Good afternoon to you all from London’s magnificent Westminster Cathedral where the entrance says it all….


We are just after celebrating Easter and next Sunday we will celebrate divine mercy Sunday, a day of extraordinary graces of mercy for us and for humanity.

Of course the risk is that when we are catholic that we simply go from one feast to the next and somehow after 40 years our lives are still the same.

At times we have been told to go to mass and to go to confession and to say the rosary and to say the divine mercy without being told how!


Medjugorje gives the secret to all these things as did many of the saints such as saint Therese of the child Jesus. The secret is personal prayer from the heart by simply talking to Jesus and Mary.

“Jesus I don’t understand the mass, it seems very boring to me. Please help me to understand or get someone to show me” is a beautiful prayer from the heart. Yet many would be afraid to talk to the Lord like this on case He’d be angry.

“Jesus I don’t get this confession stuff and telling my sins to an old priest. I don’t even know what my sins are and I  don’t know if it’s any good. Help me!” is another beautiful prayer from the heart and one that Jesus will answer in His time.

But you see to say all these prayers and more we need to do something very important. We need to give prayer time and in our busy modern fast paced world this can be very challenging for some.


When I think of all the things that I could perhaps do if I didn’t prayed I shudder!

Maybe I could sing and play the guitar instead of just pretending like in this photo. Maybe I could speak 2 or 3 other foreign languages or have a big career somewhere or had I stayed in the seminary I’d be a priest by now.

And yet what good would it be?


What good would it be if I spoke 10 languages and sang and played music and was either a ‘successful’ priest or business man if in doing so I had neglected prayer and Jesus?

What good would it be to write a book on the love of God and on His divine mercy and yet to ignore the same God every day by not spending some time in prayer?

What good would it be to bring others to Jesus and His mercy and yet never to bring myself and my own heart to Him and by doing so refusing Him the thing that He wants the most?



And yet my friends this is the big risk that we all face and especially those involved in ministry. It is so easy to allow oneself to become overly busy and to neglect ones own prayer life.

It may even seem like a charitable thing to do by “forgetting oneself” and helping others but in fact it’s pride because only pride would have us believe that we can help others without first needing God’s help and wisdom ourselves!

And so this week as we prepare for divine mercy Sunday and as we pray for all the horrible sinners in the world, let’s not forget the one sinner’s heart that only we can bring to Jesus for Him to heal and transform even more…..yes, our own!!

The more we live out of His mercy the more we can talk about it to others. The more we receive from Him in prayer, the more we have to give to others and so this week may we make the sacrifice of some of our time to give Him time so that we can be walking, talking and living witnesses and messengers of divine mercy.



Have a wonderful week and if you haven’t started the divine mercy novena, it’s never too late.

Blessings of every spiritual joy and consolation on you all!

Michael