Offaly columnist reflects as beloved brother suffers massive heart attack
Recently, my family received one of those phone calls that changed everything. My brother Darragh had suffered a massive heart attack and urgently needed a quadruple bypass operation
Recently, my family received one of those phone calls that changed everything. My brother Darragh had suffered a massive heart attack and urgently needed a quadruple bypass operation. In moments like that, time collapses. The world narrows. Everything that once felt important such as deadlines, plans, possessions, arguments, ambitions, suddenly fades into silence. Only one thing remains loud enough to matter. Love.
A hospital corridor and a single word
Sitting quietly in the hospital during those long, anxious hours, surrounded by fear, prayer, hope, and uncertainty when suddenly my eyes were drawn to a simple painting on the wall. One word. love. Nothing else. No explanation. No decoration. Just love. And in that moment, it felt less like an artwork and more like a message from God Himself, gentle, unmissable, piercing through everything else. As I looked around those hospital corridors, I began to see what I had not noticed before.
Love was everywhere. In the exhausted nurse, still speaking kindly at the end of a long shift. In the doctor placing a steady hand on a worried shoulder. In families sitting silently, holding hands, praying without words. In text messages and phone calls received, in meals left at doors of our house. In candles lit in quiet churches. In friends simply saying: “We are here. We are praying.” And I understood something again that we so easily forget: Love is not one of the most important things in life. It is the most important thing.
“Where is the love?” — A question our world keeps asking
Only days before, I had been listening to Marty Whelan on Lyric FM in the morning, a small daily refuge for me from the relentless tide of news such as stories of war, division, suffering, and fear. Then a song came on by Roberta Flack: “Where Is the Love?” It felt less like entertainment and more like a prayer. A question that has echoed through generations, Where is the love in all of this? Where is God in all of this pain? Where is hope when hearts are breaking? And quietly, beneath everything else, the answer begins to form, not as a headline, but as a whisper, Love is still here. But it is often hidden in ordinary people doing extraordinary things quietly.
Love that is more than a feeling
Scripture never leaves love as an abstract idea. It gives it flesh, weight, and action: “Love is patient, love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:4). “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us…” (1 John 4:10). “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). Real love is not sentiment. It is not convenience. It is not attraction that fades when life becomes difficult. It is choice. It is sacrifice. It is presence. St. Thomas Aquinas once said love is “to will the good of another.” Not just to feel good about someone, but to actively desire their good, even at cost to ourselves. That is why the love in the hospital felt so real as it does in all hospitals any of us have a loved one in. It was not spoken, it was lived.
The love that holds the world together
There is a deeper truth beneath all human love that before anything was broken in this world, love already existed. God Himself is eternal communion, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, perfect love shared without beginning or end. And out of that overflowing love, we were created. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jeremiah 31:3). “Come to me, all you who are weary…” (Matthew 11:28). Even now, in brokenness, God does not withdraw. He draws nearer. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” (Psalm 34:18). Love does not disappear in suffering, it becomes most visible there.
The Cross: Where love becomes undeniable
At the centre of our Faith is not an idea, but a Person. Jesus Christ. And at the centre of His life is a cross.“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life…” (John 15:13). Jesus did not love from a distance. He entered suffering, betrayal, humiliation, pain. Not because we were worthy, but because love refuses to abandon. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). If we ever wonder what love looks like, we do not need to imagine it. We look at the cross.
Where love becomes visible again
But love does not remain only on a cross or in a church or in a hospital corridor. It is meant to become visible in us. Love is, the hand that stays when leaving would be easier. The forgiveness that breaks cycles of resentment. The patience that softens anger. The kindness that interrupts despair. The presence that says, “You are not alone”. Jesus makes it very simple: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34). Not selectively. Not occasionally. Not conditionally.
The look of love
A few days before all of this, I had been listening to the song, "The Look of Love", by Dusty Springfield. And later, at a wedding in the West of Ireland, the celebrant Fr. Tadgh spoke about living life with “the look of love” and seeing people not as interruptions or burdens, but as sacred souls. That phrase has stayed with me. Because everything changes when we learn to look differently. Beyond faults and into wounds. Beyond anger and into pain. Beyond difference and into shared humanity. “Whatever you did for the least of these… you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40). Every person is carrying something unseen. And often the greatest act of love is simply to notice.
A fragile reminder: What truly matters
My brother’s illness reminded me how fragile life is. We assume there will always be more time such as more time to call. More time to forgive. More time to say “I love you.” But love delayed is often love denied. “Teach us to number our days.” (Psalm 90:12). We leave this world with nothing we own. Only what we gave away in love remains.
Where is the love? It is still here
It is in nurses, doctors and people who work on the front line of our emergency care who keep going when they are exhausted. In families who stay when it is hard. In friends who show up without being asked. In prayers whispered in uncertainty. In small kindnesses that no one records. And in moments like a hospital corridor where everything falls away and what remains is unmistakable. "Love."
Thought for the Week
As your thought for the week, do not only ask: “Where is the love?” Ask instead, “Where can I become love?”. Try this: Speak gently where you would normally react. Forgive where you have held resentment. Call someone you’ve been meaning to call. Sit with someone who feels alone. Do one hidden act of kindness each day. Tell someone you love them, while you still can. Because there are no pockets in a shroud. We carry nothing out of this world except love given and received.
Somewhere between a morning radio song on Lyric FM, a hospital corridor, a painting with a single word, and the fragile reality of life itself, a truth becomes unavoidable, "Love is not everything in life. Love is the meaning of life." Let me leave you with a prayer I wrote about, "Where is the Love?" - "Loving God, in a world that often feels heavy with pain and uncertainty, teach us again how to love. Stand with those who are suffering, as You stood at the cross. Hold those who are afraid, as You held the broken hearted. Open our eyes to see love in ordinary places, in hospital corridors, in quiet kindness, in daily sacrifices. Soften our hearts where they have grown cold. Make us gentle where we have become harsh. Make us present where we have been absent. And where we are weary, fill us again with Your love that never fails. Let our lives become a reflection of You, so that when others ask, “Where is the love?” they may find it in us. Amen."