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 […]
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 […]
I received Selena into the Church twelve years ago. When Selena was a small girl she loved to wear her grandmother’s shoes. One day she fell and cut her leg. The wound needed some stitches. It healed in its own time. Selena is now 23. We met again recently. We talked about that moment in her young life. She said she still had the scar. Instead of disappearing, it grew as she grew, becoming more […]
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 […]
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 […]
In the documents of Vatican 1 and Vatican II there’s an image of God, when creating Adam and Eve, seeing, in imagination, a unique man, Jesus, who would exist in the distant future. It was God’s image of God’s own self made human in a real person. As he shaped and moulded Adam and Eve from the mud, his artist’s eye was on that inner picture of divine incarnation in a certain baby, nearly 14 […]
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 […]
‘I wish those angels and demons would finally get off my back. One’s trying to take a piece of me, the other to heal the heart. Night and morning you’re in my head.’ Peter Andre may be reflecting on his own troubled life when he wrote these words for his CD Angels and Demons When I was small I could’ve written those words too. On my left shoulder, I was told, there was a nasty […]
Try to visualise the inner room of your heart. How often do you visit it? Keep it nourished? How often do you come home to yourself? It is the centre of our energy, motivation, imagination and compassion. Now is the opportunity to explore it. What needs to die within you at this time in your life – and what needs to grow? Is there something you need to know, the voice within you that you […]
The mirror was as big as the wall of the room we were gathered in. It was my first Pilates class. Half way through I caught a glimpse of myself writhing on the floor, arms and legs all over the place like a beached octopus. Around me flexible bodies rotated rhythmically on their mats, balancing, stretching and pulsing to the music and the instructions. Sweat was dripping off my chin. My limbs were hurting. And […]
Think of the person who loves you most; who believes in you, who adores you, who loves you and knows you the closeness of our human God by heart. (Pause) Now that real relationship gives a glimpse of. God is not out there somewhere, far away, judging who’s good and who’s bad, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. So close is God to us that God lives at the centre of our lives, of our families, […]
I have only one reason for being here. There’s only one thing I want to say to you. One thing that changed my life – the day when I began to believe that God was utterly in love with me, that I was the apple of God’s eye – a presumption? Dear people, the God I tried to believe in for the first half of my life, is not the God I believe in now. […]
Our understanding of the Holy Spirit is mostly too limited and too undeveloped. It is time now to acknowledge and release her surging power throughout all life. We need to begin delighting in, and celebrating the dynamic Spirit pulsing through the Church, through humanity, through the evolving universe and through every corner of our own hearts We were on our way back home after Benediction one bright night, many decades ago, my mother and myself, […]
The priest farms the Field of Dreams. He divines that underground spring, the secret spark in every heart. He knows that behind the veneer of our eternal lives, the external is at work. Within us there is a secret immensity that we seldom even glimpse. In its subtle wisdom, the eternal artist carefully designs a unique destiny for each person. ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.’ To be born is to […]
Wet and weary we entered the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. The 100 km Camino walk was over and our bones ached during Mass. As we got up to leave, a huge thurible (the botafumiero) was let down on a thick rope on to the sanctuary floor. A tangible frisson of anticipation stirred throughout the packed pews. The censer weighed 80 kilos and stood 1.60 metres tall. The Camino de Santiago, the Way of St […]
Even if we wished we would be hard put to avoid the experience of God. The experience of God is practically inescapable. We cannot help coming into the embrace of divine compassion whenever we experience anything. Michael Skelley writes, ‘We do not sometimes have experiences of love, fear, ourselves, or anything else and then also have experiences of God. The basic, original experience of God, on the contrary, is the ultimate depth and radical essence […]
In the first month of the new year, millions are ready to overcome their natural fears of the unknown and throw off the habit of the familiar to embrace a journey that requires patience, determination and boldness to change not only the way of looking at life but life itself It is very early on the first day of the year. Intent and attentive, I’m sitting here at the window of my new home. The […]
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 yet another spoke of the song of his beloved as she played the harp to soothe her hero after a day of blood and gore. The wise […]