Helen knew her weeks were numbered. We had chatted last August about her recurring cancer and about the young family she must soon leave behind. I carefully asked how she coped with her anxiety – and whether I could help in any way. Looking slightly surprised she said, “Oh no. I have two lovely children. And a great partner. God has given me time to prepare two little boxes for my sons. One day they […]
There is a small red button on the crematorium lectern. When you press it, the coffin slides through the curtains into the fire-chute. As I reached for the button, the doors at the back of the chapel suddenly swung open and a young, hand-cuffed man stumbled through. He was accompanied by two police officers, a man and a woman. The three of them came slowly, but determinedly, to the front. The prisoner, Ben, allowed out […]
I was ‘doing supply’ for my brother in the N Ward of a large hospital in Manchester. As ‘acting chaplain’ I was called out one night to a patient in deep distress. The reason given to me by the doctor was as follows. ‘This patient is deeply disturbed by her sins and imperfections. She is convinced that she is not in the state of grace, whatever that may mean. Short of sedation, I can do […]
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 […]
It was a dark, eerie Friday afternoon at the end of March. The children were racing from our local school to the waiting bus. Suddenly a girl noticed the magnificent rainbow. There it was, an arc of beauty, elegant as a ballet-dancer, stretching gracefully across the blood-shot sky of our small city. Fine-tuned as they were to the play of light and shade, to the dance of colours, from their Lenten class-preparation for the Feast […]
I could feel the anger coming on. If he does not stop soon, I was thinking, I’m going to lose it. He didn’t and I did. With little warning, the red mist struck. It does not happen to me very often. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve exploded in company. Strangely enough, I haven’t ever regretted those out-of-control moments. There was always something real about them. When such outbursts […]
( From last week ‘I looked up a bit of history about Church development and so on and I came across quotations saying: “There are many theologies within the Catholic Church” – I should have known that of course and I did in a sense – but I didn’t know, say, that St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas who lived around the same time had quite different theologies and yet they are both famous for […]
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 […]
