(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 […]
Love is all that we spend our lives seeking, but we forget along the way that love is present the moment we surrender to it. And the moment we surrender, we are no longer afraid of dying, or whether or not there is eternal life, because we have already found it, in love. Just one glimpse of true love, within and around us, shows us heaven. Love is eternal life. Because love sings forever, and […]
Those who are committed to defending human dignity can find in the Christian faith the deepest reasons for this commitment … ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you’ (Jer 1: 5). We were conceived in the heart of God and for this reason ‘each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.’ (Benedict XVI) [Laudato […]
‘St Francis invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants to us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. Beyond the language of mathematics and biology he takes us to the heart of what it is to be human … just as happens when we fall in love with someone … [Laudate Si 12]’ It is more than information, the Pope is saying regarding St […]
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 […]
The poets and artists are never tired of playing with this fascinating theme. Unlike many of the official teachers of religion, they have never lost the sense of wonder at the mystery of the indwelling of God in creation. For them, the smallest particle of creation becomes a window on God’s beauty. Their intense energy is spent on revealing ‘the dearest freshness that lives deep down things’. They see ‘his blood upon the rose and […]
Our Popes have used the phrase ‘One God, many religions, many theologies.’ Let us look at some examples of how faith is presented from two familiar but contrasting theologies: A Sin/Redemption or a Theology of Creation – a theology of nature and grace Image of God In the story of Sin/Redemption God is seen as a distant, watchful, controlling and punishing father. He allows Bad things to happen, babies die disasters destroy people and possessions […]
Theology is a Love-Story – To grow into this welcoming, most beautiful understanding requires much unlearning. This reflection encourages us to let go of very flawed and untrue teachings about an Original Sin, a God who punishes, who allows bad things to happen, who favours Christians. Our Popes have used the phrase ‘One God, many religions, many theologies.’ We can talk about this as ‘One Love, many love-stories’. We must shift the basis of our […]
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 […]