It is easy to mistake piety for the genuine response that God wants of us, that is, to enter into a relationship of intimacy with Him and then try to help others have that same experience. We see this everywhere in Scripture. For example, in Luke’s Gospel, after witnessing a miraculous catch of fish, Peter…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Putting our God-given talents to good use
For the past six months, while undergoing treatment for cancer, I was working on a reduced schedule. The medical treatments, while somewhat debilitating, left me still enough health and energy to carry on the administrative duties in my present ministry, but they didn’t allow me any extra energy to teach classes or to offer any…
Christ came to save people and the planet
Numerous groups and individuals today are challenging us in regards to our relationship to mother-Earth. From Green Peace, from various environmental groups, from various Christian and other religious groups, and from various individual voices, comes the challenge to be less-blind, less-unthinking and less-reckless in terms of how we relate to the Earth. Every day, our…
Our eyes are the windows to our souls
Most of us worry about aging, especially in how it affects our bodies. We worry about wrinkles, bags under our eyes, middle-age fat and losing hair where we want it only to find it on places where we don’t want it. So every now and then, when we look in a mirror or see a…
The positive side of feeling down
Normally none of us like feeling sad, heavy, or depressed. Generally we prefer sunshine to darkness, light-heartedness to melancholy. That’s why, most of the time, we do everything we can to distract ourselves from melancholy, to keep heaviness and sadness at bay. We tend to run from those feelings inside us that sadden or frighten…
The more we understand God, the more we understand ourselves
Christian de Cherge, the Trappist Abbott who was martyred in Algeria in 1996, was fond of sharing this story. He had a very close Muslim friend, Mohammed and the two of them used to pray together, even as they remained aware of their differences, as Muslim and Christian. Aware, too, that certain schools of thought,…
Private morality is where all morality takes root
We can never be challenged too strongly with regards to being committed to social justice. A key, non-negotiable summons that comes from Jesus himself is precisely the challenge to reach out to the poor, to the excluded and to those whom society deems expendable. Therefore, the huge, global issues of justice should preoccupy us. Can…
Why our differences should be understood and appreciated more
‘Different notions about God and different ways of speaking about God do not mean that we’re speaking of a different God’ writes Fr Ron Rolheiser
Opening the gates of life
There is no hell that Christ cannot penetrate, no locked door he cannot go through, writes Fr Ron Rolheiser
Christmas is to be delighted in
‘Christmas is about the monumental challenge to reform our lives’, writes Fr Ron Rolheiser