The real world that we experience firsthand and every day is a real setting in which faith really is meant to take form and grow. But does our firsthand acquaintance with our real world leave us wondering how it possibly could serve as an authentic faith environment? Think about it. Does your real world bear a full share of…
Saint of the week Arguably the most famous of the Church’s saints on June 29 we celebrate the feast of Sts Peter and Paul. Their influence permeates the entire Church and the world – Peter being the ‘rock’ upon which Christ chose to build his Church, Paul’s letters of guidance and encouragement being read out…
Effie Caldarola St Charles de Foucauld became one of Catholicism’s newest saints on May 15, 2022. This Frenchman was murdered in Tamanrasset, Algeria, in 1916 where he lived in a hermitage among the remote Tuareg people. At this point, eyes may glaze over. A saint who was a hermit? In the Saharan desert? What possible…
Fr Solanus Casey, a Capuchin Franciscan, moved closer to recognised sainthood with his beatification November 18, 2017, in Detroit, Michigan. Declared venerable in 1995, Fr Solanus (1870-1957) and his cause for canonisation remain important to many US Catholics. A soft-spoken Capuchin priest and son of Irish immigrants, he is one of the currently few native-born…
This mysterious, yet illuminating, figure of the early Church is heralded for two reasons: his writings in defence of what would come to be established Church teachings and his martyrdom. Strangely, we know much more about his writings than we do about his martyrdom – about which we know next to nothing, other than that…
Christian vision of the good life includes the reality of suffering, making it central to our flourishing; if we want to live a good life, we must follow Christ’s example and take up our cross. Perhaps surprisingly, a film from a culture (Japan) largely unfamiliar with Christianity offers a beautiful example of this truth of…
Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticised as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex’, has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold,…
Praying with God’s word will lead to the renewal of the Church, writes Stephen Binz The Bible is the “word of the Lord”: an inspired library of narrative, poetry, letters and literature that God has spoken to us, to benefit our lives. So why is it that many Catholics encounter Scripture only during the readings…
A few years ago, I started to pray using the Examen of St Ignatius Loyola. Everything changed for me. Prayer took on a new, refreshing character. I became an evangelist for the Examen. I buttonholed friends, wrote blog posts and a book, and recorded guided Examens on the Internet. I did everything I could to…
St Anthony of Padua On 13 June, the Church calls to mind one of its Doctors – St Anthony of Padua. This remarkable man, but a very ordinary one, too, in so many ways, is one of the most quickly canonised saints in the Church’s long history, with Pope Gregory IX canonising him less than…
Ruadhán Jones