The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

I'm learning that the blessing is located in our poor people, in people who are weak; they are the ones we should stay close to, not because they need us but because we need to receive from them the blessing.

Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey.

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.

I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.

When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.

Without Pentecost the Christ-event - the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - remains imprisoned in history as something to remember, think about and reflect on. The Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell within us, so that we can become living Christs here and now.