There’s a lyric in a song by Gordon Lightfoot which tries to interpret the struggle going on in the heart of Miguel de Cervantes’ mythical hero, Don Quixote. His goodness separates him from the world, even as he understands that wickedness has the same source, namely, that both “the wise and wicked feed upon life’s…
Sometimes it is hard to tell sickness from health. When we’re suffering, is it an indication that there’s something wrong with us or might it be that the suffering is the healthy result of living faithfully? When we are anxious, are we worrying God’s kingdom into birth or are we simply worrying ourselves to death?…
“We can end up as good people, no big betrayals, though no big self-sacrifices either,” writes Fr Ronald Rolheiser Thomas Merton once said that what he feared in his own life was not so much a massive betrayal of his vocation, but a series of “mini treasons” that lead to a different kind of death.…
During most of the two thousand years that Christianity has existed it has not been friends with science, and science has not been friends with it. From the Church condemning Galileo, to the Enlightenment thinkers declaring faith ‘a spent project’, science and Christian faith have been more foe than friend. Happily, this has changed. Today…
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…