remember that God will honour us for following our consciences even if we find out in heaven that we got many things totally wrong!

Come Holy Spirit! Give us love, give us patience, give us understanding and give us wisdom!

Have a great day!

Mike

Hello!

Prayer, prayer, prayer. For any of us interested in spirituality and following Jesus we know that the secret is prayer!

Yet many people get very discouraged when you talk to them about prayer!

You see there are so many books and it can be made to sound like something for the elite!

Recently I read a few lines of what a theologian had to say on how discursive prayer (ie: talking to God) is no longer needed once contemplative prayer (sitting in God’s presence) begins.

After a few minutes I had to put it down!

Look at our brains! We don’t need to know how they work to use them! We ‘just do it’!

The same too can be said about prayer! We don’t need to understand too much about what God is doing in our souls! We just need to let him do it!

You see you could write books on how to play soccer and not be able to kick a ball straight and you could write books on prayer and still have no prayer life!

That’s why Our Lady appears to simple people like Saint Bernadette because they obeyed and prayed without trying to over-intellectualise!

As I discussed this with a wise and experienced priest he quoted a line from someone who’d helped him when he was having a bit of a crisis of prayer!

“Pray as you can” he was told!

How wonderful! Some days you may feel to praise God, so praise Him! Other days you may feel spiritually dry and your prayer is to trust!

And yet other days you may feel to read the bible or pray the rosary…

You see prayer is like food and sometimes we feel like eating a lot and other times we are not so hungry and just need something to sustain us!

The secret in my experience is not to force! A day your stomach isn’t so good you eat toast and a day your spirit isn’t so good you can simply say some ‘light prayers’ and maybe enjoy the beauty of creation and talk to God!

Just as your stomach recovers its appetite for food so will your spirit recover its appetite for prayer!

So let’s not over-complicate things and put structures and technicalities around what is supposed to be just simple and natural!

‘Pray as you can’ and God will help you!

Have a nice day!

Mike

It is that time of year when people ask you “are you going home for Christmas” and when or if you say that you are not the “what about your parents” guilt-tripping starts!

My own experience has shown me that my parents will be fine but that my own sanity may not if I visited “home” for Christmas!

But on a deeper note, everything depends on what you call “home” and where in your heart you call home!

For me this is not Ireland or the small country village where I grew up. It served its purpose for my childhood but that’s well over!

I’ve learnt over the years to make home in my heart with God and to be at home all the time wherever I am!

It’s been 12 years since I spent Christmas at my parents house and I have enjoyed Christmas in France, India, Australia, Medjugorje and last year in Croatia!

In my heart I’ve always felt at home even if I know that I’ve often been judged harshly by many who do not understand my life!

For many people ‘home’ is not a comfortable place and Jesus does not force us to fit in where we are not accepted!

In these cases Jesus can give us new homes with new friends and family and teaches us to be happy and move on with life!

Some of course are blessed to have wonderful family situations. They should of course cherish and enjoy every second of it giving thanks to God for it while sparing a thought, a prayer or maybe even a dinner invitation for those less fortunate.

So maybe you are feeling a big pressure to ‘go home’ for Christmas and to be the good son or daughter! But discern it well! God may well be asking you to make home with Him in your heart and to stay right where you are!

So am I going home for Christmas?

Yes, in fact I never left and I’ll be spending it right here in London!

What about you?

Bless

Michael

Good morning! The Christmas songs are beginning to play on the radios and one feels a certain joy of the season of ‘good will’!

Last night I was at a Bible study and just before the meeting I had an interesting chat with a prayerful lady!

Somehow I happened to mention purgatory and like stepping on someone’s toe with a boot she totally changed!

‘I don’t believe in purgatory, I believe in what the Bible says’ she said!

I was thinking ‘well I do too and I believe in what the church says and what experiences and testimonies have taught me too’

However I decided not to rise to the bait and simply said

“I can see we don’t agree, anyway we are both children of God, have a nice evening’

The incident got me thinking of just how much controversy can come from different understandings of the bible and also how intolerant people can be of other people’s beliefs!

Even if we are 100% sure that we are correct, we should still make every effort to respect the other person’s point of view and not treat them as bad people, heretics or idiots!

God looks at hearts and consciences and may be far more upset by our lack of love and charity than He is about somebody else’s erroneous theology!

Ultimately we will all be judged on love and if greater knowledge doesn’t lead to greater love then perhaps it’s time to question our motives!

It is also very easy to get into debates about the Bible!

Worth remembering is that Satan is an excellent Bible scholar and even had the arrogance to quote it at Jesus in the desert! He is a fallen angel and knows the Bible better than any human being.

Jesus didn’t enter into a debate with him for He knew that He wasn’t going to convert the devil!

Instead Jesus proclaimed the truth and moved on!

At times we need to know when to do this and this only comes with discernment!

On the way home in the train a drunken woman from Russia began to make sexual advances towards us. She even began to do a poll dance!

We told her that we were coming from a prayer meeting but she continued to mock and make sexual jokes.

Sadly she had no self-respect and we were forced to stop talking to her rather than continue a fruitless exchange with a woman who wasn’t ready to listen.

Satan loves to confuse us, to mock us and to distract us!

Jesus likes to keep things simple and to keep us focused!

And so that is why we need to be full of love, full of truth and in every situation discern what God is asking us to do and what God is asking us to say and when God is asking us to move on!

I’ll finish with what Our Lady said to St Bernadette in Lourdes!

“I am not asking you to make them believe you but to tell them” (paraphrase!)

Have a great day!

Michael

Good morning and happy feast of Christ the King!

Last night I was at a prayer evening with a group of young people from Ireland whose lives have been majorly changed by Medjugorje!

Sadly the common theme was suicide. One guy’s dad and brother took their lives while for another it was two of his best friends!

The guys were left bewildered and traumatised and went to Medjugorje looking for peace!

They did indeed find peace in Medjugorje and the grace to accept the tragedies of what happened without losing their faith!

Truly remarkable and a great testimony to the power of Jesus through Mary at Medjugorje!

Afterwards we got chatting and I joked about my experience of Medjugorje with the police being called and lies spread about me because of my life and sexuality!

They were surprised but not shocked! The gay issue is a hot potatoe and perhaps too controversial for conservative palates at Medjugorje.

Nonetheless it is an issue that will not just go away and an issue that causes many young people to commit suicide and priests and religious to lose their faith!

My prayer today on the feast of Christ the king is that Medjugorje will become even better and become a place of love, healing and acceptance for lgbt people seeking God.

May the Holy Spirit inspire Bishop Hoser, Fr. Marinko and all those in charge so that the love of Jesus may touch even more people and that there may be even more inspiring testimonies to share on Mary TV and in prayer meetings all over the world!

Bless you all!

Christ is king!

Michael

Good morning!

It’s drizzling here in London this morning and my hot coffee is the perfect treat!

A few weeks ago I went to confession and how nice it was to hear the words

“You are forgiven, go in peace”.

Now mass had just started and as I knelt down everybody was reciting with the priest

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea MAXIMA culpa” with some beating their breasts for special effects!

My spirit was deeply troubled! I’d just heard “you are firgiven” and now I was supposed to shout “mea culpa” (latin for “I am guilty”).

When we are forgiven God wishes to wash away our guilt and shame so we should be shouting “mea free, mea free, mea maxima free”!

It’s also true that because of our broken spirits we are not 100% guilty of much of the sin we do commit!

Through no fault of our own we were born with a certain brokeness that theologians call ‘consupiscence’ and the traumas and wounds of life can add to the damage!

The result is that we behave in a broken way in spite of our best efforts!

God isn’t accusing us and pointing the finger in blame. He is convicting us and reaching out His hand in mercy!

And after confession He knows that we’ll mess up again because without an extraordinary grace whereby He makes us instant saints, we are incapable of otherwise!

Jesus desires us to walk in freedom and trust and not in scruples and fear!

Life with Jesus isn’t supposed to be like a giant buzzing wire game where if you lose concentration for one second the raging fires of hell are ready to consume you as demons with pokers dance in victory!

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!😂😂😂😂😂

No, life with Jesus is to be peaceful! We are on a journey of healing and holiness, we are loved witout measure and as long as we do our best we have absolutely nothing to fear!

So today, stop beating ourselves up for what is not our fault and let us rejoice in the fact that “mea forgiven, mea forgiven, mea maxima forgiven”.

Bless your day

Michael

Good afternoon!

Today as I was praying the image of a bird came to mind!

Two things hit me!

1. The bird has a body

2. The bird flies!

Using this is a spiritual image we are all like birds!

On one hand we have physical bodies and just like the bird who needs to rest on a tree or look after her young on her nest, we too need to eat, sleep and look after our physical bodies!

Yet the bird can fly, it can spread its wings and defy the gravity of its body as it soars into the skies!

And so we too can fly so to speak! By the power of the Holy Spirit we don’t need to be held hostage by the temporal needs of our bodies!

In the bible God calls us to trusting in Him when it comes to temporal things such as food and shelter and asks us to put Him and His will first!

Matthew 6
³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

If we apply this to the bird it’d be like saying ‘fly, I’ll direct you and don’t worry, I know you need rest and worms so I’ll look out for you”

But imagine a bird who doesn’t trust! He will never fly or enjoy the freedom of who he is because he’s afraid of the unknown! He builds one nest for life and never dares to move!

His wings are no good! He may as well be a cat!

But in today’s world this is what many human beings are doing!

Forgetting about their spiritual side (wings), their only concern is the earthly things!

Big mortgages to own a property, saving and saving for the future, insurance for insurance for insurance….

There is no trust in God here only rational thinking that reduces a human being to an intelligent type of an animal!

But just as the bird is made to fly, so is man made for a relationship with God and this relationship is to be the true source of his freedom and his number one priority!

Sadly for most christians their number one priority is themselves and their needs!

Every time I meet young people (I was going to say ‘like me’ but I’m not so young…(right Don!!!)) I yawn as they tell me about where they are from and what jobs they do…

Sure all that has a place but a very secondary place!

I’d like to ask them

‘What has God done in your life this week, what has he shown you?’

But usually I don’t as I fear the answer might be ‘nothing’ or worse they’d tell me about their job or some boring fact that some theologian wrote!

And so my message today is simple!

God doesn’t want us like caged parrots repeating continuously what the saints said and did!

No! God wants us to soar like eagles and to be the magnificent saints of the future that future generations of parrots will talk about!

“Jesus, teach me to trust and to put my trust into my actions as I fly under the power of your Holy Spirit.

Forgive me for all the places where I refuse to fly, where I stay attached to worldly things and forgive me for all jealousy and mocking of those who have learnt to fly!

Come Holy Spirit, bring my faith to life, I surrender all to thee, let’s fly and show the world the power of Jesus! “

Good morning!

London is cooling down, McDonald’s are beginning to play Christmas songs and it’s the season of hats and scarves!

So a few days ago I went to Westminister Cathedral to pray and as soon as I opened the door an older gentleman who was a volunteer shouted at me

“take off your hat”.

Now granted I may not look or dress like someone who goes to mass every day but the reality is that I do!

And the fact that I look younger than my age or even life experience suggest only adds to the problem!!

I am certain that if I was old and entered the cathedral with a serious frown that I would have been spoken to differently!

Now the even more ironic bit was that I had spoken to that man before but he didn’t remember me!

And so in a nice way I replied to him!

“We’ve spoken before you know, I do evangelization and you know that if it was my first time in a catholic church and you spoke to me like that, I might not be back…..

Could you not say something like ‘Welcome to the house of God, can I ask you to remove your hat out of respect'”

He looked at me…..3 seconds went by in a very loud silence! How was he going to react?!

He smiled and humbly said “you’re right” and we both smiled and shook hands!

You see evangelisation is about loving people and so patiently teaching them and not judging them!

To a non-catholic it can be very intimidating entering a catholic church for the first time and people have no idea how to behave! It’s up to us to teach them and what a wonderful way to evangelise all at the same time!

In Notre Dame in Paris many asian tourists receive holy communion in between the millions of photos that they take! They are not bad people nor are many of them catholic but naively they presume that the piece of bread is a sort of a welcome-cookie for everybody and so they join the queue, cameras in tow!

It is up to us to welcome them, teach them and explain what is going on to them and how they can participate and why they shouldn’t receive communion in these cases.

The more we explain our faith to others in love the more we should become humble!

In other circumstances it could be the other way around! We could have been born into a hindu family in india and through no fault of our own, know nothing about christianity!

Jesus asks us to love and teach others with profound humility and not to lord our faith and religious practices over others who have not had the same privileges in life as us!

So today may we love others into the truth!

May we work with love, teach with love, correct with love and pray with love as we see God in every single human being we meet!

It’s cold outside guys so put on your hats!😂😂

Bless

Mike