It was when the evenings were lengthening in the first week of the new millennium that Laura’s long lashes began to move again. During those months of waiting, there was a paleness about her, like a sick baby, and her parents’ faces became etched forever with pain and fear. It had been a long Good Friday for the Connolly family. One day Bruce’s artistic passion was no longer there. The urge to paint had left […]
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 […]
There is something about Good Friday that I cannot get used to. It always comes into our lives so strangely new. It is more than the quietness of our small City or of the stillness of the fields that stretch out towards the Yorkshire Dales. It is as if creation itself participates in some kind of turning of the light – a light that touches the heart of each person and even of the cosmos […]
We believe in the Child within us. We believe in the qualities of childhood, in openness and wonder, in trust and spontaneity, in wholeness and immediacy, in simplicity and playfulness. We believe that God is born anew in every birth, and that her heart beats in the heart of every child. We believe that the Child within us is wounded. We believe that until these wounds are healed, we will grow more slowly, love […]
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 […]
Pope Francis believes that the call to a prayerful concern for our troubled world, to a conversion of our lives to save our Mother-Earth, is much more than an added-on obligation. It is a knowing in the heart, a recognising of our wider family of origin and destiny, an awakening of the divine imagination already within the human psyche. Our hearts, fashioned lovingly in the divine image, somehow sense this astonishing revelation of our intimacy […]
It seems to me that, for the most part, in God’s plan, the institution of marriage is the natural way for the developing and intensifying of human love. To move from selfishness to an awareness of the needs of others – first the loved one, then the children – must be impossible without the experience of marriage. How else can the soul’s desires be purified and intensified if not in the cauldron of learning to […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 more, or […]
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 the real red wine, your favourite wine, swirling it, sniffing it, and savouring it. Think of human flesh, your own beloved flesh and that of others, and of all the experiences and sensations it brings […]
(As we mark the d anniversary of Daniel’s death, this is the final extract of 3 from ‘Dancing to my Death’, where Daniel’s searing honesty shines forth as he seeks to understand God’s presence in the midst his struggles with cancer and a new stoma.) I can no longer believe in any kind of external God who will shrink my tumour just because I bombard him with prayers, pilgrimages, sacrifices and repeated religious routines. But […]
(As we mark the anniversary of Daniel’s death, this is the 2nd extract of 3 from ‘Dancing to my Death’, where Daniel’s searing honesty shines forth as he seeks to understand God’s presence in the midst his struggles with cancer and a new stoma.) Occasionally the despair lessens, the depression lifts, and possibilities emerge. I have always found a healing in understanding something more deeply. During this time in my life only a stark honesty […]
(As we approach the anniversary of Daniel’s death, this is the 1st extract of 3 from ‘Dancing to my Death’, where Daniel’s searing honesty shines forth as he seeks to understand God’s presence in the midst his struggles with cancer and a new stoma.) The days move slowly on but there are no changes to each morning’s shock. Now I know that my condition is not a nightmare from which I will awaken. The same […]
The Sacredness of Ordinary Life God is always incarnate, always just below the surface of our daily lives. . . . Every moment of every authentic experience carries the felt message for us of divine grace. . . . God is the energy that sustains all our human happenings and emotions. . . . To become more aware of God’s earthy, hidden dynamic all around us, we need to Look more intensely, Think more imaginatively, […]
From Horizons of Hope Ruah – the breath of God. Pope Francis prayed that we may have a big heart, open to God. May this blessed openness set you free to surrender your future to the powerful RUAH of the Holy Spirit. May you stay strong and persevering, courageous and whole-hearted in your commitment to this vision. May your love be always stronger than your fear, your light always stronger than the shadows that will […]
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, […]
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 […]
Friday was such a lovely day. After a few grey and cloudy weeks, the sun broke through, crisp and bright and full of promise-the promise of more to come, I’ve long and warm summer evenings. But winter too has its own beauty. The December light is different over the fields near Aberford, revealing the strange emptiness of the hedges and trees. Stripped of their green clothes, how poor and better they look; and all the […]
(Pope Francis has called the Church to work towards synodality, a more inclusive and consultative way of being Church. Daniel was appointed Parish Priest of St Benedict’s Garforth in 1991. After a long parish process of listening, consultation and discernment, via many meetings at house-group and parish level, underpinned by prayer and Gospel reflections, Daniel wrote the following message in the parish bulletin. Synodality in action 30 years ago!) ‘Yesterday I asked God for the […]
The incarnation has revealed what true humanity is, to be realised not by running away from the world or turning our backs on it in indifference and fear. Christ does not reveal what it is to be divine but what it is to be human. That our God-likeness might become complete is the purpose of creation. And the way to human fulfilment is to penetrate right to the heart of the world, in all its […]
Dear Child, Let nobody ever own you. You are too precious to be possessed by anyone or anything. Only God is big enough for you. You really are the love-child of Life, fashioned from the desire of a divine heart, the energy of the stars and the human love of two people, we, your parents. Never forget your amazing heritage. Remember the invincible power that is within you. With God there is nothing you cannot […]
If our religion, our going to Mass, our being Catholics is not purely about making us more sensitively aware of the fragility and frailty and fears of both ourselves and those we serve, then what are they about? If grace does not fill us with the courage and the power and the energy to work miracles for each other, then is it not all too heavenly to be of any earthly use? The Catholic traditional […]
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 […]
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 […]