Acting Today for a Brighter Tomorrow – 2020 Legacy Supplement Chai Brady hears from charities working to help people through homelessness, poverty, violence and the Covid-19 pandemic Irish charities are facing many difficulties trying to overcome the unique challenges wrought by the current pandemic, but many have devised creative solutions to continue helping those most…
Category: Feature
Pope Francis: Climate change ‘causing immense hardship for the most vulnerable among us’
Feature sponsored by Concern Worldwide. Extreme weather destroying crops and food supplies in world’s most vulnerable countries. With climate change related hunger and malnutrition increasing, Pope Francis warned, “We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own.” Worldwide, droughts and floods have more than doubled since the early…
Purgatory: a therapy of divine love, not punishment
The Sunday Gospel Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap. Purgatory is not specifically mentioned in the Bible but the doctrine of Purgatory is a beautiful development which holds in unity two ideas that might seem to be contradictory. The doctrine of God’s holiness reminds us of God’s unique otherness, glory and light, far beyond anything we…
Bringing joy out of misery with a smile
Operation Smile was founded by husband and wife, Bill and Kathy Magee, in 1982, and has increased the number of smiles to be found in the world steadily since then, writes Jason Osborne Following a trip to the Philippines to provide surgery for children born with a cleft lip, a distinct need was seen and…
Light for November: a time to remember loved ones
The Sunday Gospel Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap. Many of us will be familiar with the opening lines of Thomas Hood’s delightful poem… “I remember, I remember the house where I was born, The little window where the sun peeped in at morn.” Less familiar and less cheerful are his lines about November… “No shade,…
Students praised for new Roscrea ‘Prayer Path’ creation
The Faithful gathered to mark the official opening and blessing of the new Prayer Path in Mount Saint Joseph Abbey created by the 2019-2020 Transition Year students from Cistercian College with singers, poetry readings and more. Abbott Dom Malachy Thompson blessed the path and cut the ribbon. He congratulated the students, Fr AodhánMcDunphy and Paddy…
The greatest Commandment and its link to pure joy
The Sunday Gospel Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap. It was an attempt to start an argument with Jesus, to disconcert him, when one of the pharisees asked for his opinion on the greatest commandment. Jesus cut through all their commentaries and debates with a simple and challenging answer: “You must love the Lord your God…
Measuring a missionary’s fruits of peace
World Mission Sunday (18th October, 2020) Together we can do more – Blessed are the peacemakers (Mt 5:9) Chai Brady speaks to Ireland’s OLA provincial about violence, feminism, tackling conflict and the rewarding life of a missionary Measuring the fruits of violence is always easier than those of peace, as often it’s the bomb that…
Religion and politics
The Sunday Gospel Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap. Today’s Readings open up the contentious relationship between religion and politics, between the sacred and secular dimensions of life. In the First Reading the political decision of the Babylonian King, Cyrus, unwittingly served the plan of God for the release of the Jewish captives. In today’s Gospel…
Reflections of a new permanent deacon during the Covid pandemic
Frank Browne On Saturday August 29, I was ordained a permanent deacon in the parish church of Saggart, by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for the Dublin Diocese. The ordination ceremony was an important event for my family. My wife, and children (aged from 10 to 17 years), had some concerns over what my becoming a deacon…