The title for this is “Theology is a Love Story” and it is not easy to read theology as a love story because so often in our experiences theology is not always that relevant to life. Let me just mention how I came to this title – “Theology is a Love Story”. It was on Easter Bank Holiday of 2018 and I was struggling with this particular episode and this particular topic. How to write […]
Basically, the Catholic sacramental imagination is an effort to recover a revealed insight about the meaning of the incarnation. That insight concerns the actual enfleshing of God’s own self, first in Jesus, and because of our solidarity with him, in all of us as well. It would look to our humanity and to our human experiences as the prime site, so to speak, for the unfolding of, and for encounter with, the incarnate presence of […]
Creation is clearly the first revelation of God. ‘Ever since God created the world, his everlasting power and deity have been there for the mind to see in the things that he has made.’ (Rom1:20) In his Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas wrote ‘God produces man and diverse creatures so that what was lacking in one in representation of this great divine goodness might be supplied by another. The whole universe together participates in the divine […]
( The reflections for August are taken from the first section of Horizons of Hope) When the unfolding of life itself at all levels of being is understood as the unfolding of the incarnate mystery we call God, then many of the ‘certainties’ and boundaries of our faith are radically shaken. As our perennial, dualistic indoctrination rapidly recedes under the holistic vision of a common intimacy and immediacy between Creation and Creator, our way of […]
( The reflections for August are taken from the first section of Horizons of Hope) Scientist Guy Consolmagno SJ, curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory, throws a deep and lovely light on our struggles to understand the questions I’m raising in these reflections. These questions and suggestions concern the marriage between our faith and the revelations of science, between religion and cosmology (i.e. the origins of the universe). He suggests that we rephrase the […]
( The reflections for August are taken from the first section of Horizons of Hope) What happens to our faith when we shift the locus of God from the private sanctuary of our routine worship into the raging, desperate realities of a speeding, spinning, graced and sinful world? How differently will we go to Mass, or kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, or begin the Creed, when the God we believe in is in no way […]
( The reflections for August are taken from the first section of Horizons of Hope) Everything Belongs and is Already Within When I look at the utter magic of nature, at the exquisite colouring and shaping of all things, the endless variety of species, the time and tuning of things, the rhythm and rhyme of things, the miracles of scientific discoveries, the astonishing newness of life’s unfolding, I say to myself, ‘Is this source, force […]
( The reflections for August are taken from the first section of Horizons of Hope) When the planets have all been charted and occupied, the mysteries of God unveiled; when the wisdom of the wise has left no more questions and when all the exploring, discovering, inventing and dreaming are completed, when the maps of life are spread out across the fields of eternal evolution, and the full story of a trillion years of creation […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) I have cried a lot these late summer days. It may be due to old age. Today David Attenborough has admitted to crying more than ever before – the most recent reason being the plight of the young penguins dying in the Antartic. Apart from being my first reaction to the news and fear of cancer I’m not sure […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) It surprises me that occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I can often 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 […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) ‘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 […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) Within the last year I wrote An Astonishing Secret – the Love-Story of Creation and the Wonder of You. It was full, for me at least, of vital, spiritual connections and clarifying mental observations. It was also completed before cancer struck, when my mind was clear and my health was enviable. Trying to create those healing connections just now, […]
Mr Casey was always courteous. He was the conductor on the Bus Eireann that dropped me at Lisivigeen, near Killarney, for my first ever summer holiday, eight miles from home. I was seven then. Our farmer friends were waiting at the crossroads. Mr Casey helped me down the three steps of the bus with my strapped and bulging suitcase. We waved him goodbye and set off across the fields for the farmhouse. No emperor ever […]
We’ll find much brighter stars than know/Old Aldebaran or the Bear. Summer days and childhood memories! When they come together, they twist our hearts without warning. Like a high-octane cocktail, they hit us suddenly and mercilessly with emotions. The smells, the sights, and the feel of summer so often strike, with painful intensity, at the tender, forgotten and sleeping magic of those special years. There is a pathos, a poignancy and the strangest sadness in […]
A few years ago a shy young couple from a ‘good Catholic family’ in the parish asked to get married in Church. Because I had never seen them at Mass I did not immediately agree to their request and suggested further meetings. Maybe it was the tone of my voice, or maybe they were not very keen in the first place, but the outcome was that I never saw them again. I did hear some […]
At 84 Samuel Becket was asked about the possibility of his retirement. “What!,” he exclaimed, “Me? Retire? Never – not with the fire in me now!” Not all of us are that lucky. In my travels I meet teachers and priests for whom the original vision of their vocation has all but disappeared. There seems to be a universal kind of ennui, a deep-seated sense of pressure, that is driving people to retire as soon […]
It happened in May last year. Easter was well and truly over and Pentecost was beckoning. Tired after Monday’s disappointing golf, I checked the ansafone. It was a woman’s voice. “Sir, I would like to have my baby christened next Sunday.” I tensed. She didn’t even know my name. Neither was she aware of our ‘two months notice’ requirement. Or the need for the pre-baptismal talks. I fumed like this for a while before ringing […]
I cannot switch off from Joseph. He has inched his way into my soul. He comes to the presbytery on a Saturday around four. He smells, he shouts, he stares. He is a heavy drinker, a gambler, and has frequent brushes with the Law. He barges into every conversation I try to have with parishioners before and after Mass. He mutters obscenities and will not be silenced. He rings me at all hours of the […]
A friend of mine entered for last year’s Talent for Britain auditions. I tuned in to one of the first episodes. The panel judges were finding it all rather boring and predictable. During the interval they said so. Mr Potts, a sad-faced young man from Wales was next up. He said he would like to be an opera singer. I noticed two of the three judges throwing cynical glances at each other. Paul Potts opened […]
Resurrection is as earthy, local and intimate as our sweat and blood, our dreams and nightmares, our drives and passions. It is as real as whatever or whoever drives and drains us, draws and drags us. Resurrection, in fact, is the deepest meaning of everything that brings a smile to our face, a tear to our eyes, a vitality to our bodies, a softness to our voices and a tenderness to our touch. Resurrection is as real as that. […]
There is one occasion in the year when we gather to watch the figure of a man on the cross outlined starkly against the fading light and there is always a thoughtful child who asks the perennial question, ‘Why do we call Good Friday “good”?’ It is a profound question. Another way of putting it is, ‘If Jesus was a man of love why was he killed? And if this good man was killed, why […]
What happens to our faith when we shift the locus of God from the private sanctuary of our routine worship into the raging, desperate realities of a speeding, spinning, graced and sinful world? How differently will we go to Mass, or kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, or begin the Creed, when the God we believe in is in no way confined to churches or religions, except in so far as these institutions, at their best, […]
Like a recurring dream, it comes back to me every Easter week – a vivid memory that seems to have lodged deep within me, and only emerges on a sunny afternoon in April. I’m about 14 years old and just up after a teenage type of flu. I’m walking along the Forge Cross road near my home. A Spring sun is shining. I’m wearing a new brown suit and new brown leather shoes. To my […]
In preparing to commemorate the Resurrection, we should, rather than pursue a private line to God, be asking some very public questions about our personal life choices, such as what we buy, how we vote, how simply we live, our sense of solidarity with others. Cusco, city of the Inca gods, is perched on a plateau of the Peruvian Andes. The people of the city, ever ready to party, will soon be celebrating Easter with gusto. They are […]
When the news spread across the world in 2001 that Archbishop Bergoglio had washed and kissed the feet of 12 Aids victim in a Buenos Aires hospice, a new hope was born in many hearts. Uncontrived and spontaneous, this was a truly radical thing to do. Each Maundy Thursday he washed the feet of the poor. He will do it again next week. No empty gesture this – it is the mini-sacrament of where his […]
The mystery of life is one thing; the mystery of God another. But to what extent are they different? To what extent are they the same? Life and God. The One Being. Has this sense of oneness, this intimation of unity, not become more evident since the moment of Incarnation? There is an amazing transformation of ‘faith’ in our understanding and imaging of God when these two realities are identified as One; the Being of […]
