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 […]
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 and energy of life the same mystery that we call God; the God we worship as the Father of Jesus, the […]
Billions of years ago an invisible dot of nothingness exploded into everything that is – the infinite cosmos of each tiny heart, the eternal heart of each expanding cosmos. And we somehow knew it was the unfolding of a love-story. We sensed that the Big Bang was the sound of love, and that creation, once molten rock, would one day sing operas. On planet earth, almost 14 billion years later, another invisible dot of love […]
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 is spoken out for the first time, it will be finally clear that all growing […]
From its very beginning nearly fourteen billion years ago, creation was already permeated and filled with God’s compassionate presence. There never was a time or space in the history of evolution when God was absent from the world. In the person of Christ this tremendous love story has been finally revealed. The healing wholeness has been accomplished. The human is now the home of the divine. What was begun in creation is completed in Incarnation. […]
Another simplistic explanation for the baffling question of the seemingly random tragedies and accidents happening to children and innocent people, has been the notion that in this life we look at the tapestry of our lives from the back, full of incomprehensible criss-crosses of thread and fabric, but when we get to heaven all will be revealed when we see the brilliant front of it. While still small, I remember thinking, ‘Tell that to the […]
We are called to be both the agony and ecstasy of God for the health and wellbeing of the world; to accept and to somehow participate in the mystery of death and resurrection deep in one’s own soul and in the life of the universe. Reading and trying to interiorise some of these wise reflections brings healing for someone like me just now. That is, on those occasions when they break through the negative thoughts […]
In common with suffering, thoughtful millions who, in a warring world of evil and destruction, doubt and wonder about the meaning of a saving God, I too have hard questions now. Can people walk through a children’s hospital ward and still believe in a loving Saviour? David Attenborough asks many questions about a God who will not, or cannot remove the worm that is eating into the baby’s eye. There are massive questions about innocent […]
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 […]
TEARS OF THINGS’ I cried a lot those late summer days. It may have been 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 why I cry now. But that response has spread out into other vulnerable dimensions […]
THE SEAMLESS LOVE-WEB OF THE SPIRIT AND EVOLUTION 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 […]
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, […]
Creating a world in need of development, God in some way sought to limit himself in such a way that many of the things we think of as evils, dangers or sources of suffering, are in reality part of the pains of childbirth which he uses to draw us into the act of cooperation with the Creator. God is intimately present to each being, without impinging on the autonomy of his creature and this give […]
The Christmas hype is well and truly over but the meaning of Incarnation has no ending. In January, the month of courageous beginnings, Christians will try to live out in their lives the Feast of Love and Mercy they have just celebrated. In a weeping world they will put love where there was no love and thus continue the human Incarnation of divine love. Life itself, all that it brings, all that we experience, every […]
English poet Christina Rossetti was looking through the lens of Incarnation when she prayed: Lord, purge our eyes to see, Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. God is now fleshed. To perceive the world in Christmas light is to discern the hidden depths of everything, the astonishing possibilities in all that happens, the extraordinary mystery abiding within the ordinary. This Christian revelation of an incarnate […]
In his humanity Jesus scandalised his neighbours; he came eating and drinking and they called him a glutton and a drunkard; he showed his anger, his desires, his need of male and female company; his frustration, his impatience – “Get behind me Satan,” he exploded. And again, “How long have I been with you and yet, you have learned so little!”. He showed his weakness, his doubt, his feelings of abandonment. And yet, this is […]
‘Excitement and joy flow out from Tom and Rhianna whenever they talk about the pregnancy. Their delight is infectious but more striking is their sense of privilege – to be having this baby is wondrous gift. Together they’ve opened up a heightened awareness of the miracle, hope, promise of this one new life, a recognition of the holiness, fragility and wonder of this baby, their baby. There is a new stillness in them, as if […]
The Irish poet and farmer Patrick Kavanagh had an instinctive awareness of the meaning of Incarnation. His was a sacramental imagination. Even in his descriptions of the most common things, his homespun words and wisdom carry in them hints of Heaven, enabling his readers to be open to them too. My father played the melodeon Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east And they danced to his music. In A […]
Too often at Christmas, the real magic is missed. There is nothing infantile about the infant; the innocence of the child is the power of God filling the hearts and souls of all beloved and broken people with hope and light Back in the 1950s, during December days, at around 6 p.m., a small army of boys and girls were collected from the neighbouring villages of Knocknagree, Gneeveguilla and Barraduff, and taken to Rathmore Creamery, […]
We can journey from frailty to freedom in our lives, and that progress is made, necessarily, not only in the mind but also in the body. To reach this goal, like the best dancers, we must ‘swallow fire’ “A flamenco dancer, lurking under the shadow, prepared for the terror of her dance. Somebody has wounded her in words, alluding to the fact that she had no fire or duende. She knows she has to dance […]
We are called into the deep by God’s dream for us. 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, […]