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,…
I once lived in community for several years with an Oblate brother who was wonderfully generous and pious to a fault. But he struggled to pick up symbol and metaphor. He took things literally. For him, what the words said is what they meant! This caused him considerable confusion and consternation when each day praying…
Recently I was listening to a religious talk show on the radio when a caller asked: How do we know that God exists? A good question. The radio host answered by saying that we know it through faith. That’s not a bad answer, except what needs to be teased out is how we know this…
Jesus was once asked why he spoke in parables. His answer is more than a little curious: I speak in parables . . . lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn again, and I should heal them. At first glance, it would seem…
In one sense, we might say that Christianity invented religion in that, before Christianity, communities of faith were mostly ethnically and tribally based. Jesus defined a family of faith differently, telling us that it is not the womb you were born out of, but the womb that you were reborn from that defines your family.…
Are we sometimes too stingy about who we allow into God’s family? Says Fr Ron Rolheiser John Muir once asked: “Why are Christians so reluctant to let animals into their stingy heaven?” Indeed, why? Especially since St Paul tells us in the Epistle to the Romans that all creation (mineral, plant, animal) is groaning to…
At a conference which I attended, a psychiatrist shared this story. A woman came to see him in considerable distress. Her anguish had to do with her last conversation with her husband before he died. She shared how they had enjoyed a good marriage for more than thirty years, with never more than a minor…
“God behaves in the psalms in ways he is not allowed to behave in systemic theology.” That quip from Sebastian Moore might be highlighted at a time when fewer people want to use the psalms as a form of prayer because they feel offended that the psalms speak of murder, revenge, anger, violence, war-making, and…