In the Hebrew Scriptures, that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, we find a strong religious challenge to always welcome the stranger, the foreigner. This was emphasised for two reasons: first, because the Jewish people themselves had once been foreigners and immigrants. Their Scriptures kept reminding them not to forget that. Second,…

One of the dangers inherent in trying to live out a life of Christian fidelity is that we are prone to become embittered moralisers, older brothers of the prodigal son, angry and jealous at God’s over-generous mercy, bitter because persons who wander and stray can so easily access the heavenly banquet table. But this isn’t…

The French novelist and essayist, Leon Bloy, once made this comment about God’s power in our world: “God seems to have condemned himself until the end of time not to exercise any immediate right of a master over a servant or a king over a subject. We can do what we want. He will defend…

Early Christian monks believed in something they called acedia. More colloquially, they called it, the noonday devil, a name that essentially describes the concept. Acedia, for them, was different from ordinary depression in that it didn’t draw you into the dark, chaotic areas of your mind and heart, to have you diseased before your own…

Recently a man came to me, asking for help. He carried some deep wounds, not physical wounds, but emotional wounds to his soul. What surprised me initially was that, while he was deeply wounded, he had not been severely traumatised either in childhood or adulthood. He seemed to have just had to absorb the normal…

Recently, while on the road giving a workshop, I took the opportunity to go the cathedral in a city for a Sunday Eucharist. I was taken aback by the homily. The priest used the Gospel text where Jesus says “I am the vine and you are the branches” to tell the congregation that what Jesus…

Fr Conor McDonough We must protect “the world (that) is more than just decay” writes Fr Conor McDonough as, “it is a place also of birth, of new beginnings” There is something immensely moving about the feast of Epiphany: bearded old men leave their dusty old books and journey by the light of a star…

So much of life, particularly today, constitutes an unconscious conspiracy against reading. Lack of time, the pressure of our jobs, and electronic technology, among other things, are more and more putting books out of reach and out of mind. There is never enough time to read. The upside of this is that when I do…