One of the saints who speaks to me is Thérèse of Lisieux, commonly known as the ‘Little Flower’. This wasn’t love at first sight. For years I was put off and left cold and uninterested by how her person and her image have become encrusted in an overly saccharine piety. She was too sweet, too…
“Peace comes when we put the pieces within us together to make a beautiful melody”, writes Fr Ron Rolheiser Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the founder of Madonna House, once gave a particularly insightful interview. She acknowledged that her path wasn’t easy, that she had her fair share of inner struggles. Why? Because, like the rest…
In 2007, Charles Taylor wrote a book entitled, A Secular Age which gave us a clear and comprehensive analysis of the secular age we live in and the implications of that for our faith. More than a thousand years before that an unknown author in the fourteenth century wrote a book, The Cloud of Unknowing,…
With the resurrection of Jesus, time started over. Simply put, up until Jesus rose from the dead all things that died stayed dead. After Jesus’ resurrection, nothing stays dead anymore. Time has begun anew. Luke’s Gospel account of the resurrection begins with the words, “on the morning of the first day”. This is a double…
When the temple veil was ripped open, this incredible truth was revealed, writes Fr Ron Rolheiser There are many haunting lines in the passion narratives. Who is not stirred in the soul when the passion story is read aloud in church and we come to the part where Jesus takes his last breath and there’s…
Shortly after my ordination, doing replacement work in a parish, I found myself in a rectory with a saintly old priest. He was over eighty, nearly blind, but widely sought out and respected. One night, alone with him, I asked him this question: “If you had your priesthood to live over again, would you do…
Theodore Roethke begins his poem ‘In a Dark Time’, with these words: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” We live in a dark time, one beset with hatred, bitter divisions, and wars that, daily, are bringing death and incalculable trauma to millions of people. But are our eyes beginning to see? Sometimes…
Thomas Moore, the author of Care of the Soul, teaches that our most important spiritual task is to listen to the promptings of our own soul. If listened to in honesty, it will guide us, protect us, and keep us healthy. I heard him present this to an audience in a church setting and after…
In the musical Les Misérables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fantine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness life can deal a person. Abandoned by her husband, sexually harassed by her employer, caught in abject poverty, physically ill and dying, even as her main anxiety is about what will…
I heard this story from a renowned theologian who prefers I don’t use his name in sharing this, though the story speaks well of his theology. He was giving a lecture and at one point stated that God didn’t want Jesus to suffer like he did. A woman in the audience immediately raised her voice:…