Everyone loves a good ‘battle-between-good-and-evil’ – luckily, it’s not just for the movies, it’s for all of us! Like Solzhenitsyn said, the battle line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Our enemy is the devil and his demons; our comrades, the angels and saints; our captain, the Lord. Exciting stuff! But most…
What’s the point of all these penances? Well, in fact, they’re pointless – on their own, that is! With faith, however, all our Lent penances acquire a special power. Why do Christians fast? The name gives it away: we fast because Christ fasted. When you fast with faith, you are really, spiritually with Christ in…
Sherry Weddell was stumped. She had given dozens of parish seminars before, helping parish leaders discover their God-given charism, and interviewing them one-to-one to discern how the Spirit was moving in each of their lives. But with this particular woman, the interview was getting nowhere: though she was a parish leader, there seemed to be…
What are you looking forward to right now? What got you out of bed this morning? It’s undeniable: we need something to hope for as much as we need food and water. In his masterpiece encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI starts by comparing the plight of the pagans of St Paul’s time…
“If only life came with a user manual!” I once heard someone say. Today there’s not much emphasis on teaching rules of good behaviour. We’re free to express ourselves and make up our own minds about things. But ‘do what you feel’ very often ends up as ‘what do I do?’ Since I can do…
As a boy, my favourite Old Testament heroes were the prophets Elijah and Jonah. Elijah’s story is like the ‘Die Hard’ of the Old Testament – instead of John McClane single handedly taking out a building full of terrorists, it’s Elijah singlehandedly overcoming the evil King Ahab and the 450 priests of the demon Baal,…