Being claustrophobic, November is not my favourite month. It is when my nightmares are most vivid, as I panic in small, dark tunnels, filled with an unbearable terror. I sweat when I’m cornered, when I cannot get the aisle seat, the seat near the emergency exit, the seat nearest the door. I love spaces, vast expanses, unending horizons, seascapes and big windows. There is a huge, flat field within a mile of the presbytery where […]
I received Selena into the Church twelve years ago. When Selena was a small girl she loved to wear her grandmother’s shoes. One day she fell and cut her leg. The wound needed some stitches. It healed in its own time. Selena is now 23. We met again recently. We talked about that moment in her young life. She said she still had the scar. Instead of disappearing, it grew as she grew, becoming more […]
AlphaGo, a computer programme designed by the British Artificial Intelligence company DeepMind, beat Lee Sedol, the world’s top-rated Go player. Go is an ancient chess-type Chinese board game. Why was this event so widely reported in social media? Because, as The Times leader reported, ‘The computer was not programmed how to play the game; it taught itself . . . AlphaGo can act, but it can also react. It can use intuition and anticipate the […]
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 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 […]
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 those moments of memories ‘that bless and burn’, as my mother […]
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 […]
Love is all that we spend our lives seeking, but we forget along the way that love is present the moment we surrender to it. And the moment we surrender, we are no longer afraid of dying, or whether or not there is eternal life, because we have already found it, in love. Just one glimpse of true love, within and around us, shows us heaven. Love is eternal life. Because love sings forever, and […]
Whenever something is portrayed as so utterly itself, it cannot help revealing something of the Other To see God in the everyday, the divine in the worldly, the transcendent in the ordinary – that is what this chapter is about (indeed what the whole book is about) but here we call on the artist to help us achieve this kind of seeing. The emphasis will be on the artist as painter, and as painter of […]
In the documents of Vatican 1 and Vatican II there’s an image of God, when creating Adam and Eve, seeing, in imagination, a unique man, Jesus, who would exist in the distant future. It was God’s image of God’s own self made human in a real person. As he shaped and moulded Adam and Eve from the mud, his artist’s eye was on that inner picture of divine incarnation in a certain baby, nearly 14 […]
People grow in faith through their experiences-and our experiences belong to the flesh. Think then for instance, of your own favourite daily bread-the touch of it, the smell of it, the taste of it. Think of real red wine, your favourite wine, swirling it, sniffing it, and savouring it. Think of the human body, your own beloved body and that of others, and all the sensations that your body brings you. Bread, wine and flesh […]
God was delighted to become human. Like parents’ love creates the baby, God’s love, too, overflowed into a baby 2000 years ago. Like parents, too, God was delighted with us – and God is still delighted with us now. God became human so as to reveal an unconditional love for us. Nothing can stop God loving us always – no matter what. There is nothing we can do to make God love us one bit […]
‘I wish those angels and demons would finally get off my back. One’s trying to take a piece of me, the other to heal the heart. Night and morning you’re in my head.’ Peter Andre may be reflecting on his own troubled life when he wrote these words for his CD Angels and Demons When I was small I could’ve written those words too. On my left shoulder, I was told, there was a nasty […]
Try to visualise the inner room of your heart. How often do you visit it? Keep it nourished? How often do you come home to yourself? It is the centre of our energy, motivation, imagination and compassion. Now is the opportunity to explore it. What needs to die within you at this time in your life – and what needs to grow? Is there something you need to know, the voice within you that you […]
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 […]
The mirror was as big as the wall of the room we were gathered in. It was my first Pilates class. Half way through I caught a glimpse of myself writhing on the floor, arms and legs all over the place like a beached octopus. Around me flexible bodies rotated rhythmically on their mats, balancing, stretching and pulsing to the music and the instructions. Sweat was dripping off my chin. My limbs were hurting. And […]
Think of the person who loves you most; who believes in you, who adores you, who loves you and knows you the closeness of our human God by heart. (Pause) Now that real relationship gives a glimpse of. God is not out there somewhere, far away, judging who’s good and who’s bad, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. So close is God to us that God lives at the centre of our lives, of our families, […]
I have only one reason for being here. There’s only one thing I want to say to you. One thing that changed my life – the day when I began to believe that God was utterly in love with me, that I was the apple of God’s eye – a presumption? Dear people, the God I tried to believe in for the first half of my life, is not the God I believe in now. […]
Maybe every 10 years or so there comes a time when we are ready, open to the Holy Spirit. And maybe for many of us, that time is NOW. Let’s pray . . . Dear God, Help me to spread your beauty wherever I go today. Flood my soul with your Spirit and light. Fill my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of you. Shine through me and […]
There’s something about summer evenings that provides the space to remember stories. When our minds let go of the feverish lists that fill the working mornings of our life, we find a queue of shy visitors awaiting their turn to heal, comfort or amuse us. Such visitors come as stories – sad and happy, as memories that bless and burn, as special moments carrying traces of light, shadow and humour. One story concerns a parish […]
Those who are committed to defending human dignity can find in the Christian faith the deepest reasons for this commitment … ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you’ (Jer 1: 5). We were conceived in the heart of God and for this reason ‘each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.’ (Benedict XVI) [Laudato […]
‘St Francis invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants to us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. Beyond the language of mathematics and biology he takes us to the heart of what it is to be human … just as happens when we fall in love with someone … [Laudate Si 12]’ It is more than information, the Pope is saying regarding St […]
In his Jubilee letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul ll, calling for ‘a new springtime of Christianity,’ had intimations of the cosmic nuances of preparing for the third millennium. He was well aware of the significance of creation theology in this regard. ‘The fact that in the fullness of time the eternal Word took on the condition of a creature, gives a unique cosmic value to the event which took place in Bethlehem two […]
Wet and weary we entered the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. The 100 km Camino walk was over and our bones ached during Mass. As we got up to leave, a huge thurible (the botafumiero) was let down on a thick rope on to the sanctuary floor. A tangible frisson of anticipation stirred throughout the packed pews. The censer weighed 80 kilos and stood 1.60 metres tall. The Camino de Santiago, the Way of St […]
Bright mornings bring the mountains to my doorstep, calm nights give the rivers their say. Some evenings the wind put its hand on my shoulder, I stop thinking, I leave what I’m doing and I go the soul’s way.’ John Moriarty Bright mornings . . . May we have bright mornings this week when the mountains of our minds become less daunting, become more accessible to us; may our morning thoughts decide the quality […]
One Easter the Harley-Davidson annual gathering took place in Killarney near where I was born. Instead of avoiding the noisy, crowded town on that week-end as many had supposed, the local people thronged the streets to see, and touch the silver, purring monsters. Parents, grandparents and small children, excitedly or wistfully, were visibly stirred by these gleaming icons of human transcendence. I wondered about the source of our innate desire for adventure, for new vistas, […]