Fr La’s weekly ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path at Lough Derg. This week’s reflection – Back where it Began On Station Island for the weeks ahead, I become again a pilgrim. Here near Saints Island, where it all began, I think on the thousands who have been and gone before me. The […]

For a second pilgrimage season in a row the Lough Derg boats will not ferry pilgrims, yet the voice of prayer will not be silent. The traditional pilgrimage on Lough Derg will not go ahead this summer. The public health measures still in place within the phased relaxation of restrictions do not go far enough […]

Fr La’s weekly ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path at Lough Derg. This week’s reflection – Bluebells in May  In May, for Mary, wild flowers are my choice: the simple ones that lift my heart beneath the local hedgerows. And this year I had bluebells from the start, some from beside the spring […]

The Seventh Joy : Family Life in Nazareth : ‘The Hidden Years’.   Across four decades of his painting from the 1970s, Michael D. O’Brien has returned again and again to create warm images of domestic life in the home at Nazareth.  The gospels refer to Jesus both as ‘the carpenter’s son’ and as ‘the […]

Fr La’s weekly ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path at Lough Derg. This week’s reflection – After the Rain    The evening was not promising but I headed for the car.                                 The Path above Lough Derg would do me good.  I had not bargained quite for what would come.   From the […]

The sixth joy : The Finding of Jesus in the Temple  This event is one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.  Joseph and Mary emerge from the darkness of their anxiety, framed in an archway.  They find Jesus at the centre of a group of elders, holding the scroll of the scriptures. Another boy […]

Fr La’s weekly ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path at Lough Derg. This week’s reflection – Three Mysteries  Some weeks ago it is since first I noticed, just over the stile, as the Path begins, these shattered eggshell fragments.  Each time I pass the question comes again: What happened here? From where might […]

The fifth joy: The Return from Egypt to Nazareth.   In his 2016 painting The Return to Nazareth O’Brien offers no details of landscape, just Joseph and his family with the humble donkey, set against heaven and earth.  Joseph’s eyes look upwards out of the picture, perhaps suggesting his trust in God above as he […]

In this week’s ‘Pause and Ponder’ from along the Pilgrim Path Fr La reflects on the ‘Sight and Sound of Summer’.   Summer on the lough shore here is clearly moving on. These golden gorse blooms last week at the quarry failed to catch my eye.  This week I cannot miss them.   Less showy […]

The fourth joy: The Presentation in the Temple and Simeon’s blessing.   In O’Brien’s painting of The Presentation we recognise that the artist has preferred depth of meaning over realism: the child is not a six-weeks-old infant but the Light of the Nations and the fulfilment of the scriptures as suggested by the book he […]