Last Of The Summer Wine He is short and scrubby. She is tall and rock jawed. He lives on the first floor, while she lives on the second level right above him. For some unexplained reason she is his heart throb, while he is her most constant nuisance. For him love is blind, so it…
Sunset In The Park It has been sixty summers since I played Gaelic football with my school mates and others in our local ball field as the sun sank in the western sky. It has been somewhat less than that since we played in that field by the light of the summer moon. Yes, my…
Dear friends, Just a little note to let you know of the events planned for the closing of our beloved Sacred Hearts Retreat Center. CLOSING MASS To give thanks to God for 76 years of ministry and service, join us in an outdoor gratitude and farewell Eucharist on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, June…
Requies Cat In Pace I first met him at the post office in the summer of 2012 when I first arrived in Kalaupapa. I believe he felt that he had been called to be the official greeter for the post office and the administration office. He was large and strong, yet very gentle and friendly…
Salute To A Hero Hero! We all have heroes. Well at least some of us do. So it is no surprise that in his most recent reflection one of our Sacred Hearts men in California, Fr. John Roche, told how from his youthful days onward he had a devotion to St. Damien and marveled at…
The Day I Lost My Sole It all started in the morning of April 4 when I went to our Kalaupapa International Airport to meet a plane load of young men and women who were arriving on Saints Damien and Marianne land in order to spend a few days of retreat away from the business…
Ashes To Ashes “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the women don’t get me, the drink it must.” It has been fifty years since I first heard those rather irreverent lines spoken by Lee Marvin in the 1969 movie, Paint Your Wagon. Now I am not about to further quote from the gospel…
A Time To Remember I threw on my Savers dark dustcoat, stepped out into the rain, and headed for my Paddy Wagon. I must have looked like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday on the way to the O.K. Corral that morning, but I was not heading to a corral, not even the mule corral. By this…
Room In The Inn The bus was filled to capacity and one very pregnant woman was left standing in the aisle up front in the clear view of all the other passengers. No one got up to offer a seat to her, no one that is except the bus driver. Quickly realizing the situation, he…