Notebook   Have we ever washed our hands so often? Someone sent me a WhatsApp message recently and it had a picture of a man who said he had washed his hands so frequently that the notes he wrote on them for his Leaving Cert exam 30 years ago had re-appeared! Nearly every TV or…

Notebook We are still in the early days of Lent so maybe there’s space here for a thought or two around the journey to and through repentance. There is a call to repentance that is central to the Lenten season. I recall sitting in the church one morning, a while before Mass.  This is something…

The Notebook   A cousin was speaking with me recently and she told me she was in London for a weekend, with her two young sons, to visit her sister and family. They went for a day trip to London and travelled on a number of trains and by underground. Later in the evening, her younger…

Notebook On a recent episode of RTÉ’s Operation Transformation, one of the people featured made incredible strides in improving her health and losing weight. She joined a weekly walking group and looks forward to the meeting each week. I hope I am not doing her a disservice, but I think she described it as “the…

Notebook It was St Stephen’s morning and I was in the sacristy for morning Mass. As I got ready, I asked one of the altar servers if he had an enjoyable Christmas Day. I had follow-up questions as well: “What did you get from Santa?” Is that what you wanted?” Even more questions, if needed,…

Notebook November is almost done.  During the month we remembered in many ways and on many days,  those gone before us.  There is something very healing about that – remembering, naming, holding on to what remains of those we knew and loved. The old song talked about year after year, the numbers getting fewer, but…

“I remember when you used to visit the school, and we had such good times and fun there, but I never thought that the future would ever be like this.” I knew what he meant. His mother had just died following an accident – a young woman, with so much left to live and to…

Notebook Some months ago, I heard a request on our local radio station for a song by Max Boyce [pictured above]. The song played was familiar to me but not so the performer. I had never heard of him before and, no doubt, that says more about me than him. In any case, I liked…

Notebook   A few months ago, Fr Tom Mulligan published a biography of Fr Patrick Peyton – The Rosary Priest. Fr Peyton was a native of the parish of Attymass, Co. Mayo, where Fr Mulligan has since been parish priest. I have no doubt it was this connection that drew him into a place where…