A selfish person can still love someone else, can't they? Even when they've hurt them and let them down.

And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit.

But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels.

When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels.

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

It's not the fledgling birds that are thrown out of the nest by their parents and made to fly; it's the parents who are made to get the hell out of cozy family nest by their teenage offspring. It's we who are made to be independent of them, crash-landing if we don't manage it.

My job isn't to go around judging people. Priests are meant to teach love and forgiveness. That to me is the essence of being a Christian. And trying to find that love and forgiveness in ourselves and others every day should be a challenge that we want to achieve.