St Maria Goretti

Sonnet

Fill your faithful with holy joy.
You bestow eternal gladness.
There is greater strength in an alloy.
Our different metals can give us happiness.

I went to a family baptism on Sunday.
What joy there is in purity and innocence.
If only we could be more like children every day.
Living for this moment with no fearful sense.

St Maria Goretti kept her soul.
She was only twelve years.
And her murderer repented all in gaol.
For the rest of his life he shed tears.

We of this world will never be like her.
We will just get by shedding an occasional tear.

Haiku

Is our soul put first
Or do we just accept fate
We are just not saints

Sonnet

He had a dream, a ladder was there.
With its top reaching heaven and angels going up and down.
It seems so difficult to climb, we shed a tear.
We feel in our own inadequacy, we are ready to drown.

Angels can, if they want, fly.
We have to climb wearisome step by step.
How will we ever get to the top we sigh.
And won’t we fall with one just misstep.

We just hold the ground we stand on.
We can neither walk nor run.
But our hearts can climb to a new dawn.
We are just blinded by our material sun.

I am still only on the first rung.
With fear my heart is wrung.

Haiku

The ladder is there
We must have courage to climb
Is it really hard

Sonnet

To stop me getting too proud.
I was given a thorn in the flesh.
I know sometimes I speak too loud.
I feel myself caught in pride’s mesh.

At Mass the Covid marshal was bossy.
I felt like biting my wrist.
Why do we all have to be such a sissy.
Why can’t we stay in spiritual mist.

If you control people’s lives.
You only create hypocrites.
That is the only sin that survives.
Now we can’t even be moralists.

The only rule, don’t break the rules of the state.
I must be calm and try not be too irate.

Haiku

Control people’s lives
We all become hypocrites
Cry freedom for all

St Thomas the Apostle

Sonnet

You believe because you can see me.
Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.
Often it is not what you are told but what you can see.
It is not what you have heard but what you receive.

I was sitting alone in the church putting truth through the mill.
I looked through the window, a cowed mooed, a cock crowed.
In the deep silence the air suddenly felt heavy and still.
I felt a presence. I did not need to rationalise or be persuaded.

Faith is not something that can be proved.
It is a hard to touch feeling.
It comes and goes, transient, nothing is ever solved.
It is less a question of knowing, more a path of seeking.

I left the church revived.
The doubts also revived.

Haiku

Faith cannot be proved
It is surely transient
It has to be felt

Sonnet

It is not the healthy who need the doctor.
But the sick.
I need a good proctor.
Maybe a bit of a kick.

Where has my faith gone.
Why is it so weak.
Where is the new dawn.
Why do I still seek.

That’s why I need his help.
I cannot do it on my own.
I am wading through kelp.
I feel so lone.

Please help me.
So that I may see.

Haiku

Am I then alone
Or can I count on his help
Perhaps then I can

Sonnet

Which is easier to say, get up and walk.
Or your sins are forgiven.
Some like me do little but talk.
Others into martyrdom are driven.

I often rest awhile beside Oliver Plunket’s tomb.
At Downside it is raised up on pillars high.
Here the shadows of an unforgiving past loom.
But here was a man’s conscience that could not lie.

He could have remained quietly a professor at Rome.
But treaded fearlessly the fields and ways of Ireland.
Convicted on false testimony he died far from home.
And the last to have blood cleaned by the gibbet’s sand.

I freely admit I do and would have compromised.
Doing only what was and is authorised.

Haiku

Do we die for faith
Do most of us compromise
That is always thus