Prague Zoo🐒🐼🐘🐯🦁🦘

This afternoon we visited Prague zoo. Not much to see, most of the occupants remaining in their cozy enclosures away from the cold. We got tram, bus, metro and taxi in the course of our fun-filled adventure. On way home we dropped by The Charles bridge, my favourite spot in Prague. Homeless guy could not stop crying and kissing Holy Cross of Jesus on rosary beads. Not new! happens a lot but every time I am moved to tears.🥲

‘You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You’. (St.Agustine)

We got confused in 💵 conversion and only realised later that poor taxi driver overcharged us quite a bit. Tad annoyed with myself for not being more careful but much more than that I feel sorry for him. Not nice!! 

                                                        ‘You shall not steal’. (Exodus 20:15)

                                                                 The Charles bridge.❤️

Father God.📿

                                                             7AM Holy Mass this morning.🙏🏻☀️ 

Bitterly cold as I spy homeless man sleeping soundly in a doorway. Placing rosary beads in his open hand, I go on my way sadly.

Elegant courteous young man tells me: ‘You are the second person to mention God to me today. Already a lady came by and told me: ‘God does not like to see you smoking cigarettes’. He laughs in astonishment!

He never prays, ‘God is just an energy and no more’, he declares vehemently. After we talk a while I suggest: ‘You might place my prayer in a drawer, or a box and perhaps take it out again one day when you are as old as I am now’, to which he replies: ‘No. I will now place it in my wallet’.

We discuss cruel unjust Ukraine war, both of us crestfallen. I say: ‘We are not sharing our stuff with Ukraine visitors who reside in our lands now, we are sharing ‘God’s stuff’. What we have belongs to God, we are just stewards. The whole world is in gift form’ 🎁🙏🏻’

Young man, who for now simply cannot acknowledge God as his loving Father, smiles: ‘That is beautiful’, he replies……

                           ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart’. (Job 1:21)

Morning light☀️

‘My favourite definition of evangelisation: “One starving person telling another starving person where to find bread”. (Bishop Robert Barron)

Twenty years ago when I returned back home with my young boys, windswept, utterly uninteresting and in grave need, had even one person told me: ‘What we have belongs to God. We are just stewards’, I might not have felt so needy and downtrodden. 

For that reason I delight in sharing this precious gem with anyone and everyone and will continue to do so as long as I live.

‘What we have belongs to God. We are just stewards’.🎆

Prague guided tour🏟️

Snowing outside my hotel window this evening. Home at last, Thank God, after extensive informative (six hour) guided tour of Prague. Tour guide lady, amazing! She happily accepted my prayer as did all others on tour. Most enjoyable, ton of fun.🌠

I sat with dear lady again today and she remembered me from yesterday. I know because she took my rosary beads from her pocket with delight.☀️ High point🎆

                                                              Johnny and his precious pals.☀️

                            This river-boat home to countless homeless folk in winter months. 🥶

                                                                   Column of books.📚

                               Translated: ‘My life is fantastic because it is ordinary’. ( I love that)

                                                                 Christmas in March……….

                                                                           Seriously!!

                                             

                                                Too exhausted to write another word.📿😴💤💤

                                                                            Tourists are we!!🎆

Prague🌉☀️

‘We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way’. (St. Francis of Assisi)

Moved to tears receiving most Holy Eucharist at Holy Mass in this magnificent Church today. Radiantly beautiful beyond words. Reverential silence in this Sacred sacrosanct space. 

We visited the Charles bridge. Many homeless brothers and sisters. Kneeling, they hold their paper cups in humble stance, heads bent. This dear lady too old to kneel so she does the next best thing. I sit beside her on the cobblestones for a while sharing blue rosary beads and my widows’s mite. Just smiling, no need for words. Happy place for me to be.☀️

Wonderful guy drew my portrait on the freezing Charles bridge. Amazing!! Sitting still as countless folk passed by, stopping to gaze on his workmanship and then glancing back to me. Many nodding their heads in approval of the likeness. Kinda like a ‘makeover’. I being the last to see the outcome. He even got my Cross and Holy medals round my neck, that really made my day!!

                                                                The Charles Bridge.🌉

                                                                      Nightcap ☕️🍺 

‘Realise it, my brethren: everyone who breaths, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random. God sees every one of us’. (St. John Henry Newman)

 

Prague adventure🌠

‘We are born to love, we live to love, and we will die to love still more’. (St. Joseph Cafasso)

First day in Prague and what an adventure thus far. Holy Mass in Franciscan Friary yesterday morning. Sadly I could not receive Holy Eucharist (train leaving Killarney station any minute) but a lady right in front of my pew could not stop coughing and I had just what she needed in my bag - cough sweets. 

Sat in train with three guys returning from stag party, tired but not in the least gloomy. They loved my prayer!!

Tea in Heuston station cafe and a young man asked if I would please get him a cup of tea. Homeless, he told me, and as I gifted him money and prayer, he asked my age. ‘I’m sixty six’, I told him. ‘You have twenty more years’ he told me seriously. (Like he possessed some ‘inside information’). What’s not to love!! As he left cafe holding hot tea he called out: ‘God Bless you Bridget’, kissing my prayer at the same time.

Tanye and Mischa dropped by the station, our final meeting. They will return to Ukraine in two weeks. I gifted them miraculous medals. Mother Mary will keep them safe.🇺🇦😌

Taxi drive to Clayton hotel most enjoyable. Driver loved my prayer so much he placed it on display in his cab. This morning, taxi driver here in Prague did exactly the same thing.

Martin, Aimee, Josh, Ryan, Michelle, Gavin and many more received my prayer. I am so happy to be a prayer sharer in these tumultuous times. Our precious young folk are so open and crave deeply the good, the true and the beautiful.

Having just finished preflight breakfast in Dublin Airport this morning and wishing for one more cup of tea when a young waiter approached our table with just two cups of tea on a tray. We told him we hadn’t ordered them but he said: ‘No problem. Mistake. Have them anyway’, strictly refusing payment. Offering him my prayer I told him: ‘When you pray this every morning I am certain that all of Heaven will be minding you’. Over the moon waiter🙏🏻 and me too. ☕️

Our God cannot be outdone in generosity!

‘Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever’. (Psalm 23)

Thrilled to meet up with Ruairi, Derm and Shona in hotel last night.❤️

We met for the very first time almost one year ago.😌🇺🇦

Peace🕊️

‘A room without books is like a body without a soul’. (Cicero)

 

Gratitude 🙏🏻

                                 All wealth which is not my God to me is poverty’. (St. Augustine)

Holy Rosary in St. Anne’s cozy dayroom this rainy, bitter cold, March afternoon. I sit beside my dear auntie and every now and then she randomly declares: ‘Amen amen I say to you. Take up your cross and follow me’. Poignant words in this sublime setting!  

After a while Holy Spirit whispers into my deepest spirit: ‘What if she prays it after each decade’. Wow! I gently nudge dear Auntie when the time is right. Opening her sleepy eyes, she calls out her prayer every time. Luminescence and sublimity in the ordinary!

All of us sitting round in a sacred semicircle, I love to gaze on their perfectly polished shoes that will never wear out now. I ponder how these gentle folk must have oftentimes needed new shoes up and down the long years but had not the money to purchase them. Today new shoes, money in their bank accounts but they could care less about all that stuff now. 

Holy Rosary has steadfastly stood the test of time, and today as always brings them peace of mind and joy in abundance. Me too😄

I think to myself that indeed life is lived forward but can only be understood backwards. Love God and do His Holy Will to the best of our ability. He knows our every need, we will not go without.

‘Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward and learning to enjoy whatever life has, and this requires transforming greed into gratitude’. (St. John Chrysostom)

                                                                       Dear Auntie❤️

Outside my window this morning devoted crows building nests for their young ones. This time last year they themselves were ‘young ones’. This year they are parents. Let us not miss one minute of this glorious fleeting life from wonderful Father God.🎁 Freely we have received - Freely we shall give!!

                        ‘From His fullness have we all received grace upon grace’. (John 1:16)

‘

Dearest Mother Mary, Queen of peace. Keep our troubled minds at ease. Amen💎

She came strolling along as I dashed to my 10AM Legion of Mary meeting this morning. Yes, she has my prayer somewhere, she told me, happily accepting a second one. Just then someone driving by stopped to ask her something. ‘Ok’, I heard her say - ‘She’s just giving me a prayer’. ‘I have one too’, the other person replied.

Jesus will either still the storm or still you in the storm, I assured her, aware that right now a heavy burden weighs heavy on her poor heart.

‘May I call out my morning prayer’, she asks:

‘I put on God’s armour to resist the devil’s tactics. I stand my ground with truth bucked round my waist and integrity for a breastplate. I carry the shield of Faith to put out the burning arrows of the evil one. I accept salvation from God to be my helmet and receive the word of God from the Spirit to use as a sword’. (Ephesians 6: 10,11,14,17)

So beautiful. ‘That was a meeting from God’. I uttered. ‘Just thinking exactly that. Allelulia’, she replied.

Late for my Legion meeting but all as it should be.

‘The Legionary must always be on duty’. Frank Duff.

This evening Tamara 🇺🇦 gifted me this beautiful fridge magnet she managed to hold onto from her homeland Odessa. Her little grandson translates for us.🥳👵👵 I didn’t want to take it telling her that God owns everything, we are all simply sharing His stuff, but she insisted, such is her joy having her own Holy Bible once more. I love my fridge magnet. Odessa is a port city. 🛳️