We saw his glory, as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:2 He was in the beginning with God. John 1:3 All things came to be through him, and without him…
Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you Matt 2:13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until…
In the fourth book, Augustine recounts his life from approximately his late teens to his late twenties. It is a period characterised by suffering but also some rays of light. Having finished his education in rhetoric and persuasive speaking, he starts to sell his skills: “During these years I was teaching the art of rhetoric,…
There is a long tradition of historical fiction that seeks to imagine the interior lives of minor Gospel figures. Pär Lagerkvist’s Barabbas, or even parts of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita all step into the inner world of figures who appear fleetingly in Scripture. Works like these opt to reimagine the figures through the lens…
Our Christmas cribs generally include a more or less fixed set of characters: the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, some shepherds, the ox and the ass, an angel, and perhaps a lamb or two. In Italy – especially in Naples – there is a tradition of extending the Nativity scene to include…
Farming in faith means seeing the land not as a burden but as a blessing says Marie Louise Heffernan When I walk the hill with my husband in the morning, the air is sharp and the light low over the mountains. We move slowly, checking fences and the cattle grazing the heather slopes. The lambs…
When we pick up a book written approximately 1500 years ago, the differences between an ancient culture and our own can stand out; indeed, we often approach such a book assuming that there will be more differences than similarities. For example, if we are reading Confessions slowly and carefully, we may ponder such contrasts as…
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel Matt 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.…
When in Rome I spent some time with a group of pilgrims on a ‘pilgrimage of beauty’ centred around the works of Fra Angelico. In preparation for meeting up with them, I visited the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. I went there with the simple intention of spending a quiet moment before Caravaggio’s famous…
God’s love, always moving outward toward the most vulnerable, forms the backdrop to my own experience of encountering the poor says Fr Barry White Pope Francis’s call for “a Church which is poor and for the poor,” along with St Vincent de Paul’s reminder that “the poor have much to teach you,” inspired me to…
Fr Barry White