It was dark and I was taking the washing off my line. The lights streamed into the darkness from the kitchen, where my three girls were sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, chatting about their day. I watched the interaction between them, saw their animated discussion and knew that there, right in the heart of my home, God was too. A beautiful presence that set the place into radiance’. Paula, a friend, […]
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 […]
It happened in Rathmore, my home village in the south of Ireland. It is one of my first memories. It was Christmas Eve and I was four. The snow had started to fall. I was standing near the small door between our small shop and our small kitchen. I was beside myself with anticipation, hyped to the gills with Santa Claus. Christy Cremin had just bought his weekly ration of Woodbines. “Where is he now […]
Some things you don’t easily forget. I still remember a special moment from around this time last year. Their small faces ablaze with innocence, Kaitlin and Matilda lit the first purple candle in our Advent wreath. Something about the way they shyly smiled at each other was already providing us with a glimpse into the mystery for which we were preparing. What I was feeling was a kind of aching and longing. The focus shifted […]
It was dark and I was taking the washing off my line. The lights streamed into the darkness from the kitchen, where my three girls were sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, chatting about their day. I watched the interaction between them, saw their animated discussion and knew that there, right in the heart of my home, God was too. A beautiful presence that set the place into radiance’. Paula, a friend, […]
‘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 […]
Some kinds of vulnerability – the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual suffering that accompanies vulnerability – can make us angry, bitter, resentful, depressed, over-anxious, determined to protect ourselves as much as possible, and thus we can close down our defences, hide behind walls, narrow our vision, see things in a black and white way – and so reduce our learning – we can hold the world at a distance, we see it or other people […]
There are many faces to loss and loneliness. One face is about the precariousness of our human condition. The heart still twists in me, for instance, when, visiting residential homes, I see the dull glaze in the lonely eyes that once shone with delight – a delight that fills the happy, faded, family photographs hanging on the wall behind them. One such person admitted to finding the sound of overheard laughter unbearably poignant. There is […]
There is a powerful pathos in the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Autumn is heavy with such imagery and recollections. Falling October leaves preach poignant panegyrics as they go. November makes us vulnerable to the ache of a lasting […]
It is often said that people are searching for meaning in their lives. But could it be rather that they are looking for evidence that they are really and truly alive? A boy sat on the steps of a building with a battered hat by his feet. A cardboard sign read: “I’m blind. Please help.” The hat held a few small coins. A man was walking by. He dropped a euro in the hat, picked […]
One Celtic evening, the mythical Fionn Mac Chumhail and his warriors were having a discussion about the finest sound in the world. His son Oisin extolled the ring of spear on shield in the din of battle. Another went on about the fearful cries of the stags and the baying of the hounds in the rising blood lust just before the kill. Yet another spoke of the song of his beloved as she played the […]
If we are to hear the silent music beneath the noisy traffic of our thinking, we need to learn how to leave the mind and focus on the senses. The distractions of modern life prevent us picking up the rhythm of grace. At a Metro station in Washington DC a man started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that rush hour […]
My brother Joseph had Down’s Syndrome. Every so often, in my dreams, he still comes storming back to deeply disturb my life. My mother adored him. And during those most difficult times, especially when Joseph’s severe diabetes demanded unrelenting attention, she was sustained by the certainty that in caring for Joseph she was entertaining angels unaware. If I had my mother back now I would tell her that it was even more that that. It […]
Matthew Arnold (19th Century) wrote: ‘More and more humanity will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.’ ‘The poet or the novelist who can find the words and images that speak to our human condition – to our loneliness and pain, […]
(An Extract from Daniel’s teaching in Episode 4 of An Astonishing Secret video course.) These sentences are pretty packed with meaning and they need to be unpacked so I just hope you can listen to them with the ‘ear of your heart’. Remember them when you can during the day, that’s how they become part of our consciousness. Listen, now, with the ear of your heart to this paragraph: ‘God became human so that humans […]
From Episode 4 of the Astonishing Secret Videos This episode offers many examples, once again, of what we could call ‘the sacramental vision’. That’s one word for this while incarnational approach. Or the ‘Catholic imagination’ is another old name for what we are doing in this course. They are all ways of interpreting the incarnation. So one little story may help us again to again to get the feel for what we are doing when […]
‘Incarnation means that each human person has been taken up into the very heart of God, into a boundless love that ennobles each human being, conferring on them an infinite divinity. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells there with its tragedies and aspirations.’ Evangelii Gaudium 178 As this book began, so it ends, with the meditative reflection of Rhineland Mystic Mechtild of […]
‘We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared with everyone. Yet all is not lost . . . No system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, our God-given ability to respond to his grace at work deep in our hearts. I appeal to everyone in the world not to forget our dignity . . .’ “As never before […]
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 […]
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 […]
I’m alone for a moment, on the ferry home, half-way between Calais and Dover. It is Sunday morning and the sun is shining on the green-blue sea. As spring turns to summer, millions travel to Lourdes. Our own parish pilgrimage is almost over. Our hearts are full of stories of pain and joy, of some dark moments and many bright ones, of shared secrets, and glimpses of the mystery and paradox of the human spirit. […]
The coming of summer stirs our hearts. As the warm and welcome colours of July 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, […]
Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God. Whenever our eyes are opened to acknowledge the other, we grow in the knowledge of God, opening up spiritual horizons, taking us beyond our limited spiritual constructs. (Evangelii Gaudium 272) Pope Francis is making a bold statement about the power of love and the divine nature of every person. To learn something about God we must experience human loving. And in loving […]
From its very beginning thirteen billion years ago, the raw material of the world was already permeated and filled with God’s subtle but powerful presence. There never was a time or space in the history of evolution when God was absent from this planet. In the person of Christ this tremendous love-story has been finally revealed. A new consciousness has enfolded the world. The human is now the home of the divine. The redemption has […]
Within the horizons of the theology of nature and grace, there is a basic theology of sacrament without which we will always struggle to fully understand and teach the Christian faith. Once we make that central ground of revealed truth our own, then we will have immense confidence and consistency in the way we approach our teaching and catechising. What follows is an effort to explore the central Christian notion of sacrament, beginning with Christ, […]