Homily, Third Day of Retreat to Priests of the Diocese of Galway
Knock Shrine, Co Mayo
Wednesday, 10 May 2017

If a man believes in me, it is in him who sent me, not in me, that he believes; to see me is to see him who sent me. (John 12:44)

We continue, day after day, to read the Fourth Gospel, and we shall do so until Pentecost. It is the Gospel of the Father. Everything in the Fourth Gospel, from the first page to the last, draws us forward, by faith, into the bosom of the Father, in sinu Patris, and this, in fulfilment of the priestly prayer of the Son:

This, Father, is my desire, that all those whom thou hast entrusted to me may be with me where I am. (John 17:24)

It is by the gift of faith that the Father, through the Son, and by the secret operations of the the Holy Spirit, draws us to Himself. How can I not recall here the experience of Saint Ignatius of Antioch: “There is within me a water that lives

Homily, Second Day of Retreat to Priests of the Diocese of Galway
Knock Shrine, Co Mayo
Tuesday, 9 May 2017

The Collect of the Mass on any given day is a pure distillation of the Church’s prayer. The Collect of the day is nothing less than the Holy Spirit “helping us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26). The Collect of the day is the Church articulating for us those “sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26) by which the Holy Spirit himself intercedes for us, filling us with the prayer of Christ.

The Collect of the Mass, like the Prayer Over the Oblations and the Postcommunion, is given us not only as the form of our prayer but also as a lesson in the school of prayer. If you would learn how to pray rightly, if you would pray in a manner thoroughly Catholic and priestly, if you would pray “as the Holy Spirit gives utterance” (cf. Acts 2:4), then pay attention to the Collect. Learn from the Collect of every