Diarmuid is doing his Leaving Certificate this year and recently had a very interesting Irish essay for homework – ‘Will young people in the future have Faith?’. They were asked to explore a number of questions including the impact of the Pope’s visit, the scandals that continue to rock the Church and whether young people…
Danny and I will be 25 years married on the 25th of this month. I struggle to understand how so much time has passed since we walked together down the aisle of St Patrick’s Church Murlog – my own parish having been rather unfortunately double booked! And yet, so much has happened I wonder how…
We will talk for years to come about the weekend Pope Francis came to Dublin. Four of us were at the fabulous Festival of Families in Croke Park and all six of us at the Mass in Phoenix Park. It was wonderful to see the Pope in Ireland and wonderful for our family to experience…
We are off to Rome this weekend – and I am so excited! Now Rome in the middle of August will probably be sweltering hot but Rome is always wonderful. My brother Niall and sister-in-law Fritzie are in Ireland from Chicago for a couple of weeks and had decided to visit Rome which prompted our…
I’m struggling with parenting. Why? I think it is because I now find myself in the strange position of parenting adults. Our youngest turned 18 recently so we now have a family of adults and last weekend we had them all home. Not only that, but our three daughters had their boyfriends home with them…
At Mass on Sunday I found my eye drawn towards a father and his small child, aware of the gentleness and tenderness of the father towards his son. That involved keeping the little adventurer in his seat but in a way that encouraged the boy to keep close to his daddy. The father was a…
We have decided to get the house painted. What has complicated the issue is the fact that our house is semi-detached and we knew that it would look better if our neighbours decided to get theirs painted as well. Our neighbours have been living beside us now for a couple of years and in that…
For the past number of years I have been producing a resource called Seeds of Faith, the aim of which is to help families explore and understand Faith, prayer, spirituality and liturgy a little bit more deeply. Seeds of Faith follows the Church’s three-year cycle so although I regularly update the material there is a…
We are a week on from a decision that has changed Ireland forever. I recognise the possibility that you may be saying, “please, no, we have had enough, let’s talk about something else” and yet the reality is that the time for talking has only begun. This weekend we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi…
There are days when the whole idea of the holiness of everyday life seems like bizarre nonsense. Today has been one of those days. I found out today that something I have worked on and had professionally printed has two substantial errors in it and is going to have to be reprinted. I spent the…