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Praying for our Troubled World(Part 3): A New Beginning

WeeklyReflection

(Last part of a 3 part unpublished article) Another Beginning All of this brings us to a new way of being, a new way of seeing, a new way of praying. In the Christian tradition this revelation has been called ‘the sacramental vision’, the ‘catholic imagination’. It springs from the orthodox theology of nature and grace, from the mystical spirituality of humanity, from the astonishing implications of Incarnation. It reveals to us the nature of […]

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Praying for our Troubled World (Part 2): The Urgency of Pope Francis

WeeklyReflection

The Urgency of Pope Francis                                                                                                            Too many of us say a few passing prayers for the wider, wounded world, contribute our loose change, blame someone or other for the situation, and feel smug about our efforts as dutiful citizens. Such shallow involvement may work wonders for personal ego-health; it does little for the eco-health of our natural home. We are called to be present to the troubles of the world in a real way. It […]

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Praying for our Troubled World (Part1)

WeeklyReflection

You are away from your family. Your family is in trouble. You pray for the family. You hope the prayers will work. But you are still anxious. You decide to go back home. You arrive at home. You bring your full attention to the whole situation. You are there in person, with your total concern, your full involvement, your truest self. It is your home, where you began your life’s journey. It is where you […]

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We are called into the Deep by God’s Dream for Us

WeeklyReflection

Recently, I took a walk along the prom here at Blundellsands. The crisp dry November evening brought families out, to stroll, fly kites and generally enjoy this beautiful Sunday, here was I, among my new neighbours. It felt good. However, as time went on, in the far distance, my attention was drawn to what seemed to be a stately vessel resting on the deeps, it was set against a backdrop of the faintest pastel hues […]

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Grace and Radiance

WeeklyReflection

Beauty is a pillar of faith, alongside goodness and truth. In an often dark world, we struggle to ensure that its importance and sacramental quality are not lost, for at the deepest level of our being we already know beauty and resonate sympathetically with it  Across the ward, a man is struggling. His body is writhing on the chair near the bed. His right leg, arthritic and misshapen, is kicking against the cubicle curtain. Sweat […]

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God in the Scattered Fragments

WeeklyReflection

Even if we wished we would be hard put to avoid the experience of God. The experience of God is practically inescapable. We cannot help coming into the embrace of divine compassion whenever we experience anything. Michael Skelley writes, ‘We do not sometimes have experiences of love, fear, ourselves, or anything else and then also have experiences of God. The basic, original experience of God, on the contrary, is the ultimate depth and radical essence […]

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Eternity of Childhood

WeeklyReflection , ,

The coming of summer stirs our hearts. As the warm and welcome colours of June play across the fields and streets around us, those vulnerable hearts are moved again by an aching kind of remembering and longing first awakened in our childhood experiences of nature. Because Pope Francis believes that God’s extravagant love is inscribed into all such explorations and yearnings, he regards those memories as small epiphanies of incarnate grace. Our friendship with God, […]

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Time to Imagine

WeeklyReflection

(A beautiful letter Daniel imagined writing to Pope Francis in 2015. He never sent it nor was it published. It carries wisdom and hope for us today.) Caro Papa Francisco, After reading your encyclical Laudato Si’ I had a dream. Before I tell you about it may I thank you on behalf of millions who are finding new hope in your redeeming leadership. You are parting the veils for us, allowing us glimpses into the […]

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The Breath of Love

WeeklyReflection

There are places on earth that take our breath away. There are millions of wondrous species that we never even imagined. There are landscapes that are wrapped around our world like multi-coloured tapestries. Natural history programmes proliferate on our social media, and more people than ever are enchanted by them. Over 14 million of us in the UK, for instance, 80 million in China, with numbers rapidly expanding across the world, watched Blue Planet II, […]

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A Sacrament called Bread

WeeklyReflection ,

For a start, a truly incarnational theology of liturgy insists that our ritual acts of worship must never be seen as isolated interventions of grace into our otherwise ‘merely’ secular lives and world.  Rather are they the symbolic expressions of the holiness of creation itself.  This is a hugely significant truth and it takes some explaining. The Incarnation of God did not only happen in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The Incarnation actually began 14 billion […]

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Mothering Landscape

WeeklyReflection , ,

I was born and grew up in the shadow of the Paps in the South-West of Ireland. The Paps are two breast-shaped mountains that dominate the skyline along the road that runs from Cork to Killarney.  They are named in honour of the goddess Danu (Da Chich Danann) who reigned supreme across Europe in more peaceful times.  To complete nature’s astonishing silhouette, the local worshipers laboriously carried rocks and boulders all the way to the […]

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The Language of Love

WeeklyReflection

We met under a shower of bird-notes. Fifty years passed, love’s moment In a world in servitude to time. She was young; I kissed with my eyes closed And opened them on her wrinkles. Tucked away in some part of our soul there will be a precious memory of a season of love.  It may have been in our childhood, our teenage years or last August, but one moment will always be special.  Even if […]

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Cosmic Connection of the Heart

WeeklyReflection ,

Our understanding of the Holy Spirit is mostly too limited and too undeveloped. It is time now to acknowledge and release her surging power throughout all life. We need to begin delighting in, and celebrating the dynamic Spirit pulsing through the Church, through humanity, through the evolving universe and through every corner of our own hearts We were on our way back home after Benediction one bright night, many decades ago, my mother and myself, […]

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Love before Knowledge

WeeklyReflection ,

We are now at the beginning of October. I have always celebrated this week when we honour those special saints Thérèse and Francis of Assisi. They specialised in living the way of unconditional love. They knew spiritual things, as St Paul put it, ‘in a spiritual way’. With Teilhard de Chardin, they regarded love as the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious personal and cosmic force. Teilhard’s wish was that humanity would […]

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The Seamless Love-Web of the Spirit and Evolution

WeeklyReflection

Much of all this is challenging and confusing, but only because it is different from what we were often (very erroneously) told. It is the heart of our faith but in a new language and imagery. It is worth all the energy and passion we can muster to understand it more profoundly. This theology tries to tell the Christian Story in terms of a deep and endless love: always flowing from within, the work of […]

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Love Images

WeeklyReflection ,

Occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I will reach for a pen and a page to take my mind off the situation I want to deny. I find a blessed relief in mulling over the love-story of Incarnation, ruminating on the forgotten theological and spiritual teachings, and their implications for our lives and that of our precious world. And so, in the lovely light of these thoughts in many of these pages, […]

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Matter and Spirit

WeeklyReflection ,

‘Spirit always desires to incarnate itself.’ That is how Richard Rohr puts it. Translated into my current cancer condition it would mean that something truly divine is taking place in the growing or shrinking of my tumour. This understanding of our faith is, of course, as old as the hills. (And we are rarely reminded of it!) As Christians we should be identified by our ‘visceral’ attitude to Incarnation, and the paradox of suffering. Just […]

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Only Connect

WeeklyReflection ,

Our wisest people keep insisting on the healing power of connecting things in our minds, of trying to complete some fragments of life’s mystery as we experience it. You may have noticed this connecting dimension of my illness as expressed in these pages. How to see my personal pain as part of the universal and incarnate, beloved and broken presence of the Risen Christ, or of the free Holy Spirit at work and at play […]

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Reflection 4  Imagination – More important than knowledge

WeeklyReflection

(These reflections are offered to encourage you, God’s people, full of the Holy Spirit, to ‘do theology’ with your ‘sensus fidelium’ – that is with your own innate and graced wisdom. They focus on some theological intuitions and spiritual explorations to help you form a truer foundation for falling in love with God all over again. And to prepare us for the shape of tomorrow’s faith.  In the light of a healing theology of nature […]

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Reflection 3 Imagination is Everything

WeeklyReflection

(These reflections are offered to encourage you, God’s people, full of the Holy Spirit, to ‘do theology’ with your ‘sensus fidelium’ – that is with your own innate and graced wisdom. They focus on some theological intuitions and spiritual explorations to help you form a truer foundation for falling in love with God all over again. And to prepare us for the shape of tomorrow’s faith.  In the light of a healing theology of nature […]

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Reflection 2 – No imagination, no growing

WeeklyReflection

(These reflections are offered to encourage you, God’s people, full of the Holy Spirit, to ‘do theology’ with your ‘sensus fidelium’ – that is with your own innate and graced wisdom. They focus on some theological intuitions and spiritual explorations to help you form a truer foundation for falling in love with God all over again. And to prepare us for the shape of tomorrow’s faith. In the light of a healing theology of nature […]

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Reflection 1 A Daily Grace Called Imagination

WeeklyReflection

(These reflections are offered to encourage you, God’s people, full of the Holy Spirit, to ‘do theology’ with your ‘sensus fidelium’ – that is with your own innate and graced wisdom. They focus on some theological intuitions and spiritual explorations to help you form a truer foundation for falling in love with God all over again. And to prepare us for the shape of tomorrow’s faith. In the light of a healing theology of nature […]

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Cosmic Significance

WeeklyReflection

Don’t be put off by this phrase. It is becoming central to our understanding of Incarnation. This is one of the central themes of this book. In his The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and of the World Pope St John Paul II wrote, ‘The Incarnation signifies the taking up into unity with God not only human nature, but in the human nature, in a sense, everything that is flesh . . […]

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The Eyes have it!

WeeklyReflection

The poets and the artists bring the light we need to see and to recognise the divine contours of the cosmos of our hearts, and the heart of our cosmos. Unlike many of the official teachers of religion, they have never lost the sense of wonder at the mystery of the indwelling of God in Creation. For them, the smallest particle of creation becomes a window on God’s beauty. Their intense energy is spent on […]

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Reconciling Two Stories

WeeklyReflection

Two themes are interwoven through these pages– the mystery of Creation and the mystery of Incarnation. If we get one wrong, we get the other wrong too. (And we certainly have!) For the enlightened Christian both are central – the source and wellspring of all else. They are not two separate, disparate acts of God, two unconnected epic moments for the world. Theologian Karl Rahner reassures us that Creation and Incarnation are two moments and […]

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Start with your Heart

WeeklyReflection

I want to focus on some delightful new glimpses and insights that are now emerging to enrich people’s faith. Millions are finding renewed and deeper ways of being Christian, of being Catholic, of being human. A radical new light is being shed on that moment of love 2,000 years ago, when God was revealed at the centre of our lives and of our evolving world. Something amazing is happening. Something that could never have happened […]

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