Dear Gabriel,

It is worth also looking underneath the great and noble for the holy. On this, the feast day of St. John of the Cross we are reminded of some of the greatest Mystical poetry ever written, particularly from ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.

On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

But it was something else that caught my eye and held my attention at Mass. At the sign of peace, while we were shaking hands with each other in our usual, slightly awkward way, I noticed an old man kiss a small picture of someone held in his hand. I wondered if it might be his deceased wife. If so I had seldom seen such a lovely gesture.

Yours,
Thomas