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 […]
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, […]
The experience of sharing and consuming Love’s Body, the Blessed Sacrament of the Universe, the Cosmic Bread of Incarnate Divinity, the Sacred Wine of a growing humanity, the Holy Communion of all forms of life, brings, as well as deep joy, forebodings, where the future appears as a yawning chasm into which a mutilated and drained earth must fall. Let us look briefly at some reasons for such deep concern. Thomas Berry wrote about the […]
In Eucharistic celebration it is WE who are changed and realigned without true nature. Taking part in communion does nothing other than transform us into that which we consume. Jean Louis Segundo suggests that we should not just be ‘Gospel consumers’ but ‘Gospel creators’. Perhaps Christians should make continual efforts to authenticate their sacramental life by being not only ‘Eucharistic consumers’ but of necessity ‘Eucharistic creators’ too, committed to establishing a new world order in […]
In the dynamic presence of the bread and wine on the table we have symbolised just about everything that can be predicated of humanity, the earth and everything on it and in it, the universe and the cosmos itself- the past, present and future of all creation. These rich and simple elements gather up the intense agony and ecstasy of the world, its darkness and light, its failures are mistakes, its driving and hopes, its […]
Sacrament, in Christian terms, is not meant to be a notion or practice imposed from without, but rather to be regarded in the light of a world already filled and permeated with Love’s essence -a world that tends toward the celebration in symbol and word of its own amazing story, beauty and hopes. The symbolic power of the sacramental action is to remember, affirm, celebrate and intensify the love and meaning at the heart of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Not every priest would readily recognise himself as a healer of fear. We hold so much fear before the unknown, especially before the unknown within ourselves. We need to recognise too that throughout history, fear has been used as an agent of control and coercion by many groups and institutions. To our shame, clericalism and authoritarianism within the church has done the same. The ministry of the priest, at heart, is about transcending and transforming […]
There once was a sculptor working hard with his hammer and chisel on a large block of marble. A little boy who was watching him saw nothing more than large and small pieces of stone falling away left and right. He had no idea what was happening. But when the boy returned to the studio a few weeks later, he saw, to his great surprise, a large, powerful lion sitting in the place where the […]
Often people who stop coming to Mass claim that they are bored by the irrelevance of our liturgies and homilies. The real issues, they say, are about what happens in their daily lives, and how the Eucharist might support and nourish them in their often desperate struggles. So how do we set this beautiful sacrament free of all that would diminish it? How do we provide fresh, sweet water for thirsty people? And where do […]
For a start, a truly incarnational theology of liturgy insists that our ritual acts of worship must never be seen as isolated interventions of grace into our otherwise ‘merely’ secular lives and world. Rather are they the symbolic expressions of the holiness of creation itself. This is a hugely significant truth and it takes some explaining. The Incarnation of God did not only happen in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The Incarnation actually began 14 billion […]
I was born and grew up in the shadow of the Paps in the South-West of Ireland. The Paps are two breast-shaped mountains that dominate the skyline along the road that runs from Cork to Killarney. They are named in honour of the goddess Danu (Da Chich Danann) who reigned supreme across Europe in more peaceful times. To complete nature’s astonishing silhouette, the local worshipers laboriously carried rocks and boulders all the way to the […]