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:…
A vocation is an inner voice so strong that it becomes unthinkable to turn away, writes Fr Ron Rolheiser, any of us are familiar with a famous line from C.S. Lewis who, when writing about his conversion to Christianity, shared that he was “the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom.” When he first…
Many of us could use more silence in our lives. I say this cautiously because the place of silence in our lives isn’t easy to specify. Silence is a complex; sometimes we fear it and try to avoid it and sometimes when we are tired and over-stimulated we positively long for it. Generally, though, we…
The renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade once issued this warning: “No community should botch its deaths.” He’s right. Death washes clean and only after someone is gone can we fully drink in the gift that he or she was for us and the world. On January 22 the Christian community, and the Catholic Church in particular,…