In a 1990s movie, City Slickers, there’s a scene that sheds light on the importance of private integrity. Three men, New Yorkers, close friends, have gone off together for a summer to ride on a cattle drive in the hope that this experience will help them sort through their respective mid-life issues. There is no…
The Sunday Gospel Jem Sullivan 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time I Kings 3:5, 7-12 Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130 Romans 8:28-30 Matthew 13:44-52 Antiques Roadshow is a long running, popular television programme that evokes the treasure hunter in all of us. The show features art experts and appraisers who see people from all walks…
Maria Wiering “He was the world’s flower and glory, and has rendered superfluous the writings of doctors (of theology) who shall come after him.” St Albert the Great is said to have exclaimed these words upon the news of the death of St Thomas Aquinas, his former student, in 1274 at age 48. July 18 marked the…
The Pianist, about a Polish Jew’s experience of WWII, was a bit of a passion project for its Polish-Jewish director, Roman Polanski. Since coming out in 2002, it has been hailed as a classic. It stars Adrien Brody as pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, a real-life Holocaust survivor who wrote a memoir also called The…
Saint of the Week July 22 sees the Church celebrate another of its greatest saints; indeed, one of those closest to Christ as he walked among us. The ‘Apostle of the Apostles’ according to Christian tradition, Mary Magdalene was the first to encounter the risen Lord, the first to catch a glimpse of the heavenly…
María Ruiz Scaperlanda In December 2016, Pope Francis officially recognised Fr Stanley Rother’s martyrdom, making him the first American-born martyr. In September 2017, he became the first male born in the United States to be beatified. How a 46-year-old diocesan priest from a small German farming community in Oklahoma came to live and die in…
Questions of Faith There is an enormous gap between the public perception of sainthood and the reality of it. The vast majority of people believe that saints are born rather than made, titanic figures of myth and legend that we devote art to and tell stories about, nearly like Hercules or Prometheus, except that their…
When Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, he held up bread and wine as two elements within which to make himself especially present to us. Since that time, now more than 2,000 years ago, Christians celebrating the Eucharist have used the same two things, bread and wine, to ask Christ to bless this…
Deacon Greg Kandra The Sunday Gospel July 23 – 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Wis 12:13, 16-19 Ps 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16 Rom 8:26-27 Mt 13:24-43 As a city dweller who is more familiar with steel and cement than weeds and wheat, I never really connected with this Sunday’s Gospel. I’m sure the people of Jesus’s…
Sincerity is the life blood of a robust spiritual life. It’s one of those good habits I call “worldly virtues,” meaning virtues essential for living a good life in the middle of the world – in this case, being honest about our weaknesses along with our strengths, our confusions along with our certainties. Honesty But…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Ruadhán Jones