( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) I have cried a lot these late summer days. It may be 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 […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) It surprises me that occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I can often 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 […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) ‘Spirit always desires to incarnate itself.’ That is how Richard Rohr puts it. Translated into my current cancer condition it would mean that something truly divine is taking place in the growing or shrinking of my tumour. This understanding of our faith, is, of course, as old as the hills. (And we are rarely reminded of it!) As Christians […]
( The reflections for July are taken from the last section of Dancing to my Death) Within the last year I wrote An Astonishing Secret – the Love-Story of Creation and the Wonder of You. It was full, for me at least, of vital, spiritual connections and clarifying mental observations. It was also completed before cancer struck, when my mind was clear and my health was enviable. Trying to create those healing connections just now, […]
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 […]
We’ll find much brighter stars than know/Old Aldebaran or the Bear. 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 […]
A few years ago a shy young couple from a ‘good Catholic family’ in the parish asked to get married in Church. Because I had never seen them at Mass I did not immediately agree to their request and suggested further meetings. Maybe it was the tone of my voice, or maybe they were not very keen in the first place, but the outcome was that I never saw them again. I did hear some […]
At 84 Samuel Becket was asked about the possibility of his retirement. “What!,” he exclaimed, “Me? Retire? Never – not with the fire in me now!” Not all of us are that lucky. In my travels I meet teachers and priests for whom the original vision of their vocation has all but disappeared. There seems to be a universal kind of ennui, a deep-seated sense of pressure, that is driving people to retire as soon […]
It happened in May last year. Easter was well and truly over and Pentecost was beckoning. Tired after Monday’s disappointing golf, I checked the ansafone. It was a woman’s voice. “Sir, I would like to have my baby christened next Sunday.” I tensed. She didn’t even know my name. Neither was she aware of our ‘two months notice’ requirement. Or the need for the pre-baptismal talks. I fumed like this for a while before ringing […]
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 […]
A friend of mine entered for last year’s Talent for Britain auditions. I tuned in to one of the first episodes. The panel judges were finding it all rather boring and predictable. During the interval they said so. Mr Potts, a sad-faced young man from Wales was next up. He said he would like to be an opera singer. I noticed two of the three judges throwing cynical glances at each other. Paul Potts opened […]
Resurrection is as earthy, local and intimate as our sweat and blood, our dreams and nightmares, our drives and passions. It is as real as whatever or whoever drives and drains us, draws and drags us. Resurrection, in fact, is the deepest meaning of everything that brings a smile to our face, a tear to our eyes, a vitality to our bodies, a softness to our voices and a tenderness to our touch. Resurrection is as real as that. […]
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 […]