Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God’. (Col 1:) While reflecting on this line of Scripture I was inspired to write this short reflection on a painting on the Holy Face of Jesus which I have just completed.

This is not the first picture of the Holy Face which I have painted but always while painting I ask myself what did Jesus really look like when he walked on this earth? Our paintings, no matter how beautiful, can only be a pale reflection of the beauty of the God Man – the Eternal Son of the Father. Each painting looks different – I’m sure that it also contains some small reflection of each artist!

The Divine Office ...
“is a gift, not a burden, and many are the graces
that flow from this source:
Grace to praise God;
to comfort our hearts;
to brighten our path;
to renew our strength;
and to edify and sanctify
the faithful”

Wishing and Praying a blessed feast of
Our Lady of Knock
to all of you
– may she unceasingly draw all of us
ever more deeply into the heart
of her Son, our Eucharistic Lord.



The following is part of the homily given by Pope St John Paul II on his visit to Knock in 1979 – a prayer as relevant today as it was when he made it ... possibly even more so. Also our prayer for Ireland and for you today:

Happy Feast of St Dominic!

During the our Novena to St Dominic (the 9 days leading up to his Feast Day on the 8th of August) we sing an English translation of the latin 'O Spem'; a prayer to St Dominic referring to his promise on his deathbed that he would continue to intercede for us in heaven.
Here is a short clip of us singing that prayer.

Dominic on his deathbed bequeathed to his brethren, as their rightful inheritance, his last will and testament saying: “have charity, guard humility and possess voluntary poverty.” This was the path which led him to holiness and he was and is inviting us his sons and daughters to imitate him as he imitated his Saviour, Christ Jesus.

After a long preaching tour in Northern Italy, brother Dominic falls gravely ill in Bologna. It is July 1221, and the town is so stifling, humid and hot that there is no hope of improvement for Dominic’s health. The decision is made to carry Dominic to a small Benedictine hermitage on the hillside outside Bologna.

As he feared being buried in the Benedictine monastery where he had stayed, he begged to be carried anew among his brethren. Once he was back in town and settled in one of the convent’s cells, he was asked whether he wished to be buried next to the relics of this or that saint. Dominic gave this superb answer: “God forbid that I be buried except under the feet of my brethren.”

As Dominicans we treasure what few writings Dominic has left us and those words of his of which there is a record, especially his last words. As Nuns of the Order we hold dear his letter to the nuns in Madrid, but there are two words in particular which should be written on our hearts and woven into the very fabric of our beings and it is on these two words that I would like to reflect this evening.

Today is the anniversary of the death of our first prioress - Mother Catherine Plunkett, a grand-niece of St Oliver Plunkett.

One hundred years ago last week, on the 28th June 1921, St Oliver’s head, which had been entrusted to the nuns of this community, was translated to its new home, the shrine in St Peter’s Church in Drogheda. The nuns were sorry to relinquish this precious relic, especially given the community’s close association with the beloved saint.

St. Paul said, “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.”